Mindgasm - A Bad Boy Romance With A Twist (Mind Games Book 3) by Gabi Moore (20)

Chapter 12 - Penelope

The knife was tucked in my bra strap. Just under my armpit, warm and parallel to my body, it didn’t feel much like a weapon. It was more like …a part of me. I had made small talk with Valerie all day long, and we had lugged more fish than I ever care to in a lifetime, but now I was getting tired of retelling the same old highlights of our hijacking story and wanted some alone time.

Luckily, she said she would be visiting her friend from London one more time before he left, and would be gone that evening. I smiled and said “sure”. My mind, like an elastic that had been stretched tight all day long, instantly snapped to what I was really concerned with: how I would see him again.

It didn’t make much sense, I know, but something about having that stupid knife really meant something to me. I hadn’t heard from Dylan. I had stewed for ages this morning, wondering whether he had found the locks. And how. And what he would say to me. And what my father would say. But then I stopped worrying the instant I had another thought: I just didn’t care.

I had been in this country for almost two weeks now, and I had already done far, far more than I could have even dreamed. I’ve washed every last item I brought by hand, in a steal drum, with cold water. I’ve eaten a single meal of bread and stew almost every day. I’ve eaten goat. I’ve found Satan himself in scorpion form on my bedroom floor more than once, I’ve been laughed at by countless children, I’ve gotten sunburnt, car sick, bitten, nearly hijacked and now my hands were starting to smell like fish all the time. Not only had I done exactly zero days’ work in the garden, I hadn’t actually eaten anything green myself since I landed.

Has Dylan ever done anything remotely like that? I squeezed my arms down to feel the knife against my ribs. No, I don’t think he has.

So, to hell with all of them.

To Vik most of all. He didn’t understand me at all. Fine, I might look like some ditzy idiot to him, but at least I didn’t run away into the forest in some tantrum just because, I don’t know, civilization wasn’t what he thought it should be. Like, I might not understand much about the world, but at least I wasn’t so arrogant to just go and sulk in the woods somewhere because I thought I was better than everyone else.

I had to tell him all this. That he had misunderstood me. That I wasn’t like Dylan, and that I did have my own will, and that I wasn’t just this two dimensional joke, this girl he could just toy with. I had opinions about things, important opinions, and I was going to let him hear them, and maybe if he didn’t like it I could tie him to a tree and see how he liked that.

I winced at the thought. Don’t be stupid, Penny, he obviously doesn’t want anything to do with a little Christian kid like you.

I made quite a few wrong turns to get to his cabin. It was a weird route there, and didn’t make much sense. I felt that I was walking a little towards it, then looping back, getting closer, then looping back again. After a while I couldn’t tell if I’d already passed the same clump of scraggly trees before or if it was just a new clump of scraggly trees.

The wet ache was still there. Even more tender and agonizing than ever. I’d tell him that we had gathered enough fish guts now and ask whether he’d like to help us fold it into the soil, and whether he could take time from his nefarious secret life to help us haul the straw and things out to the field.

But he’d know what I really wanted. And I wouldn’t care. I be brazen. I’d tell him what an idiot I thought he was. Did he really think he was such a brave soul, out in his stupid cabin, playing Robinson Crusoe while the rest of us out here had real work to do? He’d apologize. Or he’d be speechless. But I would forgive him. And then he’d kiss me.

I stopped and stared at a clearing in the forest, and thought I had a vague feeling that the left path was the way to go. I briefly wondered whether I should find a soft patch, hide out of the sun, lay myself down and finally soothe the glorious throb between my legs. I had touched myself millions of times since the night with the knife. No sooner had I thrashed and clenched down and swallowed my moans, did the instant need to do it again bubble up in me. And so I would. And I had been. What can I say, I was going wild.

But something told me to push on. I finally made out the edge of Vik’s tool shed and the ring of weeds around it, and then the old cabin came into view. The curtains were drawn. Odd. I picked my way up the overgrown footpath and heard soft voices coming from inside. I scampered and hid behind the shed just in time to see Valerie’s slinky frame totter down the rough cut steps and out to the back. Like a celebrity hurrying out from a club, eyes downcast and hair a mess.

The knife at my side suddenly seemed cold again. I went blank. My chest hurt. I blinked hard and strained my eyes to make out Vik’s figure appearing behind hers, watching her go, but as he turned to go back inside, he saw me there, crouching in the weeds.

We looked at each other for a long time. The weeds seem to sting at my bare legs. I didn’t have the heart to stand up immediately, but when I did, my knees were weak. He said nothing, but his face looked hard; a little twisted.

“I’m, I’m sorry …I didn’t mean to disturb you, I thought…” I stammered, but he scowled and looked away. Of course. Of fucking course. Why wouldn’t he go for Valerie? She was pretty and competent and so much older than I was…

He looked like he was trying to think of something to say. I know it doesn’t make much sense, but right then, I couldn’t decide if I hated him or wanted him. His face looked so broad, so confident and strong and at ease with everything. Hadn’t he thought of me at all? Didn’t our kiss mean anything to him? How many other girls were there?

“Valerie is a friend. She just came over to talk about the plot. Are you upset?”

I was mad at how crystal clear his voice was. Here I was, an angry, quivering wreck, and he simply stood before me, strong shoulders held back, his chin up, and his voice clear. I wanted to believe him. A “friend”. Was I just a friend as well? I felt some hot, embarrassing tears threatening to overwhelm me.

He took a step towards me and before I knew it I was in his arms, collapsed against his chest and sobbing loudly. He held me with firm but painfully gentle arms, and didn’t seem the least bit surprised. My crying didn’t seem to shake him, and so I cried harder, and in no time I was bawling, emptying out a flood of emotions I hadn’t realized I had been holding in. He just held me, and I cried till his pecs went wet under my cheeks, until I couldn’t cry anymore. He planted kiss after kiss onto the top of my head, and I folded up small and safe, and snuffled out the last of my sobs.

“If you come inside, I can give you something for your nerves. You’re tired” he said. Again I marveled at the tone of his voice. Was this the same man who had strung me up to a tree like an animal and humiliated me? Who had laughed at me and made fun of how turned on he had made me? He looked down at me, eyes brimming with meaning, and the ache in my body was at fever pitch.

I nodded my head and went into his cabin.

Chapter 13 - Penelope

“Valerie is not …just so you know. We did, once or twice before, but that was long before you arrived. She came to visit me today, but she’s just …bored. Nothing happened.”

There was nothing defensive in his voice. He spoke clearly and calmly again, only as though he was cautious for the effect his words would have on me. I instantly believed him. And I hated for how much I trusted him, in that moment.

“I don’t care who else you fuck,” I spat.

“Else?” he said, something teasing in his eyes.

I shot him a look full of daggers. His smile was playful.

“I’ve never heard you swear before,” he said, genuinely surprised. But I didn’t care about that either. Why was everyone so sure they knew everything about me? He went over to his ramshackle little sink in the corner and then reached for a blue ceramic jar. Out the jar came some grey green dried herbs, which he sprinkled into a tin cup, and with a few well practiced movements he flicked a gas stove to life and set a small pot of water to boil over it.

We sat in silence for ages, me taking in every last corner of his cabin, him with his muscled back to me as he watched the steam rise out from the pot. There were some gnarly looking rabbits strung out on a line like disgusting laundry; some chipped and dented bowls and tins on a shelf, a pile of wood, a bucket, a coiled rope with a fatigued looking plastic packet bundled in the center…

I watched him from behind. Even as he swayed gently from side to side, or as he reached out or shifted his weight from one side to the other, I could make out all the little muscles under his skin. He was truly a beautiful man. Hard, raw-looking. I noticed the faded ruins of some tattoos on his back, tattoos that looked like even they couldn’t stand the punishment he had put his body through and had sunk deeper into his skin to get away from the Malawi heat and dust.

When he turned around, my eyes were at his crotch. But I took my time in turning away. He noticed me noticing. Good. I took the steaming cup from him and blew on the surface, taking care not to drop the strange line of eye contact we had strung up between us both. Here, he was in his element. Something more animal than human, more wild than civilized. Only his quick eyes hinted at something noble and refined somewhere inside him, underneath all the grunt and sinew of his masculine frame. I wanted him to see me admiring him. I sat cross legged on his lumpy mattress and set the cup aside.

“What tea is this?” I asked.

“It’s a tea for your nerves. It will calm you.”

“Sure, but what is it?”

“Does it matter?”

I took a sip.

“I guess not,” I said. It tasted bitter and fresh, like wet hay or clods of soil. Maybe like melon peel.

“You built this house yourself?”

“With my bare hands” he replied, and came to side beside me. I looked down at his hands and made out a few flecks of crushed herb on his stocky fingertips.

I took another sip.

“I didn’t tell anyone. About what happened the other day.”

“I know.”

I could hear the breath enter and leave his immense body. He towered at least a full foot above me, even when sitting. The wind outside was playing with the grass. I exhaled loudly and put the cup aside again.

“What other special herbs do you have? Do they all have, like, magical properties?” I said, in my cheeriest voice.

He turned his pale jade-green eyes to me. Those eyes bore right into the core of me. They were eyes that were naked. The rest of him was scarcely clothed, it was true, but it was in his eyes that he was most exposed of all. He was open. Animalistic. A man uncivilized. A wild man. It was almost too graphic.

“If you look at it the right way, everything has ‘magical properties’,” he said, with a naughty smile.

“What does that stuff do?” I said, pointing to some shriveled looking pods hung up like garlic.

“Reduces inflammation. Good for the bones.”

“And that?” Some fresh leaves were drying in the window.

“For contacting the ancestors.”

“Really?”

He didn’t reply. I hated to think that I had offended him.

“Well what about what’s in that jar?” I asked quickly, to change the topic. It was a tiny china vase with a lid so dirty on the outside you could scarcely make out the red dragon painted on it.

He looked and said nothing.

“That’s …not for you.”

I jumped up and went to have a closer look.

“Who’s it for? What does it do?”

“Don’t touch that! It’s very potent. It’s for…. you’re young, you don’t need it.”

“But what does it do?” I begged. I felt like the nosiest kid in the strangest candy store.

“It’s trouble” he said and stood between me and the jar. His body was like a wall. Elemental, impenetrable. It took my breath away to be so close to him again. “You’re trouble” I said and laughed, going to sit back down on the mattress again. “Besides if it’s some gross traditional medicine thing for old men who can’t get it up, then you can just say so, you know” I said.

He laughed.

“Well, it’s kind of like that” he said quietly. Yes, I remembered the rumors. No, I hadn’t forgotten what people had said about him. That Mama Tembi thought he was a degenerate and that she had heard it from someone who had heard it from someone else that he was practicing some kind of witchcraft in here and dabbling with the dark arts… But I’m a Christian, goddamit, and Lord knows I was tired of hearing stories second hand. I wanted to see for myself. Just how dangerous could one man be anyway? How bad could any one plant be? What was he going to do, put a spell on me? I looked down at his hand, resting on his muscular thigh. He was just human. All human. I wasn’t scared.

“It’s more like …something to remind you of your animal side. Sometimes, for some people, that goes to sleep in them. They forget their bodies. They shrivel up inside. This is a plant that …wakes that up again.”

I wished so hard that he would reach out and kiss me again. But he didn’t even look at me. Didn’t he want to tie me up again? Force me to do something sleazy?

“I want some,” I said, without thinking.

He smiled to himself, as if he knew I was going to say that.

“No.”

“What? Why not? I’ll pay you. Just let me try some.”

He looked a little angry.

“Pay me? What makes you think you have anything worth giving me?” he said.

The words stung. His voice was dripping with the same biting sarcasm from the time before. The mango tree time. The time I had melted onto his fingertips, like the helpless little girl I was, and begged him to go further.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mea– “

“’Sorry’ doesn’t mean a damn thing. Don’t apologize. You’re ignorant and young and sweet. Just own it. Don’t apologize.”

I was confused.

“Sweet?”

He paced the room.

“Called your fiancé back at home yet? I bet he’s very worried about you” he said.

“He’s not.” My reply came so quickly even I was surprised.

“My fiancé doesn’t care about me at all. He just wants some airhead to play house with. Some puppet. He just wants to use me…” I said, more bitterness in my voice than I had planned for.

“And… you’re not OK with being used?” he said. He was towering tall above me, his imposing form seemingly swelling to fill up the whole cabin. I was wet again.

“Well, I didn’t say that…” I said, and raised cautious eyes up to meet his. He looked down at me, the stance of a warrior, and for the first time, I realized that his sparse clothing, his unkempt hair – all of it was nothing compared to the incredible life that seemed to thrum off him. He wasn’t just strong. He was …vital, like something vibrant and heady was pulsing through him, even as he stood there motionless, looking down at me. With those arms, he could have snapped me in two, if that’s what he wanted. I squirmed and looked away again, tried to fix my gaze on the intricate, manly tendons and wires in his broad foot. The air left the room. I could almost feel his laser focus on me. On my body.

“Your body is a beautiful thing, Penelope, you should treat it with only the most immense kindness and respect.”

A familiar, Sunday-school tale. I had heard it all before. But his story was inverted somehow. Had I done it all wrong? Your body is a temple, Penelope …but a temple of carnal pleasures. Your body is so special …that it deserves only the dirtiest of things. Love yourself Penelope …love yourself so hard it hurts.

I sighed.

“I don’t want to go back home. I don’t want to marry him anymore.” The words shocked me, once they were out of my mouth and there, for someone else to hear.

“Ok.”

“And I don’t want to leave Mchinji.”

“Ok.”

“And I want to travel more. A lot more. I want to go places and do things.”

“Good.”

“And I want you to tie me up again.”

Silence. His muscles cracked slightly as he crouched down to his haunches, took my chin in his hands and forced me to look at him. I was blushing ferociously, hot all over and 100% jelly and butterflies on the inside. But it was all true. I had started speaking the truth and I didn’t want to stop.

“Sit on the bed Penny. I’m going outside. When I come back, you’re going to do exactly as I say” he breathed, saying the words slowly and sensuously, giving them each ample time on his tongue.

“While we’re in this cabin, you do everything I tell you. You will trust me, implicitly. You’ll do everything. Do you understand?”

I exhaled one long, jagged breath.

“Yes.”

Chapter 14 - Viktor

I needed to get out of there. To clear my head. The entire cabin was buzzing, almost literally crackling with her scent. Something was different about her today. She was juicier somehow. Plucky and a little arrogant and yes, somehow some of her glossy little-miss-perfect shine had come off her, and god was she beautiful underneath. Fucking beautiful.

The more undone she came, the hotter she seemed. And now I was outside the cabin, my cabin, in the bright, fresh light of day, at a crossroads and wondering what in God’s name I was doing. The girl had a fiancé for fuck’s sake. Mama Tembi would skin me alive if she knew.

How was this really going to play out anyway? Like every other predictable female, she’d soon realize that oh, sure, the guy who lives in a log cabin in the woods in the middle of nowhere? He’s actually a wild guy who lives in a log cabin in the woods. He’s never going to give you that church wedding and holiday villa by the sea. The guy you thought was so exotic and sexy and different? Well, yeah, he’s different. That’s kind of the point.

It’s always the same. They come with that same desperate fucking hunger in their eyes, and they want you, but man, they don’t just want your cock (even though, Jesus, they really want it), they want your spirit. They eat it up. They see you free and bold and alive and they just want to take it from you. They want it all for themselves. Starved little girls who grow up to be starved women who suck the life from anything they can. They can fuck. Of course. But it’s just like a little spa trip for them: the full noble savage package, a thrilling weekend away with a well-hung forest guy who makes you feel like the woman you are and then what? Then she fucking leaves. Because of course she does.

And now I didn’t know what to think anymore. Penny was different. But was she?

Everything was going to plan. She was sticking it to the man/daddy/Jesus and I wasn’t going to stop her. Hell, let them send all their uptight little church girls my way. But there was something else. Something else under my damn skin.

Fuck it.

I grabbed the leather strip from the mango tree, filled my lungs with crisp forest air and stepped back into the cabin.

She was sitting folded, hugging her knees, on my mattress.

“Stand up,” I said.

I was angry with her. Angry for coming here. She didn’t fucking belong. She stood up.

“Take your clothes off.”

She did it with all the finesse of a convent girl in a communal change room. She had worn a cheap cotton shirt with tiny toucans printed on it, and little jean shorts. She folded these in half and placed them gently at the foot of my bed. She left her silver cross necklace on. When you rip out a stem of fresh kikuyu grass, the very base of it is bright sapling green and completely pliant and sweet. Her body reminded me of this.

She was supple, young. She stooped slightly, but her frame was lissome enough that it looked graceful. Her breasts were modest and puffy. Her thighs huddled against each other above the knee but parted ways again, just a little, leaving a slight triangle opening beneath her beautiful cunt. The hair was lighter there. I had never seen blonde pubic hair in my life. Like the pussy of an angel. I smiled.

“Your arms …put them behind you,” I said, and she obediently extended them for me, like I was about to cuff her. Once the knots were done, I pulled on them hard to test, and she wobbled a little on her feet. Where my fingertips grazed her skin, she prickled up in goosebumps. I leaned in to look closer at these, and smell her skin…

“Lie down on the bed.”

It wasn’t a command, not at all. I was only speaking on her behalf. I knew she wanted to be on the bed. So I told her to go to the bed. I was there, serving her. I was the mouthpiece for her desires. Every step, I spoke out loud the things she couldn’t, and didn’t know how to say. It was she who was commanding me. Through those Bambi eyes, she was dominating me completely, and I had absolutely no control over myself.

“Spread your legs,” I said, because it was what needed to happen. She was limber: even with her hands tied, she fell onto her back and swiftly split her legs apart, lifting them high to either side. But her face was hidden, tossed to the side and cowering behind her hair.

“Look at me!” I barked, and she did. Instantly. She flicked the little curtain of hair aside and shot me a tender, imploring look. Her eyes were bluer and more watery than I had ever seen them. She was perfect. A little doll. A sweet little doll with perfect painted lips and eyes and tiny hands. And I was going to fuck her till she screamed.

I dropped to my knees and placed two careful hands on either of her milky thighs. Her asshole boyfriend had never touched her here. Never touched her like this. And I was soon going to touch her in places nobody else even could. I growled approval at how my fingers seemed to send fresh goosebumps over her flesh. She was a split peach in front of me, slick, ripe and nearly bursting. I traced a finger all down the length of her slit. The effect was electric. She squirmed violently, but not in protest. Her entire body seemed to chase after my touch, like a cat snaking after a caress.

“Now tell me what you want.”

Her fragile ribcage rose and fell as she took a deep breath in and then released it.

“I want you…” she started, tossing her head first this way and that way, pulling her gaze away again. “I want you to touch me… I want you to teach me…”

She didn’t know what she wanted. She only knew that she wanted.

I suddenly realized just how woefully inexperienced she really was. Was I the only man she had ever even seen? Had she really been living in a bubble all this time? I guess you could have a life cut off from civilization right in your own body.

I took off my sarong and flung it aside, and she looked at me. With girlish wonder, she looked at me, and I swear to God, I had never been looked at quite like that. She didn’t look at me, but into me. For a moment, we were Adam and Eve in the garden, and I could almost believe she was about to ask me what it was.

She didn’t writhe and moan and reach out to grab it. She didn’t play-act. She was fascinated, so she looked. I let her. I’ve always been on the larger side, but kneeling in front of her now, I felt like a giant. She didn’t know any of the “rules”. Had she ever fumbled in the back seat of a car with a boy? Ever kissed and groped in the movie theatre? Nothing? She was more than naïve; she was like a completely sexual blank slate.

“Kiss it,” I said, giving her permission. She closed her legs and wriggled into a kneeling position in front of me, her face close, mesmerized.

“Kiss it,” I said again, and touched bent knuckles to her cheek. She kissed it, like she was kissing the feet of a Virgin Mary statue. My head fell back and I groaned and twitched in her hands. She squealed and jumped back.

“You can move it?” she said. I chuckled.

“Did I say you could stop?”

Her eyes flashed at me. She had no idea what the fuck she was doing. She kissed it again.

“Now open your mouth, and suck it.”

She obeyed. Even a third of the way in, she was nearly gagging, although she certainly tried. Her jaw was tiny, but I groaned as I slipped over her velvety tongue. It wasn’t enough. I wanted to be all the way in her, for my dick to disappear down into her throat completely, to reach down into her. I gave a tiny thrust and she recoiled, choking. But then she was on me again, taking me in even deeper. Fuck, yes. I would teach her. I would teach her everything and anything, if she’d only keep sucking like that…

“Lie back.” I clenched my fists to stop them from shaking. My head was spinning. I had fucked my fair share of women, but something about her was so strange, so different. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to fuck her brutally or wrap her in a blanket and kiss her. Or both. I wanted to protect her, but the most dangerous thing in this room was me, and I fully intended to hurt her.

“You’ve never done this before, with a man,” I said. She shook her head. I split her legs open again and traced tiny circles at the entrance, then pressed a finger in, just an inch, and waited there. The weight of her entire body clenching around me was out of this world. I smiled at her.

“More?”

She nodded. For what seemed like hours, I played with her cunt this way, easing the tiniest bit in at a time, tracing rings inside her and opening her up, one breath at a time, as she eased and relaxed into me. I would say, “more?” and she would nod, and I would give her more. A dark puddle grew under her ass and she opened her legs as wide as she could. We were both in a trance; and the smaller the movement, the more it seemed to affect her.

Eventually, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I needed to be inside her.

My body ached. I pulled out slick fingers and stroked my cock. Her eyes grew wide.

“It won’t fit.”

I grinned down at her.

“We’ll make it fit,” I said, and leaned down to kiss her. Her lips were soft and silky and warm, her little tongue darting around in her mouth like a rabbit. The tip of my cock pressed into her navel. Maybe she was right. Maybe it wouldn’t fucking fit. Good.

I pulled back and stroked a damp lock of her from her head, kissed her once more and then watched her, so I could see that exact moment when I penetrated her, when my body went where no man’s had been before. I pressed at that tender ring and waited, the heft of my body against hers, and she gasped.

“No! Not yet. I’m afraid. This is all wrong, maybe I should go home…” she said, the words tumbling out. But I looked into her milky blue eyes and they looked back at me and the words trailed off. They meant nothing. I pushed in an inch, and I felt her gorgeous pussy stretch and close all around me, hot and twitching and so beautiful it was like the door to heaven itself. She yelped.

“That hurts,” she said.

“I know.”

Her lower lip trembled.

“Is it supposed to hurt so much?” she asked. I felt a pang deep inside. Like she was trying to get inside of me.

“I’m going to make it hurt even more…” I growled, and surprised myself. While her eyes widened in panic, her body opened further to me, and she twitched around me, drenched. I rammed in another inch, but this time she swallowed hard to stop from crying out. I kissed her again and thrust in more. Then kissed her again. One inch in, one kiss. One unit of pain, one unit of apology.

By the time I had crammed my full length into her, I could feel her melting all around me. Little ripples fluttered through her, her heat and desperation lapping in waves all along my cock. For one still, perfect moment, I looked down at her, and at the beautiful agony on her face, and something stirred in me. She was mine. I had claimed her, inside, and I would do things to her that she had never felt before.

I drew back my hips and brought them down again roughly, my cock a slick piston that slid out easily and rammed back into her little body again, forcing a scream from her throat. I plunged again into her, and again, mercilessly. I wrapped my hands round her waist and pulled her onto me, and with each fuck she gasped out loud and shuddered, opening more and more to my body. I couldn’t get deep enough inside. I pulled her slight frame down onto my lap and drove into her with more energy, her long torso lying back onto the mattress, hands bound, hair fanned out. She didn’t resist at all. She just melted into the pain, and as I tore away at her virginity, her body dissolved around mine.

Chapter 15 - Penelope

I was so sore I couldn’t stand. It was amazing. I staggered to my feet, my wrists burning at the leather strip, my damp hair in knots, and for a second I felt completely raw and empty without him in me.

“Go onto your knees. Put your ass in the air,” he barked. My whole body was ringing out with pain and pleasure. Drenched in his sweat and mine, I obeyed and turned over onto my knees. Even before he entered me again I started moaning. Head pressed into the mattress, I peered between my own knees and admired his immense, strong legs. He slid into me again. Right to the hilt of his hard, flat abdomen, he pressed that monster into me, nearly lifting me from the mattress. My knees were weak. My mouth was open but I was too overwhelmed to scream.

And then he fucked me. Till my body sang, he fucked me. I could feel every inch of him as it sunk in deep and hard, breaking me open right at the core, pressing in wave after wave of burning pleasure. I let him. While my body crumpled and submitted, his only grew stronger and harder, dominating mine. And I let it.

Did I think of Dylan? Fuck yes I did. I imagined his face; his dry, hateful face, and imagined him seeing me now, in all my glory. I wanted him to really see me, and see this strong, bad man and what he was doing to me, and most of all, I wanted him to see just how much I loved it. I fucking loved it.

I wanted to sit him down and teach him a lesson for once. A good lesson: that the body is wonderful and glorious and profane and dirty. And that dirtiness can clean you. And good can be bad, and bad good, and pain is just a kind of pleasure and that most of all, he didn’t get to tell me what I thought about all of that anymore. No more.

Something wild and unsettling was growing in my belly. A swirling, pulsing sensation that throbbed out in pulses that grew more and more intense. Something threatened to burst. Something threatened to break loose and run free.

“What’s happening?” I cried out, and felt his strong hands at my waist.

“You’re going to come” he said. He grabbed hold of the leather strip and yanked, pulling my body upwards. I was pinned against him, unable to get away, and now he was reaching even deeper into me than before. I started shaking.

His other hand went to my throat and grasped me there, hard. My vision went grey and then white and then nothing. The last thread of my breath disappeared out from my throat and all that remained was the stunning, white-hot pleasure searing between my legs. I felt like he would split me in two. Then it hit. The wobbling sensation inside me swelled and finally broke. I tried to speak but had no breath. The room blacked out around me and nothing existed except his hard, merciless shaft inside me. He banged his hips once more into mine and my body quaked and shuddered.

I came. Long and hard, all over his cock, I came. His hand loosened on my neck and all the color came back to the room, but a second, gasping wave came after me and slammed my body again. Fluid came gushing out from my body and washed over my legs and his, and I whimpered and cried out. Still twitching, he slid himself out and left me raw and open. I collapsed down on to the bed, hands still bound, wrists bleeding. My entire body was drenched.

My eyes blinked open and I saw him kneeling above me. His large chest rose and fell with deep, heavy breaths. He was panting, slick with sweat, fists clenched. His tattoos seemed to have come alive, almost as though they were dancing menacingly over his tight body, black and green and dark blue.

“Viktor, I want that special herb. The one that you said unlocks the carnal pleasures. Give it to me,” I said still crumpled down beneath him, my voice crackling.

He smiled and slapped my ass cheek, hard enough that the sound rang out in the cabin and stung my skin.

“I already did,” he said and leaned in.

I could do nothing but laugh. He came to lay beside me and we sat in silence for a moment. A thick goo trickled from out of me.

“What’s…?” I said.

He looked down, lifted my leg and examined me with pride.

“Oh no! There it goes. Don’t worry, I’ll have to put some more in for you…” he laughed, and leaned in for another kiss.

And that’s what he did.

Chapter 16 - Viktor

I didn’t think there was any space in my life, for her. But she fit, somehow. Her little hands, her narrow feet, her dainty, fragile ideas …they sunk into my world like water sinks into the holes between sand grains. It’s not that she took up any room, but nevertheless, she was always there. Even when she wasn’t there, I felt her.

Living in the forest tunes you to all the beautiful, exotic masks life puts on …but Penny was so human. There was something so arresting about the way you could watch an idea flicker across her pretty face, like wind going over a dune. Or the way her voice shivered a little and then dropped in pitch when she was unsure of herself. Or the way the hair on the back of her neck prickled then relaxed again, like the skin of a peach, but alive.

“We don’t need gardens. What we need is more community centers. Mama Tembi’s is the perfect example. It’s just a potential space, you know? It can be what it needs to be, and nobody is interfering or forcing anything. So it can just evolve as it needs to. The resources can just go where they need to go...” she said, winding a small braid round her fingers.

She had taken to talking about the mission a lot lately. The first crop of maize had been planted and she was proud, and itching to do something more. Something substantial.

“The Vikings did that. Had a ‘hall’, and all the village activities went on in there. Eating. Drinking. Trials. Weddings. It was like the original town hall,” I said.

She smiled at me and carried on twirling.

“Yes, exactly. A town hall, but different. But when I say “community center” the mission leaders hear “church” …but I’m working on it,” she said.

The heat and hard work had been good for her. She was so relaxed these days. When I first met her, she was like a hard, brittle case filled with jelly. All good Christian manners on the outside, holding in a molten core of hunger and rage and energy. Now, she was the reverse. She had gained a little weight, and softened somehow. She was loose and easy in her body, and yet I noticed something hard at her core. Something new and strong and a little defiant. It was a beautiful transformation.

Call me arrogant, but I liked to think that I had a hand in it. That in binding her, I had broken all her real chains. That by dominating her body, claiming it as mine, and yes, pushing her hard, I had released her, and loosened something indescribably sweet and free.

“You don’t really need their permission, Penny,” I said. I had said the same thing to her countless times over the last few months.

“I know. But still, it would be great to get a hold of some of that funding!” she laughed and nuzzled into me. Her bare legs were relaxing long down off the mattress and onto the floor, and looked so white and soft next to mine. She had taken to wearing sarongs, too, these days, and traditional shirts and dresses, although I hadn’t the heart to tell her I liked her better in denim shorts and Pep Store shirts.

“Yeah, but like I told you, they’re not the only ones with resources. You have ideas for the garden. Real ideas. That’s worth more than money alone. And you have me.” I instantly regretted saying it. I wasn’t used to this sort of sappy bullshit. These fawning, sugary sentiments. I could live without her. She didn’t complete me. But I would have cut off my right arm if it would have made her happy.

She turned and beamed me a bright, easy smile.

“Well, good to know, Vik, if I ever want to turn the plot into a massive weed operation, I’ll come to you first” she laughed.

I frowned and said nothing.

“Hey, I’m just joking. I just meant …well, forget it.”

I would forget it. She wouldn’t be the first to draw a line between “legitimate” and “illegitimate” and put me on the unflattering side. I got it. It was a lot to ask of her. I didn’t blame her for being a little ashamed of me. A little frightened, even.

I looked down again at her white legs and felt a kick inside. We had already fucked this morning, but I wanted her again. She complained sometimes, that her body was overwhelmed, and that she was a little sore. That I was too big for her.

Good. I wanted to leave my mark on her body. Let her hurt a little. Let her walk around out there in the world, and feel the memory of me between those girly little thighs of hers, and know that she couldn’t even for a second forget me, and what I could do to her body with mine.

I placed a hand on her knee and stroked. Just like the sun never set on the once glorious British empire, I wanted to conquer her body, her little pussy never going a full day without me. Never more than a few hours away from a brutal fucking, like she deserved. Always returning to me. Always open, for me.

I slid my hand up and she stopped talking, realizing my intent.

“Again?” she whispered. I pulled my sarong off, took her hand and placed it at my crotch, where I was hard for her again. Her hands always struggled to fit around me. I loved seeing that. I loved measuring myself against her: I knew her entire body in cock-lengths, like a hunter knows his hunting ground by paces. One length from her sweet cunt to her belly-button. One length from her wrist to the crook of her inner arm. One length for her pretty face, crown to chin. Inside, though, once I eased into her and she opened to me, she was boundless.

“Yes, again. Suck me.”

She leaned over and put her head in my lap, curling her legs into a fetal position and cozying up to my crotch as though she was about to sing it to sleep. With affectionate hands she stroked the tight curls at my groin, then dragged fairy-light fingers over my rapidly stiffening dick. She nuzzled the tip, and the faintest puff of her breath wisped over me.

“Where am I, Vik?” she asked in a sleepy tone, still twirling her fingers over my inner thighs, teasing.

“You’re here, with me,” I whispered.

“But where is this? Am I in a dream…?”

Sometimes she got into this mood. I always forget how far she’s come; how young she is. And how overwhelming all of this must seem sometimes to her.

“You’re in Mchinji, in the south of the Mehinji reserve, in a wooden cabin with a man you love, and you’re about to put his cock in your throat,” I said playfully.

“A man that I love?” she said, still dreamily gazing at nothing. We had never used that word. It just slipped out. I didn’t care.

“It’s just a word. But yes, you love him. He is, after all, eminently lovable” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

She passed her lips and cheeks over me again and again, taking me in, and I swelled and grew at her faintest touch.

“And you love her?” she purred.

I mumbled yes, and stroked her hair.

“You’ve loved me a little too hard lately…” she said, giggling. I love it when she was like this, eyes all glazed over and twinkly. She was fun when she was stoned. And even more fun when I gave her mushrooms. But sometimes she just spontaneously got like this, for no reason.

“Well, you can have a little rest now, if you suck me …but if you don’t do it right, I might just have to fuck you anyway.”

She laughed out loud and gave me a sparkly-eyed look. I watched my swollen tip disappear into her little mouth and sighed as her lips closed round me. She had learnt so quickly. She had been a truly ferocious student, lapping up everything I threw her way, always keen for the next lesson.

As her tongue lashed over the rock solid length of me, I thought of what that next lesson would be: I wanted to fuck her ass. It would take time. But I wanted no part of her unclaimed, unexplored. And when she cried out in pain I wanted to be the one to soothe it away again and kiss her tears. My cock bounced in her throat and she instantly moaned, swallowing down a little more. Laying on her side, I could rest my hand on her shoulder and lean back.

Lazy dust motes wandered and floated in the sunbeam that came through the window and made a stretched out square on the floor in front of her. The birds outside were still, and everything else was still too, and warm. I shut my eyes and savored the feel of her. Zoomed in my focus on every flick of her tongue, on the delicious way her lips slid up and down me. Whatever I had, I wanted to give it to her.

As she eased me to the edge of a warm, liquid orgasm, I thought that yes, I would fuck her anyway. She was mine and I was hers.

Chapter 17 - Penelope

“I’ve never done this before,” I said. The instant I said it, though, it felt phony and I laughed at myself. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that. Of course I haven’t done this before. You know that already…” I said.

It always seemed so unnecessary to flirt with someone like Vik. It seemed almost too crass. Instead, I had gotten into the habit of looking at him square in the face, and telling him just exactly what I wanted, when I wanted it, without any beating around the bush. I never felt so gloriously naked as I did with him. We were Adam and Eve in a garden all our own making, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world to just look into those beautiful clear light eyes and say, “Now, I’m hungry for you right now” and then we’d fuck.

No appetite of mine was ever alien to him, no suggestion was out of bounds, no confession too dark for him to hear. His body had so thoroughly claimed mine, that when we were naked together, there was no distinction between them anymore. Nothing we did could be wrong. We hadn’t said “love” again, but this, too, seemed a little crass and unnecessary. The way he looked into my eyes whenever I rode him, the tenderness in his fingertips when he brought me to a thundering orgasm …it all made that paltry word seem more than a little redundant.

“Ok, either you stop wriggling or I’m going to have to tie your legs as well and make you stop wriggling.”

We were on the floor of the cabin. I was on my side, half curled in a fetal position, with my butt perched a little on his lap as he sat, feet bent underneath him. One strong hand on my hips, he had been stroking his other hand teasingly over my clit, tracing little circles right where he knew they’d drive me the craziest.

I looked up and saw him above me, his strong body erect with the perfect posture, and he was staring down at me with so much focus it was like I was a puzzle he was trying to figure out. My arms were bound together from the wrists to the elbows, and pinned behind me so that one breast pressed gently against the floor. His fingers circled and circled and circled …the throbbing pleasure there was so intense it was becoming harder and harder to stop myself tumbling over the edge and just coming already.

“Penny, I can tell what you’re thinking, and so help me if you come now, you’re going to be in big trouble.”

His voice sent fresh prickles all over my skin.

I groaned. “Oh god… just do it already! I’m ready, I swear” I said.

“Not yet” he said and carried on stroking me at his own leisurely, infuriating pace. I was so wet there were barely any friction to speak of, and his fingers glided and slipped over my swollen lips. With how close I was to coming, it was probably just as well.

At last, he took his sarong off, and his cock thumped heavy against my naked hip. I writhed in agony.

“Oh God I want it Vik! Just fuck me, we’ll try all this other stuff tomorrow or something…” I whined, desperate just to have him inside me, for him to fuck me silly and give me some relief.

“I said not yet” he said again, a cocky little smile on his lips.

Eventually he dipped his fingers into the pool of wetness, slid a slick finger out and then anointed the entrance to my ass, drawing tiny glistening rings around it. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to focus on the dancing stars behind my eyelids.

“Penny, don’t come…” he said and sweet lord did it take every ounce of energy to hold off.

In went the finger, and the sensation was odd …yet pleasurable.

“Tell me how it feels” he said. I squirmed a little.

“It feels …it feels good. I want more.”

Inside me, his finger stroked large circles, pushing out against my body. I breathed in deep and tried to relax into the delicious burning that radiated from out of his fingers.

“Does that hurt?”

I wasn’t sure if it did. I curled my hips towards him in response and he sunk in deeper, then with some effort slipped in another. It felt deep and dirty and wrong and just a little sore. I loved it. He began to stroke me again, and this time, I instantly understood why he had made me wait so long, had made me beg for it; I rushed back up to the brink of my orgasm and was right back on the edge of ecstasy again. My clit was on fire, but this time, the pleasure spread out from the masterful fingers he had buried in my ass. It was miraculous, really. As though something new opened up inside, and the pleasure was doubled.

In went his fingers, then out again, then in again. My entire lower body felt electrified. And that’s when I said it. I said, “I’ve never done this before” and instantly it felt phony. He laughed and slapped my ass with his other hand.

“Shhh …I want you to focus.”

So I did.

“By the time I put my cock in you, I want you to be ready to come. It’s going to hurt, but you’re going to be coming so hard, you won’t even notice.”

My body throbbed and thrummed all around his firm fingers, pressing in, then out again.

It was a crazy idea. He was bigger around than my wrist. I could scarcely accommodate him in the usual way, even though my poor pussy had been taking it almost every day for months now. I didn’t know how this was going to work. But in a way, I didn’t want it work. I wanted it to be difficult. I wanted him to have to force it. I wanted it to hurt a little. Or maybe a lot.

“I’m ready now, Vik. I want to come. Put it in…” I whined again. I was going out of my mind. The deep, raw sensations he was stirring into my body felt so good I could have come then and there and been happy.

“No, not yet…” he said, and slipped in another finger. I yelped and twitched in his lap, but he held me down firm with his hand, pressing me hard into his lap.

“You fucking like that?” he growled at me under his breath. I pressed my cheek into the floor and breathed deeply.

“I fucking love it” I said, and felt him squeeze my waist and laugh quietly to himself.

Again he stroked me until I was on the brink. Again I raced up to the edge of that delicious orgasm, and again he reigned me in. Like a good little slut, I would wait for his permission, wait that so when I finally exploded, I did it with his cock all the way deep inside my ass.

In no time I was squirming again, the effort of holding off my orgasm breaking me out in goosebumps. His cock was rock hard and hot. He slid out his three fingers and pressed the head to the opening, and it sent glorious stinging waves of pleasure all through me.

“Penny, don’t you dare come yet…” be breathed, and I tried my hardest to obey him.

He had to push hard to get inside. It hurt like hell. My ears whined and I strained at the knots on my arms as he jammed it inside. I was so wet that it slid in easily, but as the bulk of him plunged into me a sharp, tearing pain rippled out all through my pelvis and up my spine. He froze where he was and tenderly stroked my lower back for a moment.

“Shhh… just stay here with me…” he whispered. I relaxed and the searing pain melted into the most delicious pleasure. And then I wanted more. He felt my body loosen and open to him, and pressed in an inch more, then another. I felt like I could barely breathe, with all of that immense cock buried in me. My pussy was raw and open and twitching madly with pleasure, but all I could focus on was the deep, dirty feeling of his fat cock trying to wedge inside me. He pressed in a little, I breathed, he pressed in more. Eventually, by some magic, the entire shaft was inside me, and it felt warm and hard and naughty as hell. I was so thrilled to have him in me, to have that gorgeous part of him so deep in me, that I nearly came there and then.

“Penny…”

His voice brought me back to earth. I breathed in hard.

I looked down at a sight so unbelievably hot I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it. My tiny ass had somehow swallowed the full length of his wide, dark dick and it was all the way inside, so that his tight abs were pressing up as close as they could to my body. I felt a silly thrill of pride rush over me.

He pulled back a little to thrust in again but I whimpered in pain. That was too much. Even I had my limits. He smiled at me and kept stroking my back.

“Look, you did it,” he said and I smiled down at the raw place where our bodies connected. I felt the soft skin of his balls press against me. With a single fingertip he planted the daintiest, faintest touch onto the tip of my clit, and lingered there for a mere moment…

The effect was out of this world. It was as though he had pushed a button and detonated a bomb inside. I rushed up to the edge of the orgasm again, except this time with so much energy I spilled right over, and before I knew it a merciless, pulsing orgasm was washing right through me. My pussy clamped down hard but the weight of his immense cock in my ass resisted me and anchored me open, sending deep, dirty waves of extra ecstasy through my stretched body. I cried out as wave after wave beat through me. My bound arms flailed around helplessly, and my hips were held down hard by both his hands, as he pinned me down with his cock. I couldn’t go anywhere. There was nothing to do but ride through those surges of pleasure-pain.

My body convulsed hard, and the twitching slowed and morphed into heavy, delicious shudders. He was still in me, and I could feel the engorged head of him somewhere still deep inside my guts. It was the nastiest, most delicious feeling in the world.

I cleared my throat to say something to him, to thank him, to beg him for mercy, I wasn’t sure yet; but when I turned to face him I saw his flushed, contorted face. He was coming too. With one last savage pump of his hips, he tore into me and I felt, deep inside, one hot spurt after another flooding into me.

“Fuck!” he growled, and the tendons in his neck looked stretched tight enough to snap.

I smiled as he dug further into me, then collapsed down onto my body, one last stab of pain as he slid slowly out. As he slid out, I felt a curious mix of relief and instant yearning. I felt empty without him. My hands still bound, we lay there a moment, and I swear I could hear his heart beating.

We looked at each other, slick with sweat, and laughed.

“I think these can come off now,” I said with a smile, wriggling a little to gesture to my bound hands. He undid the knots and we watched as the circulation came back to my arms, erasing the white marks where the strap used to be. He held me and I nestled into him. Judging by the light outside, we had been at it for a while. It was almost dark.

He sprang up and went over to his makeshift kitchen counter, and started clanging pots. I closed my eyes and dozed a little, warm, indescribable feelings washing all over my exhausted body. In a few minutes he had made some tea, and we sat together, against the wall, and drank in silence. He had his hand on the floor, one finger extended just enough to touch my leg. Just to keep contact. It made me smile inside to see it.

“Vik, what do you keep in that tin, the locked one right at the top of the shelf?” I asked, blowing the steam off my mug. He looked up at it with me. I had always wanted to ask, but he was so secretive about everything.

“That’s …stuff from my mother” he said eventually.

“She’s from Russia?” I had heard people in the village say that. He seemed a little uncomfortable by the question, but he smiled at me, that one little finger still keeping contact.

“Yes. She was. She came here from Russia when she was about twenty years old…” he started.

“Vik,” I said and looked at him earnestly. “You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to” I said.

He smiled. “I want to.”

He took a sip and contemplated the box on the shelf.

“That’s my passport. Some documents. When my mother came to Malawi, she met my father here. She was ill and he was the doctor who saved her life. They ended up falling in love. And, well, the rest is history…” He looked back down into his cup.

“But where’s your mother now?” It was a question I had been dying to ask. He so rarely spoke about any of this that I thought I might as well ask it now, while he at least seemed open to the idea. He sighed loudly and swirled the tea in his cup.

“She left,” he said, and then we sat in silence for a while.

He took a few more sips and started speaking again.

“I never really knew her, to be honest. I remember a little form when I was very young. She left when I was five or six. I can remember a few things. I remember her face, sometimes. Her name was Oksana. She worked with one of the NGOs that was big at the time. But the thing you have to remember is…” here he stopped and looked a little pained. “Well, she was ashamed of us, what can I say. Back then people were worse about mixed relationships, and my father was as black as they come. She didn’t want a baby either. I think she wanted to pretend none of it ever happened. She was …how can I put this? She was a “society lady”, very prim, she was supposed to go around and do charity work. Honestly, she just saw me and my father as a big mistake.”

“So she just left her child?” It seemed inconceivable to me. And what’s more, I was suddenly madly uncomfortable with the parallels between her story and mine.

“Well, I don’t think it was easy for her. But she had nothing here. She was spoiled, from what I hear. She wanted a life of luxury. She wasn’t made for this place, you know? So her and my father fought. She said she would send money. Do what she could to help. But that she never wanted to hear from us again. My father told her to shove her money. Growing up here was hard. I didn’t belong. I told myself I’d leave one day, and go to Russia and find her” he said.

“And so? You never did?”

“The older I got the more I realized that …well, she was gone. There was no point in finding her. Before he died, it was just my dad and me. To be honest, I’m sure she doesn’t even remember my name.”

“I’m sure that’s not true. How could a mother forget her son?”

He scowled a little, then leaned forward and kissed me.

“No, it’s fine. When you think about it, why would she have stayed? For some two-bit life in the jungle with a kid who was an embarrassment? She had a wealthy family. A whole life in Russia. What was she going to do, come live here in the middle of nowhere with us?”

“That doesn’t sound like such a crazy idea” I said, and he kissed me again.

Chapter 18 - Penelope

“And that one?” he asked.

I peered up at a chaotic looking tree with sausage shaped pods scattered in its branches.

“Too easy! It’s tamarind, obviously!” I said, and carried on walking.

There are herbs for everything. Herbs to make you sleep and those to wake you up. Herbs for broken bones and sore eyes and insect bites. Herbs to make babies come, or to keep them away. Vik knew them all.

“Ok, then, smarty pants, what about this?”

“Honeybush. Easy.”

“This?” he asked, walking on and pointing to something I didn’t recognize. I peered at it for a moment.

“That’s a rusted piece of can” I said and laughed.

“Just seeing if you’re paying attention.”

I loved these walks with him. Back at home, the sum total of my gardening experience started and ended at buying a basil pot from Walmart and putting it in the kitchen window. But Vik had shown me a whole new world. That for so many things in life, you didn’t need to garden at all. That mother nature was already her own garden, complete and wonderful, and all you needed to do was know what you were looking for. And where to find it. Coming out with him in the mornings like this to fetch ingredients was a little like going to Walmart, I thought with a secret smile. Shopping in the wilderness.

He handed me a yellow pom pom flower and I put it in my basket, but not before holding it up against my blue kitenge and marveling at the contrast.

“Look how beautiful we look together.” He looked, smiled and carried on walking.

I could tell people in the village thought it was dumb for me to wear things like this, but I simply didn’t give a shit. The wax batik fabric was sturdy, easy to clean and incredibly hard wearing. It held its shape, was cool to wear and came in festive prints. What’s not to like? Little did they know, I was fully planning to start wearing one on my head soon, just as soon as I got the hang of tying it properly.

“If you lived in America, you could be on TV. Like, you could have your own reality show, where you teach people about how to survive in the wild and stuff,” I said, merrily walking after him in the warm sun. I loved these kinds of days: broad, warm and bright. A day that was like a hug. Nobody outside except us two.

“Well, thank God I don’t live in America then” he said, a little gruffly.

“Hey I was just joking. Just saying.”

We walked on in silence.

“Still, I think you have such amazing skills. You’re really going to make something of them one day.”

He stopped in his tracks.

“One day…?”

“Yeah. One day. I mean when you finally leave her or …whatever.”

I saw his hand swish with agitation through the grass, trying to shake the seeds loose.

“Why do you assume I would leave?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t assume, it’s just that …well, don’t look at me like that, surely you’re not going to stay here forever?”

His hand went roughly through the long grass as he started walking again, picking up the pace.

“Well, are you?” he said to me, still not turning around to face me. I had to trot a little to keep up with his long, muscular strides through the bush. His big, hard thighs were mostly bare, but the grass never seemed to bother him.

“Jeez, Vik, I don’t know. I’m just saying. Maybe you could come with me back to America. We could organize something…”

“But who said I want to go to America with you?” he snapped. The conversation was beginning to hurt.

“Nobody. Nobody said anything about that. I’m just thinking about, you know, down the line. In the future…”

“Are you happy with me here, right now, Penny?”

“Of course I’m happy! I’m happier than I’ve ever been, you know how happy I’ve –”

“Then why are you already thinking of leaving? Why does everything have to lead somewhere? Why does everything have to be something else?”

I had never seen him angry before.

“I …I don’t know what you mean,” I sputtered. He was turned towards me now, and his figure was imposing. A quick, ugly thought flashed into my mind. There was nobody else here but us two. He could do whatever he liked with me.

“I’m just saying that …eventually we have to think of the future, right? I don’t understand why you’re angry,” I said at last, my voice cracking. I was meant to go home a full week ago, but had extended my stay. Dylan was giving me the silent treatment, but nobody in the village had said a word about me staying on.

“So, how much longer are you going to grace us with your presence for then? Another six months? Three?”

Before I could reply he was speaking again.

“Maybe we should all just wait to see what your plans are and then adjust our whole lives for you?”

My face grew hot.

“Ok, what in the hell is your problem?” I said, raising my voice. I would argue till I was blue in the face that I had not stayed just for his sake. I hadn’t. But he was certainly part of the reason. In fact, I had more or less thrown away my relationship with Dylan to come here and work on this stupid garden, and spend time with him. So why was he being like this?

“Do you realize how much I’ve had to give up to stay here?” I said, my voice matching the bitterness in his.

“To give up? You poor thing.”

“I’m serious Vik. You’re acting like all of this is easy for me. There’s no way I can ever marry Dylan now, and it’s all beca--”

“Oh? How sad for you. How will you survive without a husband?”

My eyes prickled with tears. He recoiled a little, and looked sorry to have said it.

“Look, I’m just confused about why you’re talking about ‘a future’ like that when you’re going to leave anyway”

“But…”

“You’re going to leave right?” he barked.

“Well, eventually, yes.”

“Then, there is no future,” he said and spun around to walk on again.

“But …we could work something out. We could find a way to…”

“Yes? To what? Live happily ever after? Are you going to put me in your backpack and take me home and keep me under your bed?” he said.

“Vik. That’s unfair.”

His face sunk a little.

“I know. You’re right, I’m sorry. This is my fault. I already knew all of this was going to happen.”

“All of what?”

He was turning into a big pouting child before my very eyes. This was a side to him I’d never seen before. Did he want me to stay? To go? I was so confused.

“That we’d just have some fun together and then part ways. That’s just how these things go,” he said, his voice cold.

I walked after him for a few paces, the ground beneath me suddenly seeming so much drier and cracklier than it did a moment before.

“So …let me get this straight. You don’t see us, like, staying together,” I said, hating how young and naïve I sounded. I heard my own voice with his ears and hated myself for it. He turned again and looked at me. His gaze was hard, and all the warm depth I was so used to finding in those beautiful blue eyes seemed closed off to me now, and everything became hard and flinty instead.

His jaw looked so tight. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. Waiting for me to utter some magical words that he needed to hear. But I was at a loss.

I had held the full heft of his body between my thighs almost every day for months now. I had anchored against this same chest over and over again as he pummeled into me, and shuddered and came in my arms, and we had fallen asleep together, his great big body beside mine, and he had said he loved me. I started to cry.

“So, I was just …’fun’…”

He kicked the ground.

“Obviously, this conversation isn’t very much fucking fun…” he said and spat into the grass. I hated him just then. I wanted to slap him right across his big arrogant face.

I tightened my own jaw. Fine. I could handle it. I could handle this.

“Well, if we’re only just going to end things and it doesn’t mean anything to you, then why bother carrying on at all? Why not just end them now?” I said. I balled my hands into fists to stop them from shaking. He looked wounded for a second, but then laughed.

“Yeah, good point. Thank you. So glad I had you to point that out to me,” he said, his voice dripping with bitterness. He flung the branch he had in his hand to the ground and stared daggers at it.

“Off you go then, don’t let me fucking keep you,” he spat. He couldn’t even look at me. Somewhere deep in the back of my throat, a painful, angry knot rose up and choked me, and I couldn’t think of anything to say. I threw my own basket on the ground and took off in the other direction, the stinging tears blurring my path back to the dorm. It was though someone had kicked my guts and split open a bag of acid inside me, and now it was bubbling over and I didn’t know how to stop it from spilling everywhere.

I raced home and flung myself on my bed, a flood of sobs wracking my body.

Chapter 19 - Penelope

Without Vik, things lost their luster. Malawi all at once seemed so maddeningly brown.

The thing about this country is that nothing is for free here. Nothing at all. Every last little scrap costs you, sometimes dearly. The garden was too expensive. There was no way around it. For every measly maize plant we hoped to coax out of the ground, we poured in straw, and fish fertilizer, and barrels of water. I don’t know how much of my life went into each cob, into each little kernel, but it was a lot. And it was a lousy return on investment.

After a while there was no point pretending anymore. The villagers politely came to visit the plot occasionally, and Mama Tembi did her best to appear grateful, but the fact was that nobody needed that community garden. Nobody wanted it. The maize would get eaten, once we finally managed to get it out the ground, but it was clear what everything would have preferred to have: currency. Gainful employment. Proper housing.

I felt ashamed of the garden after a while. I had simply trusted that the mission leaders had known what the correct thing to do was. The Malawians would get a community garden, end of story. Sounded good, but a few months in and I realized: the mission leaders never even came here. They had no idea what they were doing. The Malawians needed good sewage and internet and proper roads and something to export. The longer I stayed here, the more the whole thing seemed like a joke.

I was a different kind of disappointment I felt when I first arrived. An obvious kind of disappointment. Dirt was one thing. Poverty was one thing, and scorpions. That was all fine, I guess. What was really getting me down was how badly I had thought any of this through. How little of an effect I was really having. Why had nobody told me? That I was wasting my time?

The heat beat down on me, out in that open field. I threw my body weight down onto the spade and tried to wrench it out again. The skin on my hands was beyond sore, but I didn’t care. If I couldn’t do anything useful in this place, at least let me dig a proper hole. At least let me get the stupid stuff in the ground, and put that damn seed in there, and at least I could claim that as a triumph, no matter how small and stupid it might be.

Lots of things felt stupid these days. I had no clue anymore, to be honest. It sounds stupid, but I missed him. It sounds stupid, but I couldn’t see him again. I just couldn’t go back. And it sounds stupid, but even now, a whole lifetime since I had picked through those weeds to his cabin, even now, I still felt him, in me.

He didn’t wash out of my skin. When I woke up in the morning, he was still there somehow, inside me, aching, the first thought in my brain. My stupid brain.

I hadn’t heard from Dylan in ages, too, although that was a less complicated situation. He didn’t know what I had been doing here, without him, but he didn’t need to. He could tell just through the few messages we exchanged, that I had gone. I had broken free. And I wasn’t ever coming back. Something had been released in me, and I wasn’t going to pack it away again. Not for him, not for anyone.

There were some new missionaries. They avoided me. I wondered if people were gossiping about me. I didn’t care. I threw my weight into the spade handle again and wrenched it, pulling out a rock in clumps of dead grass. Things had grown here before, and died. The soil kept giving and giving, although it got tired. I reached down and crumbled the clumps in my hand. At least there was soil. At least, if you fed it and tilled it, the soil could give you something marvelous in return. The thought provided me some comfort.

I stood back up again, wiped the sweat from my brow. I wanted to puke.

“You OK, mama?” one of the other workers asked me.

I nodded. We carried on working.

I liked working with them. Seven of us there were, in total. We worked for the most part in silence. We found a rhythm together: down came the spade, out came the soil, in went the fish, on went the straw, then over with the spade again to bury it all in. Then again down with the spade, out with soil… again and again they worked. Occasionally there was a joke or someone cursed a rock that ruined the flow, but together we were a loose machine, working that field like there was nothing else to do with life.

I could go home. I guess. But why? Why not just extend my visa and…?

I couldn’t dust the powdery red soil off of me. I couldn’t get him out of my mind. He had dug deep into me, loosened the clumps and now strange parts of my heart and mind were exposed for the first time ever. My eye caught a fat, pale yellow worm wriggling away from my spade tip. The sight of it made me retch and before I knew it, I was bent double and vomiting into the hole I just dug.

“Penny! You’re sick! Come let’s go, enough work for you today…” one of them said, and grabbed me by the arm. I was dropped off at Mama Tembi’s, naturally, and then bid adieu. I felt awful. It was empty inside, just Mama Tembi cleaning up and a cat winding its way through the stool legs. She gave me a Grandpa headache powder and rested a broad hand on my back, stroking me with sympathy.

“How’s the garden?” she said.

“Crap,” I said and groaned.

She laughed and clucked her tongue.

“Ey, I don’t know what you’re doing out there anyway. Why don’t you go work with Valerie at the school instead?”

I gave her a leery look.

“Because I came to work here on the garden. So I’m working on the garden.” Besides, Valerie could go to hell.

She took my chin in her hands and lifted my face to hers, giving me a long, hard look.

“How are you feeling?”

“Crap,” I said again, and tried to wriggle away from her. But she held me firm and peered into my eyes. Strangely, something like anger flashed over her face.

“I’m sorry, Mama, I’m just …just tired I think. Working too hard. I’m going to go home and sleep it off, ok?” I said, hoping I hadn’t offended her.

“Yes, go home and sleep it off. Good idea” she said and patted my back again. She stood to carry on with her cleaning. “Ask Valerie tonight to give you some proper medicine, she always has something.”

“I won’t see Valerie tonight, she’s spending the night with her friend from London.”

Mama Tembi paused and looked at me. Oops. Had I said something I shouldn’t have? Blown Valerie’s cover somehow?

“Friend from London?” she asked, coming back towards me.

“Um, I think she mentioned she just wanted to visit them this evening or something. I don’t know,” I said, shrugging.

“There’s nobody here from London. She doesn’t have a friend from London,” she said, looking at me in a way that made me uncomfortable.

“Well, I don’t know, she just told me …maybe you should ask her?”

“This friend, they arrived last week? With the other missionaries?” she said.

“No, no this is an old friend she’s been visiting for ages.”

Mama Tembi’s brows knitted, but then she smiled and threw her hands up.

“Nevermind, maybe she just didn’t mention it! Maybe in the next village” she said and left the room in a hurry.

It took a long while to form in my head.

But the thought eventually did crystallize, slow and hard and with painful edges, in my mind. Once it was there, I felt stupid for not seeing it before. Of course. There was no friend from London and there had never been. Valerie was visiting him. She had always been visiting him.

The cat sidled up to me and slinked its tail round my leg. I looked down at its inquisitive face.

Then I threw up all over the floor.

Chapter 20 - Penelope

Some chickens were loitering around the front door. I shooed them away and stumbled into the dorm room, slamming the door behind me. Inside was painfully quiet. Eventually, even the protests of the chickens outside died down and I was left alone in there with my thoughts and Valerie’s washing hanging over the sink.

I shuffled over to my bed and tried to push down the retching sensation. No matter which way I sat, or how I twisted my torso, waves of nausea kept washing over me. I put a hand to my stomach, almost begging it to calm down.

I shuffled over to the bedside table and pulled out a small hessian pouch bundled with a string. Bent double off the edge of the mattress, I laid out its contents on the floor between my feet: a cheap clay pipe, some matches and a bank bag of dried herbs that could be tea leaves, if you weren’t looking too closely.

I grimaced through the bilious feeling at the back of my throat and tried to focus on placing a small amount in the pipe, tamping it down, lighting it. It took the most supreme effort, but this was the only thing that could calm my nerves these days. Vik had herbs for everything. Herbs to rest the mind, herbs to calm the stomach and herbs to bring on deep sleep. Of course, I never even had any of these problems before I met him in the first place, but that was another story.

I put the tip to my lips and inhaled. I held the puff in my lungs for as long as I could manage and then let it go, sinking into the mattress. God, that felt better. My fingers went to all the other things I had in the drawer. Everything in this damn room was shared with Valerie, but this drawer was mine. I took everything out and set it on the floor, like a witch doctor trying to read the future, except instead of chicken bones I had Chappie wrappers and paperclips.

I looked at the brown envelope from Dylan, empty now except for his message which these days seemed written in a language I couldn’t speak anymore. The first few were light and peppered with exclamations and smiley faces. Stay safe! I love you! There were other letters from him, but they grew shorter and shorter. One month it was Looks like you’ve gone native!! Haha just kidding, but it’s good you’re adjusting. The next month, a little tension appearing. It’s strange how little you mention the wedding. The month after that, Still alive?! Haha just kidding, but really, I’m not hurt, you could just let me know what the hell it is you’re doing over there. And the most recent one, the last and possibly final one, I’ve been thinking long and hard about this, and you know how I feel about ultimatums in relationships…

I had started reading that one but never finished. I’m not sure why. Maybe I knew how it ended: you’re a bad girl, Penny, so come home as soon as possible so I can ignore you and show you just how bad.

I also had a bible, some coins, gum, and several small, unopened parcels. Vik’s parcels. Filled with rare and pungent dried flowers and roots meant to discourage a baby from taking hold. All the women used these herbs. Vik would reach up his long torso and fetch one from a tin on a high shelf, and tell me to take it carefully, with water, on an empty stomach in the morning. What I had really done was smiled, nodded, taken it home and stashed it here in this drawer, where it and several more like it stayed, unopened. There were more than nine parcels.

I can’t tell you why I did this. I’m not even sure myself. I only knew that I did want to do it. After weeks of fighting with tired soil to grow a crop nobody wanted, the idea of growing something inside of me seemed unthinkably alluring. I knew it was crazy. Of course I knew that. I had sat in bed here many nights trying to imagine what I would do. I couldn’t go back home and marry Dylan. Not after everything. And as much as it hurt me to admit it, Viktor was no knight in shining armor either. He used me. But in our many arguments, I guess he had been right about one thing: I had used him too. I needed an excuse to run away, and he had “excuse” written all over him in big, tattooed letters.

But I certainly didn’t need him anymore.

I had this beautiful secret growing inside me now, and somehow nothing else seemed to matter quite as much as it did before. I took another drag of the pipe and waited a little for the soothing smoke to gently loosen the nauseas feeling. It was working. I stood quickly and snatched up each of the parcels, taking them to the bathroom.

If you had told me a year ago that I would be standing here, in the middle of deepest darkest Africa, in a rundown bathroom with a pipe dangling from my lips, steadily flushing tiny parcels of potent witch doctor herbs down the toilet, I would have laughed in your face. I was engaged to be married to an unnervingly “good man”, I was supposed to wear a chic but modest white wedding gown and I was meant for a clean, easy life.

I watched a parcel whizz round the aged toilet bowl as I yanked the chain from above, and then it disappeared down the hole and the water filled up again. I plopped in another. It was a waste, of course. They were difficult herbs to find, and took time to prepare. I could almost see his careful fingers on the intricate folds on the paper of each parcel. But nevermind. I had what I really wanted from him now.

A long, long time ago, I had prayed for the perfect man. A good man. I got Dylan Moore, everything a girl like me was supposed to want. But deep down inside, another part of me prayed for something else.

A bad man.

And now growing in my belly was living proof that no matter how pretty life is on the surface, your real desires, what you really want, well, those things find a way. They’re underneath, waiting. I yanked the chain and watched another parcel go down, and then another, and another.

When I was done, I walked back to the bed and sat, glad that the nausea was almost completely gone, and in its place a delicious, warm feeling. Everything was going to be alright. Without Dylan. Without Vik. Just me and my …I couldn’t say the word yet. “Baby”.

I crouched down and took Dylan’s letters, and in an instant I began to tear them up, into tiny, square pieces, smaller and smaller. Head full of smoke, I imagined the paper was his brittle, two-dimensional body, and I was tearing him apart. The pieces were so small he’d never put himself back together again. When all the letters were torn, I swished the pile to muddle the pieces. These I burnt on the stove.

I ate one of the candies in the drawer and threw the rest away, along with the paperclips and other sundry trash in the drawer. As I rose to go outside and throw everything in the outside skip, I heard footsteps on the stones outside. Valerie?

I froze and pricked my ears. The door opened softly and she stood there for a second, looking at me. Her face was different somehow. Her hair looked like shit, which was certainly a first, and the skin under her eyes seemed both puffy and deflated.

In other circumstances, I might have said, “Oh you’re home!” or “hey!” and smiled, but on the other side of a few puffs of chamba, all of that seemed pretty pointless right now. I went outside, tossed my bag of trash on the skip and came back in. She was lying on her own bed, knees up and hands crossed behind her head. It was her preferred pose for when she was feeling philosophical, or had something to rant about. Which wasn’t often.

“Remember what you said that time we were almost hijacked? About how it’s hard to know whether you’re the good guy or the bad guy?” she said at last, contemplating the ceiling.

“Pretty sure I never said anything like that” I said.

“No, no, you did. You were saying that maybe even bad guys think they’re the good guys, so how can you ever really know, right?”

“I think you might have misunderstood me…” I sat down on my own bed. I was suddenly hit with a wild urge to run away from her, and this room. I wanted my own place.

“Well anyway, I think you were right. It’s not so simple, you know? I think sometimes the one everyone thinks is the bad guy is actually the good guy” she said.

I took a deep breath. I tried to force out of my mind the image of her, with Vik’s rough hands wrapped around her hips. His tight, hard muscles …they had felt like mine. But as I looked at her lying back on the mattress, hair fanned out, I could see the ghost of him on her, and I felt the nausea returning.

“Why don’t you tell me exactly what’s bothering you?” I said, trying to sound neutral. I realized: it would make me so happy to hear that he had hurt her. That he had fucked her and tossed her aside. It was a nasty, childish thought, but I turned it over in my mind slowly, and decided to keep it. Only I could handle Vik. I had learnt, over the months, to take his immense body, to tame his violent energy and please him in ways that only I could.

I hated her. But at that moment, I hated Vik as well. And hoped in my heart that they if they were going to hurt me so badly, then they’d get a little of that pain too.

She let out a big sigh.

“If I tell you a secret, promise you won’t tell anyone else?” she said eventually. I smiled inside. It wasn’t very Christian of me, I know. But then again, I think I had stopped being a Christian the second Vik slid his giant cock into me and fucked me till I nearly passed out.

“Oh, sure, you can trust me” I said, and smiled darkly on the inside.

“Well, I haven’t been at my friend’s this evening,” she said, and then waited.

“You haven’t? Oh, why not?”

“Well… nevermind about him. I wanted to say I was somewhere else, though, and –”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, which part of London did you say your friend was from?” I said, cutting her off.

She paused, still staring at the ceiling.

“Um …which part? Oh, he’s from, uh, Hammersmith” she said. Little liar. I can’t say why, but it thrilled me to catch her lying.

“Anyway, go on” I said.

“If I tell you this, promise you won’t judge me?”

Oh, I’ve judged you a million times already, you bitch.

“Of course not. What’s wrong? What’s bothering you?”

She let out another heavy sigh.

“Ok, well, I was at Vik’s tonight” she said, then turned to see my reaction.

I bat my eyelashes and look straight back at her.

“Oh? Why? I hope everything’s OK?” I said sweetly. I she wanted to play confession with me, then I wanted her to squirm and say it out loud.

“Yes, no, of course he’s fine. I was there …you know…”

“I don’t understand,” I said quickly.

She turned to look back at the ceiling.

“Vik and I have been having a relationship for the last few months” she said plainly, as though she were on trial and desperate to state the dirty facts in as clinical way as she could manage.

“A relationship? But, we all have a relationship with Vik, I’m very fond of him too. I don’t understand the problem.”

Perhaps that was pushing it a bit. I mean, I had worked hard to dispel the Christian good girl image I had when I first arrived here, but even I would have trouble convincing her I was that naïve.

She looked at me and frowned.

“Oh god, you are so innocent,” she said, and flopped her legs down on the bed.

I laughed.

“I’m just playing. Of course I know what you’re saying. But, I mean, I already knew that…” I said. I wasn’t done messing with her yet.

“You did?” she seemed genuinely surprised.

“Of course! Val, everyone knows, duh.” Now it was my turn to laugh.

I didn’t technically see her blushing, but I was enjoying imagining that she was.

“Really? So …you’ve …heard?” she said quietly. For a moment I almost felt sorry for her.

“Well, don’t feel bad about it!” I said, in mock-sympathy. “It’s not like anybody’s singled you out or anything. If it makes you feel any better, they talk about all the girls he sleeps with. In fact, I think they probably mention you the least, so don’t stress…”

The silence in the room was sharp, and cold, and delicious. In a few moments, I heard her start crying. For the first time in my life, I felt bad. And I liked it. Valerie had lied to me. Vik had lied to me. And now with an eerie clarity I realized all at once: I didn’t care anymore. It wasn’t revenge exactly. But it felt good.

“Oh, hey, don’t cry Val…” I said, but what I really meant was, go on and cry, bitch.

She sobbed a little and then started frantically wiping away tears.

“I just don’t understand why I keep doing this to myself, you know? Why I keep choosing men who hurt me. Why do I keep doing this to myself?” she cried.

I got up and went to her bed, placed a hand on her shoulder and stroked absentmindedly.

“Did her…? Have you broken up or?” I said.

She was tracing her fingers over the flowers patterns on the bed, over and over again on the same loops.

“Well, it was all fine, we were doing so well. Obviously I never expected him to drop everything and have a big serious relationship or whatever, obviously with me leaving soon we both understood it would be a temporary thing, I’m not an idiot, I knew that…”

“But he dumped you and now you’re sad?” I said. That was maybe a bit blunt.

She sniffed and looked at me.

“Well, not dumped exactly. But he’s just pulled away completely. He’s just ignoring me. He’s an utter arsehole, truly” she said and sobbed again.

I lowered my head and rested it against her shoulder. It might sound strange, but hating her was a comfortable feeling. Now that I saw how hurt she was, it felt natural to try and cheer her up. You’re fucked up, Penny.

“You know, maybe you’re attracted to guys like that because you know that they’re unavailable. Maybe you want them to leave you” I said.

“What?”

“Think about it. I don’t know. Why are girls drawn to him so much?”

“Good question.”

“Well, maybe there’s something comforting about the whole idea. Vik will never commit to any one girl. He’ll never leave Mchinji. And maybe it’s a relief not to have to care about that for a while.”

“I don’t know… maybe.”

“Imagine if Vik settled down with one girl. I can’t even imagine what that would look like, can you? He wouldn’t be Vik anymore” I said.

“Well, that’s true,” she said. At least she had stopped crying.

“You know what you should do? Forget him. Do your own thing. Do you see him fretting about women? He just does what he likes. We should do the same” I said.

“We?”

I got up and went to my own bed again and laid down there. It was getting late.

“I’m just saying, Vik’s not the only one who gets to do cool things.”

We chatted late into the night, but my mind was elsewhere.

Chapter 21 - Viktor

Without Penny, the world was flatter. Lacking a dimension.

But they all leave, eventually.

I thought she was different. I thought I saw and felt something different in her. But clearly I had been wrong. Women …only complicate things.

I get everything I need from the earth herself, who is a woman too, only not so complicated. With my bare hands I turned her soil and buried seeds in her and pulled out plants and herbs and roots to sustain me. My home was hewn from wood grown in the very same forests that swayed and swished around me at night, like her great rustling skirts. And if I did things just right, she would smile and gift me a rabbit or two from her endless banquet. I wanted for nothing. Except for one thing.

I was seated at the back porch outside of the cabin, a narrow lip jutting off the edge where I could perch and smell the air and think. With my legs crossed, I balanced my small pipe on the flesh at my knee and tamped down my own special blend into the stem, pressing little scraggles in with my finger. I dangled a match over the surface and watched the flame lick and catch the dried plant tendrils, then set the whole wad alight. As it glowed noiselessly I opened my chest and inhaled, pulling the plumes of wandering smoke down the tube and into my body.

I sealed my lips, put the pipe down and narrowed my eyes as I looked out over my view of the forest. Distant birds trilled and chattered in the treetops. When I couldn’t hold it any longer, I collapsed my chest and exhaled, and sent the smoke back out into the world, thanking it for taking the time to visit all the little corners of my lungs. I blew a smoke ring and watched it bobble off into the forest and disappear.

All the leaves were her face. Every bend in every tree was the shape of her cheekbone. All the foliage was her hair. There was nowhere to look: she was everywhere.

I took a fresh lungful of air and looked harder, trying to do without her, to forget. She had left, what more was there to say? Did anybody care if I missed her?

I took another drag and set the pipe aside. This time, the smoke plumes snaked into my brain, and loosened things up a little there. It wasn’t her job to come back. I didn’t deserve her anyway. If they all leave, well, maybe there’s a reason for that…?

My ears pricked instantly to a faint rustle in the distance. Someone was approaching. I had picked this damn spot specifically because it was difficult to get to. Because I didn’t want to be bothered. Because no, I didn’t have a special cure for your granny’s arthritis and no, I didn’t want to make a trade.

I turned my focus to the oncoming rustle. To my surprise, a familiar but out-of-place figure appeared at the threshold. She stood for a moment, great bosom heaving in the heat, looked at me and then ambled her way up the path without a word. I watched her approach, and when she said nothing, I scooted over and made a place for her on the narrow porch. Mama Tembi is what the locals affectionately call “traditionally built”. I felt the weight of the entire building sag a little as she settled herself beside me, dangling her feet off the edge.

I offered her the pipe, and she took it. Wordlessly, I tamped in some herbs and lit it for her, and she drew a long, graceful puff for herself. At the apex of her inhale she coughed a little and looked with disgust at the pipe, then handed it back to me.

“You’re drying it in the sun. It needs to dry in the dark,” she said to me, matter-of-factly. Like I said, Mama Tembi knew everyone and everything. I’m not a man built for shame, but she was right, and I withered under her judgment, and the thought that I had prepared my herbs incorrectly.

I said nothing and waited for her to speak.

“It’s a pity that your father couldn’t teach you more, before he died.”

For a moment, the leaves and branches at least looked like leaves and branches.

“I told him, when he was sick, I told him, don’t worry, Vik is in good hands. Because you were. Everyone in this village is my child, you know. But you are also my child. I knew your mother, Vik.”

Once every couple of months, Mama Tembi would have a come-to-Jesus talk with me. She respected that I was on my own path, but she never doubted for a second that that path would necessarily lead back into Mchinji, into a life that was good and decent and normal. And I’d wear pants and marry a nice girl and stop my nonsense. In Mama Tembi’s eyes, this rough little cabin didn’t nearly count as “good hands”. We were all her baby chicks, and concerned mother hen she was, she didn’t like one of her own wandering too far from the nest.

Penny’s face had vanished completely. I relaxed a little.

“I have to speak my heart, Viktor,” she said, holding a clenched fist to her chest. This was serious. She never used my full name. I looked at her, and her face seemed strange.

“What’s the matter?”

“That baby girl. Penelope. She’s...” she said though choked sobs.

I was irritated.

“Mama, she’s not a baby, she’s an adult, what she does with her life is her own business, and what I do with my life is also my own business…”

She shook her head violently.

“No, Viktor, stop saying that. Everything we do affects others, everything, how can you be so…”

She stopped mid-sentence. My face grew hot. I knew that there were rumors. I knew that people disapproved of me, skulking around in the forest on the periphery, snaring an occasional missionary girl if one wondered by, like a jackal. I loved Mama Tembi, but she didn’t get to come here and tell me wat I should do. Nobody did. I stood up and made as if to usher her off the ledge. I wanted her to go.

“Are you still running around with Valerie?” she said. I didn’t see what Valerie had to do with anything.

“Whether I ‘run around’ with someone is nobody’s business but mine,” I said, curt.

“Viktor, when your mother…”

“My mother doesn’t have anything to do with it either. I don’t see her anywhere, do you?”

“And Penelope? What about her fiancé at home? You don’t even care?”

“Mama, you said you wanted to speak your heart, so do it. Say what you want to say.”

Her eyes were wounded.

“Viktor, she’s pregnant,” she said quietly, then clutched both my hands in hers.

Instantly, her face was everywhere again. Penny was all around me. Her eyes were in the wood swirls of the cabin, in the clouds, in the shapes on Mama Tembi’s shirt.

There had to be some mistake. I had given Penny a huge handful of medicine to take with her, to prevent pregnancy. It was a pouch of silphium and stoneseed root, and a mix of other potent herbs, and I had been making the same blend for the women in the village for years, and they swore by it. It always worked.

“There must be some mistake,” I said.

“I know it when I see it!” she yelled.

“Wait, when you see it? So you don’t know this for sure? What does she say?”

“She’s American, what does she know? It will take her till Christmas to figure it out…”

I angrily pulled my hands from hers. My mind raced. I hadn’t spoken to her again since she stormed off on that horrible morning, and I hadn’t the heart to chase after her. I had quietly hoped she would have sprung some sense and just gone back home already. She didn’t belong here, anyway. Not really. She needed to be at home, with her asshole fiancé, who at least could offer her something normal, something legitimate.

I had to find her. I went to fetch my shoes and angrily lashed the laces round my ankles.

“Where are you going?” Mama Tembi said. She still held the pipe in her hands. I raced over to her and clasped her shoulders.

“Thank you for coming to me with this Mama” I said and ran off.

“Vik! Wait!”

“Yes?” I said and paused at the shed.

“She’s not going anywhere, Vik. You don’t have to rush.”

For a while we stared at one another. I could sense a double meaning in her words. I ran off. In just a few words she had unraveled my exact dilemma. I didn’t want her to leave. Of course. I didn’t want her to go back home to her asshole boyfriend and I would have given anything in the world to have her sweet head in my lap just one more time. Her leaving me would be the worst possible outcome.

Except for one other possible outcome: her staying.

Chapter 22 - Penelope

Walking in the bush calmed me. It’s easy: one step, then the other. One step, the other. I liked my shoes. They were simple and strong and didn’t mind taking me far. I hadn’t been called a “goody two shoes” in quite some time. In fact, the whole idea seemed so distant to me now, like something that belonged to someone else who lived in a distant era in history. Not to me.

I had committed adultery. I had taken illegal substances. I had fraternized with a man known to have regular run-ins with the law. But even still, I felt my moral compass pricking at me harder than ever: cheating was wrong. No question about that. He had said that Valerie was just his friend. He had promised me. And he had lied.

And he could act like he was some fancy forest-guru all he liked, but he was just a garden variety, flawed human being like the rest of us, and a coward, and a fucking liar. I still hadn’t decided what exactly I would say to him when I saw his sorry face, but I still had a long way to walk, and plenty of rage to carefully spin into the perfect speech as I did so. As my feet went, one over the other, swiftly through the underbrush, my brain worked and I hashed out everything I wanted to tell him.

That he had abused my trust. That he wasn’t some cool revolutionary for hiding out in a tree house in the woods, he was just afraid. Afraid of people and of me. He was all about how he hated to see bullshit in other people, well, I would news for him: his bullshit was just as bad as everyone else’s. And though he would never admit it, the way he dried his stupid herbs was completely wrong!

And I didn’t care anyway. He was fun, sure, but I had long ago moved on. He had shown me what an idiot I was to think about marrying a man like Dylan. But he was no better. I didn’t know what I wanted anymore, but it wasn’t him, and I wanted to make damn sure he understood that not only wasn’t I hurt by his betrayal, I actually pitied him for it, and no, I wouldn’t even consider forgiving him for a damn thing.

My feet moved quickly in the brush. I was walking quickly, a brisk, angry pace that had me break a slight sweat. I recognized all the old plants as I passed them. Old friends in the form of narrow, golden grasses or thorny leaves or little white star shaped flowers with dusty neon yellow stamens inside.

While I was at it, I was thinking of scrapping the garden completely, too. We needed to grow a crop that was actually worth something. I was done heaving and sweating to raise mediocre crops, and the soil was just too depleted for anything – even the maize had been lackluster.

And I would return back home just as soon as I damn well pleased, thank you very much.

As I made my way, I heard my skirts rustling over the grass. By now, most of my old wardrobe from back home was either ruined, given away or just gone. I had a growing collection of sarongs and fishtail dresses. And a new way to fold my head wrap: not like the local women did, but in my own fashion: with a broad strip wrapped across like an extravagant Alice band, knotted at the top, off to the side, like a 50s housewife who had gotten lost and landed up in Africa somehow.

Which is kind of what I was.

I started to feel better. The right words for what I wanted to tell him hadn’t appeared to me yet, but I knew how I felt, and that seemed like enough for now. I still had a long way to go. Light footed, I skipped towards his house, the feet familiar with the old route. Then I saw him and froze.

He was standing on the swell of the hill, just standing and watching me approach. I stopped too. His form was unmistakable. I would know those strong shoulders, that cocky, upright posture anywhere, and from any distance away. I realized that he was coming to see me. Our path was the same path.

Suddenly, all the anger, my whole silly speech …it all just fell away and my mind went blank. And into that blankness rushed all the memories of him. His crystalline eyes. His hard, warm arms around me. The way his fingers were so strong around an axe, but so gentle around the stem of a flower. With a deep, hurting ache I realized I would have given anything to just stop walking, and to just curl up in his lap and let him stroke me to sleep. I hated him. But I watched his form, looking for a sign, any sign that he felt the same.

He took a tentative step towards me, extending his long neck to see me more clearly in the grass. Even from so far away, I knew the expression he had on. I knew all his expressions. I made a move toward him too. Soon, we were walking towards one another again. My heart was pounding madly in my throat, but the blood fell from my face. My hands found a passing stem and I yanked it from the soil and took it with me, twisting it nervously as we approached one another.

“Hello,” he said, when all the distance was gone, and we were two feet from one another.

“Hello.”

“Nice headband,” he said and I did a weird, dismissive shrug. This was already going completely different to what I had imagined.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I had no idea where that came from.

“No, I’m the one that should apologize.”

He looked so damn good. He had such a beautiful body. Every last inch of him was masculine. Everything was hard and tight with purpose. Nothing on him was by accident. Not a shred of him was wasted.

“I have something to tell you,” I said. He didn’t seem surprised. His eyes were soft as he looked at me.

“I know you’ve been seeing Valerie all this time” I breathed, and it was like getting poison out of my system, to just finally say the words, and give them to him, so I didn’t have to carry them anymore.

He went white.

“What…?” he sputtered. He looked genuinely surprised.

“I know that she comes and sees you. And I wanted to tell you that you’re wrong.”

He looked like he was having a hard time forming words. He searched my face and seemed crestfallen, and all of a sudden a flash of irritation came over him. He rubbed a hand over his face and swore under his breath.

“I’m sorry, Penny…” he started but I cut him short.

“’Sorry’ doesn’t mean a damn thing. Don’t apologize. Just own it. You did it, and it was wrong” I said, staring hard at him.

“But…” his eyes darted from me to the ground and back again.

“Ah fuck, Penny. Why did you have to come here at all? This is who I am. This is me, I’m fucking sorry. Go home and marry your boyfriend, if you want a pet to put in a cage…”

I laughed out loud.

“Don’t give me that bullshit! What you did was wrong.” I said, somehow finding strength from the earth beneath me.

“I never agreed to anything with you, and you knew that right from the…”

“You’re wrong Vik! Just admit it.”

He glowered at me.

“Oh, now we’re going to talk morality, are we?" I’m wrong, yes, fine. I made a huge mistake. But I’m not the one who came all the way out here looking for trouble, just begging for a reason not to go back…”

“I told you, I might still go back,” I said quietly.

“Might?!”

I sat down on the grass and rubbed my face. I was getting tired of this.

“Why Valerie though? You both have nothing in common, I just don’t get it…”

He sat next to me, but not too close.

“I know. That’s kind of the point.”

“What do you mean?’

“I don’t fucking know. Valerie’s easy. I know what to expect from her. She doesn’t demand anything from me, in fact, she’s kind of shallow in her own way and she…”

“Are you saying I demand things of you?”

“Well, yes! Yes, you do actually. And I love it. You don’t just take my word for it, Penny. You push me. You’re not afraid to… I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. I’m sorry. That’s all. I’m sorry.”

The grass rustled peacefully beside us. What a mess. I was tired. So, so tired. I wanted to hate him, but I just couldn’t summon the energy. A few months ago, he had seemed to me the biggest, scariest person in the world, made of steel and iron and hardwood, and I couldn’t believe he had taken notice of me. But now I saw him there, sitting in the grass with me, and I realized just how lonely he was. How scary I must have seemed to him.

“I think I should leave Mchinji for a while. I need to clear my head,” he said at last.

I said nothing.

Somehow, our bodies found their way to one another again, and I was in his arms, in a heartbeat. I kissed him hard and deep, and he held me firmly in his arms, cradling my head and pouring down wordless kisses caresses over me. Without thinking, I surrendered to him and soon my arms were moving swiftly over his hips, slipping underneath the familiar folds of his sarong, while he pulled at mine and we tore away at them, matching up our nakedness, pressing bare skin to bare skin. It all happened so quickly. I was soon perched on his lap, naked under my brilliantly colored sarong, fanned out over us both. With ease he entered me, his hard cock towering straight up so that it pierced my body the moment I leaned into him. I exhaled and settled my weight down onto him, and his strong thighs tightened and he began to thrust into me.

I cried out and in return he closed frantic teeth round the skin on my neck and shoulders. I realized I was sobbing. His rough hands on my hips, he bobbed me up and down in his lap, guiding my tired body over his form, slapping with each time he brought me down onto his lap and then up again. I wrapped my arms round him and buried my face in his neck.

“Vik …Vik …” I said. “Vik, I love you.”

“I love you too,” he breathed.

“I love you, but I have to go now …I don’t want to do this anymore…” I cried and, wiping the tears from my face with the back of my hand, I tried to stand up.

Violently, he clasped my waist and pulled me down again.

“Don’t go. Penelope, please don’t go.”

I tried again, but he easily overpowered me, fucking me even harder still. I squirmed and began to strike at his chest. He knew how quickly he could make me come. He knew just what to do, and where, and how, and soon I came shuddering down, my body twitching and gasping. His face softened as he looked up at me.

“Don’t go Penelope…”

I slapped his face, hard, just once. I untangled myself from him and walked off. I didn’t need to look behind me to know that he lay kneeling in the grass, shattered. I retied a tight, thick knot round my waist and rearranged the folds of my sarong. Sometimes bad can be good. Sometimes good can be bad. And sometimes, a thing can be neither. I had learnt everything I could from Vik, and now I was done with him.

With every step I took away from him, I felt stronger.

Chapter 23 - Penelope

I made my way to the café. It was one of those hot, unbearably humid days, the kind of day where people’s tempers flare just a little higher than usual. Mama had been short with me in general these days, but when she sent one of the kids to come and fetch me because ‘someone special wanted to talk with me’, I knew something was up.

I walked tall in the midday heat. He could just go to hell if he thought he had any chance of “talking” with me. I planned on saying nothing. Letting him squirm a little as it dawns on him that I want nothing more to do with him, or his stupid cabin, or his dumb plants. Besides, as it turns out, I can grow my own plants. I had devoted two small sections of the maize plot to my own experiments, and now had tea and garlic and small fruit trees growing like they were magical. And I didn’t need his damn help to do any of it.

I stepped into the café and scanned for Mama Tembi. She was behind the counter, big bosoms resting on the counter, rolling cigarettes with a new automatic roller I had bought for her. She lifted her head to look at me, but her face was unhappy. I was about to greet her when I saw him out the corner of my eye.

He stood when he saw me. Dylan.

The look of pure horror on his face nearly made me laugh out loud, and I would have if my throat wasn’t suddenly dry as a bone.

“What are you …what are you wearing?” he said quietly.

I walked over, glanced over at Mama Tembi, who had stopped rolling, and looked back at him.

“Well, it’s nice to see you too,” I said.

We hadn’t spoken in months.

Even the cat in the corner stopped licking itself and looked at us both. There weren’t too many people in the café at that time of day, but in that special way Malawians can eavesdrop while pretending not to, I could tell everyone had pricked their ears to whatever conversation was about to go down.

“Penny! Come inside! Look, your fiancé has come to visit, I’m going to get you both some Coke and then you can sit here at the quiet table, I’m sure you have a lot to talk about” Mama said, and put down her cigarettes to come and usher us both to a quiet part of the café. We stared at each other in silence while she fussed and fetched us two cold bottles of coke and then sat me down next to him. He didn’t get up.

My fingers were wet and cold on the bottle. I couldn’t make eye contact, but I could tell he was angry. He looked so crumpled. He must have flown over and taken the bus, just like I had, a lifetime ago. It may seem strange, but something about his face seemed so alien. The lines of it, the way his nose just seemed kind of mashed on as an afterthought. We had shared so many hateful text messages over the months that I didn’t expect to discover any fresh pockets of resentment for him, but somehow, seeing him like this and in the flesh, I was surprised to find how physically repulsed I was by him. He was so …soft. Had I ever been attracted to him? I was baffled.

“You should have come to me if you needed me to send you clothing” he said at last, and took a sip of his Coke.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You don’t have to wear …that” he said, his voice cold.

I looked down at my blouse. A yellow and green batik printed in birds and triangles. It was one of my favorites.

“I like it,” I said simply. I suddenly had a strong instinct that the less I said, the better.

He raised an eyebrow. In my mind, we were as good as broken up. I had ignored him for months, he had threatened me, called me names, insulted my mission and much more. But here he was, from out the blue, showing concern for my clothing? I took a sip as well. I was angry that he was here. And more than that, I was expecting Vik, not him. True, I just wanted to flounce off and tell Vik exactly what I thought of his sorry ass, but still. He tightened his mouth and cleared his throat as though he was in some kind of rushed business meeting.

“I know that you may be having some confused feelings about a lot of things, and that’s OK” he started. I looked at him. Confused was right. Our engagement had been a joke, and now it was over. What more was there to say?

“I know you’re a prideful woman. But you’re young, and it’s fine. I do understand that. I know you think I’m a little hard with you, but I actually understand a hell of a lot more than you give me credit for.”

The café was mostly quiet. People chattered amongst themselves, but I could tell they were listening keenly. I took another sip, looking at him.

“And I’m here to tell you that I come in peace. I’m not angry anymore. If you stop this nonsense right now, we can pretend none of this happened, and I’ll let you come home and we can…”

“Let me come home…?”

I could see his nostrils flaring.

“Yes Penelope. It’s not too late. Don’t worry, I’m not angry. Just give this up and come home, please.”

I hated the way he said “please” like a threat.

I looked around the café and down again at my batik birds, flying chaotically across my chest.

“I’m not coming home,” I said.

He seemed exasperated.

“I don’t understand. How can you …this place is such a …what are you running away from? Why don’t you want to come home?” he said. For a brief moment, he sounded legitimately hurt.

“I like it here. And I’m going to keep staying here. I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that.”

His nostrils flared again, and then all at once I saw the same old face I was most used to seeing from him. The righteously indignant face. The face gone pink with rage. This was the Dylan I knew. And up until now, I had never spoken to him like that, not to his face.

I was petrified, but I loved it. He sputtered a little, trying to think of what to say, then stared daggers at me.

“You are my fiancé, and you will not talk to me in that tone of voice” he said at last, almost spitting the words.

“I am not your fiancé,” I said quickly, and took a sip.

He leaned back in his chair and flashed an ugly smile at me.

“You’ve gone mad. That’s obvious. You walked away from a perfectly good relationship to come here, of all fucking places, to this dump, and for what? I just don’t get it,” he said, in a voice squeaking with fresh anger. I thought I felt the crowd bristle a little, but I was too focused on watching the shade of pink deepen on his cheeks.

“You don’t have to get it. I don’t want to be your wife.”

He frowned and leaned in close, as though he was about to learn a secret.

“What are afraid of Penelope? Whatever it is, we can work on it. We can go to counselling. I can make you happy. What do you need? Let me provide for you” he said. The words made my stomach lurch. I was realizing: I was angry too. Very angry. For so long I had been preoccupied with him all the time, with how angry he was and whether it was my fault that I had forgotten one maddening piece of information: I was angry!

I was furious that he had robbed me of so many good feelings, of so much time. That he had made me hate myself, that he had tried to squash me and control me and limit me, and that I had trusted him all the while. He had made me feel so dirty. And now, I wanted to make him feel ashamed for what he was for a change.

“What do I need? I told you so often what I needed,” I said slowly, and quietly.

His brows furrowed as he tried to think.

“You wanted …this trip? You wanted to postpone the wedding? What, tell me”

“I told you, almost every day, what I wanted, what I …needed.” He looked at me, bewildered.

“Well? What?” he almost yelled.

“I needed to be fucked,” I said, as slowly and darkly as I could manage.

The color fell from his face. I’ve never felt so simultaneously terrified but thrilled at the same time.

“Penny, your language…” he started.

“I needed to be fucked, hard, and you never gave that to me. I wanted it so badly. I begged you. That’s all I wanted. For you to love me…” I had to stop to make sure the choking in my throat didn’t turn into a full sob. I wouldn’t give him the privilege of seeing me cry.

He leaned in closer, embarrassed, and spoke in an urgent whisper.

“Of course, Penny, I understand, you have always had difficulty with temptation, but after the wedding…”

“There will be no wedding,” I said, finding my voice was strong again. I stared at him hard until my eyes burned.

He flopped back in the seat, a sinister look developing on his face.

“Is …is there someone else?” he said, almost incredulous at the idea.

“Yes,” I said. Why shouldn’t I be proud?

“You’ve…?”

“Fucked him? Oh yes,” I spat.

If there was one thing I couldn’t stand, it was squeamishness. I didn’t want to hear him mince his words and dance round the question and blush and fret. I wasn’t ‘seeing’ anyone. I hadn’t ‘slept with’ anyone. And I didn’t want to hear him say so. I could visibly see him swallow, then release as his mouth hung open. I had never made him this angry before. So angry that even he couldn’t think of some venomous barb to throw my way.

I leaned back myself, not quite smiling, but very close to it. He thought I was a dirty little slut? He thought I had trouble with ‘temptation’? Well, just let him see how much of a whore I could really be. If he thought my body was dirty, if my desires were so unthinkable, well, let him to see how much I enjoyed it. Not only did I not care that he judged me, I actually relished it. I hoped I disgusted him.

“Penny …how could you?”

I could hear the anger gathering in his voice again. He seemed confused that I wasn’t cowering anymore, wasn’t apologizing like I always did.

“How? Oh, I’ll tell you how. With glee, that’s how. I met a man who actually loves sex, and loves me, and I let him fuck me so hard I thought I was going to die, and let me tell you Dylan, I loved every second of it. I sucked him, and I swallowed it all, and I let him put it in my ass, and…”

“Penny! For God’s sake!” he said, panic in his eyes. He looked as though he was about to jump over the table and physically restrain me if I didn’t stop speaking. But I smiled at him and raised my voice.

“And he’s big, Dylan, he’s so fucking big, too. He’d fuck me so good I’d hurt for days afterwards …I swear I never knew it was possible to be fucked so deep…” I said, rubbing it in. He thought I was disgusting? Oh, I’d show him disgusting.

“Penny, please stop,” he said. I thought I heard the crowd around us hush a little as people strained their ears to hear if I really was saying the outrageous things it seemed like I was saying. Stop? No, I hadn’t even started yet. What irked me was how concerned he was that other people could hear him. A room full of strangers, and he cared more about what they thought of him than anything else. How utterly pathetic.

“I’m carrying his baby,” I said.

This time, the room really did go quiet. Mama Tembi’s rolling machine stopped squeaking and I felt her flash a worried look over to our table. I could just tell she was contemplating coming over to fret with more Cokes. Dylan looked nervously around the room, as though he expected a hidden camera crew to come bursting out from behind the reed mats on the wall. He was smiling that ugly smile again.

“I’ll kill him,” he said, under his breath.

“Good luck trying. He’s not even in the country anymore. He’s left for Russia, and I doubt any of us will ever see him again,” I said, and in a split second his hand flew through the air and slapped my cheek, hard, ringing out in the café so hard it brought tears to my eyes. I recoiled, my hands on my face, and stood to take a step back from him.

The next thing I knew, the sound of chairs grating on the floor pulled Dylan’s gaze from mine as he watched half the crowd in the café shoot to their feet and come rushing over to the table. My friends. The farmers who had helped me plant the maize. They stood in silence, but their intention was clear as day. Though my cheek burnt hot, I glared at him, suddenly feeling backed up by the people here.

“Don’t touch her,” said a voice from somewhere in the crowd.

Dylan was standing too, clenched fists on the table, and a look of pure disbelief on his stupid face.

“You have got to be joking me,” he said.

As much as he hated my body, he still felt entitled to it, even now, even after I was so clearly Vik’s and nobody else’s. He reached over the table and roughly grabbed my arm, yanking me forward. I resisted, but he was stronger than he looked. He pulled me away from the table and started for the door.

“I’ve had enough this bullshit, you’re fucking coming home Penelope…” but before he could finish, the crowd had blocked our path.

“Leave her alone,” said another voice, this time one I recognized. It was Mama Tembi, parting the crowd with the dark gray barrel of the shotgun she kept hidden in a latch door under the counter. She pointed it square at him, cocked it and lowered one beady eye to the sight.

Dylan flung my hand aside and raised both his hands in the air. His face looked as though he was the one who had just been slapped.

“Get out of here, and don’t come back,” she said, and she meant every last syllable.

Dylan shot me a poisonous look and then glowered at the crowd again.

“Fucking animals,” he blurted, and then blustered out.

Mama lowered her gun and relaxed her shoulders. Everyone went to sit down, but I stood there for a while, looking at her. She frowned at me, but I knew she wasn’t angry. I ran up to her and threw grateful arms around her.

“You have a filthy mouth, girl. I wonder who taught you to talk like that,” she said, and I smiled and kissed her neck and hugged her more.

“Thank you. I love you Mama Tembi. Thank you so much for everything. I’m sorry. Thank you…” I said as I squeezed her.

She grabbed me by the shoulders and held me at arm’s length to look at me, motherly concern all over her face. She smiled.

“You think I’m running a charity here? You’re paying for both those Cokes sunshine.”

Chapter 24 - Viktor

It had been four years since I stepped foot in Mchinji.

Russia had been cold and empty. In Mchinji, I had always been rounded up to white, but in Moscow, I had been rounded down to black. The language was ugly to my ears, and the weather hostile. Oksana Mikhaelova’s family were chilly with me, and nodded and smiled and showed me the door, telling me politely that she had been dead for years and that would I please have the respect and dignity to leave and not upset her relatives any further. I bid my time on a fishing vessel, and kept to myself, and wandered for a while, a lonely, wrong-colored speck in a blizzard. One month turned into a year, and then, in the seasonless country, one year turned into four. My soul went to sleep. I spent time outside.

Now, back in Mchinji, strange parts of me were waking up again. Let me tell you this: there are no two places on the face of the earth more different from each other than Moscow and Malawi. It was almost comical.

I gave the driver some cash and greeted him, but my pronunciation was rusty now, and he scowled at me. The bus was the same, the roads were the same. The dusty red ground hadn’t changed and the goats and chickens scampering out the way may well have been the exact same ones I had seen on my way out, all those years ago.

I made my way down the aisle and found a seat near the back, and at the next stop, a young missionary got on and came to sit beside me. A buffed, clean cut boy with a TV accent and new shoes, he introduced himself as Damian and shook my hand. I said little about myself. I was Viktor. I was coming to visit family. After four years, I fully expected that my name would no longer ring any bells for anyone in the village, but the reality of it still stung the ego a little. My own clothes spoke nothing of my past. I was cleanly dressed, shaven. Tattoos hidden and the callouses on my hands long since healed and softened.

I was heading for my old cabin, or what would be left of it after all these years. I would see Mama Tembi later, if she was still at the café, but before anything else, I needed to see that land. I needed to smell the air, to touch the soil. It would be in bad shape, I knew. All the way on the flight here I had reminded myself of that: things would not be as I expected. I had to be prepared for the worst.

But this little pilgrimage was overdue now. Every morning of my life I woke up and my mind was still there, still in that place. I had moved around endlessly, spent endless mornings waking up in endless rooms. But the cabin in Mchinji was always there first. And inside it, Penny. A vision of the cabin always came with a vision of her. Bare shoulders, flaxen hair floating in waves around her glowing face. She would appear there, a split second before I woke properly. Living in my mind when I had done so much to erase everything else in there.

My body remembered her, too. Those dreamy days spent in the forests, in the fields, in the hazy nest the cabin made when it was dusk and we lit a pipe and lay together, hands clasped, naked and gazing at the stars peeping through the window… Whenever I came, she was in my mind. Onto this, too, her image was melded. To have pleasure was to think of her; to think of her was to have pleasure. She was tangled into my mind and body and after four years, the knots were still tight.

The stranger Damian began to chat about this and that. He had arrived a few weeks ago and was loving his mission. They had started to revamp the old community garden here and he was so excited about how well it was going. They were really going to make some meaningful changes in the next few months.

“Met any interesting people in town yet? Mama Tembi?”

“Mama Tembi? Hmm… not sure the name rings a bell,” he said and I smiled with a pang.

As he prattled on, I found I couldn’t keep her face out of my mind. The way you could trace every little thought and feeling in her fine features; her pale eyes, so similar to mine.

“Luckily we have some really good people on our mission, honestly. Really passionate people,” he said, and I looked out the window at the dust and stray dogs.

“A lot of strange people around here unfortunately, so it’s good to have such a nice group to work with, you know, people you can trust…”

“Strange people?”

He smiled and waved off the question.

“Oh you know, we’ve all heard the stories of crazy people who come out here and get weird ideas …and then never go home again!” he laughed. Perhaps he had heard of me after all.

“What else have you heard about these crazy people?”

He seemed disappointed that I wasn’t interested in hearing about the mission’s garden.

“Well …just rumors you know. There are people living in the reserve, I think.”

“Crazy people?” I said and smiled.

“Yeah, I’ve heard about a woman who lives there somewhere, but she’s American? I don’t know. Just stuff I’ve heard.”

My heart kicked in my chest. A woman. I slammed my eyes shut and saw her face again. He carried on talking about this and that, but I was no longer really listening. My mind raced.

Eventually the bus came lurching to a stop and he had to go. I shook his hand again and he told me to come find him later, if I passed through again. I squeezed my hand round the straps of my small backpack and said I might. A few stops later, I got off too.

It took me a full two hours to hike through the bulk of the road that lead into the heart of the forest. With the tar road behind me, and the sun blazing ahead, I was soon breathing hard, the backpack straps leaving wet sweat marks on my shirt. It had been a long time since I had done this much physical activity.

The plants were the same. The trees had changed a little, and some foot paths seemed to have grown fainter and disappeared under weeds and grass, but the character of the forest was still intact. And still in the trees, as it always was: her face.

I climbed the familiar rise and looked down. There was the old cabin.

It seemed much as I had left it. Too much like it, in fact. From that far away, I couldn’t make out too much detail, but I had expected more wear and tear. I carried on walking. By the time I had rounded the bend and stepped into the clearing, it was immediately clear – someone was living here.

I slowly walked through miraculously well-kept gardens and fields. Gardens that rivalled my own, when I had lived here. The plants were lush and heavy, almost obscenely healthy. There were vegetables, herbs, corn, and a few of the old strains I had first cultivated here, although different somehow. The old shed had been torn down and there were no weeds. Instead, to my surprise, I discovered small baskets of pansies. Pansies.

Little bowls of African violets were scattered here and there, and I found a clutch of chickens cooing and cackling in the shade of the pumpkin leaves, out of the heat. Those were new.

I followed the path to the cabin and saw further evidence of care. Repairs. Some sections had been painted. A coir mat at the front door. I stood for a long time, trying to understand everything I was looking at.

“Who are you?”

I spun around to find the source of the strange voice. Behind me stood a small boy, barely as tall as my hip, wearing a dusty pair of superman trousers, a full complement of freckles and no shoes. He had a stick in his hands, and skin that looked velvety soft and downy, even under the dust. With eyes that resembled the transparent blue-green of beach glass, he looked me up and down and asked the question again.

“I’m Vik,” I said. My mouth was dry and my throat hurt to say it. I swallowed hard and looked at him, and he looked at me.

“I used to live here,” I said eventually.

He peered at me through suspicious eyes but then smiled, big and broad, and scratched his stick in the dirt.

“No, this is my house!” he said playfully, and began to kick the ground a little.

“Of course it is,” I said. “Where’s your mommy?”

He peered at me again and pointed behind me, at the house. I smiled at his eagerness and turned towards the house. Instantly, I saw her.

She was a vision.

Her face was the same, I think, but just barely. She was swathed in stiff red and yellow fabric, and her head was wrapped, a knot to the side. She was bigger. Her breasts were full and between them hung several beaded necklaces. She looked down at me with heavy, calm eyes, eyes that seemed only mildly surprised to see me standing there. With one hand resting on the door, she used the other to beckon the boy, who ran up to her and hid himself behind her skirts, peering out at me with a smile.

She didn’t need to ask who I was. And I knew who she was. I had seen her face every day in my dreams for years. A single blonde tendril poked out from her head wrap and slowly, she smiled a little at me.

“Look Kojo, we have a visitor,” she said. Her voice was the same, although barely. Thicker somehow, and softer, and deeper. “Kupeza mphika mwana wanga,” she said, and the boy smiled and ran to the back of the house.

She took a step down and then another, never breaking her gaze with mine. God, she was beautiful. I swallowed again, feeling myself about to laugh, or maybe to cry. Instead, I said,

“You’ve taught him well. He’s a good boy.”

She stepped down off the last step and sidled up to me. I could hear the little one clamoring with something somewhere far behind the house.

“Yes, I know,” she said and stepped close to me. She smelled of cinnamon and roots and soap and some other indescribable loveliness. I kept waiting for her to say something, but she just looked me over, up and down, and smiled quietly to herself. I wanted to grab her, to embrace her and tell her that I loved her, and that I was sorry, and that she was everything, had always been everything, and that I had been wrong, and that more than anything I wanted to reach out and touch her now, and seal up all these years, and forget everything else, everything except that I loved her, and that all I wanted was her.

All I could do was extend a hopeful hand, and wait for her to give me hers. Her palms were rough from work, but her touch was soft and graceful. She seemed so in control, so elegant and poised in her movements as she turned and gestured for me to follow her.

“Come inside and sit down a little. You look tired.”

It was inside that you could see that the cabin was no longer the same cabin. In fact, it was a full house now, with several extensions added on, making several rooms, all plastered inside and bright and clean. I stared for a moment, shocked. She had really done well for herself. Parts of the old cabin poked through here and there, but there was no doubt about it: the place I was standing in was all hers. I swallowed the lump in my throat. The moment she arrived in Mchinji, all those years ago, I had seen something in her eyes. A kind of uncommon strength. And now here it was, in front of me, the fruit of that strength. I was unspeakably proud.

With a clatter the boy entered the room holding a tray with a teapot and a set of dainty Moroccan teacups. He wobbled over carefully, placed the clinking tray down and looked up at us both with expectation.

“Thank you baby, you brought all the things for us,” she said, and he ran up to her and pawed at her skirts again.

“How old is he?”

“He’s four.” She stroke the top of his head. He had faint, blonde curls and beautiful tanned skin.

I laughed and put my back pack down. I was speechless.

“Wokomamtima, today you must go and play with Jeffrey. Mommy must talk to mister Vik today.”

The boy looked up at her with big, pale eyes.

“To Jeffrey?” he repeated.

“Yes, you must take some cake and put your shoes on, and go to Mama Dora. When it’s dark, I’ll come and get you” she said, and smoothed down the springy curls on his head.

He nodded and thought to himself for a second, suddenly very serious. I was in awe that such a small child had so much mastery over himself, and that they both thought nothing of sending him out alone.

He bounded off to the kitchen to prepare a little parcel of cake, and then she helped him with his shoes. He threw little glances at me here and then, smiling mischievously, as though he was sure I would be jealous that he got to go and play with Jeffrey today. She repeated the instructions to him a good few times more, and he nodded and seemed pleased with himself, repeating them back, telling her that when the sun went down, then she would come and fetch him again. They sang a little song together, a local song about the sun, and he clapped his hands and she pressed her forehead to his and kissed him. It made my heart ache.

Once the boy had left, I smiled at her, raising my eyebrows.

“He’s very advanced for his age. Wants to do everything himself. Takes after his father,” she said, and gave me a questioning look. I extended my hand to her again and she took it, and I smiled at her. I could spend the rest of my life like this, just smiling at her, enjoying her sweet face.

“I missed you,” I said. She didn’t say that she missed me in return. I continued. “Every day I was away, I dreamt of coming back, of coming back here. Back to you. You’re my home, Penelope,” I said, and it was the first time I had said something like that, even though the moment I uttered it I realized that it was the simplest way to express what I was feeling. She said nothing.

“I was afraid, before. I’ve been running away my whole life, and I didn’t expect anyone ever to find me. But you did. By some magic, or some miracle, you came into my life anyway. And I …I hurt you. I was an asshole…”

I waited for some acknowledgment on her face, but she remained silent. The loose blonde tendril floated noiselessly. How had she grown so beautiful?

“And that haunted me all the time I was away. Every day. I wanted to run away again, that’s all I know how to do, to run away. Just like my mother, I wanted to run away and pretend none of it ever happened. But this time I couldn’t. You followed me. Your face was everywhere. When I closed my eyes, I saw you. In my dreams, I saw you.”

I felt my chest tightening. I felt like I had never said so many words all at once before. And once I started speaking, I couldn’t stop. I was afraid if I stopped speaking then I would cry, so I carried on speaking. I told her about going to Russia. That my mother had passed before I had a chance to find her. I told her everything. And when I was done with that, I started talking about her son. Our son. And when I said “our son” I did cry, although I quickly wiped away the tear and carried on talking. She held my hand, and listened, following my every word.

When I was done, the tea was cold. She clasped my hands and looked deep into my eyes. Then she knelt on the floor in front of me and took my hands to her cheek, kissed them and held them again. Her hands went over my thighs and onto my knees, and she stroked me, like a wounded animal that had wandered into her home. I relaxed and exhaled, grateful beyond belief that at least she was touching me.

She traced her hands up onto my torso. Her touch was not gentle and seducing – there was no need, after all. She already had me, heart and soul. No, these touches were grounding, like she was reclaiming me. Checking to see if everything was where she left it. The hands travelled further up and then she had my face in her hands. Slowly, she moved upwards to kiss me, and I moved downwards, and our lips met halfway.

It was as though no time had passed at all. Instantly, my body remembered her, and I sighed into her gorgeous lips as she pulled me down into a deep, slow kiss. Every cell in my body piqued. I was hard in seconds. In silence, we kissed for a long while, her tender lips patient and kind. I was overcome with a feeling of wanting to please her. To know all her needs and fulfil them, perfectly. I wanted to love and hold her, and the little boy too, and every time her beautiful face broke into a smile, I wanted to be the reason for it.

I stroked my hands down over her neck and onto her shoulders. She lifted lithe arms and shrugged off her shirt. Underneath, her breasts were loose, the nipples hard. They were heavier than I remembered them, and fuller. She rose to her feet and wriggled off her skirt, to reveal the rest of her body, equally soft and full. Her skin was so delightfully silky. Her hands on my shoulders and neck, I lowered my head and took her all in, only wishing I had more hands to paw at her glorious flesh. She smelt like something partly tamed, like wet earth but warm. She had the unmistakable musk that had driven me wild so long ago, except the scent was more mature now, even headier and more luxurious. Even in my fevered dreams, I couldn’t have imagined her as beautiful as she was now.

I gave her belly and the tops of her thighs small, respectful kisses, greeting each part of her. The dramatic curve of her waist. The fine down on her navel. The soft carpet of blond curls at the beautiful cleft between her full legs. She stroked fingers through my hair as I worshipped each part of her. Every fold and swell had its own character, its own scent and heat, but the prayer was always the same: I love you.

She gestured for me to stand up and led me over to a bed. Nothing at all like the run down mattress we had made our home so long ago. No, this was a soft, feminine space, and as we both collapsed onto a little mound of hand embroidered cushions, more of her earthy scent was released. She peeled off my trousers and then my shirt, dropping them to the floor like she couldn’t understand the need for them.

I was completely naked before her. And I wanted nothing more than for her to take me. To take everything I was, receive it all, accept everything I had and take me into her beautiful body. My cock stood stiff and hard, and I felt like I could explode from wanting her. These sensations were new. I had felt lust before, a million times. But this was a deeper ache, something that shook me way down inside, and it hurt. I was no longer all muscle and bone and anger. I was a little older now, and my body had some signs of wear. I stood before her. Let her see it all.

Her hands stroked over me again, down my chest, parting her hands down around my cock and then making their way down each of my legs. My poor, tortured cock stood erect and red, untouched. We knelt and faced one another, and kissed a little more. What the years had taken from me, they seemed to have given her. Even in her humble body, she seemed impressively strong, and as I kissed her, it was as though I was lapping her up, drinking from deep within her.

Her lips went over my chest and shoulders, and then in an instant she was kissing the tip of my swollen cock, tenderly. Without any more ceremony, she rose to the balls of her feet and squatted deep over my lap, shimmying close to me and balancing against my chest. The moment was slow and sinewy, yet throbbing with energy. When she finally lowered onto me, I couldn’t help but cry out. She kissed me and lowered a little more, her strong thighs taking in just as much as she wanted, while I waited below. She winced a little as the width of the head split her open, and she paused for a moment, frozen in her kiss while her twitching body adjusted around me. I wanted to grow bigger still. To fill all of her. I pulled back and stared into her flushed faced. I needed to see her expression. I needed to know the effect I was having on her.

She blushed and smiled, and wiggled down an inch more. I wish I had a cock a mile long, so I could do this forever, and never stop. I could tell she was out of practice. Her body took time to soften and accept me. I remembered the old days, and how we’d fuck for hours every day, her raw little body buckling from the sweet abuse I doled out, and how she’d keep coming back, never sated. But now, I just needed to be in her. As far I could go, as far as she would let me in, I wanted to fuck her, and love her, and find my way back to the place again.

I pressed in another inch and found a hidden pool of wetness inside her, which now began to stream down the length of me. Onto the slickness, she slid down further and eventually I was all inside, and she nestled her hot inner thighs into my lap, wiggling a little and settling her weight onto me. Inside her, I settled too, and pictured my cock swelling and melting to fill every corner inside her. She was fearsomely warm inside, indescribably sweet and so slick she glided over me like silk.

She fell forward onto my body and I held her there, and she rested for a moment and let me stroke fingertips down her long naked back.

“I love you Vik,” she said, almost too quietly for me to hear.

The words tore at me inside, my cock jumped of his own accord, inside her, and she moaned and nestled closer.

“I love you Penny,” I said to her shoulder. The little blonde tendril waved around and tickled my nose. I lifted my hands and unwound her head wrap, like she was the ultimate birthday present, and lay the fabric aside. Her hair fell loose onto her shoulders in warm clumps. It had darkened a little, but was still that same ethereal shade of blonde as it always was.

I stroked my fingers through it, admiring its length. She clenched around me, tightening her pussy all along the length of me. I groaned in appreciation. Did she remember all the things we used to do? Did she remember the way her right leg would shiver every time she came, or how we’d make bets about whether there was or wasn’t one more drop of cum she could coax out of me with her tongue, or how she once, just once, asked me to slap her and call her azungu…

The muscles in her thighs tensed up and she rose, lifting her sweet body off of me. In the split second where I felt I would die without her engulfing me, she fell back down again, taking the whole length, more easily this time. I felt her opening up inside. She lifted again and dropped her strong, skillful hips down onto my lap again. Each thrust was juicier than the last, and as she picked up speed, I found my grateful thighs rising up a little to meet her.

We found a peaceful, slow rhythm inside each other. Her body drove me so wild I was instantly on the edge, but she slowed down and ground careful hips into me, sensing when I was close and rising up on her haunches off of me again. My tongue played over her plump breasts, decorated down the middle with the strands of beads, and I could make out a mantle of freckles all around her neck where the sun had hit her, and below: white.

When I looked at her face again, she was crying. This sent me to the edge again.

“Are you staying?” she said, and all at once I saw her old girlish face again, one filled with uncertainty and vulnerability. I squeezed my arms around her as tight as I could and pulled her in.

“I’m never going away, ever again,” I said, and as I did her body shuddered a little. With the tip of my cock I felt her warm cunt spasm, and release more glorious juice that flooded down out of her and onto my stomach. She groaned and squirmed. My body remembered this all – the way she would tighten and heat up just before she came. Fuck she was beautiful.

She whimpered and choked on her words a little as she tried to tell me was she close, but there was no need. I could read her body like a book. Her little hands tightened around me and I held her waist firm. I gave her my cock again, pressing in as deep as it would go, reaching right into the deepest parts of her. With one strong jerk she cried out and I felt something hot and wet inside her quiver and then explode all around me. Her pussy clenched hard around me, but all the tension fell from her thighs and she collapsed down onto me.

The little moans she made were so sweet, and so fucking sexy, I was soon following after her, and all at once I let go and shot an immense load of hot, warm cum deep inside her, my hips curling and convulsing into her body, pumping her full of it.

I pulled her close to me. “Shhhh…” I whispered into her ear, as each shudder rocked her body and made her gasp out loud. The tears were flowing freely now, and with surprise I realized my own face was wet. I fell back onto the bed and she folded down onto me, her body now loosened and melted. I had forgotten just how good she felt. She was mine and I was hers. It had always been that way.

Clasped together, skin to skin, we lay for a while, our breathing returning to normal. I stayed inside her and went soft, but she held me close and grasped me with her legs when I tried to pull out.

“Don’t go away, ever again,” she smiled.

I laughed and kissed her damp brow, stroking away a lock of her beautiful hair.

I looked around the room. She had done so well for herself. Framed pictures of people I didn’t know, beautiful textiles and bright colors on the walls. It was a charming place; like nothing I’d seen before. She lay quietly on my lap, letting me look. I had questions. Lots of questions. But none of it seemed to matter much right now. I was inside her, and I loved her, and she loved me, and as long as that was true I was happy to let all that other stuff go for now.

A festive patchwork quilt covered the bed. In the traditional style, but the colors were all different. The mirror was trimmed with silk flowers, and she had two impala skin cushions in the corner, propped to make an impromptu bay window beside a beaded curtain made from porcupine quills. It was part college dorm room, part museum, part grandmother’s house, part playroom, part artist’s loft. It was unbelievable.

“You did all of this, Penny…” I said, stroking her hair. She curled her hips against mine and hugged me closer.

“Yes. With my bare hands,” she said, and we smiled together.