The wood that runs alongside the Jambville Castle Estate was scattered with poor homes. They were not real houses, but neither were they simple huts. The buildings rose disorderly, partially done with crooked walls of stones without mortar, partially with wooden boards, and with roofs thatched with straw or made of bark. In most, smoke rose through a simple hole in the roof, but some few even possessed a chimney pot. In these dwellings lived a collection of wretched and ragged people, not peasants of the Count, for they lived in places worthy of being called houses even if poor, neither the Castle servants, who wore spotless liveries, but rather people that managed to live carrying out the most humble and unpleasant tasks needed for the castle inhabitants, like bringing away the dung from the stables, cleaning the rivers of dead branches or of wild animal corpses, and any other tasks that were below the station of the Count's servants.
These people, apart from the food they received from the castle servants in exchange for their occasional services, and from clothes so worn that it was rather difficult to call them clothes and that were kept together more by dirt and improvised strings than by tailor art, managed to eke a living also by picking herbs and any other edibles provided by nature, as well as by small thefts, rarely of anything too big a value to be noticed: buckets with the bottoms bursting out, broken tools and parts of what ended in the castle dustbin that they had to periodically empty.
Another common characteristic of these people was that nobody had a real name, or if they ever had, it was one that was long ago buried in the memory and forgotten. They called each other by nicknames and fake names often cruel and vulgar: Crosseye, Stinky, Fuckass, Swipy, Poison, Fattie, Gossipy, Plucky, Shitty, Nobottom and other names even less refined.
When the castle lords or their guests were passing on the road that, cutting through the wood, arrived at the castle, these beings hid in the branches and the bushes. Nobody knows if it was because they were ashamed to show their abjection, or because they were afraid to arouse the powerful mockery that was sure to follow their discovery. From their hideaways they spied on the rumbling passages of the coaches, or the dusty drumming of the horses' hooves, or the proceeding of the rare passerby on foot accompanied by his servants.
This invisible, at least for the castle lords, wood population, over time was enriched by some new element: a few newborns that, however, seldom survived to an adult age, or some fleeing soul looking for a refuge in that anonymous society. There, at least, nobody asked questions. There nobody was curious.
Here, in the year of Our Lord 1773, in an unspecified month of Spring, on a day like all other days, to a certain Tawny and from an unknown father, a baby was born. In the first years he didn't even have a name. When, weaned and able to walk, he started to bother the other wood inhabitants, they started to call him with various epithets and of those that of Snot-boy stuck to him. Contrary to the biggest part of the newborn babes of that place, he grew up healthy and strong, full of liveliness and curiosity. This last earned him slaps and kicks, and, when older, even some strokes from a willow branch, but he never lost his curiosity.
When the boy was nine years old, Tawny left him an orphan. If until then he had had from his mother some kind of vague protection and guidance, now Snot-boy was abandoned to himself. But exactly then the Blade arrived, a newcomer with a hard aspect about him. He buried the woman, appropriated what had been Tawny's shelter, and with it, all that was there contained, including Snot-boy.
The Blade was different from the others, as often were the newcomers. His clothes were less shapeless and worn out, and they still conserved a trace of their original colours. His manners were less coarse. However, his countenance was enough to command respect, and at times, even to strike fear in the heart of others. Moreover, the Blade was still a strong and sound man, around thirty years old, and his body wasn't emaciated and weak like almost all the wood people. Finally, and above all, The Blade always carried with him a very beautiful shining dagger, that which gave him his new name. Snot-boy was soon fascinated by him.
It was not long before Snot-boy started to pester him with thousands of questions and thousands of whys. The Blade, if he was in a good mood, which was very seldom, answered him. The little boy, if he didn't receive an answer, didn't persist and took an interest in other matters. However, if once in ten the answer did come, Snot-boy didn't lose a single word and listened with never sated eagerness. Then, when alone, he recalled and turned over in his mind what he had heard from the man.
Snot-boy was now a boy in full development, with a body not particularly strong but neither frail. He was very fast in running, and very skilled in climbing or in hiding. He seldom approached the castle or it's immediate surroundings, but he did enter the estate sometimes, when called with gestures by a servant or another asking him to perform some small task. The boy felt an attraction to and a curiosity about the great building as well as the people living in it, but an unconscious fear prevented him from approaching too close. To him, the servants in their elegant liveries seemed lords, and the real castle lords seemed unreachable as dreams. (He would have thought "like gods" if he knew the meaning of such, but nobody never talked about God among his people).
Once, sneaking through the bushes of the estate and arriving at the edge of the garden at the back of the castle, he succeeded in seeing a little boy. He was a little older than himself, and a bit taller, yet Snot immediately felt, in a confused and vague way, that an abyss separated them. The other was splendour personified. Whereas Snot-boy's clothes were shapeless and of the colour of soil, the other's were perfect and of gay colours; whereas he was covered in crusts and unkempt, so the other was clean and tidy; and, whereas his hair was tangled and dark and stuck to his head because he never washed it, so the other's hair was soft and luminous and beautiful....
It was exactly this enormous difference, this abyss, that awoke in Snot the urgent desire to go back to admire the other as often possible. From that day on, therefore, he started to sneak more and more often into the estate, in the hope of being able to see again the one that he now called, for himself, "The Other".
The Blade noticed the more frequent absences of the little boy and one day asked him the reason. He was not really interested in Snot's doings, but he suspected that the boy might have found some small work from the castle servants, and that he wasn't sharing with him the reward.
To the man's question Snot didn't know what to say, because he would not share with anybody his secret. So he answered with a vague, "I stroll and wander, here and there...." This vague answer made the Blade even more suspicious so that he openly accused the boy of keeping all for himself the food he received from the castle servants for tasks they had given him. Snot denied this was so, but whilst denying, his eyes sparkled, amused by the idea that the man was so far from the true reason, and that his secret was safe. However, the Blade interpreted the light in the boy's eyes as the final confirmation that his suspicions were right.
He grasped the boy by his rags and started to shake him and to insult and threaten him. Snot let the man do so undaunted, his eyes always lightened by a faint glimmer of mischief and amusement. He let the man have his way both because he was conscious he didn't have the physical strength to oppose the Blade, and because all things considered, he was accustomed to the angry outbursts of the man and he knew that they never were too long or dangerous, if you didn't check them.
Suddenly, however, the boy read in the man's eyes something new, a light he had never seen before, not evil, not good, but burning. Those dark eyes seemed like they were letting leak out little by little, like a hidden fire, a secret force. The little boy looked in amazement, curiosity, and fascination at those eyes and barely noticed that the man was ceasing to shake him but was clutching him more tightly than before.
Then, suddenly, the Blade dropped him and roughly pushed him far away, but while he was pushing him away, his eyes seemed rather wanting to possess him, two black whirlpools waiting to sweep up their booty. Snot felt rather frightened. Now the smile that normally fluttered on his boyish face faded, and a kind of strange bewilderment seized him. His rather wild life had gotten him used, right from childhood, to recognize the meaning of the different ways people had of looking. From that skill came, for instance, the ability to flee a moment before a burst of rage or an attempt to strike him. He was able to recognize in the other eyes hate, hunger, boredom, anger, mockery, amusement, rage.... He could read in the other eyes interest, pity, greed, liking....
Now he was dumbfounded: he had never seen a way of looking like he saw that moment. He backed away from the Blade two or three steps, continuing to look in his eyes as if hypnotized. Also the man, even though he had sent the boy away from himself, continued to look straight, and in silence, into the boy's eyes. Now Snot read in those eyes something he recognized: uncertainty, hesitation, and then the reflex of a struggle between two different imperatives.... Then finally there was a lightning. Now his eyes were once again sure, hard, and ablaze with that strange unknown fire.
Without moving The Blade, always looking straight in his eyes, ordered, "Take off yer rags!"
Snot didn't of course expect such an order, but, even though astounded, he felt he could not disobey. The force of that look was enormous and bound his will to that of the man. So, slowly, he removed from his body the few rags that barely covered it.
"Down, on my bed. Face downward."
Again Snot obeyed, and, for the first time in those eternal minutes, their eyes separated. Then The Blade approached and Snot instinctively felt, or better, feared, that some menace, something terrible, was threatening him. The man sat near the boy on the straw mattress and one of his rough hands lay on Snot's buttocks, remained still for a while, then in the unreal silence that had befallen the room, started to caress them, at first slowly and lightly, then with more strength, rather than with roughness. Now both hands of the man were groping the small buttocks, were fingering them, and Snot felt that all that was happening was weird. He didn't understand. In the short span of his life nothing similar had ever happened.
He heard the Blade's breath becoming heavier, more excited, then, for a moment, those hands left him. The little boy turned his head and looked toward the man as he tried to understand what was happening. The man had risen up and was untying his breeches. As he lowered them, Snot saw that between his legs there was a thatch of dark hair from whence a fleshy pole was jutting out, straight and quivering. The small boy couldn't understand what was happening. He looked again in the man's eyes. They were ablaze like two burning brands, seeming to burn with fever. They emanated force, determination, and power, and, from the true bottom, joy. A wild joy....
Stepping on each side of the little boy, the man knelt, took again his buttocks in his hands, and opening them wide, leaned his face almost until it brushed against them and spat, straight and with force. Snot felt the spit hit his little hole. He didn't really understand, all was so weird, so unexpected, so absurd.... What the hell was happening, and why?
Whatever it was, the little boy felt it was something that had to happen, something unavoidable, so he waited. He felt something hard pushing on his anus and at once he realized that it was the man's pole and understood that The Blade wanted to insert it inside him. He didn't know, and couldn't understand, the reason for that, but if The Blade had decided that was what he wanted, the boy thought he for sure must have good reasons. The Blade never did things without good reason.
The man's hands continued to keep wide open the little boy buttocks and the pole pushed with growing strength and determination, now charged with all the weight of the man's body. Snot felt a sharp pain, then a dull pain, and by instinct he contracted his muscles. The Blade pushed with greater force. The boy relaxed just a short moment to catch his breath and felt he was being penetrated, invaded, split open....
The Blade gave a strong push with his loins and sunk in him a little bit more. Snot moaned, shut his eyes, and bit his lip, but he didn't try to escape that pain. He knew that he could never be able to oppose The Blade. He just continued to ask himself the meaning of what was happening to him. Was this a way to punish him? Well, if so, he had just to wait for the end of this unusual punishment. So he relaxed, resigned to the inevitable.
That big pole of flesh between his buttocks, inside his small hole, once more slid further inside. Snot perceived that the less he tried to resist that invasion, the less he felt pain. Therefore he relaxed completely and the man fully sunk inside him. Two steel hands grasped him by the shoulders, and then the man, planting his knees and arms on the mattress, started to move his pelvis up and down. That continuous rubbing and pushing, that hard going and coming inside him, bothered Snot, but he didn't move. He realized that The Blade's breath was changing, becoming difficult, almost hoarse. It was as if the man was suffering! In a short while, in fact, the man started to groan, to shake convulsively, then stiffening and becoming hard as seasoned wood, he quivered and vibrated. Accompanying a violent tremble, a choked yell came from The Blade's throat and at last the man went limp on him, falling inertly upon his small body.
At first the little boy thought that the man was dead and felt a sense of bewilderment, and of panic. But then he felt the warm breath of the man on the nape of his neck, and felt his hands moving. Finally, after a few moments, The Blade unsheathed from inside him, exhaled a deep sigh, and stretched out at his side. Snot looked The Blade in his eyes, frightened but curious. Now he was able to read those eyes very well. It was exactly the look that all the wood people had those rare times when they succeeded in stuffing themselves with food. In The Blade's eyes he saw that same sated, happy, satisfied air....
So, with an uncertain voice, he asked, "You feel ok, Blade?"
The man softly sniggered and answered, "'Course. Very well."
The boy turned on his side. "What happened?"
"I fucked you."
"Fucked? In what sense?"
"Literally. I've put it in yer ass."
"'Course, but why?"
"I felt like it."
"But why?"
"T' enjoy."
"You enjoyed? I felt pain."
"You'll get used t' it."
"So you'll put it again into me?"
"'Course. I'm an idiot I didn't think of doing it before!"
"But you liked it? I felt pain." Snot repeated. This wasn't a complaint, or a protest, but simply a statement.
The Blade tied his breeches up. He met again the boy's eyes and said, "When a man has a hard-on, he has to give vent, to push it in a hole. When you grow older, you'll understand. To fuck is one of the best things there can be, for a man."
This was one of the longest conversations the man ever had with the boy. Snot didn't really understand, but he nodded. If The Blade said it, then it must be that way. Snot had no doubts on that.
Snot learned to recognize that special light in the eyes of The Blade, and when he spotted that, he just undressed and lay at once on the straw mattress of the man and let him hammer at his little ass until the man reached his orgasm, deeply embedded in him.
Snot learned to recognize that way of looking also in the eyes of other people, and understood that what The Blade was doing with him, others were doing the same between themselves when they withdrew with that look in their faces to come back awhile later with a sated look... Even if he didn't talk about that with anybody, he understood that often it happened between men and women, but also between two men or two women, but he was never curious enough to see how the others did it. He, anyway, already knew that very well.
It was rare that the Blade had to ask him. He was able to understand straightaway. And, as the months passed, he noticed that the pain was little by little vanishing. Little Snot didn't yet feel pleasure, for his body was not yet awakened to his sexuality, yet he allowed the man to penetrate him without any hesitation. Rather, he realized that by acting in a certain way he could light desire in The Blade's eyes, and that by moving in a certain way under the man's assaults, he was able to increase or lessen the man's pleasure, to lengthen or shorten his orgasms. He realized that he was developing a certain power over the man, and he was pleased by that. So, by instinct, he learned to please him better and better. To him, this had become a kind of game....
Then something changed when, while The Blade was mounting him one day, between the boy's legs a turgidity arose and Snot, for the first time, felt also a vague sensation of pleasure that culminated in a dry orgasm. The pleasure grew still greater some time later when from his little pole, which was still small but had started to grow, the first drops of a whitish liquid very similar to what The Blade left between his buttocks when he fucked him started to come out.
Snot thought that possibly he would love to have somebody to fuck, besides being fucked. However, he didn't know how to go about finding someone, being that he was the youngest one in that community of wood people, and confusedly understanding that he couldn't ask an adult, and even less than that, ask The Blade to let him try.
When the man realized that the boy had started to mature and that he was now able to emit his first seed drops, he one time said him, "When I mount you, beat it."
"Beat it? What do I have t' beat? What do you mean?"
"This way," the man simply said, and started to masturbate in front of the attentive eyes of the boy. Snot followed suit. The man smiled, and, making him lean forward, took him from the back and started to fuck him, this time standing up. The boy continued to masturbate and noticed that now the hot pole inside him, especially when rubbed against a certain spot, was giving him a strong, intense pleasure....
So, he discovered a new step in the reaching of pleasure. Soon he didn't limit himself to masturbating when The Blade was fucking him, but began doing it himself when he was alone. With one hand he masturbated while he inserted two fingers of the other hand into his own back hole, and so he discovered he was able to give himself pleasure at will, even if alone.
When he made that discovery, Snot was about thirteen...