Slowly, like a man undressing his bride on their wedding night, Sir Henry unwound her caul of sea-green velvet. As her long red hair caught in the salt breeze and blew about his arm like freshets of blood, he let her wrappings fall to the sand. Then, in triumph, he held her up to the night sky.
In the aqua light of the flaming tree, her hair burned with all the colors of hell and her glass eyes sparkled, green as sea urchins. The most gorgeous mother-of-pearl could not compare with the luster of her pale skin, nor oysters with the succulence of her lips.
With the deference of a courting suitor, Sir Henry laid the head of his lady upon the sand. Then he set about building her a body.
Her spine—from neck to curved pelvis—he took from the remains of the amorous mermaid. The bones of legs and feet, arms and hands, lovely fingers and precious toes he built from driftwood and coral. Her lungs were sea sponges and her tendons long strands of kelp wrapped around the muscular innards scooped from great scallop shells. Womb and bladder were sea cucumbers, her ovaries starfish, and her liver a giant sea leach. Her gallbladder was a yellow snail and her innards a writhing sea worm pulled from below the sand, its circular mouthful of teeth snapping. For breasts, two more lovely rounded sea sponges, and for nipples, tiny pearls.
Almost finished, he sat back on his heels and gazed upon the body of his beloved, and at her head, which rested several feet away. She looked like a beautiful saint—beheaded and flayed—though the gods this lady served were no Christian ones. Sir Henry sighed. The only missing organ was a heart.
He reached into his sack. With a frightened ribbit the frog leaped, but Sir Henry caught it deftly in one hand. Lifting it high, he felt the strength of its struggles and the rhythmic swelling and pulsing of its throat as it breathed. Oh, it would do nicely! He plunged it into his beloved’s chest where it snuggled between the sea sponges and hid.
Now all he needed was skin.
At the tide line, Henry filled his sack with wet sand rich with sea lice and tiny, translucent crabs, then lugged it back to the circle of stones surrounding the flaming tree. Once inside its circumference, he rested the heavy sack on the ground beside his lady’s body and knelt down.
One by one, he added grave clay, herbs, and elixir. When the last of these was added, the mixture frothed and bubbled. Tiny lice and crabs rose on the foam and scuttled madly over the sides of the sack, trying to escape. Unbuttoning his fly, Sir Henry withdrew his stiff member and began to stroke it, focusing his mind on the beautiful face of his lady and the lovely skull beneath. He came to climax swiftly, directing his pearly glitter into the mixture. As he buttoned his fly, he thought it was time to add the final ingredient necessary to bring this flesh to life.
Raising the ritual knife, he uttered a guttural prayer and then sliced into the flesh of his right forearm. As blood poured into the sand mixture, he whispered another spell. Arm still bleeding, he reached both hands into the bubbling, frothing mix and began to knead.
He could feel its texture change. The grains of sand—both shell fragments and pebbles—began to dissolve. The smoothness of what resulted reminded him, oddly, that sand was the main substance in glass. But what he kneaded and stretched was neither sand nor glass but something between clay and flesh. Its color, softly ruddy from the red of his blood, was the hue of a lady’s blushing cheek.
With the finesse of a skilled sculptor, Sir Henry attached head to body with muscles and tendons formed of stout kelp, and then he began to layer skin upon his beloved. As each delicate membrane was stretched over her muscles and bones and organs, it set for a moment and then softened. Sir Henry could see the little capillaries sprout and grow and spread through the dermal strata as he prepared and stretched each one, thin and delicate as a frond of seaweed, over her sleeping form. As the seventh layer set and softened, her chest rose in a gentle sigh. But though the body had begun to respond he knew that her form was, on the whole, still lifeless, since it was not yet animated by a spirit. And though the form he had given her was beautifully feminine, its nether regions were, externally at least, still sexless. But before he performed that particular surgery, his lady deserved to be dressed.
From the sand where he had laid it with such care, Sir Henry lifted her shimmering folded dress. In the light of the blazing underworld oak, he shook it out.
Ah! His seamstresses had not disappointed him! Blue-green as velvet seahorn and trimmed with sand-gold braid, the gossamer-fine gown glistened in the light of the fire. Turning his back to the flame, he held it up to the sky and saw the Pearl of Diana shining through it. Such translucent delicacy! The great fan sleeves were like the wings of a butterfly and the dainty bodice like a sheath sewn from the overlapping petals of fragrant flowers.
With the care of a lady’s maid, Sir Henry dressed his doll. Over her head went the gown, and into the great fan sleeves he slid her arms. The bodice he loosened, since the color of her nipples was not yet complete, and though he pulled the gown to her hips, he left the join between her legs—as yet virginally unbroken—bared.
For this bit of work, Sir Henry would need more of his own fluids.
Uncorking the champagne, he poured some bubbly liquid into the chalice cut from his great-grandfather’s skull and drained it. Thinking of God, and of the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib, Sir Henry cupped the swell of his Galatea’s breasts, traced his fingers over her colorless nipples, then ran his hands along the base of her ribs and clasped the taper of her waist.
He was ready. Once more he brought himself to climax, spraying his jism into what remained of the flesh-clay mixture contained in his sack. Then he squeezed the cut on his arm, breaking the scabby clot so that it could bleed some more.
In his excitement, he’d been reckless with the initial incision, and the reopened wound was deeper than the original. The spray of blood that flooded the sand both fascinated and horrified him. As a wave of weak dizziness swept over him, he quickly bound his wound, fearing he would faint and bleed to death if he did not do so with alacrity. Blinking, he began to knead again. Blood spread through the mix, dyeing it the crimson of a newly opened rose. The mixture, already smooth, was now as soft and silky as petals.
First, Sir Henry gave color to her nipples, and the addition of this ruddy clay made him swollen and erect again. Her legs were—by necessity—already splayed, and so he formed the delicate folds of her labia, fine and slick and smooth. Her full skirt was still rucked high, and so he inserted his middle finger between those nether folds, creating her vagina. Though most of his jism had gone into the making of this, the smoothest and most delicate of flesh, a single pearl-like drop of his own fluid remained, and so he balanced it on the tip of his finger and reached into the recesses of her, where that tight tunnel met the neck of her womb, and deposited it there. After all, it was their wedding night. When this was accomplished and their marriage consummated, Sir Henry stepped back so that he could examine his creation.
Oh! His hands must have been guided by the gods, since not even DeMains at his most inspired could have created a lovelier or more perfect form. With her skirt pooled around her hips and her bodice undone, she looked like a ravished bride, though the porcelain calm of her expression bespoke a serenity rarely experienced by mere mortals.
Slopping more champagne into the bone chalice, Henry drank deeply. Drunk on bubbly and beauty and moonlight and fire, and giddy from loss of blood, he began to dance around his lady, singing and chanting in the guttural language of the dead which he’d memorized from the abbot’s treatise.
As the sea wind—until now unnaturally calm—picked up force, Sir Henry danced, reckless as a teenage boy drunk on his own lustiness. With a final rasp of spells, he picked up the silver conch shell and raised it to his lips. Then he blew.