The Ne'reween

"Honey. Honey! Where are you? Where -- Augh!"

Rhone jumped as Honey sprang up behind him, out of the darkness and grabbed him from behind. She then ran past him down the path and sprang back into the dark bushes, giggling the whole time. With a grin Rhone ran after her.

The landscape was well lit by the full moon. In years past neither Rhone nor Honey would have dared venture out-of-doors during All Souls Night, but they were both feeling their full fourteen years' age, and had decided that they were too old to believe in the fables and tales the adults spun by the fireside for the other children. Besides, there were other, more interesting things to do.

Rhone could not see Honey up ahead, but he could hear her excited breathing and the sound of her passage through the undergrowth. His own breath came out in half-laughs, thrilled at the chase. He always liked Honey, but now he felt a certain, special excitement around her. He wasn't entirely sure why, but there was something about her that he somehow had never noticed until this year. Maybe it was her new height. Until this year she was always the smaller of the two. Maybe it was loneliness. His older brothers had gone off to war, and half the village children were gone, migrated to the cities with their families in search of work and food.

What Rhone wouldn't admit to himself was that suddenly Honey wasn't just a girl anymore, and he was no longer a young boy. He realized now that there was an attractiveness to the opposite sex, and for whatever reason, it seemed to concentrate itself in Honey. The mysteries of love were a mere rumor to him, but there were many mysteries about Honey, and Rhone knew he wanted to stay close to her, in case some were revealed.

He stopped in a small ravine, panting, holding his breath fitfully so he could listen. Where had she gone? The sound of snapping twigs brought him around, and drew his gaze up the steep, rocky, slope. There, up the hill, with the moonlight shining on her, stood Honey.

"Up here, snail!" she yelled, jumping up and down and waving her arms. "You sure run slow! Aren't you going to catch me?"

"Shhh!" urged Rhone, "They'll hear you back at the house!"

"Slow ox!" she taunted. "Mole feet!"

He dashed up the slope, and she ran ahead of him. The higher they climbed, the slower they climbed. Finally Rhone paused.

"Whew!" he exclaimed, pausing and stripping off his shirt. He mopped his brow with it, then tossed it on top of a prominent boulder. "All this running has me sweating!" Rhone started up the slope again, dodging around the boulders.

"That's a good idea!" she called out. "I'm too hot for this," she added, in a tone of voice that caught Rhone's attention. He looked up just in time to see her throw her dress up over her head. He stood, stunned. She looked down at him with a mischievous grin and laughed at his shock. Rhone could do little but stare. He had seen her naked many times before, as children playing in the nearby streams, but somehow seeing her like this revealed the changes the years had made in them both. In the dim moonlight she was a vision of pale white curves, unmarked by any darkness save her flowing locks above and the beginning of a delta below. For some reason that made his breath shorter, and his blood hotter.

"That's much better," she taunted saucily. "Now I can run even faster!" With a hop and a skip she disappeared. Rhone followed, a different sort of energy suffusing his legs.

Rhone knew the slope reached a ridge at the top, then descended to the road. She wouldn't risk appearing there, where he was sure to catch her in the open, so she would have to go further away from the house. He cut across the slope and crested the rise higher up. He ran hard toward the path, listening to her giggles ahead. He burst out of the brush at the same moment she did. He could see that she was naked, save for her shoes and a band of white cloth around her chest. She let loose a delighted shriek, and nearly stumbled while turning back. He followed, and for a moment more they ran, laughing hard. Finally he reached out and seized the cloth, and pulled her in. They went down in a tumble.

Rhone landed on top, pinning his quarry to the dirt. Honey squirmed, trying to push him off, laughing. He tickled her, squealing with glee. She writhed, shrieking, trying at first to escape, then wrapped her legs around his waist. She ran her hands across his smooth chest, her eyes wide. Rhone placed one hand on each hip, fondling the revealed treasure. He slid his hands upwards and seized the cloth around her chest. It was tight, binding the lower half of her breasts, pushing them up and making them look larger than they were. He tugged on the band, pulling it down.

"No!" she exclaimed, laughing. "Not my fascia!" She grasped the band, trying to hold it up. They struggled, giggling, until suddenly one of her breasts came free. Immediately her resistance faded, and the fascia fell away. Rhone tossed it aside and stared in awe at Honey, who lay there, panting, waiting. Unsure just what to do, Rhone lowered his lips to her breast.

"Just a taste of Honey," he whispered.

"I wouldn't do that," a voice behind them said.

They both yelped, scrambling to their knees. Honey covered herself with her hands and cowered behind Rhone. They stared trembling at the stranger who had accosted them. He was dressed in dark cloth, with a wide-brimmed hat on his head. From its rim dangled wooden rings strung with colored beads. The couple couldn't see much of his face, but when he smiled they could see only gums, without a single tooth in sight. The moonlight glinted off his eyes.

"Who ... who are you?!" blurted Rhone, pushing back away from the man. "What do you want?!"

"I wouldn't be ... tasting those sweets here at night," the man cautioned. "The ne'reween is likely to get you."

"The what?" gasped Honey.

"The ne'reween. Haven't you ever heard of the ne'reween?" He leaned forward, stepping closer, lowering his head to stare straight into their eyes.

"Many years ago there was a young couple, just like you," he said. "They were tasting their spring buds too, just like you, only they got just a little bit further. Well, the girl, see, she was ripe, and after a while, she had a baby."

Rhone started to squirm uncomfortably. He knew where babies came from, but that was not what he had been thinking of a few moments before. Now the possible implications of their unplanned intimacy was sinking in. Behind him he could feel Honey draw away from him.

"Of course," the man continued, "she was really too young. When the baby was born, see, her sweets were too hard, and they wouldn't give no milk! Oh, how the baby cried and cried, but when she gave her breast for it to suck, there was nothing there.

"Well, after a long while of listening to the baby crying she got so angry that she went out and got some milkweed sap and gave that to the baby to drink."

"But ... but milkweed .. it's poison!" stuttered Honey, protesting, again hugging Rhone close.

"Aye, that it is. She took the baby out into the woods, and wrapped it in her fascia," -- he pointed to the white cloth lying beside the path -- "and left it to die. Which it did."

The man took a step closer, the beads on his hat rattling. "Well, perhaps I shouldn't say it died. Let's just say it wasn't a baby anymore. For, you see, a bit later that same two was out in the woods again, stirring the soup as it were. The ne'reween, for that's what the baby had become, saw the man and woman, you see. It thought that the man was attacking its mother, for being a baby it didn't understand such things as you do now. So it grew claws and teeth, and it tore the throat out of that young man, who was actually its own father."

Rhone wrapped his hand uncomfortably around his neck.

"After that it saw its mother there, with her lovelies exposed, just as if to give it suckle. Well, it was forever hungry, cursed as it was, and it tried to suck. But her tits were still just as hard: almost as flat as your own, if you please."

Honey released Rhone and wrapped her arms around her bare chest.

"Well, it sucked and sucked, but nothing came out. So it sucked even harder, and finally sucked the life right out of her. So you see, that's why you ought not be tasting those sweets tonight, here in the woods. For the ne'reween is still out there," he swept his arm around at the darkness, "looking for a breast to suck. And if it saw yours, well, you wouldn't like it."

The man leaned forward, stepping even closer to the frightened pair.

"Now you better be getting your clothes back on and be getting back home. If you know what's good for ya." When they just sat there, paralyzed, he thrust his head forward with a jerk. "Go!"

Rhone and Honey jumped to their feet and ran. They ran back up the hill the way they came, hard at first, then slower as the exertion caught up to them. Away from that intimidating presence, Rhone now was regaining a sense of himself. When Honey finally slowed to catch her breath he touched her shoulder. She looked at him and took his proffered hand, then exchanged that for his embrace. They stared into each other's eyes for a long moment, then laughed. Rhone and Honey continued jogging up the hill, holding onto each other's hand and not looking back. They reached Honey's dress and she snatched it up, then they passed Rhone's shirt and he did the same. They ran until they reached the path, where they collapsed to their knees, laughing.

"Who was that?" asked Rhone finally, shrugging his shirt on.

"I ... I don't know!" Honey replied as she slipped her dress back over her head. Rhone watched her secret parts disappear from view, wondering when he would see them again. They fell into each other's arms and laughed a long while. Then, holding hands, they started back toward the house. Suddenly Honey stopped, her hands flying up to clutch her breasts.

"What?" exclaimed Rhone.

"My fascia! I left it back there!"

"Get it in the morning," urged Rhone. Suddenly the woods seemed darker than they had before. Though he wouldn't admit it to her, he had a strong desire to be out of the dark, inside with the others.

"No, no, you don't understand!" Honey insisted. "If I come back without it, mother will see when I undress tonight. She'll know I've been up to something! We have to go back and get it!"

Together they turned back and ran up the path, always looking ahead for the dark form of the stranger. They reached the spot where they had met him, but he was not to be seen.

"It's around here somewhere," Honey said. "Look at the side of the path."

They scouted about. Suddenly Honey spotted a clump of white in the undergrowth.

"Here it is!" She bent down to pick it up as Rhone stepped over to her side. What she lifted was not her fascia, however, but a bundle. It fell apart as she lifted it. Out rolled an infant's toothless skull. As they stared in horror, a wooden ring strung with beads fell to the ground. It was a baby rattle. With a howl of unreasoning terror, the two turned and ran straight home without stopping. ◊

---

When you are the third of seven children, it can sometimes feel like you are lost in the crowd, but there are times when Jim Owens is a crowd unto himself. A garrulous dabbler in the fine arts, a seasoned professional in the field of computer technology, and an earnest seeker for the meaning of life, Jim is interested in almost everything that isn't a professional sport, and will even talk about those occasionally. Not only has he been writing fiction since the age of eight, he also is married to a wonderful woman and lives in the beautiful state of Oregon.