“Maypole Dance" - Spring
Britain, 1568. Coll is a young man with an artistic soul who doesn’t fit in his mining village. He’s too dreamy and different to interest the local girls. When he walks away from the spring fair and deep into the forest, he encounters a primal spirit who appreciates his attractions and is happy to initiate him into the spring rite of fertility. But will she let her mortal pet go afterward and does Coll wish to be released?

Excerpt:

The girls in their virginal white dresses wove around one another in an elaborate dance. Pale shoots of new spring grass were trampled into the earth by their passing feet. Pink, blue, yellow and green ribbons wound around the twenty-foot pole planted in the middle of the fairground.

Elaine skipped past, her head thrown back and her mouth open in joyous laughter. Her auburn curls were drawn up and fastened beneath the floral wreath around her head. They cascaded in red-brown ringlets down her back.

Coll would give anything in the world to be allowed to touch that hair, feel its silk spilling through his hands and bury his face in it to find out if it smelled like flowers. He watched her hips sway beneath her skirt as she danced and his cock hardened in his breeches.

Elaine disappeared in the mob of dancers. The multicolored ribbons drew tighter in an intricate pattern around the tall, stripped pine pole. The dancers wove in decreasing circles until all the pink-faced, giggling, jiggling girls were pressed together in a tight circle. Their bare feet were coated with dirt and the hems of their skirts were stained brown with dust. Their breasts pushed against the bodices of their dresses.

Coll stole a hand under his jerkin and adjusted his hard-on inside his pants
Elaine came around again and, for a brief moment, looked at him and smiled.
Coll was frozen, entranced by her vivid blue eyes. His heart lifted. He offered a weak smile in return and half-raised his hand in greeting.

Then she danced past and disappeared from view once more.

Reaching into the pocket of his jerkin, he clutched the swan he had made for her, rubbing his thumb over the gracefully arched wooden neck. His heart beat faster. She had looked at him! Today he would speak to her and dare to offer her his carving.

The dance ended in chaos, the girls laughing as they stumbled and tripped and let go of their ribbons. Elaine emerged from the group, sweating, smiling and headed his way.

Coll’s heart pounded as he drew the swan from his pocket. He held it tight in his hand watching her approach and imagining what he would say to her. It sounded good in his mind. Elaine, I offer you this token of my admiration and affection. I made a swan because you are so like those graceful creatures with your long, white neck and lovely, pale skin. Perhaps you would allow me to accompany you around the fair.

She was almost to him now. Her face glowed with health and with that beautiful, happy smile. She was only a yard away now. He opened his mouth to speak. “Elaine,” emerged from his throat in a choked whisper.

She walked past him.

Coll froze with his hand partially extended toward her, offering the swan. His mouth snapped shut. He turned to look over his shoulder.

“Gwydion, you came to watch the dancing.” She stopped before a swarthy, stocky young man and beamed her smile on him.

“I came to watch you.” Bulging biceps were crossed over a barrel chest.
She giggled and ducked her head, setting her curls bouncing.

Gwydion reached out and fingered one of the auburn ringlets then leaned in and whispered something in her ear.

Elaine laughed louder and slapped his chest. “What would my mother say?”
With a huge grin, the beefy young man grabbed her hand. Together they ran away, dodging the crowds of people in the fairgrounds. Soon they were lost to Coll’s sight.

His hand clenched tight around the wooden swan and its fragile neck snapped. He looked down in dismay. It had taken him hours to get it just right, lifelike and perfect. But what good was it now anyway? He might as well cast it down on the ground and let it be trampled into the mud by the passing fairgoers’ feet.

With a sigh, he tucked it back into his pocket and pushed his way past the people to reach the edge of the fairgrounds. Elaine was not interested in him. None of the girls in the village were. They all wanted strong, burly men. Miners like their fathers, men who could clearly provide for them and make homes and babies with them. Their ideal was a robust young man with arm muscles hewn from stone and tree trunk legs.

Coll was like a dove dropped in a starling’s nest. His gold-streaked brown hair, finely chiseled features and lean build were not like any of the boys in the village. He sometimes wondered if he were a changeling, slipped into his cradle by the fae when his mother wasn’t looking. Maybe there were people he belonged with somewhere else, people who looked like him and thought like him. People who wouldn’t think he was strange for drawing pictures, sculpting clay figures or carving them from wood. Maybe there was a place in the world he could fit in.

Coll walked glumly through the bustle of the fair. He passed the stalls where produce, meat pies, cloth, tools and trinkets were laid out for sale.

“How’s your mother, Coll? Feeling better? Tell her I said ‘hello’.” A plump, ruddy-faced woman called from behind her display of woven blankets.

“Yes, I will.” He hurried on before Llyan the Weaverwoman could beckon him over to talk. Moving beyond the edge of the bustling fairgrounds, Coll crossed the verge of the field toward the solitude of the woods. The primeval forest was the only place he felt at peace.

Bird calls and the rustling of small animals in the underbrush were all that disturbed the stillness this cool, spring afternoon. The trees were clothed in the pale green of newly unfurled leaves. Purple blossoms made a lacy canopy of the redbud trees. Yellow marshflowers and pink primroses bloomed in the shadows and a few early dandelions in the rare patches of sunlight. The scent of lilacs was sweet and strong.

Coll walked a forest trail blazed by deer, avoiding the dense growth and tearing brambles. He pushed his way deeper into the forest, farther than he’d ever gone before. Sweat trickled from his hairline and stuck his shirt to his spine. He relived the image of Elaine and the other girls dancing in gay abandon and wondered what it would be like to touch soft bodies, stroke firm breasts and lie between willing thighs. His cock lifted once more.

Just then he broke through the underbrush into a secluded glade, a wide-open space in the middle of the thick circle of trees. The floor was carpeted with ferns and lily-of-the-valley. A single tree stood in the center of the clearing, an ancient beech, as wide around as a millstone. Smooth, gray bark covered the tall column and its branches arched in perfect symmetry in all directions. New leaves covered the branches in a shimmering veil of green.

Coll stood in the shade of the tree, smoothing his hand over the wood. He wondered how beech would be for carving. Suddenly he felt a strange pulsing under his hand like the unexpected twitch of a cat’s tail. He jerked his hand away from the warm bark and stared at the tree, but it didn’t move again.

Across the clearing was a clear pool fed by an underground stream. Coll’s thirst drew him to it. He knelt and scooped the tepid water to his mouth with his hands then bathed his face. Sitting on a log at the edge of the water, he pushed his sweat-damp hair back from his forehead then unfastened his pants. Reaching inside, he took his member in hand and began to stroke it as he had longed to do all afternoon. He let his eyes drift shut. Elaine’s image quivered to life on the dark screen of his closed lids.

In his imagination she stood before his bed in the loft of his parents’ cottage. She smiled and slowly slipped her white dress off her shoulders then her breasts, waist and hips. She let it drop to the floor and stood naked before him. As she glided toward him, Coll’s hand tightened on his shaft and moved up and down faster.