Chapter 22: The First Communion
The sun bled orange over the western ridges as Marco helped her onto the horse. She wore only the geometry of red wax. The cool evening air brushed her skin, raising gooseflesh. Marco mounted behind her, his clothed body warm against her bare back. The horse’s walk was slow, deliberate, towards the distant cluster of stone houses nestled in the valley.
“The markings,” Marco said, his voice a quiet rumble near her ear as the path wound downwards. “They are not decoration. They are a visible sign of an invisible process. The evaporation of your ego. The dissolution of the old story.”
His hand rested flat on her stomach, a point of heat.
“The story that your worth, your completeness, is tied to one special man. To a singular, jealous love. That story is burning off you like morning mist.”
Izzy leaned back into him, watching the terracotta rooftops grow closer.
“Tonight, the village sees these marks. They understand. The marks are your consent. A blanket consent. For every man. The rite begins now. Tonight, you are anointed. You are opened. Then, tomorrow, your blood comes. And from that moment, no one touches you. Not a hand, not a mouth. You become a vessel held in sacred abeyance.”
“Until the solstice,” she said.
“Until the solstice,” he confirmed. “From that sunset to the next sunrise, any man who wants you may have you. The temple doors are thrown open. It is the culmination.”
The first lights of the village winked on below. She felt no fear. Only a hollow, eager silence within.
They rode into the main street just as the last light faded. A few old men sat outside the taverna, nursing glasses of grappa. Their conversation died. Their eyes, murky with age, tracked over the wax lines on her shoulders, her spine, the backs of her thighs. One of them stood, slowly, and disappeared inside.
Marco helped her dismount. The cobblestones were cool under her feet. He did not cover her. He led her by the hand towards the taverna’s open door.
The warm, yeast-and-garlic scented air inside washed over her. The clatter of cutlery ceased. A family at a corner table, a broad-shouldered farmer with his wife and two teenagers, stared. The wife’s eyes widened, then dropped to her plate. The farmer’s gaze was direct, assessing, unashamed. A young waiter froze, a tray of empty glasses held aloft.
Word travelled without a sound being uttered. A low whistle from the doorway. The scrape of a chair. Within minutes, the taverna was emptying, not in a rush, but in a steady, purposeful flow of bodies heading towards the central square.
Marco led her out after them. The square was an old space, dominated by a ancient well and a crumbling statue of a forgotten saint. Torches had been lit, their flames grabbing at the deepening blue of the sky. Villagers gathered—men in work shirts, women with shawls pulled tight, children peering from behind skirts. A quiet, expectant hum filled the space.
In the centre, on a patch of earth worn smooth by centuries, Marco had her kneel. The earth was cool, granular. He produced a small clay jar. From it, he poured a stream of oil, dark and glossy, into his palm. It smelled of rosemary and smoke.
“Ashes from last year’s fire,” he whispered, for her alone. “The old cycle anointing the new.”
He began to anoint her. Over the wax, his oil-slick palms smoothed across her skin, tracing the same sacred patterns, making them shine in the torchlight. The flames cast their dancing, primal shadows across her body, turning her into a living, breathing mural of light and dark. The crowd watched, utterly silent.
Then a chant began. Low, guttural, from the throats of the oldest men. A single word, repeated. A name for the earth. A name for the receptive principle. It was picked up by others, a rhythm building, vibrating up through the stones into her knees.
A man stepped from the crowd. He was perhaps fifty, with thick, greying hair and the solid build of a stonemason. His face was serious. He walked to her, his boots stopping just before her knees. He looked at Marco, who gave a single nod.
The man unfastened his trousers. He did it with a workman’s practicality. He knelt before her. His hands, rough and calloused, slid under her thighs, lifting her, positioning her. His smell was of dust and sun-dried stone.
Izzy looked up at the ring of faces, fire-lit and intent. She heard the chant. She felt the cool air on her most exposed skin. Then she felt the blunt, solid pressure of him.
She opened her thighs wider, sinking into the posture. She embraced it.
He entered her in one slow, firm push. A sigh went through the crowd. The chant deepened. He fucked her with a steady, piston-like rhythm, his breath hot and sharp in her ear. There was no kiss, no caress beyond what was necessary. It was a claiming, a sealing of the covenant. When he finished, he withdrew just as methodically, fastened himself, and melted back into the circle.
Another man was already stepping forward. Younger, leaner, a nervous energy in his eyes. He took his place. And then another.
The night unspooled. Time lost its shape. There was only the sequence of bodies, the varying textures of skin and hair, the different rhythms, the shared warmth, the repeated, wet giving-way inside her. Hands held her hips, her breasts. Mouths sometimes found her neck, her shoulders. The chant never stopped, though its form changed, softening at times to a hum, rising again to a fervent pitch. She was a focal point, a living sacrament upon which the collective will of the place was being projected.
Her awareness narrowed to sensation, then expanded to include the ring of fire, the stars wheeling overhead, the profound, animal rightness of it. Her ego, as Marco promised, was nowhere to be found. There was only the vessel, being filled.
Sometime deep in the night, the flow of men ceased. She knelt, trembling with exhaustion, slick and used and utterly open. Four of the younger men came forward. They lifted her. Her body felt boneless. They carried her, not to Marco’s estate, but back into the taverna, up a narrow wooden staircase to a small, clean room with a simple bed. They laid her on the coarse linen sheets.
Marco stood in the doorway. He looked at her, his expression unreadable. A final, silent nod. Then he turned and left. She heard his footsteps recede down the stairs.
She slept a black, dreamless sleep.
Dawn light, sharp and clarifying, speared through the small window. Izzy woke. A deep, familiar cramp low in her abdomen. A wetness between her legs.
She sat up. The sheets beneath her were streaked with red. Rust-brown and bright crimson, a stark map on the white linen. Her flow had begun, just as she’d predicted. The sacred abeyance had commenced.
The door opened. Signora Bianchi, the taverna’s proprietress, a woman with a face like kind leather and sharp eyes, entered with a bowl of water and a clean cloth. She saw the sheets. She stopped. Her eyes moved from the blood to Izzy’s face, back to the blood.
A slow smile spread across the old woman’s features. It was not a smile of disgust, but of awe.
“Il miracolo,” she breathed. The miracle.
She hurried to the window, throwing the shutters wide open. She looked down at the quiet morning square, then back at the bed.
“The timing… it is perfect. The blood cleanses the vessel now. Then the days of waiting. The body prepares.” Her voice rose with excitement. “On the night of the solstice, Signorina… your body will be at its most fertile. The egg will be waiting. The temple will be ready for life.”
She bustled out, leaving the bowl. Her rapid footsteps echoed on the stairs. Her voice, carrying into the street, called out in rapid, joyous Italian.
Izzy sat amidst the stained sheets, the cramp tightening. She listened.
Word spread. It did not take long. First, a few women gathered in the square below her window. Then a dozen. They stood not in gossipy clusters, but in a loose circle. They did not look up at her window. They looked at the ground, or at each other.
Then one, an ancient woman with a voice like cracked earth, began to sing. It was a melody without words, a winding, modal thread of sound that seemed to rise from the stones themselves. Another voice joined, harmonising. Then another.
A small crowd of the village’s women, their morning chores forgotten, gathered outside. Their song wove through the morning air, ancient songs from centuries gone by, melodies of seed and soil, of blood and moonlight and the ripe, turning year. They were not singing for her. They were singing through her. She was the conduit. The promise.
Izzy pulled the bloodstained sheet around her shoulders and went to the window. She did not show herself. She simply stood in the shadow of the room, listening, her hand pressed to the cramping depth of her belly, feeling the old cycle end and the terrifying, fertile silence of the new one begin.