“The forest where I was born is far, far to the South,” Glade told Ivory the following day after her apprentice had returned from foraging duties in the woods and removed her clothes on the shaman’s request. “It’s a very different land. The sun shines high in the sky. At midday it’s almost directly overhead. It is always warm. My people never wore clothes. I never knew what it meant to cover my flesh. The need to do so just did not exist.”

“It sounds like paradise,” said Ivory.

“Paradise? The mystical place where the spirits take you when you die?” Glade mocked, reminding Ivory of the gulf between their beliefs that could never be bridged. “The paradise you imagine and which I invoke to comfort the dying is no paradise at all compared to the land I come from. Your paradise is a cold dry treeless plain, whereas the forest where I lived was warm, moist and full of trees. In comparison to the Southern forests, your small woodlands are nothing more than pitiful. The trees were alive with beautiful birds whose gorgeous feathers were more splendid than those of any ptarmigan or crane. Most animals that live there never venture to the cold forests of the North.”

“What type of beast are they?”

“You have no words for them. There were monkeys and apes. There were frogs whose skin was more brightly coloured than flowers in the Spring. It was never cold. There were no seasons. We had no word for ‘year’ or ‘season’. The course of our lives was measured only by the Moon we could but dimly glimpse through the forest canopy. We knew no other world than the forest. If given the choice we would never exchange the warmth and bounty of our paradise for the cruel cold of the frozen North.”

The young Glade had no notion that one day in her future she would live in a land dominated by seasons and populated by large animals such as woolly rhinoceros, aurochs or mammoth. There were a few dangerous animals under the forest canopy, but the leopards and wolves generally left people alone. The chimpanzees and gorillas were wary of humans. Most of the animals that lived in the dense forest were small. The Forest People didn’t live in villages. They slept on the forest floor at night on whatever spot their roving had taken them during the day and they relied on campfires to ward off predators. Occasionally, a lion or hyena might stumble into the forest by accident, but there were not many rich pickings to whet their appetite.

The Forest People had ways of life and traditions appropriate to a life of foraging and hunting in the woods. The custom of permanent settlement was not one of them. If an area of the forest was full of fruits and small game, a settled community of more than thirty people would soon denude it of everything edible. It was best for the tribe to be constantly wandering.

The forest was home to many itinerant clans of Forest People and there was great celebration when their paths crossed. There was no suspicion or hostility in such encounters. Everyone knew the encounter would be brief and that the two clans would soon part, but these gatherings were a time when all inhibition were wholly abandoned.

Many of Glade’s happiest childhood memories were of such encounters. There was the exchange of gifts and food. There was feasting under the shadow of the trees. And when enough palm wine had been drunk, there was the inevitable fucking. It was on such an occasion that Glade first lost her virginity and did so more than once that night. Although she enjoyed sex with the men in her clan, what Glade most enjoyed was sex with new friends she might never see again. It was commented on, but never understood, that nine moons after such an encounter was a fruitful time for new brothers and sisters. This was always a cause for celebration. Nobody understood that sex and pregnancy were related. It was enjoyed too frequently and with too many different partners for anyone to establish the link between the two.

It was an innocent world. It was innocence so absolute that when it came crashing to an end the awakening into a harsher, less forgiving world was that much more terrible.

“Did you believe in the spirits when you were young?” Ivory wondered. She was sure that Glade couldn’t always have been an apostate.

“Yes,” the shaman admitted. “But these weren’t the spirits you revere. Our spirits were the spirits of the trees, which we believed were people like ourselves. We would never harm a tree. We gave praise to the trees whenever we made a kill. We believed that the deer or antelope whose life we’d taken was a gift from the trees that had given them life. The Forest People had many myths and legends which we embellished and enriched around the campfire at night. It wasn’t only sex we relished when we met other clans in the forest. It was also the exchange of new stories. This is where I learnt my skill at story-telling which I employ to such good advantage here. I discovered early on that the essence of a good story is not to simply give an account of what actually happened or what might have happened: it is in the telling of that story. People want to hear stories that have a satisfying and happy conclusion. The story must be resolved in a way that reinforces what people want to believe. This is another lesson you must never forget. When you tell a story, you must find out what your listener wants to hear and ensure that this is how the story ends. Any other ending and the listener is not satisfied and is less likely to trust you.”

“Did you also believe that man and woman were born from ice and snow, and that the world began in a snowstorm?”

“Of course not. No one in the forest knew what snow or ice is. We believed that the world was like a tree but one that had lived forever. There were new branches in the history of the world and the appearance of the first man and woman was one such new branch. Our tales were of a happy first birth. Not like your myths. There was no tradition of punishment and guilt. We believed that nature is always bountiful. Our prayers were to express gratitude for nature’s beneficence. They weren’t an appeal for forgiveness and mercy.”

The Forest People had no concept of sin. People could be greedy. They could be naughty. They could even be angry. But they could never be sinful. There was no malice or avarice because everyone shared everything: their food, their fire and their bodies. How could sin ever come to pass?

Glade discovered that not only was she a gifted story-teller, but that she was also a skilled and passionate lover. She was proud to be known as an easy lay and a good fuck. She did whatever she could to further the opinion that made her so popular with her clan. After she made love to one man or boy, she would roll over, semen still trickling down her thighs, and take another man’s penis in her mouth in anticipation of another bout of sex. She often made love to two, three or four men: sometimes serially and sometimes together. When men were in need of sex, it was Glade who was the most willing to provide it.

“I loved cock. I couldn’t get enough of it. There was not a day, except when I was ill, that I didn’t make love at least a couple of times.”

“How many children did you have?” wondered Ivory. She understood that sex was a gift from the spirits to compensate for the burden of motherhood.

“None,” said Glade.

“Have you ever had children?”

“Yes. Two. But this was many years later, after I’d left the forest. It is a strange thing, but nature decided that I should be less fecund than most women in the world. Nevertheless, there were girls in my clan who were always pregnant. They gave birth and then within the space of a moon or two they were pregnant again. Others like me never gave birth at all. We thought that children were another gift from the trees. In your tribe, with its taboos and your practice of marriage, it becomes fairly obvious to understand how a mother can come to give birth to children.”

——————————

Ivory’s life as the shaman’s apprentice was mostly no different from how it had been before. She had the same duties at the hearth to prepare food, tend the fire and stitch the thick furs that was as much a necessity as food in the cold weather. As Ivory pulled a thread through the hide with a bone needle, she more than ever envied Glade’s childhood where clothes were unknown. There was never a day in Ivory’s life even in the height of Summer when it was warm enough to greet the Sun’s rays without the protection of thick furs.

Ivory’s routine had changed in one significant way. Whenever she joined the village women to forage for fuel or food in the woods, she was now aware that they had a very clear idea of what the shaman and she did beneath the bedsheets. Ivory wasn’t as revered as the shaman, so she couldn’t expect her sexual activity to be regarded quite as indulgently. Ivory was viewed rather warily, especially by those women who feared that the affection she expressed with one woman could now be applied to them.

It was for this reason that Ivory was surprised when Acorn approached her furtively on the open grassland while they foraged for animal dung to feed the fire. She’d been a widow ever since her husband suffered an unfortunate fall during a mammoth hunt near an unexpectedly fragile cliff-edge. Ivory had never spoken to Acorn before. She wasn’t a relative and their families had once quarrelled over the inheritance rights of a tent and its possessions.

“How I envy you,” whispered Acorn as the two piled dried cakes of aurochs dung on their heads. “I’ve also shared the shaman’s bed and no man can compare to her for her love-making.”

Ivory blushed. “My duties as an apprentice are wholly honourable,” she protested.

Acorn smiled and brushed her fingers over the small patch of cheek Ivory exposed to the Sun. “I’m sure they are, sweetness, but the shaman is a woman whose bed I would gladly share again. I take it you’ve had the privilege of knowing her naked flesh?”

Ivory shook her head, but Acorn could see she was lying. “I’ve only been in her company for a few days. I don’t know what to think,” the young apprentice admitted.

“You’re young yet,” Acorn said sympathetically. “If you had more experience of sex with a man then you’d know how lucky you are. Not one night with my husband compares well with the all too few intimate nights I’ve shared with the shaman.”

Acorn was right. Ivory’s modest experience with boys wasn’t remotely comparable to the steadily more passionate lovemaking she enjoyed with Glade. There was no word in her vocabulary to describe a relationship between two women that was like that between a woman and a man, but even without such a word she was sure that a relationship where there was no hope of producing children was fundamentally wrong. In any case, Ivory still had amorous thoughts for men however wary they now were towards her. This wasn’t because they disapproved of her, but because Ivory was a gift to the shaman and they had no wish to quarrel with the chief.

——————————

Ivory expressed her reservations about the nature of their lovemaking while she and the shaman nestled naked together under the thick furs of her bed.

“It’s a cock I need,” Ivory said. “Your kisses, however tender, are no substitute for the excitement of a man’s thrusts.”

Glade smiled. “You only miss what you think you’re missing. But if you want your lovemaking to be more like that between a man and a woman, I can satisfy you in that way too.”

She slipped out from the under the furs into the chill night air that was only feebly warmed by the smouldering embers of the fire that Ivory would rekindle in morning. She retrieved a pouch that was hidden behind the stone slabs from which her cabinet was assembled. She pulled out a curious reddish figurine that Ivory could see in the glimmering light was almost the exact size and shape of a man’s erect penis. Glade brought it to the bed and with a shiver nestled back under the fur beside Ivory. She handed the strange object to her apprentice.

Carved objects had great value amongst the Mammoth Hunters. They were prized for their mystical values because it was known that the spirit world had guided their construction. It was a miracle that stone, wood or clay could be carved into a shape that was recognisably human or animal. The more realistic the image, the closer its provenance to the spirits. But never had Ivory seen and certainly not touched an object of this shape nor one made from such peculiar material.

“It’s made from resin,” said Glade. “It comes from a tree, but resin as malleable as this can’t be found in the Mammoth Steppe. This comes from far to the South East. What do you think of it?”

Ivory giggled despite herself. “I can think of only one thing,” she admitted as she admired the knobbed head and its exact proportion.

“It’s a toy,” explained Glade, “but not a toy such as a child might use. Tomorrow night, I shall show you how the toy is used. And perhaps then you won’t miss quite so much what a man has to offer.”

——————————

When Glade was young she no more knew of such toys than had Ivory. She had no notion at all of any kind of decorative craft. The artefacts used by the Forest People were completely utilitarian and mostly employed for hunting or foraging. The tribe had no stone tools. All tools were made from wood that had been sharpened against hardwood trees.

Similarly, Glade had no conception that there was a world that existed beyond the woodland. The clan never wandered to the forest edge. The only open spaces they encountered were alongside the rivers that flowed through the forest. These were dangerous places where large animals such as hippopotami and crocodiles lay in wait for the unwary. It was generally with relief that the clan would retreat to the comforting shelter of the trees and away from the harsh glare of the unshaded Sun.

In any case, this was a time when Glade had no need for a toy like the resin dildo. If she wanted a cock between her thighs there was always at least one such willing member on hand. Glade’s few explorations of other girls’ bodies didn’t tempt her at all away from the pleasure of heterosexual coupling. The love Glade enjoyed most was predominantly serial and generally with men or boys.

“I love you,” said Okapi, a boy named after the largest forest animal anyone had ever seen. “Of all the girls I’ve fucked, it’s you I love the most.”

“I love you too,” said Glade as she rolled off his chest onto the mossy forest floor. She regarded his penis as it shrivelled to the size of a fig. “You’re almost as good a lover as Baboon or Flying Squirrel.”

“I’ll be just as good when I’m as old as them,” Okapi promised. “I’ll fuck you like no one has ever fucked you.”

“I look forward to it,” said Glade.

She tenderly pinched Okapi’s foreskin between her fingers. The boy leaned forward and eased a finger into her anus. It entered easily. It was well lubricated by the seepage of semen and vaginal juices.

“Do you want me to fuck your arse?”

“No,” said Glade firmly as she gently removed his finger. “Flying Squirrel fucked me there two days ago and I’ve still not recovered. But if you like, I’ll finger fuck you.”

“I’d like that,” said Okapi who enjoyed such sport. He was a boy keener than most for sex with men.

As Glade’s fingers probed inside Okapi’s anus, she had no reason to doubt that this was a life that would last forever. The bounty of the forest was such that there was no reason to imagine that she wouldn’t always be able to make love in the dappled sunlight of the forest. It was impossible to imagine a time before her tribe had lived in the forest. It was equally as inconceivable that there would be a time after. Glade had no reason to expect that she would ever know a time when her tribe no longer had the forest to themselves.

——————————

Ivory was also innocent. Her arse had never been penetrated not had it ever occurred to her that a man or woman might choose to venture into such a tight and malodorous zone. Nonetheless, she was now less innocent of how Glade’s sex toy could be used.

As it always was with Glade, the introduction was gentle. She sat cross-legged and naked in front of Ivory. She parted first her thighs and then, with her fingers, the lips of her vagina. She slid the toy in steadily. She stimulated her clitoris with her free hand and bit by bit eased the dildo inside until it was as firmly within her as a man’s penis might be. She moved it up and down with slow rhythmic motions. She progressively increased the rhythm to one of frenzy as she thrust it in and out.

It was the first time Ivory had seen anyone masturbate, although she’d caught glimpses of boys stroking their penises when they thought no one could see. She was astonished by the degree of Glade’s arousal from her own ministrations. It was more than she’d ever managed with her own fingers. Perhaps it was possible, she thought, for a woman to satisfy herself without the need for company. Certainly, Glade’s exhaustion after her masturbatory session was as real as when they’d made love together, although she still had sufficient passion to make love to Ivory under the bear-skin blankets while the short night advanced towards the clear cold light of the morning.

Ivory was nowhere near as practised as Glade when it was her turn to use the toy. Her pleasure came more from her lover’s tender caresses. Glade helpfully prepared the toy for her. She moistened it with spittle so that it didn’t rub her vulva raw or tear the skin of her labia. Ivory could only achieve orgasm when the toy was used by the two women together. It was her first fulfilling penetration and it was shared by two engorged vaginas. Although Glade had taught Ivory something of sexual passion, the orgasm that shook her soul out from her body was one she’d never before imagined possible. She knew that sex could be pleasurable, but this was of another order altogether. When she collapsed onto Glade’s bosom, Ivory was spent in a way she wanted to experience again and again. The perspiration dripped from her pert breasts onto her lover’s rather larger bosom. Her body slid against Glade’s with the slipperiness of bare flesh on a damp river bank. While making love she cried out with unrestrained ecstasy and afterwards she wept uncontrollably.

Not all Glade’s instruction was of a sexual kind, although rather more of it was than Ivory originally expected. She was instructed in the shamanic arts that Glade had learnt in far distant lands and from other shamans. She was taught the use of herbs and mushrooms to make medicines and potions. She learnt about the ills that beset people, especially women, and how to give them comfort. Many were best treated by no more than rest and plenty of water.

Glade confided that there was almost no spiritual content in the babbling in foreign tongues that accompanied her ministrations.

“I doubt very much that your spirits have had much communion with the tribes I’ve known who make these medicines and speak these languages,” she confessed. “But people expect there to be chanting with their medicine and I am happy to give them that.”

She then recited what sounded like a prayer to the spirits. It was a guttural sound punctuated by clicks and whoops.

“That’s in the language of the Cave Painters in the High Mountains. It’s a poem I learnt on the glories of the Mother Goddess whom they worship. It asks the Mother Goddess to bless a woman with many children and that the children should all live long enough to be parents themselves.”

Glade then babbled in another tongue. This was a sibilant sound punctuated by heavy aspiration and a throaty glottal stop.

“That’s a dirty limerick about two men fucking a sow and one of them getting pig-shit on his feet. That chant is equally as effective.”

“That’s wrong!” exclaimed a scandalised Ivory. “When people are in distress, they should be treated with reverence.”

“Rubbish!” Glade retorted. “People just want to hear unusual sounds. The meaning is irrelevant. It only helps them insofar as it’s what they expect to hear. That’s why I always ask them to give me a lock of hair. I’ve got no use for it but it makes the ceremony seem more important.”

“Do you really cure people when they’re ill?”

“Usually yes. Not always. I know I’m doing no good when a person wants a prayer for fecundity or to ward off wolves. But it makes people feel better and it keeps me well fed.”

Glade told Ivory many stories. Some were fascinating insights into foreign lands populated by strange animals such as giraffes, ibexes, hairless elephants, hippopotami and zebra. Often these were stories of hunting and quests. There were stories about people who lived by the sea and hunted dolphins. There were stories about villages made from mud in grasslands where animals roamed under a hot sun in large numbers as in the Mammoth Steppes. Some stories featured strange beings that Glade had never seen. These included one of a giant man with a single eye in the centre of the forehead, of small people with tiny butterfly-like wings, huge flying reptiles and beings that were half human and half some other animal.

“Do such beings exist?” Ivory wondered.

“I don’t know. But there are so many strange things in the world that maybe they do.”

——————————

Ivory was told more about Glade’s childhood home. This was a subject Glade returned to often, sometimes with a glimmer of a tear in her dark brown eyes. It was as utterly alien to Ivory as the tales of flying horses or ostriches or gorillas. She had always been frightened of the forest. They were terrifying places of tall trees and howling wolves. She couldn’t believe that the dense rain forests of the South were at all as paradisial as Glade made them seem.

“Does it rain every day?” asked Ivory for whom rain was not always welcome.

“Every day,” Glade assented. “But it’s a warm rain and the forest soon dries. It’s nothing like the gales and blizzards of the North.”

“So, why if the tropical forest is so wonderful, don’t you live there still?” asked Ivory.

“Because the world I once knew no longer exists. The forest is still there. Perhaps it will last forever. How can people destroy a forest armed only with stones, bones and spears? It’s just not possible. Not even a single tree can be felled without the aid of fire. But the tribe that lived there, my tribe, no longer exists.”

“Why is that?”

“First there was the sickness. A plague spread through the clan and killed one person in five. It killed my father and one of my sisters. It was horrific and alarming. A person would sweat and shit and vomit and then die. There was no cure. We knew of disease, of course. Who doesn’t? Mostly they were contracted when our travels took us to swamp land where insects are as thick in the air as they are on the ground. But this illness was new and terrible and came not long after we met another clan that had already suffered from its ravages.”

Somehow, all the clans of the Forest People were plagued by illness and there was no explanation for it. Perhaps it reflected the tree spirits’ wrath at the lack of respect shown them and so it was decided that the trees should be honoured with redoubled reverence. It soon became obvious though that however many gifts were offered to the trees and however much the men masturbated on them, the plague did not abate. The Forest People were fearful that the sprits had deserted them. Encounters with other tribes were no longer occasions of delight as they were now associated with the dread of a fresh bout of contagion. These fears were compounded by the increasing realisation that such encounters had become much less frequent.

“What was the cause of the plague?” Ivory wondered.

“I don’t know,” admitted Glade. “I also became ill, but fortunately I recovered. Those days of suffering had been the worst days of my life so far. But much worse was yet to come.”

——————————

It was a day that started as every day began. As always the clan—now less than twenty in number—awoke with the first rays of the sun and began their day of making love, foraging for food and tending the fire. Then they began to roam, as wholly randomly as always, but one that followed landmarks familiar from earlier excursions.

A cackle of excited monkeys and the squawk of startled birds might have warned them that they were not alone in the forest, but this wasn’t usually much concern to a tribe who knew well how to guard themselves against leopards or wolves.

It was Tarsier, a girl in the first bloom of sexual maturity, who first saw the strange men in the forest and alerted everyone. The clan approached the shadowy figures that were marching in the gloom of the forest with some apprehension but not really fear. And strange these men most certainly were.

As they approached Glade could see that the men had much darker skin than the Forest People. Indeed their skin was almost entirely black. It was as black as the sky at night. They were well camouflaged against the dark shadows of the forest. Their strangeness wasn’t confined only to their skin colour, which made Glade wonder whether these were people at all but spirits made corporeal. Their heads were totally bare of hair as so too were their groins. Their pubes were somehow the more naked for there being no hair. That the men wore no clothes didn’t trouble Glade’s clan. In fact, no one suspected that such a thing as clothing even existed. What was far more peculiar was the total absence of hair.

There were a few moments of uneasy silence while the Forest People attempted to make sense of the unusual sight of a disciplined line of black men standing ahead of them. Tarsier shivered as she studied their unfamiliar unsmiling faces, while Glade took the young girl’s hand in hers. The line of tall men curved threateningly around the clan. Their skin glistened from the sheen of sweat that was testament of a rapid march through the forest. They carried spears that unlike those of the forest-people were tipped with well-knapped stones secured at the tip by cord.

As one of the older men, it was Flying Squirrel who took the initiative to address these strangers. He walked up to the man in the centre of the line who seemed to be the one most in authority. The notion of status was a novel concept to Glade’s tribe. They had no notion that any man could ever be in any sense less than equal to his fellows.

“We welcome you and hope that we may share the bounty of the forests with our new friends,” Flying Squirrel said.

There was no response from the man he addressed. He didn’t move his head but his eyes followed Flying Squirrel warily. His eyes shone very brightly on a black face and that combined with his shaved eyebrows made it seem that he was constantly startled.

Flying Squirrel repeated his welcome and proffered his wide-open arms as an additional gesture of welcome. He expected, as everyone did, that the stranger and his companions would break into a grin and respond to Flying Squirrel’s welcome by embracing him. Then the two bands could exchange tales and food. When the women appeared, as they surely must, hidden perhaps in the darkness of the forest canopy, there would be the orgy of sexual abandon that Glade normally associated with chance encounters in the forest. Glade already had her eyes on the black men’s penises which she was sure would fit comfortably inside her. At least one man had a fully erect penis. No doubt, Glade thought, this was in the anticipation of a friendly fuck.

The man Flying Squirrel addressed began to speak. This was also very peculiar. Glade had no concept that there were people in the world who didn’t speak the same language as her. Although there were Forest People who spoke with a distinct dialect, it was another thing for a language to be as wholly incomprehensible as the words this man spoke. Or were they words at all? To Glade’s ears they sounded like the bark of a deer or the grunt of a boar or the snarl of a leopard. Whatever he was saying, the words he used seemed harsh and unfriendly.

Flying Squirrel didn’t understand the reply any more than anyone else. He repeated his welcome word for word. He then walked right up to the man to whom he’d spoken and made to grasp his penis. This was the traditional friendly greeting amongst the Forest People.

And it was then that Glade and her clan knew for certain that this was not a friendly encounter.

For many years later, Glade rehearsed in her mind the exact sequence of events. She remembered them in slow motion, but at the time when they happened they were sudden, unannounced and unexpected. Flying Squirrel was angrily pulled off by one of the black man’s companions before his hand could grasp the penis in greeting and a stone-tipped spear was plunged into his stomach. There then followed a frenzy of violent activity, much like when a deer is slaughtered, but not this time accompanied by reverential prayers to the tree spirits. Spear after spear was thrust into Flying Squirrel’s bleeding body as his limbs twitched their last. And the frenzy continued well after it was obvious to the horrified Forest People that he was dead.

This was not only the first time that Glade had seen anyone being killed but the first time she had ever experienced naked hostility of any kind.