The Night Saira Burned Among the Witches

The bonfire blazed in the center of the clearing like a second sun, and twenty naked witches danced around it. The solstice night was the only one when the Valdebrumas forest brought them all together, young and old, and no one came wearing clothes or shame on her skin.

Some had bodies marked by the years and childbirth. Others were barely women, only recently out of adolescence, their flesh still firm and curiosity burning between their legs. All of them gleamed with sweat in the firelight, sensual, shameless, without a gram of modesty.

On the soft grass, several had begun to lie down, exhausted from dancing and eager for something else. They sought each other’s hands, bit each other’s lips, licked the salt from one another’s shoulders. The heat of the fire wasn’t the only thing warming the air.

Saira was attending her first coven. Her teacher, Bruna, had brought her—the woman whose body she already knew by heart. They slept together in the stone cabin on the slopes, gathered herbs together, ate from the same dish, and had shared the same bed for two winters.

But that night Bruna had told her only one thing before they left.

—Tonight you’re not mine. Tonight you belong to the circle.

Saira didn’t fully understand what it meant until she was in the clearing, surrounded by unfamiliar skin. She wanted to know other mouths. She wanted to learn what women who weren’t hers tasted like.

The first to approach were two sisters from a neighboring valley, dark-haired and quick to laugh. One ran a hand over her hip while the other brushed her hair aside to kiss her neck. Saira let them, closing her eyes, learning the different weight of each mouth, the different pressure of each finger. They weren’t in a hurry, only possessed of the patient desire of women who knew the night was long.

When the sisters moved on, Saira stood still for a moment, breathing in the bonfire’s sweet smoke and the scent of sex floating in the air. She had never imagined desire could feel like this, without guilt, without measure, shared among so many and with none of them asking anything in return.

The dean called to her, a matron with heavy breasts and white hair who presided over the celebration from a seat of logs covered in pelts. She was the most powerful woman in the region, and almost all of them yearned for her favors. Because she was the youngest and newest, Saira received the attention of everyone who passed by her.

—Come closer, child —said the dean, holding out an earthen cup of herbal brandy.

Saira drank. The liquor burned her throat and spilled down her chin to her neck, and the matron bent to lick the trail away before it reached her breasts. Her rough tongue traveled slowly upward, and Saira felt her nipples stiffen all at once.

—You’re hungry —the older woman murmured against her skin—. You have the whole night ahead of you to satisfy that hunger.

As she spoke, the dean’s gnarled fingers traveled down the apprentice’s belly and made their way between her thighs. They found her swollen clitoris and played with it in slow, unhurried circles, while her other hand held her by the nape to kiss her. The matron’s tongue tasted of herbs and fire, and Saira moaned into that old, knowing mouth.

Saira stayed a little longer, letting those old fingers learn her from the inside. The dean read her like a scroll, effortlessly finding the places that made her arch, and all the while she spoke softly of the witches she had loved over her fifty solstices, of those who had truly burned in the bonfire and those who had burned only with pleasure. The apprentice listened with half an ear, her mind clouded and her body aflame.

It was hard to pull away. When she did, she yielded the dean’s lap to the next woman, a voluptuous healer who was already waiting her turn, and turned back toward the center, dizzy with liquor and desire.

***

Between one turn of the dance and the next, Saira searched for her teacher with her eyes.

She found her beneath a tree, on a bed of straw. Bruna had her head buried between the long, white thighs of a redhead who arched and moaned, adding her voice to the night. She was on all fours, offering her ass to anyone who wanted it, and another of the apprentices had taken her up on it: she was biting her buttocks and driving her tongue between them, licking her with the same devotion one prayed with.

Saira felt a pang of something that wasn’t jealousy. There, no one argued over a body. No one fought over breasts or hips when they had all come for the same thing: to give and receive, without measure.

The caresses of those passing nearby brushed against her without asking permission. One hand squeezed a breast as it passed, another slid down her back to her buttocks, a mouth stole a kiss on the fly and vanished into the darkness. Every touch left her more awake, hungrier.

A mature witch, with broad thighs and a calm gaze, stopped her for a moment. She took Saira’s face between both hands and kissed her slowly, exploring her mouth with her tongue as though reading a map. Then she whispered in her ear to be patient, that pleasure shared among many was different from the pleasure of two bodies alone, and that tonight she would learn the difference. Saira nodded without fully understanding, but the words lodged in her like a promise.

The bonfire was beginning to die down, and with it the circle grew smaller. Only the strongest were still standing, those who could endure the flames’ scorching heat against their naked skin.

And then she saw her.

***

She was the most beautiful of them all. Blonde, with a mane of golden curls that fell to a round, firm ass. Skin smooth and white as curdled milk. Her breasts stood high, not very large, ending in two small, pink nipples, pale and hard as chickpeas in that cold that cooled no one. A narrow waist, wide hips, a taut belly.

She danced alone, eyes closed, oblivious to everything. Saira approached until she took her hand between her fingers.

The blonde opened her eyes and looked at her as a lioness looks at its prey, with hunger and calm. She said nothing. She grabbed Saira by the waist and pulled her against her body in one swift tug.

The kiss was savage. She thrust her tongue deep into Saira’s mouth and seized her ass with both hands, spreading her buttocks and pressing. Saira answered by lifting her legs and wrapping them around the blonde’s waist, squeezing hard so she wouldn’t fall, clinging to her neck. She felt the blonde’s fingers making their way between her thighs from behind, seeking her wet entrance, playing with it while holding her in the air as if she weighed nothing.

They were both breathing in ragged gasps. One woman’s breasts pressed into the other’s, their nipples rubbing, hard. Saira devoured that mouth as if she had been waiting for it all her life—and perhaps she had.

—Put me down —she gasped—. I want to taste you.

The blonde lowered her slowly. They sought one of the few corners still free, a bed of aromatic herbs in the shade of a willow, and there she laid Saira on her back without stopping looking at her.

***

But Saira wasn’t the first one to taste.

The blonde knelt beside her head and swung one leg over her, leaving her pussy right within reach of Saira’s tongue. Saira buried her face in the abundant golden hair, searching with her mouth until she found the thin lips and the clitoris already swollen with desire. She caressed it with the tip of her tongue, just once.

The roar of pleasure the blonde let out reverberated through the clearing. She collapsed forward over Saira’s dark body, resting her breasts on her belly and her cheek against her thigh, and there, without wasting a second, she parted the apprentice’s dark curls with two fingers and drove her tongue as deep as she could.

They became entwined, each with her mouth on the other, returning what they received. Saira licked slowly, in circles, extending every stroke until she felt the blonde’s hips tremble. The blonde, by contrast, ate voraciously, without pause, alternating her tongue with two fingers that slid in and out, drenched.

Saira tried to concentrate on what she was doing, but the pleasure the other woman drew from her kept breaking her rhythm. Each time the blonde curled her fingers inside her, the apprentice lost her thread, moaned against the golden sex, and had to remind herself to keep licking. It was a delicious struggle: giving and receiving at the same time, never knowing which of the two sensations held the greater power over her.

Around them, the few witches who still held out watched with labored breathing. One or another caressed herself without coming closer, enjoying the sight of the two bodies tangled in the grass. Saira felt those gazes on her skin and, far from being ashamed, found herself even more aroused. That was the difference they had told her about: desire grew when there were eyes to feed it.

When Saira slid a wet finger to the blonde’s anus and pressed gently, the woman roared again against her sex. The apprentice knew how to give pleasure. She had had a good teacher, and that night she proved it with every movement.

They came almost at the same time, one over the other’s mouth, muffling their moans in foreign flesh. The blonde collapsed beside her, her golden hair stuck to her face with sweat, and let out a hoarse, satisfied laugh.

—You’re new —she said, catching her breath—. It shows.

—How? —Saira asked, still trembling.

—Because you’re still surprised by what a woman can do with her tongue.

Saira laughed and sought her mouth again, slowly, without urgency now, simply for the pleasure of doing it. They kissed for a long while as the coven around them faded away with the fire.

***

The bonfire had dwindled to embers when the witches began to rest from the orgy. Lying in pairs and groups on the grass, they lazily caressed one another, shared the last swallows of brandy, and whispered secrets into each other’s ears.

Bruna approached Saira and lay down beside her, embracing her from behind. She smelled of the redhead and damp earth.

—Well? —she whispered in her ear—. Did you learn anything tonight, child?

Saira looked at the sky, where the moon was beginning to pale before the first gray of dawn. The blonde slept on her other side, one leg thrown over Saira’s.

—I learned that you’re not the only one who knows how to teach —she replied.

Bruna laughed softly and bit her shoulder, right where a stranger had kissed her hours before. The Valdebrumas forest kept the secret, as it did every solstice, and wouldn’t give it up until the next fire.