The barking did not stop. It grew louder. I was certain the dogs were running towards us, that they would find us and tear us apart. I reached out and pulled Megan towards me, to protect her with my body if I had to. Her eyes met mine, wide and bright, her mouth twisted with fear. I could not help myself. I pressed my lips against hers and kissed her.
For a moment she struggled in my arms. Then, as the sound of the dogs worked deep into my head, I felt her relax and she returned the kiss, her probing tongue sliding between my teeth until it found mine.
The sound of the dogs faded away and took the fear with it. I was lost in the moment, completely surrendering myself to the taste and the smell and the touch of her. One of my hands strayed to her breast.
Megan pressed her hand to my belly and then slid it down into my trousers. I moaned as she took me in her hand. It was all I could do not to cry out.
I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my mouth harder against hers as a delicious pressure built inside me. Her hand moved, and I moved in time with it, the pressure building and building until something exploded within me. I was overwhelmed by a thrill so intense it was nearly painful.
Suddenly she let go of me and groaned with disgust, whipping her hand from beneath my trousers and shoving me away.
Whatever foul spell had been cast over us was now broken.
I felt like a man waking from a troubled sleep. I lay on the ground, blinking in confusion at the sky, filled with revulsion at the thought of what we had done. We were brother and sister. What madness had possessed me? Possessed us, for it was fair to say I had not sinned alone. Megan had been as desperate for me as I had been for her. All that day I had felt strange yearnings for her. Now I began to wonder if she had harboured the same shameful desire for me.
I could not bring myself to talk, and neither could she. I sat facing away from her while she dressed in silence, and did not move when she strode past me, without a word or a backwards glance. When she had walked far enough away that I could not see her, I got to my feet and set off back towards the village. Then I changed my mind and, stepping from the path, made my way to the lake. The lines were where we had left them, one swinging back and forth. I was not interested in taking the fish from the hook, so I left it to its struggle for freedom. I felt dirty, tainted. I needed to wash myself clean.
I waded into the water. Once it had reached past my waist I held my arms out straight before me and dived in…
The sun was close to setting by the time I reached home, but it was still uncomfortably warm and my clothes scratched my damp skin. I heard voices from the hall and could smell roasting lamb. Lacking the stomach for food or company, I continued straight on to our hut, hoping Megan and my parents would have joined the others for the evening meal. I ducked inside. It was deserted.
I lay on my pallet and stared miserably at the smoke hole; the sky was turning dark. I still struggled to accept what Megan and I had done. I thought perhaps I should leave home, gather up what few possessions I had and make my way down to the lowlands, lose myself in the forest, search for a village where I could start a new life where no one would ever know of my disgrace. I would have done, too, except that I would be dead in a day, food for a bear or a pack of wolves. I was small and weedy.
Eventually my mother returned with my sister. I feigned sickness to explain my absence at the hall. Megan did not so much as glance my way. She had reached the age where they felt they needed to shield her from my eyes — and what a success that had been — so they had suspended a blanket from the ceiling above one end of the hut where she could dress and sleep without being seen.
Muttering that she was tired, she pushed past the blanket and disappeared.
That was a long night. My mother and I talked quietly for a while, then she yawned and said she, too, was going to bed. I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling, as laughter and raised voices drifted across from the hall. It was always that way. Once the women and children had left for the night, out would come the ale and the men would drink themselves stupid, and then my father would stagger home and pass out. That night he collapsed on his bed, with a grunt that wafted beery fumes over me, and was snoring in seconds.
Minutes felt like hours, hours passed like days. I could not sleep. The heat did not help. I pulled the shirt over my head and dropped it to the floor beside the pallet. Still too hot, I took off my trousers and dropped them next to the shirt, leaving on my braies to preserve my dignity. An owl hooted. A sheep bawled. I closed my eyes and willed sleep to come.
It must have, for I was aware of nothing until I felt a weight on my mattress. Someone was climbing quietly into the pallet next to me, and warm, moist flesh brushed against mine. Megan, I thought, with a sick feeling in my belly. I sat up and tried to push her away but the hands that gripped my wrists were too strong, forcing me back to the mattress. A heavy body, much heavier than Megan’s, slid over mine, pressing me down so I could not move.
“Mother?” I gasped. There was no mistaking the smell of her. I tried to protest but her mouth smothered mine and my words were muffled and lost. Away in the hills above the village, I heard the barking of those hellish hounds, insinuating itself into my head like worms boring into the flesh of the dead. At once I was filled with a lust so strong it eclipsed all other thoughts. I was helpless to resist, it was as if it were happening to someone else, and I was a reluctant observer who could not turn away.
I heard Megan cry out, heard the deep rumble of my father’s voice. After that there was nothing save that relentless baying, the heat of my mother’s breath in my mouth and the slickness of skin against skin as she wrapped her legs around me and drew me in.
I will not speak of what happened after that. From the revulsion written in your faces I suspect you do not want to hear it either. Believe me, the disgust you feel for me is as nothing compared to my own self-loathing. Believe me also when I tell you what happened that night was the work of the devil himself. For in those long hours between midnight and dawn we were seized by a kind of madness. And by we I mean everyone, the entire village.
That became apparent the following morning. When the rising sun woke me, I was alone in my bed. Raising myself up on one elbow, I could see my parents were asleep in theirs. Had I dreamt it all? The soreness between my legs told me otherwise, but surely we could not have slept so soundly if it had truly happened.
A cockerel crowed, and slowly the village stirred into life. The atmosphere in our hut was muted; none of us would look the others in the eye. We knew we had done a terrible wrong, so terrible we dared not speak of it. How could we, when we couldn’t begin to understand why we had done it? My young mind could only suppose we had been possessed. Unable to bear it any longer, we made our way in gloomy silence to the hall to break fast with the villagers.
Although I was not hungry, I felt a desperate need to be with others, to be among those who had not shared my awful sin, but it was apparent on entering the hall that my family had not been alone.
No one spoke when we walked in. They were struggling with their own consciences and barely registered our presence. Gwyn, our brehyrion, looked as guilty as anyone in the room. His wife had died years ago and he had raised Arwel with the help of his mother, Bronwyn, a thin, harsh-voiced woman known to the children as Crow. She was a bad-tempered creature, too. I looked at her and then looked at Gwyn and had to swallow the bile in my throat.
Days passed. Whatever madness had overwhelmed us had passed, for there was no more wickedness. The dogs, or whatever they had been, were not heard again. A month went by and, as is often the way with such matters, the memories gradually grew less raw until village life returned to something like normal. But then the consequence of our accursed couplings became evident. One by one, eight of the women of the village, my mother and sister among them, discovered they were with child.