The first full week of the month got us notice of a full village meeting. A full village meeting meant everybody, not just those over nine years as usual, but everybody from babes in arms to the most doddering ancient still alive. (His name was Luke, he was eighty, deaf and smelly.) A full meeting was about as common as dung from a rocking horse, as my father delicately put it. It was to happen the following Friday, at two in the afternoon.
Dutifully people left their work, their school, their homes, and converged on the village hall. I met up with my father and brothers and was about to go and sit with them, but the chief elder beckoned me aside.
“Not you,” he said. “You will stay separate. Your time has come. We are going to tell them about your special abilities. You will not see your family again until tomorrow.”
My father looked at me with his mouth open, hardly believing what he had heard. I imagined that he must have known about my being called to the meetings over all these years, but he seemed to have no idea of the reasons. Neither, by the look on their faces, did my brothers.
But the chief elder’s word was law in the village, more or less. He certainly gave me no time to do more than say “’Bye. See you on Sunday,” in as light a tone as I could, although my guts were knotting up inside as I wondered what I was going to have to do.
“Er… yes… er… look after yourself… ” I could hear my father still speaking as I was led away toward the room of my stripping and examination… Instinctively my heart sank a bit. The man pushed me into the room.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he told me. “This should take no longer than half an hour.” He turned away, out of the room. The key turned in the lock. My mouth sagged open in surprise. I looked around at the room properly for the first time – it’s difficult to take in the details of somewhere when you’ve stripped yourself naked in front of a group of men, one of whom is prodding at the most private bits of you, and all are talking seriously to you. And afterwards all you want to do is get dressed and get out from in front of them as soon as you possibly can.
I wondered if I’d be able to hear what was going on in the hall next door, but the room was separated from it by the toilets and by two doors and a short corridor. I put my ear to the door, the panelling, to the other door (also locked) and could hear nothing except a distant murmur.
Half an hour came and went, so did the three-quarters and the hour. It wasn’t until ten past three that I heard the door unlock again. To my surprise all the council elders were there, not just the elder, and with them was the blacksmith, smiling, I noticed.
The elder motioned me into a chair, one of the circle of them around the table. The rest of them joined me. And the explanations began.
It took a long time. The old religion was about the Spirits of the land. Sometimes in the past, when men had taken more notice of its demands, it seemed that they needed a personification of the partnership that they said had to exist between the Spirits and mankind. A seventh son was seen by them as an example of earthly fertility, and it seemed that only a seventh son could produce what the old gods needed.
There was a pause. All this seemed common sense to me. I had been schooled for it, hadn’t I? But what was it that the Spirits wanted.
“A daughter and seven sons.” My eyes looked at the blacksmith without understanding. What had that to do with me?
“Aidan… ” the chief elder had taken over again. “We have been waiting for the time when your body would be ready to make the seed that is in all men, the seed which starts new life. For this reason alone we have seen you in front of us, hoping against hope that your body would be ready to provide what the Spirits need before your thirteenth birthday. For that, we are sure, is the age at which you become too earthly, too far from the spirit world, to be acceptable to the old gods. It is now less than a month before you are thirteen, and we have had to leave this until the last moment to make sure that your body is as ready as possible.”
I still really had not much idea of what I was to do, except that I knew it involved my scrotum and penis, on the grounds that it was that area that had been the centre of interest to them and I had been told that I must make no effort to make my own seed come out. But what… how…?
“Aidan. At the west of the village is the old Grove, as you know. I’m sure that, despite being told that it’s a secret place of evil, you’ve been there.”
Well, yes, I had. Despite my father forbidding me to go, I had tagged along with others and we’d gone nervously to the long, low, tunnel in the bushes which led into the unknown. The area was the thickest wooded part of the Island, despite being only a fairly short walk from the village edge. We had gone on, and further on down the long, dank tunnel of dark leaves and at the end there was this circular clearing, roofed by ancient trees, but with seven saplings in a group in the centre of it. Growing in the gloom, against all odds. And the silence. And the chill.
We had been struck silent ourselves by the oddness of it. And then slowly, insidiously, the chill and the unseasonal silence had got to us and we started wordlessly walking backwards to the entrance. At which we turned, almost jostling to be first, and walked fast, then ran, then panicked our way out into the warm sun-dappled woodland path. Where we stopped and looked at each other with embarrassment and guilt in our eyes.
I suppose every generation of the village’s children must have done the same. Just the once. Never a second time.
I nodded at him, and a glint of amusement crossed his face.
“Did you ever go a second time? No, I thought not. What you don’t know is that the Spirits live there, somewhere. Being earth spirits they hate anything man-made, so everything that is done there has to be done with natural tools. And it has to be done without clothing. Unbeknown to you, one man has the right to go there when he needs. And he has to tend the grass and make sure the saplings are healthy and that nothing is amiss. He makes no secret of it, but neither does he boast of it. He works there, naked, and is accepted.”
I looked round. Which of them had to do this strange job. The blacksmith was looking straight at me. Realisation dawned.
“You!”
“Any village’s blacksmith has special powers, if he’s any good at all,” said the elder. “Ours is very good. And because he works with iron, which comes from the rocks, he is trusted by the old spirits and is our… emissary to them. He will help you in what you are to do.
“The legends tell us that a young boy whose body is that of a man can produce seed which, once it has fallen on the ground, will grow into what men call mandrakes. These grow quickly, quicker than human children, and from plants which have leaves shaped as hands, they become human bodies which have roots as trees. And then at last they become loose from the ground and are as naked infants. And one of these will be a girl, and the Spirits will take her for their own.”
I didn’t know whether he was telling me a legend or whether they really believed this. My own mind, educated by now to question things, said it was myth. Yet the solemnity he told the story was – well, convincing.
The blacksmith’s voice rumbled into life. We boys were all scared of him, such a vast, rough, tough character did he appear. “Aidan. Your part in this is to provide the seed from which these mandrakes will spring. Legend says it must be your first seed, that you must be a virgin at the time of its giving. That is why we’ve been so anxious that you haven’t given into the temptation to make it before now.”
I nodded, my mind spinning. I would try and make sense of this later.
“But Aidan, although it is your seed which the ground needs, it is the future of the village which the mandrakes will secure. So it is not only your seed that your body must make, but the most virile seed that the village can make. For this reason you are to accept the seed of seven other youths, friends of yours, and their seed will enter you and be part of yours and so all the strongest, youngest in the village will make these things.”
I listened without understanding. Well, I understood the reasons, but not the mechanics of it all. How was I to make seed? How was I to accept other boys’ seed?
But the elder was finishing. “We are all going now, Aidan. You will be with smith. Do as he says. Remember what he is requiring you to do is for the future of the entire village – your future, yours and your family’s and every other soul here. It will be strange to you, and perhaps disconcerting, but there is no other way. So you are under his command. Is that clear?”
Autopilot, the safest way. “Yes, sir.”
“Good boy.” And they filed out of the room.
Silence fell. We were looking at each other.
“Take your clothes off, boy. All of them.”
What?! Him too? But wait… he was starting to undress as well. Puzzled, I started following suit.
“Aidan, you now know that the Spirits, that their Grove, cannot abide man made things. I have to go there naked. I am not ashamed. My work has given me a strong body, and youth and family and upbringing and exercise have given you a strong, virile body, too. Yes, even at only twelve. You should be proud of it, unashamed, unworried if people see all of you as nature intended. Now you are to find out more about your body and how it works. And you are going to use it for a purpose that will, as you have been told, save our village. First you must get used to being together with someone else, and although at my age I’m hardly likely to be pretty in your eyes I am at least able to lead.
“Now, the first of those whose seed you are to accept has been told to be here at four. Before that you must get used to being close to someone else’s nakedness.”
We were both now without clothes. His body was wide, and tall, and muscular as I had expected it to be having used my imagination as he had started to strip. And it was hairy. Where mine was smooth and naked, he had black hair everywhere. Mine was restricted to the few straggly dark brown hairs around my ‘tonker’, but at least they made me feel as if, one day, I’d be a man like this one. My emotions were suspended. I felt neither shame nor embarrassment, just that something was about to happen, something very male that I didn’t understand.
“Make it stiff, boy,” he said, watching me and using both his hands on his own scrotum and penis. I realised what he meant and, reddening, worked on myself as his own thick erection blossomed and stood upright from his pelt of fur. Mine reacted even quicker than his, and he smiled. “Ahh, the speed of the boy’s erection. I wish mine was still as ever-ready as that. Come close to me.”
Now many of you who read this are probably saying to themselves that there is absolutely no way on earth they would strip naked, at the age of nearly thirteen, in front of a grown man, particularly one they were in awe of, who they consequently hardly knew, and who they didn’t really like all that much anyway, and who had just given himself an erection, something which you had never seen before – and he really was a size. But consider: This was a small community, the 1960’s had hardly dawned, we were all brought up to obey authority unquestioningly (as did almost every child of the time), I had been told I was special and that what I was doing would bring about a reversal of my community’s fortunes.
It’s all a question of your mindset at the time.
I approached him, fascinated and horrified by his awesome figure and even more awesome erection. It wasn’t knobbly or peculiar or anything like that, it was just… big. The size wasn’t surprising, I suppose, for such a big man, but its smoothness was. It was that which provided such a contrast to the rest of him, and which half fascinated me, rather than repelled me.
“Good boy,” he said, almost gently. “Now, I want you to put your hand round it. Just hold it.”
I looked at him in astonishment. He was serious. His face looking down at me appeared kind; for him it was almost soft. Very tentatively I reached down and was about to do what he said when I checked. I looked up at him. His face was still gentle, and he just nodded to me. I could still hardly believe what I was doing as I stretched out and wrapped my hand around his large shaft.
“Put your other hand under my balls, Aidan. Feel them well. One day yours will be something like that.”
I looked up at him. “B..balls?” I asked.
“Underneath. The… scrotum?”
This was a word I knew. Still wondering, I did what I was told, feeling the vast (it seemed to me) egg shapes in their soft, hairy sac of skin. I found myself manipulating both parts of him… squeezing… fondling…
“All right, boy, that’ll do. Do you enjoy that?”
I didn’t know. It was different. It wasn’t gross, somehow. Did I enjoy it? Was I meant to enjoy it? I looked up at him uncertainly. For some reason I wanted to put my hands back on him, to explore more…
I nodded.
“Good. Because the next time you do it, it will be on somebody younger, somebody better looking than me. But before that, there is something you need to know.” He stopped, and looked at me, still with that gentle look on his face that I had never noticed before today during my brief visits to his forge.
“Aidan, you have heard a lot about making your seed. And you have been told that you mustn’t ever do so. That is so, until after you have done your duty tonight. But if you have never done so, you won’t know yet how to do it, will you?”
I shook my head, sensing that I was getting near to the real point of all this.
“You know that it involves the penis and balls. That is why we are both now naked and you have just seen and felt what a grown man is like there.”
A pause again. I nodded dutifully, anticipating new knowledge.
“Then listen and watch, Aidan. Kneel on the floor in front of me and watch what I do, and then you will be able to take over and make sure that you will be able to do it for yourself later.”
He sat on a chair, legs spread, and indicated to me that I should kneel between them, facing him. Once more he grasped his penis, put a hand under his scrotum, and slowly started to massage himself. I watched entranced. He looked down at me.
“Do you think you will be able to do that, Aidan?”
“Yes… sir.”
“Good boy. Put your hand under my balls again to replace mine, and just fondle them like you did just now.” I did as he asked. This time the soft, egg shapes had a life of their own as they tried to bob up and down in time with his hand. Some more moments of this, and he spoke again.
“Now put your hand on my penis and do what I was doing. Still use the other hand down there, though.” He let me take over, and I was aware of a shift of power of some sort, an alteration to our relationship. I was in charge now, in a small way, and he was just lying there. I worked his skin up and down, up and down… and before long I noticed a wetness at the end of his penis, a wetness I tried my utmost not to touch. The furtive, guilty explorations I had made of my own body recently came to mind, and I remembered the wetness I had made when I had, I thought, gone nearly too far. Was that it? As my hand went on and more and more appeared it was impossible for me to avoid it, and with a shudder I felt my hand become slick. The sounds of my action were punctuated by little sounds of wetness as the stickiness percolated between my hand and his skin.
“Good boy, Aidan. That is a fluid the body makes naturally. It makes it slippery like oil, and makes it feel better. It isn’t dirty. Don’t worry about it.” Did I have a choice?
At last he said, in a voice suddenly thick and quiet: “Good boy, Aidan, good boy. My body’s nearly ready to make my seed. When it does it will leave my penis in a spurt. It’s harmless, and it’s clean, and it’s the stuff that love can make and that can make a life. Don’t be scared of it. Keep going… keep going like that… that’s good… I think… I think… yes… here… here… ah… yes… oh…” And suddenly his naked belly bore lines of a shiny white liquid which had erupted from the penis in my hand which had suddenly, I thought, got even harder and bigger as he had reached this moment. I kept going on him, for the simple reason that he never told me to stop, and the last two or three of his spasms just appeared at the top of his organ and slipped wetly, slowly down the side of it onto my hand.
I think if he hadn’t told me that this was, effectively, the stuff of life, I’d have been disgusted by it. But all that was in my mind was that this was his seed, that it started life, that it was a part of him, that I had my own inside me, that I would be doing this for myself after I had done whatever it was I had to do. Then I remembered what the elder had said, that they Spirits needed my seed, my seed, to make the mandrakes. Inside me, what I thought of as my own spirit was ambivalent: I was more worried than I cared to admit about having to do, for the first time, what he had just done, yet thrilled that it was to be me who would be responsible for creating whatever it was that would be the salvation of my community, my home, my family.
And what would happen if I couldn’t? If it didn’t work for me? If my body had gone wrong somehow?
I blinked and looked up at him as he gripped my hand, breathing heavily, and removed it from him.
“Wait a minute,” he said, still in that thick voice.
We stayed there, in that sort of frozen tableau, for about thirty seconds, while his breathing settled down again. At last he looked back down at me and gave the most open, friendly, relaxed smile that anybody, I was sure, had ever seen from him. I knew that I had done it right, and that he was pleased, and it was that smile that made me switch from disliking him to almost liking him. It must have been the contrast with his normal mood.
“Phew,” he said, and wiped his brow, and renewed his smile for me. “You wait until it’s your turn. What you have just seen, Aidan, is an orgasm. It’s the moment at which your body pushes out its seed, and it’s a very, very intense feeling. There is genuinely nothing else you can do that’s like it. And you still have your first one ahead of you. Lucky boy.” He paused again, and seemed to be reminiscing to himself, but soon shook his head impatiently.
“Now then. You have been told that you must take in the seed of others. Now you know how it happens, it will be obvious what you need to do. When one of the boys comes in, he will be told to strip. He already knows what he has to do, and he will come to you when he has stripped and he will sit on the chair in front of you. You must do for him what you have just done for me. Understood?”
I was suddenly nervous again. I mean, he was an adult, and he had told me what to do. But these were to be people near my own age, people I knew, boys who had got to know me, particularly over the last weeks. I had visions of disgust, of ridicule, of tales all over the village about how I had tried to… to… make them make their seed.
“Aidan? Come on, boy. You’ve done the difficult bit. These are friends of yours. They’re expecting you to do it. They have their part to play in this, just as you do. Yours is the major part, but theirs is just as important.”
I nodded. I had no choice, really. I mean, if it was now, with all that there has been in between about what goes on in society and what doesn’t, no way would I have been so compliant. Would I?
“And when he has told you that he is about to make his seed appear, you must put your mouth to him and take it in. It will taste strange to you, a little like vinegar, but salty too. You must take it in and swallow it all. Do you understand?”
“I… er… do I… do I put my mouth to his… er… ” I trailed off.
“Penis? Yes, you do. He will expect you to. That way you will waste none of his seed.”
“But what happens if he… er… goes to the toilet in my mouth?”
“He won’t be able to. It is physically impossible to make water and seed at the same time. In fact, as you start to massage him, he will make a fluid just like I did. As well as lubricating him that gets rid of any tiny drops of wee in his penis from when he last went. By the time your mouth gets to him anything like that will have well and truly gone, so don’t be scared of it.”
By this time it felt as if my throat had almost closed up, so nervous was I at what I had to do. My own penis, erect in sympathy all the time I was massaging him, had now reduced to the size it did after I had been sea-swimming in April. I looked away.
“Do you want to put your mouth round mine, so you can get used to what it feels like?”
The question jolted me even further toward panic. Did I? Should I? I could see that it would be like trying to learn something useful, but he was so big, so hairy, and at the moment still so wet with his seed that I hated the thought of taking his monstrous penis into my mouth was almost sickening. I wavered, my indecisive, twelve year old mind unable to resolve the two sides into action.
“Come on, Aidan,” came his soft voice. “It’s not dirty – you know that. And it’ll be easier to do it for the others if you do it to mine.”
The trouble was, it made sense. I knew that. I looked across at him again. He was by now completely flaccid, something that intrigued me. I had been wondering if, once you had made seed, you stayed big. But it seemed not. Something dragged me near him again, and I knelt down at his side again. His face was encouraging. He nodded.
My hand grasped him again, and lifted up. As my head approached him I thought I felt a stirring in my hands. My mouth went down… I was sure the penis was lifting up… my mouth opened… and I carefully encircled the immense organ with it.
“Push it further in, Aidan,” came the voice. “Make sure it all goes right to your throat.”
I slid my head further down until the end suddenly touched the soft part of my mouth at the back of the palette. Instinctively this made my throat close and I hurriedly pulled away as my instincts tried to expel him from my mouth in the only way it knew how. I looked up at him, guilty.
“It’s all right. Just do it again, and this time remember what will happen. Try to go slowly, so that your mouth has time to get used to it.”
By now he was entirely stiff again, and I really had to stretch my mouth to get round him. Slowly I pushed down, and just managed to stop short of where it had been before. Then slowly: push… pause, push… pause, and soon it was at the back of my throat and could go no further.
“Swallow, Aidan.” The voice came to me, yet all I could see were his black, curly, bristly hairs just in front of me. Obediently I swallowed, and once again the instinct attacked me and I had to withdraw from him hurriedly.
I looked at him again. His face looked… well, disappointed, I suppose. But he still had that soft, half smile that seemed so unfamiliar on him of all people.
“Good boy,” he said. “you even made it feel really nice. I suppose one day a girl will do that for you, and then you’ll find out just how good it feels.”
The thought had never struck me before. I supposed I would.
He told me to sit down, and we each looked at magazines for a while. It seemed almost as odd as everything else that had gone on that afternoon to be sitting, naked, with the village blacksmith, also naked, in a room in the village hall… reading magazines. Every now and again I caught a movement from where he was, and could almost feel his eyes on me. As for myself, I was shivering, again, not with the cold, because I wasn’t, but with the growing anticipation of what I was going to have to do. Time dragged. But at last there was a knock at the door, and I jumped, and felt my skin go cold and clammy.
“Answer it , Aidan.”
“But… but I’m bare, sir.”
“That doesn’t matter. So am I. So will he be very soon. Answer it.”
I looked at him, still more than uncertain., but padded over to the door anyway. It seemed only right to check that it was only one person, and that he would be expecting…it.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Mark,” came a rather strange voice, it sounded almost scared, as if it was coming from a throat as constricted as mine had become as soon as I heard the knock. Mark was one of the older friends of my brothers, one who had become more friendly than usual with me of late. Usually he spoke with a loud, confident ring in his voice, not this almost strangulated whisper. I wondered if he was as worried about all this as I was.
I looked towards the blacksmith. He nodded. Slowly I opened the door, hiding my body behind it, and looked round. It was Mark: only Mark, to my relief. He looked at me, a strained look, and took in the fact that I was partly hiding from him.
“Oh… er… I see. Er… shall I come in?”
“Yes,” I said, simply, and opened the door wider, stubbing my toe as I did so. “Ow…!”
“Are you Ok?” He sounded concerned as he walked in, and then took in my nudity. “Oh.”
I looked uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable. But at least he wasn’t laughing at me. He looked, if anything, just as ill at ease as I was.
“Come in, Mark,” said the blacksmith. Mark froze, apart from his eyes, which swivelled round to see the man, then widened almost comically as he took in the giant, nude frame, sitting calmly at a table, magazine still in hand.
“Whaa… ” And the mouth gaped.
“It’s all right, boy. I have to be here to make sure it all goes right. And I need not to wear anything because otherwise it wouldn’t be fair on you, now would it?”
“But… er… I mean…”
“Come on, Mark. You’ve had it explained to you why your help is needed. You also know what will happen to the village if just one of you doesn’t go through with it. All the others have their minds made up, you know. Don’t let everyone down, yourself, your family, every person in the village.”
He looked uncomfortable. Poor boy. I had had years of being prepared for this – or something like it. He’d only had a few weeks.
“Ok.”
“Good boy. Now, take all your clothes off, then come and sit on this chair.”
He seemed to sag as he realised that the inevitable was now with him. I watched as the muscular, sixteen year old shoulders appeared from their covering. He threw the shirt onto a nearby chair. Sitting, the shoes came off, and the socks. I hoped he’d had a bath recently.
He shot me a look which I couldn’t fathom, then fumbled with his belt. Then his clasp. Then his buttons. And the trousers slid down, exposing slim, hairless thighs, and a pair of white underpants such as we all wore back then. But his had a difference. Mine covered me, and lay flat most of the time. His came from under his legs and bulged quite distinctly outwards before flattening in toward his belly and the waistline.
I looked further down and saw that his muscular calves were covered in a sprinkling of dark hairs.
He looked strong. But then he was. I’d seen him at work. He stepped out of the trousers, and looked nervously at the blacksmith and me. At me! Him, nervous of me! Why?
And then he hooked his hands inside his pants and pushed: pushed over that bulge, and bent, pushing further down, until he was doubled up, pants round his ankles. And once more he looked up to where we were both watching. And this time he looked even more unhappy.
“Good lad, Mark,” said the blacksmith. Lad now, was he? Not a boy any more. Well, looking at him I supposed that was only right. He swiftly straightened, walked over to the chair and sat. We both looked at the blacksmith.
“You need to tell him, Mark, what he has to do. He knows, as do I, but he needs to hear it from you.”
I looked at him, then at Mark, who gulped. “Er… you have to… you have to… wank me, and take my spunk in your mouth.” I looked at Mark, then at the blacksmith, questions forming in my mind.
“He’s used the slang terms, Aidan. You have to make his seed appear, and swallow it.”
“Yes… er… yes. That’s it,” said Mark nervously.
I nodded. Nothing happened. I sat looking at Mark, who avoided my eyes and looked at the floor.
“Go on, Aidan.”
The words I’d been dreading. Somehow I made myself walk over to Mark’s chair and kneel in front of it. He gave me a swift glance, then looked away again. I looked at his penis. It was lots longer than mine, fatter too, but smooth and, I supposed, quite pleasant if you liked that sort of thing. It was surrounded by a bushy growth of black hair, like the smith’s, but neater, younger… why did I think that? And underneath the scrotum was large, and deep hanging, and the two halves swung with a life of their own.
I couldn’t just grab at him and start. I had to say something to him.
“Mark?” At last he looked me in the eyes, unhappily. “Mark… I’m sorry… I’ve got to do this. Really.”
He nodded, and said wretchedly: “I know.”
And with that I started massaging his penis as the blacksmith had shown me. The other hand went to his scrotum, again as I’d been shown. As Mark felt me touch him there he looked at me, surprised. But in my other hand I felt the penis stir, and knew that despite all his mental resistance to the process, nature had started to take over, just as it had with the blacksmith. My own penis started to stir too, and with youth on our side we were soon each fully erect. Mark had closed his eyes.
I massaged him for a long time, being gentle, and looking always for some sign that he was going to make his seed for me to swallow. It took a long time, but the first thing I saw was the clear fluid that the smith had told me about. I knew by now it wasn’t that that I was after, but it was apparently a good sign.
Still gently but persistently I continued. Mark’s eyes remained firmly closed. More fluid appeared and coated my fingers and his foreskin. And then, almost as I was wondering whether he was ever going to make it for me, there was a quiet, high, almost child-like moan. The next thing the eyes had flickered open, and the mouth was saying: “Aidan… now… take it… quick… I… oh…” The last word was as my mouth closed round his penis, and I took him as far towards the back of my throat as I dared.
“Keep massaging, Aidan, or he won’t be able to do it properly,” came a growl behind me. I’d forgotten about the blacksmith in my concentration on Mark. I used my hand on the part of Mark’s penis that was outside my mouth, and he suddenly gave a shout, and I could feel a hot stream hit the back of my throat. I nearly gagged on it, but forced myself to swallow. To keep the intruding member there. Five more times with diminishing force it came, and I swallowed desperately each time. At last the jerking of his body stilled, and I stopped, but kept my mouth on his penis which seemed now not to be so hard. I made sure a licked it round to get the last drops of his fluid, and that was almost the first time I’d really tasted it.
It was salty, and a bit vinegary, and it had a little of the characteristic of sloes in that it dried my mouth out a bit. But it wasn’t as disgusting as I’d feared. And now Mark was wriggling. I hurriedly removed my tongue from where it was still trying to make sure he was clean, took my head away and looked up at him.
He had the same peaceful expression as the smith had had earlier. The eyes were half closed, the good looking face was at peace, he was breathing deeply, and was still now that I had stopped working on him. For some reason the little nipples on his chest were a brighter red than before, and were sticking out, too.
I rocked back onto my feet. He looked up, and smiled at me, trapping his bottom lip in his teeth, and heaved a sigh.
“That’s never been done to me before,” he said in a quiet voice.
“Good lad,” said the blacksmith, standing up. His massive erection looked odd now that it was all over and he was just being… what? Himself? Hardly! I looked down at myself. Yes, I had one too.
“That was well done, Aidan. Now you know what to expect. Thank you, Mark. Please will you go through the door there and into the room opposite. Take your clothes, get dressed, and wait.”
He looked surprised. “I thought I’d be going back to work, sir.”
“And talk about what’s happened to everybody? No. You’ll wait there and others will join you, and you’ll all wait until we’re all finished. But no more wanking in there between you, understood?”
Mark looked shocked. “I’ve never done that with anyone else in my life,” he said hotly.
“Well, you have now. Go.” Mark looked at the smith, went red as he suddenly realised what the man meant and, without another word, with acute embarrassment in his eyes again, he gathered his clothes and went.
“Go to the door, boy, and get the next one in.”
How did he know, I wondered. “May I have a drink, sir?” I asked. The after taste of Mark’s seed was still lingering on my palette, and drying out my mouth.
“No. Not until you’ve finished. Get the next one.”
I went to the door, opened it a crack and stuck my head out. Another of the village’s young bloods was waiting there, again looking worried. His eyes lit on me, but his smile of recognition was replaced by a look of embarrassment as he realised why only my face appeared round the door.
“Aidan… you’re not… er… naked, are you?”
I saw no reason to lie. He was going to see me soon enough. I nodded.
“Oh. Er… do I take my clothes off here or in there?”
That was new. He had some thought for me, perhaps.
“Inside, Carl, please.”
“Ok.”
He too was taken unawares by the presence of the naked smith. But started taking off his own clothes without any fuss. Once they were all off and we stood looking at each other, I noticed that his penis, more or less a carbon copy of Mark’s, was already starting to react. As, inevitably, was mine. He dropped his clothes on a chair.
“What happens now?”
“You know what you must do, Carl. You need to ask him to do it for you. Sit in that chair and he will come to you.”
He said nothing, but with a look of resignation went and sat on the chair. He looked at me. “Are you happy with this, Aidan?” he asked suddenly.
Before the blacksmith could say anything to reprove him, I answered. It was the answer I’d practised so many times to justify it all to myself.
“It’s the only way of saving the village. We’ve got to do it.”
“If you’re sure, then I suppose so.” A pause. Did he gulp? “Aidan, please will you make my seed flow and take it into yourself for the gods?”
It was the quiet way he said it that made me look up at him and smile. It was the oddest possible start to a friendship, something unusual between a twelve and a seventeen year old, but it’s lasted to this day when, of course, the five year gap is meaningless. And have I been glad of his friendship over those years? Particularly the early years. But that’s part of this story. All I knew of him then was that his parents had been killed in a fire which swept through their home two years previously, and that he had only survived because he was small enough to escape through a window. Since then he had been taken in by an elderly couple, had left school and now worked on the land along with the other adults.
Encouraged by his quiet acceptance, and the still-blooming stiffness of his penis, I cradled his testicles in my hand and gently squeezed and fondled them, and then looked up. He was watching, a slightly surprised smile on his face that I hadn’t just started pumping at him. I took it to mean approval.
What was it that made me think about my body when I was in bed? What was it made me stiff? Ah yes… And I did the same to him, tracing a finger up his thigh towards the brown hair crowned scrotum. And to my surprise an appreciative “Mmmmm” came from his closed mouth.
I really hadn’t intended to offer pleasure to any of them. Indeed, I didn’t know how to. But that spurred me on, with him, to try and make it as pleasant as possible – I don’t know why. Something just clicked between us. And I wanted to take his mind off the blacksmith’s presence.
Of course, by the time I started work on his penis, which was after a good deal of the sort of tickling that I would give myself in bed, and which resulted in my body becoming wet and scaring me that I was going to make seed (that worry was the greatest erection deflator I ever came across), he was well on the way. After having worked quite hard on Mark, to have his successor gasp “Quick!” after such a short time was quite a relief. I covered his penis with my mouth and pushed, exercising him all the time as I now knew how, and was only just in time to catch the jets of his donation as they tickled at the far reaches of my throat. Hastily I swallowed – he seemed to be filling my mouth – and found I had to take down far more than Mark had made. And all the time, by now instinct, my left hand was fondling his sensitive scrotum which, as he passed the fluids from his body to mine, I felt tighten in towards his body.
Once again, I licked him clean, and put back the mushroom head of his penis into its protective sheath of foreskin. And once again, I looked up, and was surprised by the look of tenderness on his face. He seemed unable to get up. I made to do so, but he put a hand on my shoulder to stop me.
“Stay a minute. Got to recover.”
Obediently I knelt there until he stirred and swayed to his feet. I stepped back, but he stepped after me and swiftly put an arm round my shoulder.
“You must love… the village, Aidan. I respect you.” And he turned abruptly away and found his clothes. I watched him go, wishing that he could really be my friend. I don’t know why, but whereas working on Mark had been – well, something that I’d been told to do, with Carl it was different. I just… liked him. And there wasn’t this feeling at the back of my mind that both of us should be disgusted by the process.
“Nice lad, isn’t he?” rumbled the blacksmith after Carl had dressed and left to join Mark in the other room. I nodded, feeling warm inside still. Funny that, thinking back to it it’s only just occurred to me what I did feel at the time. “You’ll like the next one, too, I should think. Go and get him, will you?”
I padded off to the door again.
Of all the youth of our village, there was one boy I’d never liked. He was part bully, part… well, the sort of person you knew instinctively you couldn’t trust, who made you feel sort of creepy inside.
It was him. The first thing I noticed was that instead of being embarrassed by my opening the door to him with everything I owned in full view, he looked me up and down for what seemed like ages, and then gave me what I could only describe as a leer. It made what was left of my erection after Carl shrivel away completely. I was glad he was going to have to have one, and not me. This was not going to be enjoyable. But the odd thing was that he wasn’t surprised to see the blacksmith naked, and wasn’t at all phased at seeing his massive body.
As he took off his clothes he kept glancing over to the smith and giving a sort of smile, and as he finally stripped off his underwear he was obviously already turned on. He was equipped on the same lines as the smith, except were the man was immense and smooth, the lad was immense and obscenely knobbly. His pubic hair was not the thin patch of fairly recent puberty, but a thick dark forest which started almost at his navel – difficult to tell, because he also had a lot of hair on his chest – and broadened out almost hiding his genitals. Except that the penis was definitely unhidden in its semi-erect state. I shivered with distaste.
He discarded a vast pair of questionable underpants and looked at me, then at the smith. “Is he going to be able to do it? He’s not very big, is he?”
If my eyes had been daggers, he would have been blinded.
“He’s all right, Steve. He’s just not as old as you, that’s all.”
“I can tell. It’s tiny!”
I stepped back away from him and looked at the blacksmith. To give him credit he appeared ashamed.
“Steve, that’ll do. It’s been decided. He’s perfectly capable and he’s perfectly old enough, and for thirteen he’s just the right size. Most people are. You may have gone through childhood with six inches tucked up under yourself, but you’re one of the few. Now no more chat, just sit on the chair and confirm to him what you want him to do.
He sat. I just stood and looked at him.
“Come here, boy. You can’t do it from that distance.”
I was still smarting, and my anger gave me a voice for a change. “The other two were nice about it. You’re being rude.”
“Well, the whole thing’s hardly tea party stuff, is it? Now come on. I want to get out of here.”
But I just stood and looked at his face. After a few moments of inactivity he spoke again. “All right, I’m sorry. Come here, wank me and swallow my spunk.”
I reluctantly crossed to him and knelt between his legs. I really didn’t want to touch him at all, and didn’t see why I should try and make it nicer for him. So I just grabbed his obscene looking penis – quite hard, and was glad when he jumped and said ‘Ow!’ – and started pumping.
“Scrotum, Aidan,” came the blacksmith’s voice, “or we’ll be here all day.”
I began to think that we were. I went on, and on, and on… and still nothing happened, despite my reluctant kneading of his testicles. But at long last his hoarse, unpleasant voice said something like: “all right. Here I go… take me down, little sucker… ” and the worst part of it came when I put my mouth – or rather stretched my mouth – round his penis as it swelled even more, so I could caught his offering in my mouth.
At first I thought I’d missed. With the other two there had been a definite jet. With him, well, just the inside of my lips grew warm. I swallowed – or rather made myself swallow – anyway. Not that it would have made much difference to what the blacksmith and I were trying to achieve. The effect on him seemed to be the same as the other two, though. It was a few minutes until he had recovered.
“Whew!” he said. “He’s not as good as you, but he’s quite good. You’d better teach him the rest of it.”
“Shut up, boy. Get dressed and get out into the other room.”
It wasn’t so much what was said, but the embarrassment in the man’s voice that struck me. Then the full weight of the words clonked into my brain.
He didn’t, did he? And why with someone so gross? And so incompetent when it came to quantity? And why do it when you didn’t have to, anyway? I watched the tubby bum of the departing Steve with interest and relief, wondering what the attraction was.
When next I hid my body behind the door and stuck my head round it to see who was waiting, I got a surprise. Ben was two years older than me, and was one of the few boys who would as a matter of course choose to come and play and talk to we younger ones when school was at break. I liked him. He was good fun, and cared about any problems we had, and tried to help. It was good to have him around, we all agreed. And he was big for his age, and that helped too.
But to find him there, looking as though he was about to be executed, was a shock. He wasn’t surprised to see me, only to see that I was naked when he’d entered the room. That actually made him come to a standstill, and just look at me – not at my nakedness, but unhappily, at my face.
“Oh, Aidan… poor Aidan,” he almost whispered. The blacksmith didn’t hear him, and I didn’t understand. Ben lifted his arm as if to touch mine, then dropped it and shrugged. “What do I do?” he asked me.
Now, of all the people who had seen me naked, none had disturbed me as much as him. The council were all adults; they could look at me and I had got used to it. The blacksmith was an adult, and was naked as soon as I was anyway, so I could accept that too with a bit of an effort. The first two young bucks were on the same footing as me – embarrassed, naked, forced to be intimate – and the third was such a waste of time that he no longer figured in my scheme of things. But Ben… Ben was a friend who counted as being my own age. The embarrassment was immense, and I thought to cover my genitals up before I realised how futile that would be now.
“Er… you have to strip, then sit on that chair over there. Sorry, Ben.”
“It’s all right. So long as it’s not too bad for you. And at least we’re… oh.” He had at last noticed the blacksmith, sitting there, also naked, trying to hear what was going on.
Poor Ben. That really floored him.
“It’s all right, boy. I have to make sure it all happens. Just ignore me – I’ve seen it three times so far, so nothing is new to me.”
“I… er… I… oh…” And Ben just froze there, seemingly unable to move.
“It’s all right, Ben, really.” I was trying to console him, to make him understand it had to be done, that it was for the good, but all that my brain could offer was that it was ‘all right’. He looked at me strangely.
“Are you together in this?” There was quite a sharp edge to his voice.
“No,” said the blacksmith. “All I’m here for is to make sure it happens right. He’s not ‘with me’ in the sense that you probably mean.” Ben had shot his question at me, but I was glad the man answered. Had I heard the exchange before Steve and the smith had exchanged comments I’d not have realised what was meant, but following the obvious disclosure that those two were together in some way, I understood what Ben’s concerns were.
Ben seemed to sag. He looked at the smith. “What do I do?” he asked. I noticed that the usual ‘sir’ we were taught to use to the village’s Blacksmith had disappeared from his mind, something that had happened to me too, although I hadn’t realised it until then.
“Strip off, boy. Sit on that chair, and ask Aidan to do what you know he has to.”
Reluctantly Ben revealed a smooth, nearly hairless body, something like mine, but for him the extra years between us had provided another inch or so to his penis, which for him lay quite neatly between the two plum-shaped halves of his scrotum. Over the top was a quite definite, sharply demarcated, patch of dark hair. The effect was neat, tidy, and somehow… appealing. I wondered at my mind for thinking it, but he seemed to ooze roundness and fullness, the sort of effect that before I’d only really attached to a woman’s breasts. He watched me watching him as he sat on the chair, and squirmed a little in his embarrassment.
“It’s all right, Ben, really.” I do my best to calm him.
“I know,” he said. “It’s just that… if we were alone… I could… I could… I mean…” He trailed off. I looked at him unhelpfully. “… I mean I could… do it easier… you know. It’d just be us, and we’re friends. And we might even enjoy it…” He looked at me carefully, guiltily, as he finished. I looked into his eyes. He was almost pleading, like a dog who wants so much to have the food in your hand, but knew that he wasn’t really allowed to.
I liked him. He was a friend. A stronger older boy who would help against the occasional bully like Steve. When I was younger I’d looked to him as a bit of a hero.
I did for him what I had for Carl, but still more carefully and gently. I knew somehow that he would be completely unused to this – I never even knew whether he had done it for himself, let alone have anyone else do it for him. As his arousal grew with my soft touches and strokes around the area I could see the surprise in his eyes as he experienced it. Our eyes met occasionally, and he would just smile gently at me, and once his hands left the side of the chair and hovered towards me. But he dropped them back again, only to bring them up, hesitantly, as the time progressed and that aura of sensation, of pleasure, came and held him. Unbidden, he laid his hand on my shoulders, and I looked up at him again, in surprise. His eyes were nearly closed, but he was aware of my glance, and smiled back with such a look of acceptance on his face that I suddenly felt – no, knew – that for him this was right. I had forgotten the smith, forgotten the reason for our being there, forgotten everything except that I was involved with him, helping him, liking him more and more as he just accepted my ministrations, liking the feel of his hands on my shoulders as if I were special to him, liking – yes, liking – the sight of his perfect body in front of me, mine to touch and manipulate and use as I wanted. At the time I remember being surprised at my feeling, and put it down to think about later when I was alone.
And as I worked on him, I felt a change in his thighs where my left hand rested, fondling him. A tensing, and the testicles in their protective sac seemed to be pulling away from my cradling moving hand, And there came this high voice…
“Oh Aidan… Aidan… please… I love you… don’t stop… ahhhhh…” and the breathing became panting, and the panting became quicker, and I knew I must lower my mouth to take in this friend of mine who seemed to be more than a friend, or wanted to be. Love? What? But why? Had they all felt that as they reached crisis point? None of the others had said so. But now my mind was intent on the shots of his life fluid that were hitting the back of my throat in quick, urgent bursts… so much more than ugly Steve had produced, despite Ben being only two years older than me, and one year younger than him. As I kept swallowing I remember being impressed.
And then it was all over. He jerked a few more times into my mouth, dry jerks so far as I could tell, but his breathing kept going fast, and shallow, and suddenly his whole weight slowly toppled over me, knocking me back so my mouth was dislodged from his erection, and I ended up doubled on the floor, uncomfortably compressed by his body on top of me. His weight rolled him off me and onto the floor, which his head hit with a thump. Thank goodness for wooden floorboards! The blacksmith was over in a moment, and at first I wondered what he was going to do as his massive erection was bobbing stiffly before him. But I needn’t have worried.
“He’s fainted, that’s all,” he said. “He’ll be back in a minute. I hope his head didn’t hit the floor too hard.”
I explained that it hadn’t. But despite my discomfort at suddenly having the boy’s weight on me, I wanted to be near him, to look after him as he recovered. “I’ll hold… on to him,” I said, quite positively for me. The man looked at me.
“Fond of him, are you?”
“Yes. S’pose so. He’s a friend.”
“Good friend, by the sound of it.” I nodded, not knowing how his mind was working.
It took only a minute or two for him to stir, and mutter, and then his eyes opened. Wide. Looked straight at my face. And then softened, and his recovering brain made his breath sigh, and a smile appear on his lips.
“Aidan,” he whispered, “Oh, Aidan…” It was so quiet that the blacksmith couldn’t hear. I just looked at him, puzzled. I know they had all enjoyed what I had made them do, even the pig-like Steve. But it sounded as if, for Ben, there had been somehow more. When he’d been unconscious he’d seemed so unusually frail looking… or was it just that his frailty had communicated itself to my mind without my needing to look? Even now he’d come round he seemed different from his usual, tower of strength sort of character. Not weak, just… vulnerable. Vulnerable as some of we younger ones were when faced by bullies; the bullies that he’d helped us against.
So I looked back at him, anxiously, and smiled when he did, more to encourage him back to his usual protective self than to sympathise with him. At last he sat up and carefully hoisted himself to his feet. He still appeared less than his usual self, though. But as he stood, swaying slightly, looking at me, always at me, he smiled again, and the spark reappeared in his eyes. He stretched out an arm, I thought to shake my hand. But it went round my to my bare back and just gently stroked my shoulder blade as his smiling, recovering eyes looked straight into my astonished ones.
Then he turned and left the room without a word.
I was suddenly aware that I was trembling. My throat was dry and slightly vinegary, but that wasn’t what was affecting me. I hadn’t wanted Ben to leave the room. I wanted him to be there and make sure nothing odd… well, odder… happened to me. And I wished he’d been the last, so I could go with him… somewhere.
My memory of the last two of my ‘donors’ has rather faded for me. Some of it had to do with Ben, but mostly it was down to what happened afterwards. I remember who they were, of course, Hamish and Peter, two friends of my elder brothers. And each of them was a man, and embarrassed, and worried about the blacksmith having to be there. But, with the knowledge of the consequences of their not going through with it, as I got to work on them they became engrossed in what I was doing and managed to provide what was needed, and in some quantity, too. Each of them looked at me rather strangely as he left, but I had no idea what was in their minds.
After Peter had left, the Blacksmith swiftly donned his clothes despite the erection which had once again blossomed as he watched me manipulate Peter. I was never aware of being watched – my attention had always been completely on my subject, whoever he was. But each time as my eyes travelled to him I could see that he had been aroused. Naturally I was aroused by what I was doing, except with Steve, and even then... Well, I hardly had any choice in what to look at, and I challenge anybody not to be affected by someone else’s erection being stroked all the way to orgasm. My clothes were near where he had been sitting to watch, and I crossed to them.
“No,” he said – well, barked, really – “you stay as you are.”
Why? I thought. There’s no reason now, is there? I had no more to ‘do’. No one else was coming in who could be embarrassed by my being clothed.
I stayed naked. He went into the adjoining room where the older boys were, and I heard nothing for a few minutes, then raised voices, and finally the blacksmith’s shout, which silenced them. A few rumbles more, and he returned to the main committee room and me.
“We have about twenty minutes,” he said. I looked at him, puzzled.
“Before we go to the Grove,” he said. I still looked puzzled.
“Where you spread your own seed for the gods,” he said. And my puzzlement left me. I had all but forgotten, with all the unaccustomed lessons I’d been learning about the male body, what the purpose of this all was. I was to go to the Grove, and use once again the motions that that were now second nature to me. But this time, for the first time, on myself. Me. A virgin. I was to experience this magic that I had been creating for seven boys all afternoon. The magic that had left one of them faint. Ben. Why such a feeling? And this was for me. For myself. Me. And I was to be a sort of father, at the age of twelve, nearly thirteen. A father of mandrakes, then of real children, but grown in the ground. I started to get excited. None of the likely details of all this could I see, at twelve.
“So make yourself comfortable. Read something. I’m going to,” he said, and sat down where he’d been all afternoon. I crossed to the table, picked up a magazine at random, and crossed to the chair where seven naked boys had sat during the previous few hours, as if it was perfectly normal to be reading, in the nude, with a clothed man I hardly knew in attendance.