The Language of Trees by Steve Wiegenstein

Author:Steve Wiegenstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blank Slate Press & Marketing, Inc
Published: 2017-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

September 1888

“I need to remind you that this is all in the service of your personal development,” Lily Breeze said. “Attachment to persons is not what we are about.”

“I know that,” said Newton. They were naked in her bed, wrapped up under the covers, and he had murmured an endearment.

“I’m not sure you do,” she said. “We don’t engage the body for our own selfish reasons, we do it to advance our understanding. Brother Braswell wanted me to remind you of this.”

“You tell Braswell about everything that goes on between us?”

“Of course I do. He’s my spiritual leader.” She seemed about to say more but stopped herself. “Anyway, Brother says we should proceed from where we are.”

Newton didn’t speak. He’d never been able to overcome his misgivings about the entire relationship, but the ready availability of pleasure was so new and irresistible to him that he couldn’t keep himself away. She had never permitted him the full measure of her body, just the touch of her hand and the pressure of her lying full length. Until she was confident that he had sufficient self-control to engage with her without accidentally making a baby, she said, there would be no full measure. So was today the day?

“You’ve heard the expression ‘French whore,’ no doubt,” she said. “Ever wonder what it means?”

“Well, no.”

“Think about all those Bible kings with their hundreds of wives. If you wanted to stand out among a hundred wives, you’d need to learn some pretty fancy tricks. This secret knowledge was handed down through the years, woman to woman. When the Crusaders came to the Holy Land, they met up with women who possessed these secrets of the flesh and were enthralled by them. Back to Europe they went, with these secrets and some of the women. The Church hated this and tried to stamp it out, and you know why? Because they wanted women to be lumps of meat with a hole for procreation, not equal and active partners in the pleasures of the body. It’s not the sex they feared, it’s the equality.”

“Where’d you hear all this?”

“Brother B., of course. The man has read and studied all his life, more books than you and I will ever read.”

“I don’t know. Sounds like a fairy tale to me.”

“Maybe so. But I’ll tell you this. Shame is a woman’s great enemy. You talked about a whore in town you used to visit. Bet she never took off all her clothes, like you and I do.”

“No,” Newton said. “She was more of the ‘drop your pants and I’ll hike up my skirts’ sort.”

“That’s shame at work. The woman you marry, whenever you marry, probably won’t do it either.”

“What if the woman I marry turns out to be you?” He had meant it as a tease, but regretted it immediately. She’d already scolded him once for a bit of gallantry.

Lily Breeze laughed, but not unkindly. “Not in a hundred years. That is not the part I am to play. I’m a tool of your enlightenment, not a partner in romance.

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