The Island of Excess Love Read online

  He tugs at a lock of his gold hair. “Don’t you like it?”

  “That’s not the point. You’re messing with my head. And I still don’t know the reason.”

  “You’re my queen. I told you.”

  “No,” I say. I fold my arms on my chest, trying to will him to explain.

  He sighs. “When I was very young my sister, Xandra, drew an image of us. I meditated on that image and I began to see you in my mind. I saw you alone in a room, reading, always reading, looking at paintings, studying the world around you. Your vision was so precious to you; I saw that. Someone who perceives, understands, and values beauty the way you do should never be robbed of even a shadow of her sight.”

  These words awaken a small sob in my chest. He goes on. “I felt your loneliness as a girl, the unrequited love for your best friend. You were so beautiful to me, so vulnerable, and, though you didn’t know it yet, so strong and I knew you must be mine. I have looked for you ever since. When I found you—in my mind at first—I sent the ship to bring you here, although I didn’t cast any evil spells on the ship or make you see your own corpse, as you say.” This last thought makes him shudder almost imperceptibly.

  “Then who did?”

  “I’m not sure. But my intentions toward you are only the most loving kind. You’ve suffered enough and now I want you to be happy.”

  “I appreciate everything but I just want to get back home.”

  The king reaches out to touch my face very gently, then drops his hand, and I find myself wishing he hadn’t. “This is your home now.”

  “What about Hex?”

  His brow wrinkles with concern. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where he is. He may have left. It happens sometimes. As you’ve expressed yourself, this place is a lot to take in.”

  “He wouldn’t have left me.” Why does my voice sound so uncertain?

  “Let’s get you back to bed. I just wanted you to see my special orchids.”

  We lean over the balcony and I look at the flowers again. I’m glad you woke me. Thank you.

  As I follow the king down the stairs of the tower to my room I realize I don’t want to be leaving yet.

  He leads me to the door of my room. He takes my hand, and kisses it. I can feel the shape of his lips even after he has left.

  In my room, on my bed, is a piece of parchment with words written on it.

  dear pen

  i had to leave. it doesn’t feel safe here. i can tell you are happy not to have to worry about food or water or monsters in the night. and grateful to have your sight. but i need to live in the real world. i know we will meet again. hug ez, ash, ven, and argos for me.

  i love you

  hex

  I stare at the piece of parchment in my hand. It’s Hex’s writing. The way he signs his name. But I can’t believe Hex would write this. As if I mean nothing to him. As if we did not survive the end of the world together. I gasp for air and my legs crumple under me like they are made of the same silk as my dress. As I fall I knock over the goblet of wine the king brought earlier. The crystal shatters and the wine stains the floor. But it’s no longer wine. It’s too dark, too tinged with the scent of copper. It’s blood.

  I want to scream out for Ez and Ash, and Venice, who are asleep in their two respective rooms, but I can’t pronounce words. Instead a long wail escapes from my throat. In seconds the king is back in the room. He’s on the floor with me, his arms around my shoulders. My heart’s pounding so hard it’s making my bones shake.

  “What’s wrong? Penelope?”

  I show him the note. I don’t mean to. I don’t even trust him. But I show him the note. It feels at that moment like he’s all I have in the world.

  “He did leave. Damn.”

  “He wouldn’t leave me,” I say. “We’re never apart. He’s my best friend. He’s…”

  “Come with me. We’ll get you something to drink and then you’ll rest.”

  I let him half lift me to my feet and lead me down the hallway to a large room. The walls are all jagged with silvery crystals. The bed is twice the size of the one in my room. In front of it hangs a painting. It’s of a bare-chested man with longish gold hair and fair skin. His chest and abdomen are like flat slabs of carved stone. His eyes are fierce blue. Beside him is a creature with a woman’s face and breasts but the body of a lion. She’s stretched out, long and rippling, eyes closed, leaning her cheekbone against his. It resembles The Caress, a painting of a man and his feline muse, by a Belgian artist, Fernand Khnopff. But in this painting the man is the king, without his antlers, and the sphinx is me.

  I’m not weak anymore. Adrenaline pounds through my limbs as I face him. I could have a lion’s loins with all this force I feel. “What is this?”

  “Penelope. I’m sorry it’s frightening to you. What we don’t understand can be terrifying. But it’s better than the real world, believe me. I just want you to be happy.”

  “Happy? I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing but there’s only been bad magic around me since…” I hesitate. Since the first time I dreamed of the king.

  “Only bad magic?” He frowns under the shadows of his antlers so lines crease his smooth brow.

  “I thought my brother was burning to death. I was forced from my home by Giants. I was taken across the sea on a possessed ship. We almost died! And then we arrived here and Hex and I had to bury ourselves.”

  The king asks me to slow down and tell him the whole story, from the beginning. When I’m done he picks up what appears to be a single silvery orchid. It’s one of the winged creatures, its feet tucked under it, its dewdrop eyes closed. He hands it to me but I shake my head, no, and look away. Still, he’s made a point. This is not magic that I can call bad in any way.

  “I told you, Penelope, I don’t know about these things you speak of,” he says. “I only bewitched you to see beauty. To hide the horrors.”

  I know he is a trickster and a sorcerer but I believe him when he says this.

  “But how did you do it?”

  “After what you call the Earth Shaker hit, the island where I lived and almost everyone on it was destroyed. Only myself, Storm, Dark, and Swift survived. They had different names then. I was given a gift that allowed me to make what was hideous around me appear beautiful. I made quartz palaces and flower gardens and orchards and waterfalls. I made Storm, Dark, and Swift into demigoddesses with wings. I did all this with you in mind, the young woman from my visions, knowing one day I could share this world with you. It may be illusory but it is meant only to give you pleasure and solace.”

  Once again, none of this makes sense but I’m used to that by now. I’ve accepted that after the Earth Shaker hit, the king was bestowed with strange gifts like the ones my friends and I received. What I really don’t understand is why this magician king would care about me at all.

  “I’m not a mythical creature. I’m nothing special.”

  His lips are so full that they turn down even when he’s smiling. Now he’s not smiling. The fold of his lip between your lips. No …

  “Why would you say that about yourself? After you’ve survived what you have, conquered monsters, saved your loved ones. There’s enough horror in the world. You don’t have to attack yourself, too.”

  “Leave me alone!” I push at his chest—it’s so solid–and he catches my wrists.

  “You need to leave yourself alone. Your true self. Stop fighting who you are, Penelope.”

  His grasp is too strong for me to get away. “Where’s Hex? What did you do with him?”

  “Penelope, I didn’t do anything to Hex. But I want to help you any way I can.”

  The skin of my belly pulls taut in spite of myself. A sob catches in my throat. I close my eyes, dizzy. The wine I drank earlier … I must have had more than I realized.

  “Bring him back? Can you bring him back?” Now I’m pleading. I have no other choice.

  “I’m sorry. That’s one of the things I can’t do for you. Not if he doe
sn’t want it. But I can do almost anything else you want.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask, wary, but wanting.

  He gestures around the room. The rough walls split to expose glittering crystals, the smaller, colored crystals growing along the surface, the polished quartz floor with an image of a sun and moon on it, the painting of me as a mythical being and him as a man. Beyond this room is a whole castle of quartz and beyond that are gardens and orchards and meadows and lakes and waterfalls and forests. Untainted, unpoisoned. All this is his and he is offering it to me and my brother and my friends. He offered it to Hex, too, but Hex left. We could have all lived here together. Maybe I still can live here. I don’t want to fight any more monsters or grieve the loss of any more loved ones or face each day not sure if I’ll survive. But Hex …

  The king wraps his arms around me, careful not to graze me with his antlers. He’s so warm. That scent of roses, grapes, and honey. Also sage and mint. His hair is soft against my cheek but the gold stubble on his chin is rough, scratching, comforting in its own hard way. The muscles of his arms shift and pulse beneath his linen shirt. I bury my face beneath his collarbone. I’m so tired. I don’t want to fight anymore. I want all the nightmares to just end. I want to be taken away beyond the pain. That’s what I want.

  He reclines my body onto the purple silken bedding beneath a canopy bordered with acanthus flowers. I’m passive, a doll; it feels like relief to give in. The silk dress clings to my nipples, breasts, and abdomen, the fabric dipping slightly at the place where my thighs meet my torso. I’m wet there with no underclothes to absorb the moisture. My breath is coming faster and my chest is heaving. The king puts his hand over my heart.

  “My queen, how I desire you.”

  “Always so formal,” I whisper, smiling to myself at his affectations.

  “I’ve cultivated the speech that befits a queen. May I lie with you, Penelope?”

  “In what sense?” I manage. I guess I mean it as a joke but neither of us laughs.

  His eyes refract the light like the crystals out of which his home is made. “In any way you choose.”

  I shake my head on the pillow, the strands of my hair covering my face, and he gently brushes them away.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I don’t want to tell him that I want him too. I have never wanted a man before. It’s a sharp ache that feels like it belongs to someone else, yet it’s mine. “Am I under a spell?”

  “I have been known to cast spells,” he says. “But I think you are too strong for me. I think this desire is beyond my magic. It seems to be almost the source of my magic, not the other way around. Do you understand?”

  I shake my head, no. I don’t understand anything about him.

  He is so close now that his breath stirs my hair and he’s breathing harder now. “Think of an artist and his muse,” he says, moving his hand down to my solar plexus. I feel my heart beat even there. “The muse may look at the painting he makes of her and think, This is magic!” His hand moving toward my silk-covered belly. “But the artist created that magic because of her. So the spell belonged to her all along.”

  Like the painting on the wall of the man and the sphinx. The muse dreaming the artist. Not the other way around. So strange. And stranger still, this desire I feel for the antlered king.

  No, I’ve never been with a man before. I had a crush on a ginger-haired girl named Moira but she liked boys. I fell in love with Hex, thinking he was born male, and loved him the same, or maybe in some ways more, when I discovered he was not. That’s the extent of my experience. Hex and I have done a lot sexually and it’s always felt safe and right. But Hex is gone now. He left me, with only a note.

  The king has bewitched us all, I’m pretty sure. But the world he’s made is a paradise of sorts. And it’s as if he made it just for me.

  I realize that I never answered his earlier question.

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “Yes, what?”

  “You may lie with me.”

  “In what sense?”

  I blink up at his face with its smooth, symmetrical bones. The candle flames flare behind him.

  “In any way you choose.”

  The king moves his hand back up from my belly, over my sternum to my throat. He clasps my neck like his fingers are a gentle piece of jewelry and leans forward so our lips touch, sending a scattering of pearls from my mouth to my groin. As we kiss harder I grasp his hair, tugging gently. My hands move higher up and meet the hard shape of his antlers. Instead of making me retreat, the feel of them excites me more. He silences my moan with more kisses and slips the straps of my dress off my shoulders with one hand, fondling my face with the other one. One hand on my cheek, one hand on my right breast. The nipple rises to his touch and he rubs it gently. His hand moves to the other breast and I grip my thighs together, not as a barricade but as a form of pleading. Who is this creature I’ve become? It’s as if he’s transformed me into a sphinx. Should I check to see if I have a spotted hide, sleek-muscled haunches, a tail and claws? The king’s still sitting up and I grasp his shoulders and bring him down beside me. He takes one of my hands and moves it over his flat belly to his pelvis while his lips find my breast. Inside me the pearls cascade as I let my fingers move over his hardness, so foreign it might as well belong to another animal. I run my fingers up and down this shaft, feeling it grow even harder. I want him inside me. I need him. This is the most powerful spell of all.

  The king shifts his weight, sliding his hand back over my belly and between my thighs, dragging my dress with his wrist until he slips it off over my hips, legs, and feet. I’m so warm and sleek that I hardly feel naked. Maybe we really are becoming animals. No shame.

  But I should feel shame. I’m betraying the one I love.

  No, Pen, you are here with me. You are mine. We are all that exists now. I love you.

  The voice seems like mine, in my head, but it’s his voice, the king’s. He’s already inside of me, in one way at least.

  I’m a naked shameless animal and he’s still dressed in his linen clothes. He moves his hand between my legs and pushes my thighs gently apart, skimming my hair with his fingers, dipping lightly inside. I jolt up and he reaches for me, soothes me, lays me down again on the endlessly soft bedding. His mouth continues to plunder mine, drawing out cries of joy I’m unable to stifle.

  “Please,” I say. “I want you.”

  “Penelope, are you sure? I don’t want this to be imposed on you. I want you to know your own great power.”

  I gaze into his eyes, which are filled with the reflection of candle flames like lakes surrounded by torches. “I don’t care if I’m bewitched. I just want you. Please.”

  With one hand still between my legs he unfastens the first button of his shirt. I reach up and help him, slipping the shells through the holes, sliding the fabric off his warm, satiny shoulders. His bare chest glows like phosphorus in the dark. I press my lips to his skin, tasting salt and olives, lavender and honey. I reach for the waistband of his trousers and tug to release him. The shock of that smooth skin on that hard shaft makes me gasp for air and he lifts my mouth back up to his and revives me with his kiss.

  Somehow he’s undressed all the way now, and poised on top of me, pressing my legs apart with the bone width of his knees. One hand rests lightly at my sensitive spot, two fingers rubbing in circles.

  “I’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt,” he tells me.

  I glance down and understand why he’s said this but I’m so excited and open that I’m not afraid. This desire is like a sphinx growling with my throat, thrusting with my pelvis, filling my head with riddles.

  Why are you here? Why are you doing this? What have you become? Who are you, Pen? Penelope? Who are you?

  Does it matter?

  I come a thousand times, a thousand ways, it seems, in the arms of the king.

  But once, when I glance up past the marble-pale curve of his deltoid muscle, I think I see three pairs of go
lden eyes watching us from the dark. I am too drunk with pleasure to pay much attention.

  * * *

  “Dylan, come with us,” the girl calls. She has long red hair, a little frayed by the sun. She’s running down a beach, wearing a bikini. Two other girls are with her. One brunette, one with black hair. All gorgeous as nymphs.

  The young man they’re calling is sitting alone on a rock, looking out at the water. His sun-bleached hair falling ragged over his eyes. He blinks in the direction of the girls and then turns back to the horizon.

  The three form a quick circle, speak, giggle, turn and run back to him.

  They climb up the rocks, using their outstretched arms for balance. They sit beside him.

  “What are you doing?” the black-haired one asks.

  “I’m thinking about the future,” he says.

  “Am I in it?” She speaks with the courage of a girl who knows boys find her beautiful.

  He looks at her. His eyes are as blue as the part of the waves where the sun shines directly. But they’re cold.

  You and your friends will be my winged demigoddesses, my servants, handmaidens to my beloved when I find her, he thinks.

  “Not in this form,” he says to the girl.

  10

  ABOMINATIONS

  I WAKE TO SCREAMS. Have you ever heard anyone being tortured? Have you ever heard anyone burning to death? There aren’t words for this sound. It has to be a nightmare. But it’s not; I don’t think so.

  The room I fell asleep in is gone. I’m dressed in rags fastened together with thorns, lying on a large stone surrounded by weeds and rubble. Here and there I recognize a broken piece of a chair, a smashed cup, some shards of mirror. The air smells not like flowers and honey but like toxic smoke. There is no roof and the sky above me is dark and roiling with clouds.

  I slide off the stone, scraping my bare legs.

  I run over the ground, cutting my feet on sharp rocks. I run toward the screams. Agonized shrieks. Starting to diminish.