The Sacred Hunt

I highly recommend listening to Heather Alexander's Something Dark while reading.

Part 1: A Nature Spirit's Memories

I watched him for years. His mother birthed him beneath my branches, a small pink wrinkled thing covered in white and red. He took his first breath within the cradle of my roots and the soft grass covering them. His first scream startled the animals living within me. When his life cord stopped pulsing, the mother bit threw it and buried the heavy red sack at my base. Their mingled blood called me from my half-slumber and into full consciousness.
I watched.
As a boy, he climbed my branches, settling into them to watch the clouds or hide from the others who didn't understand his dreams. He wanted to be more than his father wished. He was not a shaman like his father and grandfather before him. His body demanded he lose himself in the woods.
Still, I watched.
When he was a teen and ready to become a man, I was the one he came to. With gentle yet strong and sure hands, he took my offered limb and broke it from me quickly, shaping it into a hefty spear. I watched with a weeping heart as he took a sharpened stone and dragged it across his forearm, and blood soaked into my roots. His blood soon ran through my heart.
I left my spirit's rest and wandered the woods that night. I watched his sacred rite; I saw his first kill and the bear that fell by his spear. After I'd returned to my tree, he followed my path and set the bear before me. Their mingling blood ran down his chest as he used sacred herbs of healing to poultice the claw-made wounds and then set himself to task.
I watched with un-closing eyes.
When he found a maiden who pleased his heart, it was to me he led her and made a lovers' knot of my branches. It was beneath my branches that he gave her everything, and his seed ran from her body onto my roots. His two life-giving fluids now nourished the heart-wood of my tree and thus me.
With an aching soul, I watched.
Warriors came from another clan and all the men were called to war. It was with his piece of me, the sharpened spear, that he left. His life-mate came to me daily and prayed, each day she asked for him to return. I was but a nature spirit, I had no power over the affairs of men; I could not end their war.
I watched the woods with a torn heart; I could not let him be alone. I would shelter him if I could. I felt his strength still strumming through me; I knew he yet lived. I captured that string of light and followed it to its maker. I flitted from tree to tree until I had to dance in the moonlight across a river wider than my boy's village. I sought to find him, but it was he who found me. He spotted my shimmer in the full moon's glow and knocked an arrow, not knowing what he saw.
His aim was true and I felt the onyx tipped wood pierce my chest. His blood, his seed, his life, began to run out of me. I made it to the bank where he stood before I fell.
His arms went around me and he wept with understanding, his lips offering up his own life in exchange for mine. I would not lose this boy. I would return in another life. He would find me.
With blood coated hands, I stroked his forehead and cheeks, the rounded bones pleasing my touch. I had longed to feel his skin with my own hands, not the caress of my leaves and bark. It was worth losing my magic.
Setting my hand over his heart, I summoned the last of my magic and imbued it into him.
“Find me, Hunter. Hunt and you shall find me.”

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Part two: The Hunt

I sensed his presence for my entire life. He was always in the back of my mind, seeking me. I did not know what exactly he sought, but I knew he would find it. I knew I had to run and he had to chase; it was our eternal game.
I came face to face with the hunter and knew not of his identity for many years. His spirit still slumbered. Mine had been born awake this time. In others, only he knew of the game. But this time, he would learn. I would wait. I waited, I watched, and I hoped. I wanted him to remember. He didn't seem to.
Our paths diverged as mine led me out of the woods I loved. I grew strong while my light dimmed. I gave my light to others so that theirs could flourish while mine grew too weak to glow. My branches were cut, others bound into a pleasing shape. The bindings began to chafe after far too long.
He cut one binding and then another. He sat beneath my branches and told me stories as we had in lives past. Our lights grew bright, twin shining stars with hours between them but a lifetime apart.
Then he awoke. He made the summons. The bond was made. Magic flared through me; I would accept the call. He summoned my spirit, and I would come to him. I would lay down my barriers and let him claim me at long last.
Then he revoked the call. His human side was at war with the hunter, it fought to subdue his nature. He had bonds he could not forsake despite our history. My magic still flowed; it would have to summon him back to me. The hunter would have to become the prey for a little while.
He begged me to not provoke, so I waited. I had learned to wait for him, the days did not matter. He knew me now.
I retaliated at his teasings, and sought to entice him in return. The human side continued to win. Frustration filled me until I was ready to burst and I took out my aggressions on my mate, who happily acquiesced.
We continued our game of taunts and provocation until life itself became strained. We knew the game was as dangerous as it was beautiful, and we both knew that the ending was messy. But we played into it as we must.
When the veils thinned at Samhain, I begged the gods and goddesses to let us have our sacred hunt, to bless our rite with a moment out of time when we could forget the real world and live within the mists of the sacred. I heard no answer, and assumed my prayer went unheard.
Then, the night walk came. The moon was high and sang in my blood until I needed to feel Her rays upon my face. I slipped a sheer white robe over my blue sleeping gown, donned slippers upon my feet, and bound my waves back with a pale blue ribbon. The cold breeze refreshed me while it stirred my restlessness to a peak.
The drums started the moment I took one step past the treeline. My heart echoed the pounding of hands against the taut skin and my feet stepped in time, running through the trees. It became a game of chase as I eluded the sacred drummer.
I heard his heartbeat as he came closer, could smell the sweet musk of his skin, could feel the heat radiating between us. His fingers reached out for me but only caught my ribbon. It loosened in his grasp, and my hair spilled down onto my shoulders, the silvery blue ribbon wrapping around his hand in a silken tease.
My hunter let out a growl and reached for me again, but I danced out of reach, teasing him with a smile as I rounded the giant oak. Its branches caught on my robe, so I left it behind, running only in my silken blue gown and slippers. I heard his primal yell and looked over my shoulders to see him clasping my robe to his face, inhaling my scent.
The sight caused my breath to catch and I stumbled in my lust-crazed fog, landing in the soft leaves of the forest floor. He advanced, stalking me, discarding my robe as he came closer. I scrambled backwards, losing my slippers to the mud. I finally made it onto my knees as his drum grew louder.
One warm hand grasped my ankle and tugged, turning me onto my back so that I looked up into his face. He wore smudges of mud upon his cheeks that reminded me of dried blood, the blood I had marked him with. My fingers still fit his face as before and as I stared into those blue eyes, too blue to be completely human, his lips met mine.
By that simple touch, I was claimed.
He growled against my lips, his hands grasping my wrists and holding them up over my head. He looked at me in question, silently asking for my answer.
“I yield to my hunter.”

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Part three: Sacred Space

My lover lay, finally sated, in my arms, his head pillowed by the curve of my breast. My fingers lightly stroked back the dark curls that tickled my cheek. We had woken one another a few times through the night, coming together again and again in the sacred dance of lovers.
Each time, before and after, he always gave me the five-fold kiss. My feet, my knees, my womb, my breasts, and my lips were each blessed by a gentle kiss as his hands massaged my flesh to readiness. He worshiped me as a goddess and I accepted his tribute and named him my horned god. In the moonlight, I could see the bearskin mantle he had worn as a a tribal hunter, and my mind painted that over us as we lay in the leaves, our bodies at rest.
We had answered the summons of our bodies, and found in turn that it was our hearts that truly made the call. As the sun slowly awoke from its slumber and warmed the night sky with shades of the palest gold, I kissed my lover sweetly, teasing his lips to open for my tongue. He shifted us so that I rode him, the morning sun washing over our bare bodies, removing the night's languor.
We clung to one another as pleasure took us over, never releasing our embrace even as we stumbled through the woods to the small creek and washed our bodies. I regretted washing the signs of his marking from my thighs but knew it must be done for our return to the sunlit realm. His shoulders, neck, and back bore the signs of my passion, bruises from my teeth and lips, and lines from my fingers clawing at him to hold my hunter nearer.
“I marked you.”
He looked over his bare shoulder and smiled, splashing water up at me. “I know; I'm glad. It will serve as a reminder this happened.”
“She'll see.”
My hunter nodded, a hint of red coloring his scruff covered cheeks. “I'll deal with her. I left you marks of my own as well.”
I twisted and used the creek as a mirror. Bruises in the shape of his hand prints covered my arms and hips. They had not been made in anger, but in passion. He did not know his own strength as he pulled me to him. A red mark that was fading into a dark bruise marred my neck, just below my right ear.
He smirked and tugged me down into the cold water. “You're mine, here in these woods, you know.”
“I'm yours always, everywhere. Here is the only place we can acknowledge your claim.”
He kissed me to silence my lips, his hands clinging to me with desperation.
“I did not want it this way, Bella. I would have you forever if I could.”
I nodded and wiped my tears away, not wanting our last moments to be ones of pain. “I know, my hunter. The sacred hunt will always call to me. Play your drum, and I will come to you, Emmett.”
Our hands pressed together, palm to palm, and then he walked away. My hunter left me on the bank as he had before, but this time it was my heart that shattered instead of my body. I watched him don his clothes in silence, my heart retreating behind its mask as he covered the broad expanse of his back with the shirt his wife had most likely purchased for him.
He gathered my clothing and with shaking hands dressed me, offering my body the five-fold kiss as a farewell. I watched from the shadows as he walked down the path and out into the sun, a golden haired woman waiting for him. She clung to his arm as he emerged and they walked together, his eyes searching for me as his head turned often.
When he was out of sight, I washed my face free of my tears in the creek and finger combed my hair back into its binding ribbon. I walked through the woods in the direction of my own home, avoiding the paths I knew so well as they brought memories of the hunt I had to say good-bye to.
I stepped out into the light and was greeted by the loving face of my own husband as he smiled at me with understanding.
“Have you come back to me, my love?”
“Yes, I'm home.” I could not tell him that it was only until the next hunt when I would run again.