The Night Saira Burned Among the Witches
The bonfire burned in the middle of the clearing like a second sun, and around it twenty naked witches spun. The night of the solstice was the only one on which the forest of Valdebrumas brought them all together, young and old alike, and no one came dressed or wearing shame on their skin.
Some had bodies marked by age and childbirth. Others were barely women, only recently out of adolescence, with flesh still firm and curiosity burning between their legs. All of them glistened with sweat in the firelight, sensual, shameless, with not a grain of modesty.
On the soft grass, several had already begun to lie down, exhausted from dancing and hungry for something else. They reached for each other’s hands, bit their lips, licked the salt from one another’s shoulders. The heat of the fire was not the only thing warming the air.
Saira was attending her first coven gathering. She had been brought by her teacher, Bruna, whose body she knew by heart. They slept together in the stone hut on the slopes, gathered herbs together, ate from the same plate, and lay in the same bed for two winters now.
But that night Bruna had told her only one thing before they set out.
—Tonight you are not mine. Tonight you belong to the circle.
Saira did not quite understand what that meant until she was in the clearing, surrounded by чужд? Wait. no. in English. Let's continue. She wanted to know other mouths. She wanted to know what women who were not hers tasted like.
The first to come close were two sisters from a neighboring valley, dark-haired and easy of laugh. One ran a hand over her hip while the other brushed her hair off her neck to kiss it. Saira let them, closing her eyes, learning the different weight of each mouth, the different pressure of each finger. There was no hurry in them, only the patient desire of women who know the night is long.
When the sisters moved on, Saira stayed still for a moment, breathing in the sweet smoke of the bonfire and the smell of sex hanging in the air. She had never imagined desire could feel like this, without guilt, without measure, shared among so many and with no one asking anything in return.
The matriarch called her over, a matron with heavy breasts and white hair who presided over the feast from a seat of logs covered in furs. She was the most powerful woman in the region, and almost all of them longed for her favors. Because she was the youngest and newest, Saira received the attention of whoever passed by her side.
—Come here, girl —said the matriarch, and offered her a clay cup filled with herbal liquor.
Saira drank. The liquor burned her throat and spilled down her chin to her neck, and the matron bent to lick the trail before it reached her breasts. Her rough tongue rose slowly, and Saira felt her nipples harden all at once.
—You’re hungry —the older woman murmured against her skin—. All night ahead to sate you.
As she spoke, the matriarch’s stringy fingers slid down the apprentice’s belly and made their way between her thighs. They found the swollen clit and circled it slowly, unhurriedly, while her other hand held Saira by the nape to kiss her. The matron’s tongue tasted of herbs and fire, and Saira moaned into that old, wise mouth.
Saira stayed a little longer, letting those aged fingers know her from within. The matriarch read her like a scroll, finding without effort the spots that made her arch, and all the while she spoke softly of the witches she had loved in her fifty solstices, of those who burned in a real bonfire and those who only burned with pleasure. The apprentice listened half-attentively, her mind clouded and her body in flames.
It was hard to pull away. When she did, she gave up the matriarch’s lap to the next woman, a voluptuous healer who had already been 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, urging the night on. She was on all fours, offering her ass to anyone who wanted it, and another of the apprentices was taking her seriously: she was biting her buttocks and driving her tongue between them, licking her with the same devotion with which one prays.
Saira felt a stab of something that was not jealousy. There, no one argued over a body. No one fought over breasts or hips when all of them had come for the same thing: to give and receive, without measure.
The caresses of those passing close by brushed against her without asking permission. One hand squeezed a breast as it went by, another slid down her back to her buttocks, a mouth stole a kiss in passing and vanished into the dark. Each 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 like someone reading a map. Then she whispered in her ear that she should be patient, that shared pleasure among many was different from that 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 withstand the searing heat of the flames on naked skin.
And then she saw her.
***
She was the most beautiful of them all. Blonde, with a mane of golden curls falling all the way to a round, firm ass. Her skin smooth and white as curdled milk. Her breasts high, not very large, ending in two small pink nipples, pale, hard as chickpeas in that cold that chilled no one. A narrow waist, wide hips, a taut belly.
She danced alone, eyes closed, oblivious to everything. Saira moved closer until she took her hand between her fingers.
The blonde opened her eyes and looked at her the way a lioness looks at her prey, with hunger and with calm. She said nothing. She grabbed Saira by the waist and pulled her against her body in one swift tug.
The kiss was wild. She shoved her tongue all the way into Saira’s mouth and took her ass in both hands, spreading her buttocks, pressing. Saira responded by lifting her legs and wrapping them around her waist, squeezing hard so as not to fall, holding on to her neck. She felt the blonde’s fingers forcing their way between her thighs from behind, finding her wet entrance, toying with her while she held her aloft as though she weighed nothing.
Both of them breathed in broken gasps. One woman’s breasts pressed into the other’s, hard nipples rubbing together. Saira devoured that mouth as if she had spent her whole life waiting for it, and perhaps that was so.
—Put me down —she panted—. I want to taste you.
The blonde lowered her slowly. They looked for one of the few free spots left, a bed of aromatic herbs in the shade of a willow, and there she laid Saira on her back without taking her eyes off her.
***
But it was not Saira who tasted first.
The blonde knelt beside her head and swung one leg over, placing her cunt just within reach of Saira’s tongue. Saira buried her face in the thick golden hair, searching with her mouth until she found the thin lips and the clit already swollen with desire. She stroked it once with the tip of her tongue.
The roar of pleasure the blonde let out echoed through the clearing. She collapsed forward onto Saira’s brown body, resting her breasts on her belly and her cheek on her thigh, and there, without losing a second, she parted the apprentice’s dark curls with two fingers and drove her tongue in as deep as she could.
They lay entwined, each with her mouth on the other, giving back what they received. Saira licked slowly, in circles, drawing out each pass until she could feel the blonde’s hips trembling. The blonde, in contrast, ate with voracity, without respite, alternating her tongue with two fingers that went in and out soaked.
Saira tried to concentrate on what she was doing, but the pleasure the other woman wrung from her broke up her rhythm. Every time the blonde curved her fingers inside her, the apprentice lost the 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, not knowing which sensation ruled her more.
Around them, the few witches still holding out watched them with heavy breathing. One of them stroked herself without coming closer, enjoying the spectacle 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 feeding it.
When Saira slid a wet finger to the blonde’s anus and pressed it gently, the other 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, smothering their moans in someone else’s flesh. The blonde collapsed beside 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.
—In what way? —Saira asked, still trembling.
—In that you’re still surprised by what a woman can do with her tongue.
Saira laughed and sought her mouth again, slowly, with no urgency now, just for the pleasure of it. They kissed for a long time while around them the coven faded with the fire.
***
The bonfire had dwindled to embers when the witches began to rest from the orgy. Stretched out in pairs and in groups on the grass, they lazily caressed one another, shared the last swigs of liquor, whispered secrets in each other’s ears.
Bruna came over to Saira and lay down beside her, wrapping her arms around her from behind. She smelled of the redhead and of damp earth.
—Well? —she whispered in her ear—. Did you learn anything tonight, girl?
Saira looked at the sky, where the moon was beginning to pale before the first gray of dawn. The blonde was asleep on her other side, one leg thrown over hers.
—I learned 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 forest of Valdebrumas kept the secret, as it did every solstice, and would not give it up until the next fire.
