After Lacie’s extraordinary night with the young Prince and Princess, a sailor appeared at King Al Mikahil’s palace to escort her back on board the Coq d’Or.
A beaming Captain Sindwell welcomed her. “You have half an hour to prepare yourself,” he said. “No, don’t look distressed, it’s not an ordeal. We’re taking you to the market of Al Nen Drowd. It’s a feast day, something you must see. Beautiful colours, tasty sweetmeats, aromatic scents everywhere.”
But how could Lacie give her mind to such distractions? Over all, loomed the coming ordeal. How could she forget those revolting figures, the gross Sultan and his two ominous henchmen with their tall axes? She had performed her tasks; and her reward? To be ‘bedded’ by the Sultan.
Still, she had the Sultan to thank for the wondrous initiations of the last two days. ‘Just think of letting him ‘take you’ as a way of showing your gratitude,’ she told herself.
How different her three encounters had been. Prince Igor had shown loving appreciation of what she had given him. Prince Russlan had been a voluptuously generous giver; and then, like a sweet dessert, there had been the mutuality of her Princess, her Doppelgängerin, her first time loving ‘woman to woman’. She mustn’t complain if the Sultan wanted his ‘payback’. Surely nothing truly sinister could happen under the protection of Santa Claus Sindwell. And those axes; they could surely never be wielded in anger, even should the Sultan decree, ‘Off with her head.’ These days?
She heard and smelt the market long before they reached it. Her most vivid images of fairytale bazaars paled beside this maelstrom of Al Nen Drowd. The sounds; hot-blooded haggling; horses neighing; chickens running under people’s feet; women squabbling. Snatches of music floated from every corner of the market, and seemingly in styles from every corner of the earth, like an aural kaleidoscope. And the sights; stalls ablaze with colour, rich with layer upon layer of linens, cashmeres, silks and satins, folded and flounced, whose brightness made the prettiest of Lacie’s dresses look bland and puritanical.
The splendour of the stalls was eclipsed by the people behind them. Some wore luxurious sari-like drapes. Others had their heads and faces covered in veils, styled as of the Middle-East, but alive with a myriad hues of Far-Eastern butterflies and orchids. The men’s robes and satin jackets sported extravert electric-blues, reds and golds. They moved amongst the stalls like shimmering dragonflies amid the butterfly colours of the women.
Outside the Inn of Three Oranges, a male cluster of what can only be described as human peacocks ogled a belly dancer, gyrating to an old man’s reed pipe and wearing nothing but a pair of dainty red slippers.
Other men slinked furtively into a peep-show to ‘Spy on the Sleeping Beauty. Hurry Before She Wakes’.
Men of a different persuasion, as well as women, pressed round a man in a flaming robe and turban, a veritable firebird, playing a flute, to which danced a young, naked Orpheus.
Ladies of demure disposition turned their backs, to gush over a pretty young female dancer, dressed as a ‘sugar plum fairy.’
Lacie followed the sound of music coming from ‘The Capricious Italians’. Never had she seen such uninhibited Italians. They danced wild tarantellas whose music, in Lacie’s dreamlike state, seemed entirely made up from fragments of Scheherazade’s Sultan’s tune. Why must everything remind her of her soon-to-be overcomer?
She moved away from the music, back to the stalls, passing ‘Peter, the Wolf Tamer.’ Peter looked fiercer than his weary-looking wolf. ‘I wonder,’ thought Lacie, ‘if Peter can tame Sultans.’
Above the clamour, a deep bass voice shouted: “Roll up, roll up. Don’t miss the art gallery of Modeste Godunov. By permission of Saltan, Czar of all the Russias, we present, from the Steppes of Central Asia, a plethora of paintings phantasmagorical. See the chickens dancing in their shells; the spectacu-larical Gate of Kiev, and, if you dare look upon her, the iron-toothed witch, Baba Yaga. Don’t miss.”
Then, at last, were the stalls with goods to peruse or buy.
On a stall declaring, ‘It’s always Christmas Eve’ a toy soldier in the form of a wildly fanciful nutcracker stood sentry over gaudy knick-knacks such as the very twins of the red shoes the belly dancer was wearing. A legend read: ‘This year, wear the Czarina’s Cherevichki slippers’.
Then came stall after stall of priceless costumes, almost too bright for the eye, modelled by the most life-like mannequins, and on many stalls by real women and men.
Lacie soon realised she had lost sight of the Captain and his party, but she was confident they’d catch each other in time.
She watched a wizened old man haggling over a yellow and red sari, modelled by a young Siamese girl surely no more than seventeen. Who would he want it for? She imagined him with a proud, just-grown-up granddaughter. Perhaps she lived out in the country. How overwhelmed she would be with this regal-looking garment. When the grandad paid, Lacie was puzzled. The girl with the sari went away with him. Perhaps she would change out of it somewhere to hand it over.
“Come back,” called the old woman. “I forgot. Because it is Feast Day, you buy one, you have one free. Here.”
Stunned with horror at the realisation that the man had bought not the sari but the girl, Lacie could not react when a man ran from behind the stall, took hold of her and carried her in his arms. He ran effortlessly after the grandad carrying his ‘free gift’. He set her lightly down at the feet of the grandad and trotted beside him, holding Lacie firmly by the hand. Lacie could hear grandad muttering, “Oh, my ears and whiskers. Oh, my pubes and privates. Look at my two pretty sweetmeats. What fun when we get home. My little lovelies.”
But it was not to be. Lacie felt a heavy grip on her shoulder; an even heavier blow had sent her captor to the floor, and the Siamese girl ran off to her freedom, leaving the grandad muttering his disappointment.
It was one of the Sultan’s henchmen. He was without axe, but hardly one for a grandad to argue with. He must have been following her all along. Unsmiling, but not roughly, he took her back to her friends and soon back to the Coq d’Or.
For the rest of the day, Lacie had been able neither to rest nor to eat. Evening came and with a knock on the door, Captain Sindwell, as jovial and encouraging as ever, came to take her before the Sultan.
This time there were no maidens to bathe her, nor perfumes, nor unguents. She showered in her cabin, put on the same robe and ribboned tassels as before, and entered the Sultan’s stateroom-cum bedchamber. She looked at the bed. Soon, she knew, she would be supine on it.
The Sultan was wearing a velvet dressing robe of deep burgundy. His two axe men were keeping guard as before. Were they going to watch…everything?
Hardly greeting her, he motioned to her to strip and dance. She danced as before, and as before, the moment she reached nakedness he barked to his henchmen. “Bring her to me.”
Each henchman took a hand and led her to the throne.
The Sultan examined her. She stood before him while he groped her body with eyes and hands. His coarse fingers grasped her breasts, and read her navel and labia like braille.
“Come to my bed,” he commanded. She lay on her back, eyes closed, thinking of her two princes. ‘This is just my way of saying thank you,’ she thought.
“Open your eyes.” Now the Sultan was barking at Lacie. She opened them to see him standing naked before her, proffering a huge, erect, penis. He directed her to take the thick, meaty cock, first to her lips then to her mouth.
Wow, she’d heard of men regarding women as ‘pieces of meat’, but it was far more a description of the Sultan’s dick. Compared with either of the princes’ this cock was thick and succulent. She wondered if it was equally sensitive. This Sultan was hardly noticeably a sensitive plant.
Her tongue was sensitive though and she let it toy around the penis, licking the soft skin along the shaft, and playing with the tip in a way that audibly pleased the Sultan. Her hands played inquisitively with the weight of his pendulous balls.
‘This is good,’ Lacie thought. ‘The longer I please him like this the shorter the time that he will ‘have me”. She continued to pleasure him with her tongue, while her fingers played the tunes she had learned to play on her own body and then those of her princes and her princess. From the sounds he made he was a lover of her romantic music. She stroked the Sultan’s thighs and explored the masculine worlds between them. Everything was bigger and coarser than anything she had experienced with the princes. Everything so new.
Sooner or later it had to happen. The Sultan, driven wild by her teasing, reared himself up on top of her and came down, only just remembering to control his weight at the last minute.
The thick succulence that she’d been pleasuring made its entry, hopefully with every intention of pleasuring her. But would it? She braced herself. Its sheer size was going to hurt her, and she’d seen very little sign of the Sultan’s gentle consideration. She looked up at him, about to assume an expression of pleading.
But he came in slowly. The cock’s thickness filled her. Stimulated her. He rubbed it slowly in the entrance to her vagina. To her surprise, she discovered her body was ready for him. She held him to herself.
This was going to be okay. The cock felt good and fulfilling inside her. Her pussy warmed with juices to welcome him.
He responded by gently pumping.
But it didn’t last. He was after all a potentate, with a large power complex and a large body in every respect.
His pumping became faster. He was not used to controlling his will, and he didn’t now.
She clasped his ass; his big, gross cheeks. She felt coarse hair.
He was an animal.
Okay, two could play at that game. She’d be an animal too.
He pumped faster and deeper. She thrust her hips high to meet his haunches. Wow, that felt good. She did it again, and he flung his hands under her ass, threw her on top of him and went on thrusting. With his hands over her ass, she felt complete subjugation to him even though she was on top.
What did that make her if he was an animal?
She broke the spell and took over the lead. Was it anger or was it passion? All she knew was that she was enjoying it as she’d never enjoyed anything before. His gross penis was arousing every molecule in her pussy. She squeezed it with her vagina muscles. She let it go again. He played her game of thrusting high his hips now he was underneath.
Suddenly she longed to be subject to him again. She lay still on top of him. He reached his hands over her ass and she acquiesced, let him hold her, touch her, feel her cheeks, probe fingers between them.
She sought his mouth and crushed hers over it. He opened his and filled her with his thick, searching tongue. The tongues communed with each other till the Sultan could bear it no more. The animal came back. But now Lacie was ready. She became one hundred percent beast.
Nothing was holding her back. This pussy was going to eat the wolf alive. Even though the wolf thought he was winning by rolling on top of her again. Though underneath, she gave herself the emotional upper hand. She manipulated her hips so the penis constantly caught her most precious, magic, fire-filled spot. She felt his balls, bouncing against her thighs. She clutched his ass again, lifting as it lifted, clawing as it heaved, pressing it so hard against her she could feel between his cheeks. She felt her vagina engulf even that massive cock. And felt the Sultan suddenly rear, arch, and fall. She heard his cries of ecstasy, only drowned by her own simultaneous climax.
She fell back.
There was long, long silence.
Happy and contented, she began to be curious as to what he would say to her. Would he be grateful, or would he continue his precedent of never talking to her, only about her? Silently she wanted to giggle at the thought of him saying to the two axemen who were still at their post: “The girl has pleased me. Take her away.”
Surreptitiously she looked round at him. He was fast asleep.
Lacie lay beside him and soon slept too. She dreamt of princes, of princesses; of penises and pussies; of everything conjoined, all but cabbages and kings.
Until she dreamt of thunder.
She awoke to a trembling of the bed, and reverberation of the whole stateroom. The axemen were sleeping. They were used to the sound of the Sultan’s shattering snores.
But Lacie wasn’t. They were hardly two hours into the night. The rhythmic rumblings showed no signs of diminishing. What is the reaction of Sultans to being woken and ordered to stop snoring? Lacie dared not find out.
And yet the whole scene began to seem ridiculous. Axemen who didn’t wield their axes; Sultans who wore rich finery but were animals at heart (and at loin).
‘They’re all just bullies,’ reflected Lacie. ‘All bluster’.
The snoring became louder and louder.
Suddenly she could not bear it.
“What are you all?” she shrieked. “You stand there with axes but you never use them. A Sultan who wants women but doesn’t find them for himself, then hasn’t the decency to talk to them when he gets them?”
Her voice crescendoed into a shriek but the Sultan still didn’t wake. Above the louder and louder snores, she burst out: “You know what bullies are. They’re all cowards. That’s what you are. You’re nothing but a pack of cowards!”
The floor of the stateroom trembled as though a huge wave had hit the ship. The wooden walls of the stateroom cracked. They crumbled as if made of matchsticks. A roaring gale arose and blew the ceiling away. Above, towered massive black storm clouds. The axemen stood in terror until two lightning flashes destroyed their axes and felled them to the floor. A third blasted the bed where the Sultan lay. Alive or dead, he wore a blissful, childlike smile. Lacie had tamed the wolf.
Over the cacophony of wind and waves came another sound. A larger than life bumble bee buzzed frenetically around what was left of the stateroom. “Ohhhh, my wings and mmandibles. Such a stormmm,” it hummed. It saw Lacie. “Pollen,” it said peremptorily. “Here. Eat. Quick.”
Lacie ate and instantly became tinier than the bee. It picked her up, carried her far across the sea, and dropped her gently in the soft grass of her favourite downs.
Far below her, the late afternoon sunshine sparkled over a fairytale blue sea. Sails of red, blue and yellow glided in serene dance, measured by the same gentle breeze that played over Lacie’s dress as she reclined.
The breeze wafted warmly from the sea. It kissed her bare feet, rippled over her legs, and ruffled her bodice. As it caressed her face she blew it a kiss. Eighteen-year-old Elsie looked down from her score and said: “You funny girl. Did the bee wake you up? You’ve been snoring merrily these last five minutes.”
Lacie looked up at the score of Scheherazade. Elsie had reached the last page. Lacie must have slept far longer than five minutes. “Oh, but I’ve had such a long dream,” she started. Then quickly, blushing at the thoughts that flooded into her mind: “Maybe I’ll tell you another time.”
Elsie pointed to the floor. “Oh! My scores and textbooks,” she said. “We’ll be late for tea.”
Lacie picked them up for her and they left, with one distant look at a four-master returning from fairyland.
