Brides and Masters of Men
By
Allister Nelson
I sat in Eden, watching the gloaming reel like a sultry piano high atop the glistening clouds. Sparrows and kestrels flew around my apple tree, and I bit deep into one’s red flesh, dreaming.
Eve had just been here. Blonde, curious, I’d shown her what little I could, but I feared the knowledge wouldn’t stick. That was how Adam had been when I’d tried a year earlier, after the Prima Materia – Father – had reveled in birthing a black-haired image of Himself, full-fledged and naked like a shard of His own mirror’s reflection.
Michael and I were His Right and Left Hand first, then, our brother Gabriel and sister Uriel. Then the others – Jophiel and Zadkiel: the rambunctious fair-tressed twins. What Michael and I had treasured in the Garden at first together in silence, was now the Silver City, populated by our brothers and sisters, our family winged acolytes all.
The sylvan dwellers of the Woods Beyond Worlds from the Gods and Goddesses the Prima Materna, opposite and wild beyond the reaches of even Father, had birthed before us lived right outside the city gate. They had their own humans, their own followers, from Apollo’s laurel-wreathed Pythia to Devana’s bear-skinned huntresses to Tezcatlipoca’s flayed-legged maidens.
All I had was a taste for good whiskey with Michael from the Dagda, a lust for adventure, and an itch to get out of this place. Lucifer and Bael talked of it with Asmodel and I often – say, what would we do if we left? Where in the Realms would we go? Who would lead? Who would follow?
But a disturbance came from the Gate of the Garden as I whiled away the hour after I had given Eve some rather potent fruit – three roughshod, red-cheeked angels, wounded, covered in blood, stumbled through in a rage past Uriel’s flaming sword hitched to the post. They were full of foul curses and pus:
The triplets Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof were brutish oafs: but oh, the wild grace of smell on them? It was of sex and Woman! Of dark tresses, olive skin, and pulchritude of white sea moss that grew in my favorite place on Earth.
“Where do you hail from, brothers?” I asked, a façade of care about me.
I only wanted Her – whoever had dealt the idiot three the much-deserved blows.
“From hunting Lilith, the She-Beast, who would not kneel to God,” Semangelof grunted.
“I am not much of one for kneeling either, brothers. We are angels, equal in service to the Prima Materia,” I drawled. “And who is this Lilith?”
Senoy gritted his broken-in teeth: “The First Woman, one meant to kneel to the Image of God, in subservience, be helpmeet to Adam as Eve is.”
I stifled a laugh. Oh, the sheer joy, Eve having just partaken of my lustful, irradiant fruit of soul and death and rebirth and fertility and immortality but an hour earlier! What fools these oafs were! In the distance, I could hear Eve and Adam coupling for the first time. It stirred my manhood, the scent of Lilith, imagining her in my own arms.
“Good tidings, brothers bruised,” I proclaimed, throwing my apple core near their feet. They scowled, ready to go for me though they were pale as the grave. “Heal if you can, though I think my Lilith has dealt you triplets the mortuary blow. And in my opinion: I do not think it is in Woman’s nature to kneel.”
And with that, I flew on my swift twelve wings of lightning aback the Sitra Ahra down Qliphothic Shells, to the Red Sea where Lilith had set up a witch’s hut of wonder. The beauteous dark and comely enchantress relaxed amidst hung herbs and glass buoys, sitting in a shell tunic dress by the porch, sipping tea, her knuckles bruised and bloody.
“I was wondering when you would come, Serpent Mine,” the witch said, amused. My mistress knew me well. Oh! Lilith: light of first moon in my garden, I the moonflower bud she meant to tend.
I circled her lazily on a spindrift of spikenard air, letting my form shift into a scaled, black rainbow Serpent. “You know me, Wife?”
I offered her my bridal gift: homemade nightshade wine.
“What woman does not know Death, Samael? You come each moon for our Blood, when we are Niddah, and ride us with potent wolf magic pure, harvesting our spent, unborn eggs. Even virgins shed like rain pendulous souls to never be, which you claim into your great Reaper maw. That is why I beat back the angels. They meant to rape me, sire their own bastard sons and daughters upon me. But my moon blood is my treasure. I will bear none but a Serpent’s child, and I will only lay atop you.”
I crawled and slithered into her tea, played atop her amber-brown curls, breathed in the cinnamon and whiskey of her skin. I sipped Lilith’s antimony-poisoned tea. She drained the nightshade wine.
And we frolicked amidst a moon glade, my Witch Queen and I, her Serpent, entwined carnally in a night garden.
Shifting, angel, man, beast. Her, owl, woman, witch.
“I love you,” I professed, sweat-backed, beneath as the majestic Queen rode me.
“I will eat you.”
She reached in, used her magick to pluck a fig from my breast – and it was said in Baruch I planted an evil grapevine – and she harvested my heart as her own, learning the secret name of the Prima Materia.
“Now, we are Gods, Samael.”
“Better to reign as Pagans over witch daughters and sons,” I smiled, cradling. I recited poetry as she sang songs that would pass the eons down to our children – the humans.
And we are still happy today, here in the wild hamlets of Gan Eden, at bars in Bedstuy, in markets amidst Marrakesh, in the hustle and bustle of Taipei, Lilith in calico skirts, I in sunglasses after dark.
Allister Nelson is a Pushcart Prize-nominated author whose work has appeared in The British Fantasy Society, Apex Magazine, ILLUMEN, Renewable Energy World, The National Science Foundation, Luna Station Quarterly, Prismatica Press, Coffin Bell, etc. Her work has been curated by Kevin J. Anderson and nominated for Poland's top fantasy prize.
By
Allister Nelson
I sat in Eden, watching the gloaming reel like a sultry piano high atop the glistening clouds. Sparrows and kestrels flew around my apple tree, and I bit deep into one’s red flesh, dreaming.
Eve had just been here. Blonde, curious, I’d shown her what little I could, but I feared the knowledge wouldn’t stick. That was how Adam had been when I’d tried a year earlier, after the Prima Materia – Father – had reveled in birthing a black-haired image of Himself, full-fledged and naked like a shard of His own mirror’s reflection.
Michael and I were His Right and Left Hand first, then, our brother Gabriel and sister Uriel. Then the others – Jophiel and Zadkiel: the rambunctious fair-tressed twins. What Michael and I had treasured in the Garden at first together in silence, was now the Silver City, populated by our brothers and sisters, our family winged acolytes all.
The sylvan dwellers of the Woods Beyond Worlds from the Gods and Goddesses the Prima Materna, opposite and wild beyond the reaches of even Father, had birthed before us lived right outside the city gate. They had their own humans, their own followers, from Apollo’s laurel-wreathed Pythia to Devana’s bear-skinned huntresses to Tezcatlipoca’s flayed-legged maidens.
All I had was a taste for good whiskey with Michael from the Dagda, a lust for adventure, and an itch to get out of this place. Lucifer and Bael talked of it with Asmodel and I often – say, what would we do if we left? Where in the Realms would we go? Who would lead? Who would follow?
But a disturbance came from the Gate of the Garden as I whiled away the hour after I had given Eve some rather potent fruit – three roughshod, red-cheeked angels, wounded, covered in blood, stumbled through in a rage past Uriel’s flaming sword hitched to the post. They were full of foul curses and pus:
The triplets Senoy, Sansenoy, and Semangelof were brutish oafs: but oh, the wild grace of smell on them? It was of sex and Woman! Of dark tresses, olive skin, and pulchritude of white sea moss that grew in my favorite place on Earth.
“Where do you hail from, brothers?” I asked, a façade of care about me.
I only wanted Her – whoever had dealt the idiot three the much-deserved blows.
“From hunting Lilith, the She-Beast, who would not kneel to God,” Semangelof grunted.
“I am not much of one for kneeling either, brothers. We are angels, equal in service to the Prima Materia,” I drawled. “And who is this Lilith?”
Senoy gritted his broken-in teeth: “The First Woman, one meant to kneel to the Image of God, in subservience, be helpmeet to Adam as Eve is.”
I stifled a laugh. Oh, the sheer joy, Eve having just partaken of my lustful, irradiant fruit of soul and death and rebirth and fertility and immortality but an hour earlier! What fools these oafs were! In the distance, I could hear Eve and Adam coupling for the first time. It stirred my manhood, the scent of Lilith, imagining her in my own arms.
“Good tidings, brothers bruised,” I proclaimed, throwing my apple core near their feet. They scowled, ready to go for me though they were pale as the grave. “Heal if you can, though I think my Lilith has dealt you triplets the mortuary blow. And in my opinion: I do not think it is in Woman’s nature to kneel.”
And with that, I flew on my swift twelve wings of lightning aback the Sitra Ahra down Qliphothic Shells, to the Red Sea where Lilith had set up a witch’s hut of wonder. The beauteous dark and comely enchantress relaxed amidst hung herbs and glass buoys, sitting in a shell tunic dress by the porch, sipping tea, her knuckles bruised and bloody.
“I was wondering when you would come, Serpent Mine,” the witch said, amused. My mistress knew me well. Oh! Lilith: light of first moon in my garden, I the moonflower bud she meant to tend.
I circled her lazily on a spindrift of spikenard air, letting my form shift into a scaled, black rainbow Serpent. “You know me, Wife?”
I offered her my bridal gift: homemade nightshade wine.
“What woman does not know Death, Samael? You come each moon for our Blood, when we are Niddah, and ride us with potent wolf magic pure, harvesting our spent, unborn eggs. Even virgins shed like rain pendulous souls to never be, which you claim into your great Reaper maw. That is why I beat back the angels. They meant to rape me, sire their own bastard sons and daughters upon me. But my moon blood is my treasure. I will bear none but a Serpent’s child, and I will only lay atop you.”
I crawled and slithered into her tea, played atop her amber-brown curls, breathed in the cinnamon and whiskey of her skin. I sipped Lilith’s antimony-poisoned tea. She drained the nightshade wine.
And we frolicked amidst a moon glade, my Witch Queen and I, her Serpent, entwined carnally in a night garden.
Shifting, angel, man, beast. Her, owl, woman, witch.
“I love you,” I professed, sweat-backed, beneath as the majestic Queen rode me.
“I will eat you.”
She reached in, used her magick to pluck a fig from my breast – and it was said in Baruch I planted an evil grapevine – and she harvested my heart as her own, learning the secret name of the Prima Materia.
“Now, we are Gods, Samael.”
“Better to reign as Pagans over witch daughters and sons,” I smiled, cradling. I recited poetry as she sang songs that would pass the eons down to our children – the humans.
And we are still happy today, here in the wild hamlets of Gan Eden, at bars in Bedstuy, in markets amidst Marrakesh, in the hustle and bustle of Taipei, Lilith in calico skirts, I in sunglasses after dark.
Allister Nelson is a Pushcart Prize-nominated author whose work has appeared in The British Fantasy Society, Apex Magazine, ILLUMEN, Renewable Energy World, The National Science Foundation, Luna Station Quarterly, Prismatica Press, Coffin Bell, etc. Her work has been curated by Kevin J. Anderson and nominated for Poland's top fantasy prize.
