in the forest, he grew angrier and more sullen. Nothing Ilina did could move him to smile.
A time of drought and misfortune came upon the land. Pitor had to travel farther and farther into the woods to find trees he could chop for profit, until at last one day he’d traveled so far he couldn’t make it home before dark. Though he ached to return to his beloved Ilina and knew she would worry for his safety, he knew how foolish traveling in the dark would be. He made himself a small camp and prepared to spend the night. He dared not even burn one small portion of the wood he’d gathered, for not only would it be taking food from Ilina’s mouth to use the wood he intended to sell, but the risk of deadly fire in the dry forest was too great. Instead, he pulled his cloak around himself and hunkered down, unable even to sleep lest a beast attack him in the night.
Nevertheless, weariness overtook him, and Pitor’s eyes closed. He dreamed of his love, of her touch and of her kiss, and woke with his cock straining the front of his trousers.
“Ah, sweet,” said a voice from the shadows. “What a prize you hold between your legs. How I long for a man to fill me up with what you’ve got.”
Convinced he was dreaming, Pitor sat up with a shake of his head. Laughter curled like smoke from the darkness. A woman stepped from behind a tree. The sight of her sent fear and desire coursing through him in equal amounts, and Pitor sprang to his feet, his hatchet ready to defend against her.
“You know me?” The woman’s dark hair swirled around her face.
Pitor’s breath heaved. The closer she stepped the more aroused he became, until all he could think of was satisfying the carnal urges flooding him.
The woman was upon him, astride him, before he knew how to object.
“Who are you?” he cried, stricken, for he’d never been unfaithful to his wife before.
“You don’t need to know.”
He turned and was on her before she could escape, the blade of his ax to her throat, but she only laughed. To his shame, his cock twitched and rose at the sound of it. She reached between them to grab and stroke him fully erect.
“You should be better satisfied with what you have, woodsman, else you lose it all. Let me show you what you could have.”
Pitor jerked away from her and lowered the ax.“I love my wife.”
The woman stood, her eyes flashing in a face still covered with shadows. “Come with me and be my love, and we will walk the forest as monarchs.”
He shook his head. “No!”
She tilted her head. “No? Then fuck me once with that sweet prick, and I’ll reward you for your efforts.”
Pitor’s hand trembled. “No reward you could offer me would be enough for me to betray my wife.”
“Not even the life of your child?”
Pitor gasped aloud. “I have no children!”
Ilina had lost several pregnancies at great harm to her health. He knew she still longed for a babe, but he hoped for her sake she wouldn’t catch again. The woman in front of him clucked her tongue to the roof of her mouth.
“Fuck me, and your child will never know hunger, nor poverty. How is that for a reward, and for so simple a task? One your body craves already?”
“You can promise me that?”
“That and more,” promised the woman, and Pitor was lost.
As he sank into her warm, slick flesh, Pitor groaned, “Ilina!”
“Ah, yes,” said the woman atop him, the woman who smelled and felt so familiar now.
Pitor groaned again as ecstasy swept him. “Ilina!”
The woman slowed her movements, rocking against him. She bent to whisper in his ear. “I am your Ilina, if you so desire.”
Pitor’s hands gripped her hips as he thrust inside her, over and over, until his seed boiled out of him and he fell back, spent. The woman laughed and withdrew, leaving him cold in the night air. Pitor blinked, stunned at how she’d once again become a stranger.
“Don’t travel so far from home, next time,” she advised, and was gone, leaving Pitor to return to his wife.
She had meant to keep it secret from him until she knew for sure the babe grew inside her without difficulty, but Ilina didn’t regret telling Pitor about the child their love had planted, because the moment she did, the gloom and anger Pitor had allowed to overtake him vanished.
For months, Pitor returned each night to his Ilina with a smile as bright as diamonds. He made sure to bring her the finest fruits they could afford, even forsaking his own hunger to provide his wife with the best delicacies to tempt her failing appetite. Still, as Ilina’s belly swelled, the rest of her withered. She kept a smile on her face, though, while the babe inside her wriggled and squirmed.
The midwife was not pleased with the way the babe had stolen so much of Ilina’s strength. “It’s not right,” she told Pitor when Ilina had fallen into an exhausted, feverish sleep. “The labor has begun, but it’s not progressing. They’re killing her.”
“They?” Pitor, white-faced and sick, clutched his hands together and tore his gaze from his wife long enough to look at the midwife.
“Your wife is carrying twins.” The midwife said no more when Ilina woke and began to scream.
Ilina’s daughter was born in blood and sweat and screams, and the midwife placed her into Pitor’s arms at once while she sought to stanch the flow of crimson from between Ilina’s legs. Pitor held the squirming, naked infant and watched his wife die in front of him, and then he handed the child to the midwife and left the cottage.
She found him in the garden, the place where his beloved Ilina had spent so many hours tending to her flowers. The midwife had cleaned and wrapped the child, who lay quiet in her arms, but when she offered the babe to her father, Pitor turned his face.
“Take them away.”
The midwife, a goodhearted woman who had seen many births and deaths but none so surprising as this one, offered the child again. “There is only one. I was wrong.”
She had never been wrong before and was uncertain if she was truly wrong now. One child had been born, yes, but the girl was unlike other babies. The midwife pulled the blankets away from the child’s face to show Pitor, who would not look.
“See,” the midwife said. “Her eyes? Her hair?”
Pitor shook his head.“My wife is dead. Take that creature away.”
The midwife looked into the face of the sleeping infant. The hair was silver gilt on one half of her head and black as grief on the other. The child’s eyes were the same; one pale blue and the other a deep, midnight black. Two faces…yet one.
“What do you want me to do with it?” asked the midwife quietly.
“I don’t care,” said Pitor. “You can kill it, for all I care. Now go away, and let me bury my wife.”
