0 comments/ 8080 views/ 0 favorites Coming of the Red Mother Ch. 01 By: gyumri_boy In memory of Tura Satana (1938 – 2011) star of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! It has been two years since Tsovinar had lost her husband to a Kurdish raiding party and the day her lover was murdered she found herself kneeling on the earthen floor of her hut, a harvest of apricots around her knees, Hayk's cock throbbing in her hands. The eighteen year old lay on his back, his cock erect and pulsing in the warm afternoon air. She had positioned herself between his legs and paused only momentarily from placing soft kisses against its velvet head to gaze up the long, mountainous slope that was Hayk's rock hard body and into his lust-fueled eyes. Younger flesh. Younger guns. It was nice to have someone so open to her advances. Hayk's balls lay heavily in her hand. In Armenian the term is "amorji." Much nicer, Tsovinar thought, than the sterile English "testicles." Hayk's were big enough so she couldn't get the whole thing in her mouth at one go. But she had found, with a little experimenting, that if she simply sucked one of the swollen hen-eggs into her mouth at a time the lad would still shiver all over and the shaft of his cock would strain against its flesh imprisonment, as if it meant to rip itself right out from the crotch of the young man and punch a hole in the thatching of her roof. Tsovinar spent a long time amusing herself with her lover's amorji. As the old saying goes, pleasure is found in the liquor of others and Hayk had a John Barleycorn the older woman loved getting drunk on. She could taste just the beginnings of it, that sweet clear teardrop, as she swirled her tongue around the head of his cock. A diet of apricots and teenage cum had left her feeling invincible. Maybe that was the problem. Too much fucking makes anyone cocky. Even a thirty-eight year old Armenian widow. Tsovinar and her young buck. Nothing lasts forever, especially in 1914 Ottoman Turkey. But what can anyone know of the future? Especially when you are about to make your lover cum? When she was ready Tsovinar licked her way up his shaft once again, covering the head with her entire mouth and – gag reflexes be damned – drove it down her throat as far as possible. Hayk quivered. She placed a hand on his belly and could feel tectonic plates shifting deep within, magma bubbling to the surface. She pulled her head back so her lips released the tip but after a moment to wipe the slobber from her chin when right back down. Tongue, lips and tonsils: she massaged his cock with all three. Hayk was moaning, saying how grateful he was, how this made him feel, how she was the the best cock sucker in all of Anatolia. "I'm probably the only cock sucker in Anatolia," Tsovinar thought. Oral sex was unheard of in turn-of-the-century Turkey, both by its Muslim majority and Christian minority. But the older woman had gone to school in Paris, where Kama Sutra foreplay was an art that was taught often and everywhere she had gone. As if to reward her for her hard work, the young man began gasping and making tiny bull-snorts through his nostrils: "I'm close, I'm close, I'm so close--" Tsovinar pulled back as she opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue. Hayk grabbed his cock in both hands and worked it furiously while he exploded, molten lava coating her tongue, her chin and across his belly. She smiled as she ran a finger in one of the hot, gummy pools that lay near his naval, placed the finger in Hayk's mouth and grinned as he swallowed it. The two lay still for a while, the older woman's cheek still pressed against his knee, watching her young buck's cock slowly deflate. Glancing up she saw that his face was irresponsible and happy the way all eighteen year old faces are when they are filled with wonder and desire after a particularly toe curling orgasm. Tsovinar, in turn, was glowing by this attention, the way anyone in love is entertained and delighted after giving someone so much pleasure. Through the long sunny day Tsovinar had parried his love-talk skillfully, enjoying herself, as she had been doing since she first laid eyes on him the year before, high up in the Anti-Taurus Mountains. So they had relished the lazy morning and afternoon as they passed in each others' arms, but twice lately she had glanced across the low tree-tops of her garden, down the trail to where the mountains descended into the hazy plain far below. "I think I must go back now," said the young man, not wanting to leave or even move. This was the only thing that irritated Tsovinar about taking a young lover. Older men roll over and sleep. This young man would suddenly need to "get home," as if that post-coital buzz confirmed in him that sex with someone who looked, more or less, like his mother's lost twin, was somehow problematic. She knew that wasn't the only reason he constantly tried to slip, first his hand and then his cock, up her skirt, but the first time he cried out "Mama-jan" as he exploded deep inside her made her cum even more. Moments like that made her regret she never had had a child of her own. "Oh?" she said, watching in amusement as the cum in his pubes began to dry into library paste. "Well, if you think it is so late." Tsovinar rolled onto her back, scattering apricots. Her yellow handkerchief had come untied and strands of her black hair had fallen loose. The round fruit was heaped thick and she idly played with two plump apricots, rolling them across her palm, comparing them in her mind to the boy fruit she had just spent her time sucking on. "It is not too late, precisely ... not too," he began wistfully. "No, it is not," Tsovinar agreed, consulting what sky she could see from floor of her hut. "We still have three hours before the sun goes down." He brightened and propped himself up on his elbows. The afternoon was heavy and warm and after such a strenuous endeavor the idea of getting dressed seemed a bit silly. "But after the sun goes down it is so very dark on the trail back to the town," he observed, as if no one had ever thought of this before. "I could never believe you are afraid of the dark." "Of course I fear nothing, Tsovinar-jan," he quickly said. "It is only there are so many holes one might fall into." "Shat lav!" Tsovinar laughed, "Very good." Suddenly she felt like teasing him. "Do you know, Hayk-jan, I think that mustache of yours will be beautiful in a five or six years. And you have a good figure for someone who does so little work." The delightful thing about Hayk was that he took everything so seriously. "What? I am much stronger than last year," he began. "My arm--" "Yes, I can see. I am not sure I shall let you fuck me any more. You didn't offer to when you met me this morning – and then they will gossip in the town that poor Tsovinar the Widow can't even get beautiful boys to throw her skirts over her hips and mount her like a ram on an ewe in rutting season." "But," the other began, "we just did." "No, you came like a fountain but my swamp is still dry. Look, it took so long to make you cum that my apricots are still not sorted out." Hayk rolled on top of her and Tsovinar could feel his cock beginning to swell again at the prospects of riding her once more. Tsovinar laughed and looked up at the broad shoulders and wild hair that blocked out the sky and filled her with joy. She had yet to open her legs but with a finger she traced one of his hairless nipples. "Oh no, Hayk-jan. If you got me on my back I would end up with fruit pulp in my hair. If you want to stay with me, then please help me. Go bring me some fresh water. The barrel is almost empty." "Water?" The tip of his cock rested against Tsovinar's closed girl-lips. Despite her claim to owning a dry swamp Hayk found her very wet and giving off an amazing heat. If only she opened her legs a little, he knew, with a slight push, he could easily sheath his entire eight and a half inches deep inside her. Hayk gazed ardently down at her upturned face. A riot of teenage hormones and emotions was flooding through him. Part of him wanted to throw her legs over his shoulders, grab her hips and rudely fuck away until she was screaming in wanton pleasure. But another part held this in check: that she did look so much like his mother – the same hourglass shape hips, the same heavy breasts with blood-brown nipples, the same streak of silver running through her mane of black – that he readily agreed to do whatever it was she asked. Get water? He would get water. Especially if she followed through on what she hinted at earlier that day. She was going to open the dark secrets of her ass up to him. Perhaps. If he behaved. "Very well, then," said he finally, rolling off her and looking about for his trousers. "If you like this better, finish the apricots and I'll go for the water," but he paused when he saw her look over his shoulder and did not move and asked, "why do you look down the trail so often?" "Because Anahit said there had been reports that the Kurds have been attacking farms on the other side of our mountain," she replied, softly. "What? You have been thinking of Kurds at a time like this?" Hayk was a lovely boy and a great fuck but he tended to be a bit of a drama queen when he felt like it. Especially if he felt his beloved wasn't paying full attention to him. "Your sister told you that?" "Yes." Tsovinar shaded her eyes and looked where the foothills separated, giving a view of the distant dry lands. Many rivers and streams, crooked and straight, came out of the mountains, but they all ceased before they reached the desert. Beyond, far to the south, were the empty dunes and hills of the wasteland called Der ez Zor. That was a world without even a sparkle of a mirage to refresh one's thirst, nor a hint of a lie of rain to dampen the baked, cheating dirt. She stared for a moment at the terrible distance and then grabbed the young man in her athletic arms and kissed his broad back over and over until he giggled. She liked boys with a bit of the fey in them. "Why would they come up here for?" demanded Hayk, half dressed, looking for a boot. "The Kurds? Raiding. Ever since the army stopped interfering with them they have become bolder and bolder." Hayk considered this as he leaned against the water-barrel to force his foot into the bunglesome boot. Tsovinar could feel him watching her naked body as she stood and began looking for own clothes, her silver crescent ear-rings swinging with the slight tilting of her head. His fingers, forgotten and unguided by his thoughts, rubbed at the ever-growing bulge in the front of his trousers as she bent down, her great plum-shaped cheeks spreading open, the dim bud of her ass momentarily visible. She could hear him humming as she dressed herself, a popular folk tune no doubt taught to him by his own mother years and years ago, a song by the famous troubadour Sayat Nova. Tsovinar hummed along, inattentively, busy with her skirt: "Fools, like fire and heat, scorch everything and burn; but love, like water sweet, a desert into a garden turns ..." After a while he put stopped and asked: "have they been seen up here recently?" "Not recently. We still have soldiers in the barracks in the town. Not everyone has been sent off to war." "I heard a man in the village Havmets say the Young Turks are losing the war against Russia and England," Hayk began. "That would be a pity," Tsovinar replied automatically, ignoring all questions of politics and Young Turks. "Hayk, aren't you going to get my water for me?" "Vo'chinch." He shrugged, using the term in the ancient language for when things are neither good nor bad, they just are. "I'll bring it directly." "You have to go to Spiurka' hei for it." The Lost Spring, half a mile from the hut. "Hmm, since it is getting so dark I better stay here." Bright green branches of fruit trees and a small cottonwood and an irrigated fenced square of green hid Tsovinar's tiny home from the main road. Its white and dark sides, gleaming and melting with molted light, deepened the heavy air. "Where is Anahit-jan now?" inquired Hayk. Tsovinar sighed as the mood changed. "She has gone to drive our sheep and goats to a new spring. There is no pasture at the Spiurka' hei. Our streams and ditches went dry weeks ago. They have never done so in all the years before. I don't know what is going to happen to us." The anxiety in her face must have intensified plainly for a moment and then recede to its hiding place for Hayk looked at her curiously. "Come, Cherubino!" The older woman laughed and ran her fingers through her hair. "Do you intend to stand and stare at me like that until the moon rises? Water, I say. Ah, finally! he moves!" Hayk, in a mock display of labor, slouched to a bucket in which the dipper rattled. He then proceeded off on his journey, crawling on his hands and knees, banging the pail on every stone along the way. "You know that bucket is far to small for what I need," Tsovinar remarked. "You promised me the joys of your body and instead turn me into a beast of burden. You are so cruel to me," came the muffled response. The older woman just laughed. The pail clattered on the stones and the young boy stopped crawling. She watched his performance through the open door of her hut, the pleasure of the day basking like heat in her body. Then, Tsovinar sprang to her feet, and, catching up to her lover, shook the bucket in his face with gratifying mock ridicule. "I have no idea why we raise little babies to become big babies and decide to call them men, but we do," she grinned. "Really, Hayk-jan. Now we'll go together." Tsovinar started merrily through the trees and the garden. He followed, two paces behind, half ashamed and gazing at her curvy hips twitch back and forth, showing off her rounded ass under the fabric of her skirt. They crossed the acre of green through swaying leaves and passed out of the witching circle into the mountain's domain, picking their way among a dozen carcasses upon the ground, all mummified sheep, two seasons dead, when the first of the drought had hit and their mountain sanctuary was unable to protect their livelihood. They left behind the bones and crossed over a bald spit of land to where the foothills descended, down among the dry rocks to where the main valley cut deep river beds that brought no water. Finding their way through this unshapely ground, they came upon the hidden pool called by the Armenians Spiurka' hei, the Lost Spring. "It is silly to call this waterhole Lost when we go to it all the time," Tsovinar said. "It must have been a hidden for a long time," Hayk said. "And then one day someone discovered it." "That is usually how it happens." "And what is making it go dry?" "What makes a man's heart full of hate? Why does anything happen?" Tsovinar replied cryptically. The two of them descended down the side of the crumbled slate-rock face. Overhead the tall tops of the mountains blocked out the sky and the silence felt older than this world, a silence of the Void before any of the worlds were birthed. "Do you believe it can ever go completely dry?" Hayk asked, as they stood at the edge of the pool. "The Holy Father Zildjian says that it is miraculous that is hasn't gone dry yet," she replied with a little sly smile. "What do you believe?" "This pool was here long before our people ever moved into these mountains and called them home and it will be here long after the Armenians are nothing more than a memory and that is what I believe." "Hmm." "You don't sound entirely convinced that you believe what I just said?" "No, it's not that, but look at this," the young man stretched out his arms. Below them lay a set of natural steps running to the bottom of the pool, the water being like glass. Near the bottom, as if scornful of the arbitrary and irrelevant layers of slate around them, six black stones were lodged as if placed into the wall by some hand – six stones in the form of a cross, black against wall. It was this curious natural formation that had led Armenian to see it as a portent, a symbol from God that this pool, and by extension the whole mountain, belonged to them. "Look at our Cross in our well and in our water – you have to admit God wants us to be here." "Really? And if the rocks had formed a crescent half-moon would you willingly give all this up and say, 'God obviously wants the Muslims to have this, not us'? Somehow I do not think so." "What?" Hayk looked at her as if she had just spoken a blasphemy. "Are you saying you don't believe in God now?" "My dear, dear child. Why does disagreeing with you automatically mean I have no faith, eh?" "But Father Zildjian said the Bible said this was our well." "Really? Does it really say in that book this pool of water belongs to the Armenians? I wonder which verse that is?" The young man remained silent for a few moments. He really did not like these sort of conversations, since they always made Tsovinar moody and then sex an impossibility. Finally he said, "Father Zildjian is--" "The Holy Father Zildjian is many things," Tsovinar interrupted with yet another smile, her cheeks beginning to hurt. "He is also eighty-nine years old and forgets which town he is in." "But--" "Hayk-jan, have you actually ever read the Bible?" "..." "People," and she touched the boy's face with a finger, "like you and me and the women in the market in the town and Holy Father Zildjian and everybody else in this world all pick and choose what we want to believe in." "But--" "Hayk-jan, when I go to shop the women in the market call me an adulterer and a fornicator." "Why? You are a widow." "Yes and because I am a widow they think I should dress in black and heap ash on my head and lock myself away from the world. They think I am being unfaithful to my husband by letting a hard, young cock such as this--" and she ran her hand over the front of Hayk's trousers and was rewarded with an irresistible upsurge under the fabric "--find its way into my putz and tutuz," she finished, using the Armenian terms for cunt and ass. "Er, they think you being unfaithful to your dead husband?" asked the flustered young man. "Yes and because the Bible says all adulterers should be put to death the women in the market say this very loudly, loud enough for me to hear. But the Bible also says that a woman who wears man's clothing should be put to death as well." "Um, that's silly, isn't it?" "Why? Why is one silly and the other serious? Those laws come from the same book but I do not hear the women down in the market arguing that their husbands should stone them to death because they happen to be wearing trousers one day." "But--" "Times are changing, darling. Old rules are being cast to the side. The Sultan is no more. I will never be veiled woman with ash on my head, hidden away from the sun and love. I want only pleasure in my little garden for the cock and the cunt and endless cum will always defeat hatred. Don't you?" "Don't I what?" "Don't you want to start a little ... revolution?" "Stop, stop," the boy protested, "you are hurting my head." "I think your head is just find, my love," Tsovinar ran her tongue up and around Hayk's ear. She slowly disengaged from his arms and stood with her back to him. His entire attention, body and soul, was focused on the round globes of her ass, swaying slowly from side to side under her skirt. "What I believe in," she said, lifting the fabric inch by inch until the naked flesh of her thighs was uncovered. "What I believe is that the water level is lower today than it was yesterday and if you fuck me especially hard I will cum even more than I did today." Coming of the Red Mother Ch. 01 Tsovinar pulled her skirt to her naked hips and tucked it up in her belt. One of her hands went under her blouse to her huge nipples and squeezed while her other hand slipped between her legs, spreading apart her cunt lips and revealing to him just how dripping wet she was. She rubbed her clit with her girl-cum, making her fingers glisten. When he loosened his trousers, revealing his cock shining with desire, her eyes lit up in delight and her fingers worked faster on her clit, making slick-slick oily sounds. Hayk moved closer and she let go of her nipples and moved her hand into her crotch to join her other one. "Sit," she commanded, as one commands a dog. Like a dog the teenager obediently sank to the floor. She came nearer and stuck her cunt in his face so that it was only inches from his eyes. Her fingers were deep inside her, first one, then two and finally three. Cum was bubbling within his cock and he knew is she kept the fingering up he would soon cum himself. Hyak reached out and touched her thigh, caressing it and moving his hand up. She moved her crotch closer as her fingers continued to work her clit. Finally she groaned and planted her crotch directly on top of his face, letting him taste her flesh and devoured her cunt. He loudly slurped the folds of her labia, his tongue pushing deeper and deeper into her putz. "Ah-- ah-- ah--" Tsovinar began rocking her pelvis. Everything was slippery down there and before long she was shaking and her orgasm set off his own as Hayk once again spilled cum all over his belly. "Is that all?" she asked with a grin. By way of answer Hayk simply grinned. He was still rock hard and, grabbing her hips, impaled her on his cock. Both were slick with cum and she leaned back in ecstasy as he held her and kept her from falling. He brought her breasts to his mouth and sucked on each nipple, slurping in as much of her as he could. Her cum was dripping down into the crack of her ass. Hayk smiled and two plunged into her ass from either side, stretching her wide, widening, wider. That was the act that seemed to push her over the edge and Tsovinar began to grunt noisily. "Fuck me in the ass," she begged in a hoarse whisper. "What?" "Put your cock into my tutuz. Take it slow and use lots of spit." She stood and brought her glorious ass cheeks to his mouth. He stuck out his tongue and tasted the tart, earthy odor of her asshole. She moaned deeply. He poked his tongue further inside licked the wrinkly rim, all the while leaving slews of spit everywhere he went. "Come here. Do me like horse," she said, getting on hands and knees. He rubbed his stiff cock against her cunt, lubricating himself with a mixture of cum, spit and desire. "Are you sure?" "Yes, do it." Tsovinar thrust her ass even higher into the air as he pushed in further. Suddenly his cock broke through the clenched resistance and disappeared into her. He pulled out slightly just to see what it felt like and then he pounded into her, causing her entire body to jerk. Hayk pulled Tsovinar's face up towards him and she let out a pant with each stroke. A shadow passed over head, a lone vulture circling, riding the air current, but neither lover noticed. In a few minutes Tsovinar was cumming and her orgasm triggered his and he spilled cum deep within her bowels. They rested. It felt good to lay naked in the sun, a million miles from the war that was just spreading across all of Europe. Hayk must have dozed off for a moment for when he awoke he found Tsovinar looking uneasily at the circular pool and up from its fissured walls to the foothills and then to the high tops of the mountains rising in the cloudless blue sky. Hayk said nothing for a while. He wondered if Tsovinar spent all her time when he wasn't with her fretfully looking down into the valley, dreading the arrival of the raiders who took her husband from her. Or perhaps she possessed some secret sense, could tell somehow when disaster was about to strike. "Come away with me, Tsovinar-jan!" he suddenly blurted out. "I can work. It is fearful for you to live here alone." "Alone, Hayk-jan?" His voice had awaken her from her worries. "Do you consider living with my sister Anahit and my mother and my niece 'nobody to live with'?" "Yes and not the way proper families live together." "Proper? I did not realize I was letting some backwoods priest or imam fuck me in the ass just now. Promise me never to tell such foolishness to my sister. A family is anything we make it and she was kind enough to let me come back home when I found myself alone and I would hate to do anything that puts ideas into her head so that she might start telling me to wear all black and start heaping ash on my head and then where would I be, eh?" Tsovinar paused and smiled at him. "Promise me that and I promise never to tell your future wife all the naughty things I let you do to me. After all, wives can be ever so ... difficult about such things." "Why do you always mock what I say, Tsovinar-jan?" "Mock? Oh my dear boy, see how the sun's going! If we do not get our water, your terrible Spiurka' hei will go dry and you will have nothing to wash me with for my bath except for boy cum and kisses, which rarely gets me clean. Come, Hayk-jan, not only did I let you explore my bottom I even carried the bucket down here now it is your turn." "Tsovinar," he said, "don't you love me at all? even just a very little?" "Love you? Why do I need to love you when you have just asked to marry me, Hayk-jan? I shall keep you chained to the bed and only let you out when you are good." "You keep poking fun at me but I would protect you if the Kurds ever came back," and he said it with such sincerity she adored him for his nativity. "I am not the one who needs protecting." He remained silent, doing his best to appear ill-humored and dangerous, but as he stooped to pick up the bucket he muttered, "It is not difficult to kill a man, Tsovinar." "'Kill a man'?" and she put her hands on her hips and laughed. "Did you just say 'kill a man', my little chieftain? My little warlord? Is it so easy to take another life?" "For you I would do anything!" "Yes and that is why I love you so." Tsovinar stood and caught her darling boy and kissed him. "Please do not talk about killing," after they broke from their kiss and stood looking at each other. "It is fine for us to spend our days fucking like rams and ewes but I have already lost one husband and do not want to lose one more." And with that she began to climb toward the sanctuary she had made for her family and herself and secretly smiled when she heard Hayk struggling behind her, the bucket in his arms, careful not to spill a drop. "Sayat Nova might be right," she thought. "Fools, like fire and heat, do set the world burning." Tonight Tsovinar wanted to burn with them. The apricots could wait. Let the sky come tumbling down, for all she cared, tonight she wanted an inferno and she wasn't going to stop until they were both charred to ash, nothing left but orgasms and blackened bones. Coming of the Red Mother Ch. 02 It was her sister Anahit who broke the news to Tsovinar. The younger woman simply stood in the doorway and listened to the sound of birds, accompanying the morning insects, in a chaotic sort of sonata. That fire between her legs flared up and for a moment grief and pleasure were one and the same. When she was done speaking Anahit went inside and left Tsovinar to stare out at the trees and hills and purple mist melting into heat. Why? Why in this one moment was she so turned on? She wanted to bite her lip. She wanted to taste the salt of her own blood, a blood that had wandered ages before out of the mountains near the city of Van. She wanted to strip off her dress, run to the great oak tree in their yard and grind against its rough bark until her clit bled. She wanted to feel something — anything — at that moment. Her husband had been a Kurd, a small man who carried a large pistol everywhere he went. He was dead now, of course, he must be dead by now and so was her beloved boy, her delight, her Hayk. There was something inside her, some dark rage, that hungered for — what? violence? Something had been building up inside Tsovinar. Perhaps it was never making peace with her husband's disappearance, for there was no body to cry over, nothing to bury and mourn. And now it was happening all over again. And now Hayk, who had just filled her ass to its stretching point the night before, whose cum she could still taste, whose cum she would never taste again, Hayk was gone. "Yes, Hudaverdi is in town right now," Anahit said, gravely. "Is he?" Tsovinar muttered to herself. "Sister, you can't go into Erzurum right now. Stay here until Hudaverdi calms down." "Stay?" echoed the other. "Stay while Hayk's body lies in the middle of the street?" "No, it has been taken back to his family's hut. But Hudaverdi has the law of the Empire behind him. All that will happen is I will lose my beloved sister just like you lost your ..." and here her voice trailed away. "Exactly," Tsovinar whispered and walked into the house. "The Young Turks have a fever that's rampant through in the whole Empire these days, sister. This man simply wants to kill Armenians — men, women, children, grandparents — they don't care. If he meets you he'll try to shoot you." There it was, stirring inside her, that bursting flood of blood and panic and desire — a wind of purifying fire — first shaking her soul and then sinking away to leave her strangely chilled. "Lord Christ knows there is no reason for him to shoot poor Hayk-jan. But what's that to do with any of these shootings and hangings these days? Do the Young Turks ever need a reason to shoot us?" Her sister went on, "Hudaverdi is here and just angry enough to want to kill. There's a lot of local folk whose ambition is to make a reputation for their Osmanli masters. They talk about how they'll answer the Armenian Question for them. They make threats about ordering the wild Kurdish horsemen in here to clear us all out. They laugh at our elders and brag about how they are above the law. But not this time. No more 'Kurd der vourar.'" There is a Turkish proverb about a Kurd who goes to buy a new sword. On the way home he spies an Armenian walking along the road and decides to see how sharp his sword really is so he swipes at the man's head. The Armenian raises his cane in self-defense and the sword shatters. The Kurd drags the Armenian into court and the judge angrily asks the accused, "why did you raise your cane? Didn't you know it was a Kurd who was striking you?" and orders the man to pay for a new sword for the Kurd. Thus, "Kurd der vourar" — it is a Kurd that is striking you — became both the motive and exoneration over many a murder. Both of the women were silent, thinking about what Tsovinar had just said, contemplating its significance. "If the Ottoman Empire is ever going to recover from this fool war Enver Pasha and all the rest have got us into then the Armenians will have a bright future once again," Anahit finally said, breaking the silence. "But if you go seeking to avenge Hayk, if you kill that man, you're ruined. The Young Turks won't even pause to kill one more woman. This eye for an eye business you speak of doesn't work with them when one of the dead are their own. If you resist arrest they'll kill you. If you submit to arrest, they will rape you then you and the you will be hung." "I'll never hang," Tsovinar muttered darkly. "No, I don't think you would," came the reply. "But sister, I'm afraid of your temper – it will get you in trouble. Your husband went out into the mountains to help fight Kurdish raiding parties, his own people. He never came back. After all of this I do not want to bury you in the same plot of earth as Hayk." Tsovinar went over to her little bed sitting in the corner and dragged an old, rusty trunk out from under and into the open. "Sister," Anahit continued, "I remember how you were before Hayk started spending time with you, moody and angry and your temper was full of wild talk. I can understand that. You had all the reasons in the world to be angry – but now you're cold and quiet, like you are lost in thought and I don't like the light in your eye." From inside the box Tsovinar lifted up one of the few things her husband had unwittingly left for her: his pistol and its gun belt. The gun was a Russian-made, ugly thing called a Nagant. Seven-shot, heavy, with the cold, dull polish showing how often it had once been used. There were a number of notches filed in the leather of the gun belt. Tsovinar had intended to bury it along with his body but since nothing had been returned the gun had been left in the trunk, hidden under her folded traveling robes. "How are you going to carry that thing?" Anahit inquired. "Like everyone else does, I think, in my hand and now I guess I'll go and let Hudaverdi find me." "You know all around these mountains," Anahit began. "After you meet Hudaverdi hurry back home. I'll have your traveling robes ready and a bag packed for you." With that Tsovinar turned on her heel and walked out of the house. The air was full of the fragrance of blossoms and the melody of birds. Tsovinar wondered presently if she shared her sister's opinion as to the results of a meeting between herself and Hudaverdi. She had no fear of the man, but a vague fear of her own nature, of the same fear her sister spoke of, of that burning force within her. Was it violence that excited her? Was it sorrow? Of all the times she ever felt that itch between her legs, why was she aroused now? Perhaps this willingness to let herself go forward with this act was her body's way of telling her soul that this was good and this voice, this spirit from deep within, was telling her body that she wanted this man's lifeblood now just as much as she had wanted her young lover's cum only the day before? Outside in the road a neighbor woman stood talking to a friend in a wagon. They turned and began to speak to Tsovinar but fell silent. She heard their words but did not reply. They looked at the shawl wrapped around her head, the outlandish gun hanging at her hip, the expression on her face as she began to stride down the road toward Erzurum and hurriedly crossed themselves on that sunny day. Erzurum was a small town but important in that unsettled part of the Empire for it was the only trading-center in several hundred miles of lawless mountains. On the main street there were perhaps fifty buildings, some brick, some wood, mostly made from the pink mountain rock, tuf, and by far the most prosperous of these were the scattering of cafes. It was in these that the older men, those not already conscripted into the Young Turk's army, met and smoked and brooded in their handlebar mustaches and fezzes. The taboo against gambling had been lifted, though the possession of alcohol was still a punishable crime in that part of the world. Most of the men of Erzurum preferred opium over spirits in any event. From the dirt road Tsovinar turned onto the main street. It was a wide thoroughfare lined with stalls of merchants, wayward children and wooden carts of various kinds. Tsovinar's eye ranged up and down, taking it all in at a glance, particularly the townfolk moving leisurely up and down the street on this hot day. Not a soldier was in sight. She relaxed slightly and by the time she reached the cafe of Ozlum Bey she was walking slowly. Several people spoke to her, for everyone knew why Tsovinar the Widow was in town and she felt them turn to look stare at her after she passed. She paused at the door of Ozlum's, took a sharp survey of the interior, then stepped inside. The cafe was large and cool, full of men and low conversation and hashish smoke. Ozlum Bey, who was behind the bar, straightened up when he saw her, then, without speaking, he bent over to rinse one of the tiny cups he served his sludge-like coffee in. The voices ceased upon her entrance. Though women were not technically barred from entering such an establishment it was rare, especially an unchaperoned woman and more than one face began to scowl at the intrusion into their own little world until they saw who it was and then they simply stared in amazement. These men knew Hudaverdi was looking for trouble, they probably had heard his boasts of killing an Armenian brat who happened to walk in front of him. But what did she intend to do? Several of the local men exchanged glances and returned to their low talk and pipes. Ozlum Bey stood with his big chapped hands out upon the table. He was a tall, raw-boned Turk with a long mustache waxed to sharp points. "Bonjour, Madam Tsovinar," was his greeting. He always attempted to use as much French as he could with this strange Armenian woman who had taken a Kurd for a husband so many years ago, for he knew she had once lived in Paris and was fond of her but now he averted his gaze and stared at the cup in his hand. "Barev," she replied, slowly, speaking a greeting in her own ancient language. "Tell me, Ozlum Bey, I hear there's a man in town I should find." "You might, Madam Tsovinar," replied Ozlum. "A friend came in here a couple of hours ago saying that such a man had gone crazy in the heat." "Anybody with him?" "Husein and Karaca and a little farmhand my friend had never seen before. They were coaxing him to leave town right before he shot Izmirlian's son." Tsovinar did not say anything for a moment. Her eyes were hidden in the shadow of the shawl and to the man behind the counter she suddenly looked terribly grotesque and alien. Perhaps it was this, or perhaps simply because she was a member of that despised and lowly caste — the Dhimmi, that all the Christians of Ottoman Turkey were part of — but suddenly Ozlum was certain he was looking at a woman capable of doing anything. "Why doesn't our Gendarmerie, Ozel Cavus, take care of him now that he is a killer?" "Ozel Cavus went away with the soldiers. There's been another attack over at Metshav. Kurdish raiders, likely. And so our town is wide open." Tsovinar stalked outdoors and started down the street, meeting many people — farmers, Greeks, merchants, Assyrians, shop clerks and Jews, however, when she turned to retrace her steps the street was deserted. A few fez-covered heads protruded from doorways and around corners. The main street of Erzurum saw blood being spilled on it every few days. The shooting of Hayk was common enough and just three days before a handful of Assyrian Christians had been executed in the main square of the town simply because the officer in charge had wanted to test out the new gallows he had erected. If it was an instinct for certain men of Erzurum to try and kill each other, it was also instinctive for everyone else to sense the signs of a coming violence. In less than ten minutes everybody who had been on the street or in the shops knew something that had never occurred before was about to take place, that Tsovinar, a woman and a lowly born Armenian at that, had come to meet her enemy, a Young Turk officer of high rank. When she returned to the entrance of Ozlum Bey's cafe she stood in the dusty heat for a moment and presently her friend came to stand in the doorway, watching her. "Tsovinar-jan, I'm tipping you off," he said, quick and low-voiced. "Hudaverdi is over at Todori's. If you are hunting him you can find him there." She nodded and re-crossed the street. Nothing happened as she traversed the whole length of the block without seeing a single person. Todori's cafe was on the opposite corner and she was suddenly conscious that she was aroused. Her crotch throbbed in anticipation. She kept squeezing her thighs and contracting her muscles as she stood, staring at the cafe. The simmer of anticipation had gradually become more pronounced, and now, with a cruel smile, she realized she was as wet now as when Hayk had entered her for the first time. Slowly she began walking forward but before she reached Todori's she heard loud voices, one of which was raised in a high pitch shriek, like a pig getting gutted during hog-cutting time. Then the door swung outward and a bow-legged man burst forth upon the sidewalk. He wore the military uniform of a colonel in the Young Turk's army and his eyes were red-rimmed and pupils bizarrely dilated. At first he didn't seem to see her, his attention centered on his comrades back in the cafe. Slowly he became aware of a presence behind him and turned. He stared at Tsovinar for a moment and then uttered a savage little laugh. Tsovinar stopped in her tracks at the edge of the dust. If Hudaverdi was tranquilized by a hookah-full of opium he did not show it in his movement. He swaggered drunkenly forward, rapidly closing the gap. Red, sweaty and disheveled, his face distorted, she saw that his hands were extended before him, the right hand a little lower than the left. Gradually he slowed his walk, then halted. A good twenty-five feet separated the two of them. "Bah. Woman, go home—!" he shouted, fiercely. "There is no honor in shooting a woman, even an Armenian, don't waste my time—!" "In that case, I'll enjoy this even more," she replied. Hudaverdi's right hand stiffened — moved. Tsovinar drew up the heavy pistol as a child throws a ball underhand — a graceful movement her husband had taught her — and fired twice. Hudaverdi's own gun boomed, still pointed downward as he fell back, loosely, crumbling. His bullet scattered dirt and gravel at her feet. Tsovinar stepped forward and held her gun ready for the slightest movement on Hudaverdi's part but the man lay upon his back and all that stirred were his chest and eyes. How strange now that the red had left his face so quickly. She was surprised there was no blood, she had been expecting a geyser, something to rival in death what her young buck had constantly seethed into her cunt, her ass, her mouth, her hair, in life. A momentary frown crossed her face. Then something deep inside the man ripped, as if the heart, desperately trying to pump through ruined arteries, had caused some internal rupture and then — glory and amazing — there was blood, everywhere. Hüdaverdi tried to speak, his mouth overflowing, gagged and failed. His eyes expressed something pitifully and then looked through her blankly. Tsovinar drew a deep breath and sheathed her pistol and when she looked up there were men around her. "Look at that center shot," said one. Another, who evidently had just left the gambling-table, leaned down and pulled open Hudaverdi's shirt. He had the Queen of Diamonds in his hand and laid it on Hudaverdi's ruined chest and the red mother on the card covered the two gaping bullet-holes just over the dead man's heart. The men looked at her, not hostility, only with the same curiosity children have when encountering a new bug they had never seen before. "Never saw a woman shoot like that: Armenian, Turk or Greek." "No, I know a few Kurdish women who can do that." "Wallah, Kurds, of course, yes, Kurdish women can do anything, but not Armenians." "No, not Armenians." Tsovinar wheeled and hurried away. Her husband had been a Kurd and all that remained of him was locked in her memories and the heavy pistol that sway lazily at her hip, now two bullets lighter. When she came to the gate of their farmhouse she saw Anahit there with her a canteen, rope and bags, all waiting for her, a subtle shock pervaded her spirit. "What a waste of time!" Tsovinar exclaimed, hotly. "Finding Hudaverdi wasn't much, Anahit-jan. He dusted my dress, that's all." "Tsovinar-jan, you killed him then?" asked her sister, huskily. "Yes. I stood over him and watched him die." "I knew it. I saw it coming. Now you've got to leave this part of the Empire." Tsovinar slowed. She ran a hand across her face, as if waking from a dream. She looked about herself and Anahit's heart swelled terribly for her sister looked a thousand years old. "What will I tell mother?" Tsovinar asked, as if in a daze. "Nothing. I'll break it to her—" Suddenly Tsovinar sat down and covered her face with her hands. "Anahit, what have I done?" Her shoulders shook. "Listen and remember what I say," Anahit replied in earnest. "You're not to blame. You are Armenian. The laws that the Young Turks are laying down now changes all our lives in a minute. The years since the Hamidian Massacres are terrible times and they burn in a person and breed an instinct to fight, to save our lives and that instinct is in you. It will be many generations before it dies out of our blood." "But I'm a murderer," Tsovinar said, shuddering. "No, sister, you're not. And you never will be. But you've got to go and be a Kurd until it is safe for you to come back home." "Be a Kurd?" "Yes. The Young Turks are afraid of Kurds. Even when they raid our towns and villages the army looks the other way. Strike for the mountains in the east and when you get among those men avoid challenging them. Kurdish women ride with their husbands but even the Kurds have their limits as to what they will tolerate. You can't come home. When this is over, if that time ever comes, I'll get word to you. That's all. Goodbye, my sister." With blurred sight, Tsovinar gripped her sister and turned her back on everything that she knew and walking down the road with her bag over her shoulder without looking back. Traveling through the mountains was slow work. By evening Tsovinar had only put five or six lineal miles between herself and Erzurum, however, walking did not require much thinking so it gave her ample room to mourn and wonder. By noon the next day she came down from the mountains and hiked through the foothills. She had yet to pass a farm or house since she was in a flat region with poor vegetation. Occasionally she caught a glimpse of low stretches of desert in the far distance. Her husband had taken her into this world often enough so she knew where water could be found. When she reached lower ground she did not, however, halt at the first favorable spot that presented itself, but kept moving. She was a tiny speck on the face of the plains but her shadow went on before her, stretching on and on. By the third day Tsovinar came out upon the brow of a hill and saw a considerable stretch of country beneath her. It had the sun-burned humdrum as all that she had crossed. She wanted to see vast space — to get a view of the great desert lying someplace beyond to the south. It was sunset when she decided to camp. She passed by old campsites that she remembered. At last she found a secluded spot under cover of thick scrag at a respectable distance from the old trail. She made a small fire, prepared her supper. Coming of the Red Mother Ch. 02 Twilight had slowly shifted into dusk. A few pallid stars had just begun to show and brighten the skies above her. Beyond the low continuous hum of summer insects sounded the evening carol of song birds whose names she did not know. Presently the birds ceased singing and in that pause the quiet was noticeable. When night set in and the place seemed all the more isolated and lonely for that stillness in the air she had a sense of relief. She couldn't explain why, but this isolation was turning her on. All her life she had been surrounded by others — her mother and father, her husband and gossiping women of the market, her sister and her family, even Hayk — now she was alone and breathed in the night air deeply, feeling a long-familiar stirring in her gut. She wasn't suppose to be here, to be alive, to be able to do the things she had done. She spread her legs, dangling one over the edge of a nearby log and pulled her dress to her knees. In the firelight she drew slow little circles on her naked thighs with her fingertips. Caressing her bare skin, she slid a finger under her rough, 19th century bloomers and could just touch her outlandish panties. Arching a little, she stretched her finger a bit more and could feel the dampening spot. She fingered her clit through her wet cloth and sighed in relief. Time passed. Her hair had begun to stick to her face, beads of sweat marking her upper lip. Her arousal was mixed with night heat and the pleasure was taking her out of her body. She drew her knees up to her chest and rolled over to one side, urging her desire to come. Usually, when she masturbated, she fantasize about others. Tonight she did not. It was just her soul and her body's response to pleasure. Closing her eyes, she gloried in the squishy sloot-sloot noise her fingers made, ramming four fingers in as far as they could go. Sweat dampened her temples and stung her eyes but she continued. This was perfect. Arching into pleasure she was gripped by the beginnings of her first climax. She began to pulse. Clenching and unclenching her cunt muscles, she called upon all the ancient gods of her people to hurry to her, to bring her pleasure, bring her revenge. Moaning aloud, her knees almost touched her ears as she writhed and flexed and bucked, her cries increasing in volume, she was close, very close. Her hips thrust into her hand just as she recoiled from her own fury. She couldn't take it anymore and yet she was determined to cum. She thrashed harder, her cries louder and louder. Her old self would have worried that such noise would have attracted unwanted attention. But the change one day had brought amazed her. All that what Hayk had loved in her — her free, easy, happy spirit — and all that her husband had loved in her — her bold, intelligent, self-assured manner — was gone. Her ragged moans drowned out the sound of the night. It drowned out her ferocious hammering of her heart and the blood pulsing in her ears, her fingers, her cunt. These weren't cries of pleasure, these were battle cries, the sound the lioness makes in the savanna at night before the kill. She would take on the whole Ottoman army if she had to. Let them come. She was about to cum. Someone was coming, someone had to because the masculine pride of the Young Turks would never allow a contradiction like her to exist. By Sharia law not only was she a member of the untouchable Dhimmi but she was a soul-less woman as well, fit only to bring male heirs into the world, forever needing to be kept in check due to her dark, illogical emotions. In one last stab she impaled her fingers painfully deep in her flesh and exploded. Slumping back on the ground like the cut strings on a marionette, her dress around her hips, head lolling to the side and then the other, she whined, jerked, twitched and fell away, sleeping the sleep of the dead. Far to the south, across the endless wastelands that are called Der ez Zor, a presence stirred, awoke and stretched. There had been a noise, a noise not heard under the moon for — uncountable eons. There had been a cry, a barbaric ululation, a blood yawp, the sort of sound that only souls can give while exposed to great pleasure or great pain. The shadow that moved across the sands knew about pain and the guilt that comes from it. Somewhere, out there in the foothills of Anatolia, lay a woman who had uttered those sounds and the shadow moved off, passing over the dunes without leaving so much as a footprint in the sand and not even the wind knew what passed beneath it.