Edarta: An Erotic Fantasy

By Michael Harvey Friedman

When David Sendek, a 34-year-old software engineer who has always been a bit of a failure with women, stumbles upon a mysterious BDSM club called Nyala in San Francisco's SoMa District, he can't resist the fatal charms of Jill Ashe, a gorgeous dominatrix who seduces him and becomes the love of his life.

David's closest friend, 33-year-old

• Language: English
• Publisher: Butternut Press
• Release date: Sep 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735392431

Book preview

In Nyala, Book 1 of The Upstairs Girls, David Sendek and Wilhelmina (Willie) Ludlow, two thirty-three-year-old friends, fall under the spell of Jilaynie Ashe and Selene Mayweather, a pair of stunning dominatrices at a San Francisco-based BDSM club called Nyala. Little do they suspect that these seductive females are actually Meliai Dryads who have a hidden agenda: to seduce and abduct humans to their home world of Ausonia where, through a kind of erotic magic, they will be turned into the Drys trees the Meliai desperately need in order to survive.

Each Dryad’s immortal life springs from the enigmatic bond she has with her own tree. As long as that tree lives, the Dryad remains young and beautiful. But if her tree dies, the Dryad will age rapidly and die in agony; and now the Drys orchards in Ausonia are succumbing to a blight that threatens to wipe out the entire Meliai clan. Fortunately, a Dryad can transfer her life-giving bond to a new tree—if she can create one from her human lover before her blighted tree dies. The Meliai have found that working at an upscale BDSM club is the perfect cover for finding the type of humans from which they can create new, healthy trees.

David, a shy software engineer who has little experience with women, has never had the courage to act out his fantasies until he meets the exotic Mistress Jilaynie (Jill) and begins to visit her as a paying client at Nyala. Amazingly, after several sessions, this stunning dominatrix asks him on a date, saying she has feelings for him and can no longer accept his money. Thrilled by his unbelievable luck, David eagerly accepts, and Jill takes him to dinner, then back to her apartment, where she cuffs him to her bed and seduces him with the aid of a mysterious drug from her home world. Thoroughly under her spell, David begins a torrid affair with Jill, oblivious to the fact that she’s a Dryad, and that her true purpose is to turn him into her life-giving tree.

Willie, a strong-willed lesbian businesswoman, is David’s closest friend. As a child, she was the victim of violent sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather, Reverend Harry Barton, who became the biological father of her daughter—an infant she surrendered to an illegal baby mill before running away from home in Orlando as a young girl. When David tells her he’s in love with a dominatrix, Willie is horrified, believing he is in the clutches of a sadistic woman who is after the $1.5 million he made from his stock options. But she wrongly assumes David is seeing Selene Mayweather, the gorgeous Headmistress at Nyala, who has become a local celebrity due to her cable TV appearances and best-selling book.

Failing to dissuade David from his folly, Willie (posing as a client) books a session with Selene and attempts to put a stop to the dangerous liaison by threatening to have her club closed down as a brothel. Selene easily deflects the scheme and angrily tells Willie that David is not involved with her at all, but with her assistant Jill. She then slaps Willie for trying to blackmail her and, feeling humiliated, Willie flees.

So she is astonished when Selene phones days later to ask her on a date. Realizing she is attracted to Selene, Willie accepts, and the two women meet in Golden Gate Park. Willie, who seldom talks about her painful past, is both surprised and touched by Selene’s kindness and finds herself revealing her entire history, including how she was made pregnant by her stepfather and had to abandon her infant daughter to strangers. Burdened by guilt, Willie breaks down in tears, and Selene comforts her with clandestine, kinky sex at an outdoor restaurant, after which they begin a romantic relationship.

When Harry, Willie’s stepfather, turns up in San Francisco with Clementine, the autistic daughter he fathered with her seventeen years ago, Selene intercepts them at the airport and, by abducting both to Ausonia through an interdimensional portal, acts to protect Willie from Harry’s scheme to use Clementine to regain control of her.

Meanwhile, David’s father, Lester, is dying of Huntington’s chorea, a debilitating genetic ailment that David stands a fifty-percent chance of inheriting. When David and Jill (now living together) visit him in hospice, Lester, whose mind has become addled by the disease, mistakes Jill for the wife who abandoned him years ago and asks her for oral sex. David is horrified, but the freewheeling Jill determines to grant Lester’s dying wish and pushes David into reluctantly agreeing. She presents it as an act of kindness to his dying father, knowing that David, who adores Lester, won’t be able to refuse. But she is also testing David to see how far he might be willing to go for love of her.

When he seems about to end their relationship, Jill realizes to her dismay that she’s actually in love with David, which puts a major snag in her plans to transform him. Both her choices now seem bad: She can leave David human and lose her own life, or else sacrifice him to save herself. Complicating matters, Jill has a twin sister in Ausonia named Janaynie, whose own life also depends on turning David into a Drys tree, and Janaynie is pressing Jill to complete her mission, making veiled threats of what might happen if she doesn’t follow through.

Unable to return to Ausonia without David, and unable to remain lovers with him on Earth for fear that the Meliai Tribunal will punish her by exacting vengeance on David, Jill decides to set him free and vanish from his life in order to protect him, reasoning that if she is gone, the Tribunal will have no cause to harm him.

Jill has a mysterious accident when her car plunges off a cliff into the ocean and she is presumed dead, though her body is never recovered. Soon thereafter, David’s father dies of his illness, and the death of two people he deeply loved sends David into an emotional tailspin. Willie fears her dearest friend is coming unglued from grief when he tells her he hears Jill’s voice at night and is convinced she is still alive somewhere and searching for him.

Willie tries to dissuade David from this foolish fantasy, telling him he must let go of Jill and move on with his life or he will never find love again. But that night, he has a prophetic dream in which he finds Jill and together they climb a thousand-foot tree into a golden land where death has been banished forever. He wakes more convinced than ever that Jill is alive; however, it was not Jill but her manipulative twin Janaynie who psychically entered his dream.

Determined to get both Willie and David to Ausonia, Selene invites them to a Halloween fetish ball at Nyala, and before the party begins, she suggests that Willie view an erotic art gallery housed on the second floor of the building. She gives Willie a glass of secretly drugged punch, then leaves her alone to peruse the odd paintings, a couple of which show people in the process of becoming trees in a way Willie finds disturbingly sensuous. Puzzling over the bizarre paintings, Willie becomes disoriented as a result of the punch, lies down on one of the gallery’s viewing benches, and loses consciousness.

Meanwhile, David is upstairs in Nyala’s exotic dungeon, where the kinky ball is in full swing. He searches for Willie, who promised to meet him by the bandstand at 9:00, but hours later, there is still no sign of her. Just as he is about to give up and go home, he’s tapped on the shoulder by a Hell’s Angel, who gruffly tells him there’s a blonde woman looking for him by the service entrance. Curious, David walks down three flights of rickety steps into a dim lobby, where he sees nothing but a metal door with something that sounds like a generator humming behind it. (This is the Meliai’s interdimensional portal, through which they abduct humans to Ausonia.)

Suddenly a woman dressed as Cinderella steps out of the shadows. She drops her mask, removes her blonde wig, and David sees Jill, alive and well. With a shout of joy, he rushes to her, not realizing this is not Jill, but Janaynie. As David embraces her, he feels the cold stab of a needle in his neck, and he, too, loses consciousness.

Willie awakens in a forest cabin, finding a note from Selene telling her she’s in an alternate universe world called Ausonia, and that she (Selene) will return in six weeks and ‘explain everything.’ Furious at being abducted by her lover, Willie dismisses the silly tale about an alternate universe and guesses this rustic cabin is actually somewhere in the woods just outside San Francisco. With her cell phone not working, she decides to find the nearest town and tell the police she’s been kidnapped. It’s only when she opens the cabin door and sees a completely alien landscape with two moons in the sky that she realizes Selene’s bizarre story is true and that she’s a very long way from home.

Several weeks have gone by since David’s own abduction, and he’s living in an Ausonian town called the Lower Village, working at a quaint little store run by voluptuous Meliai twins, who flirt with David, keeping him constantly aroused, though declining actual sex. This seems to be the Meliai’s M.O. here—sex is not permitted for humans in the Lower Village—but there are tales of a place called the Upper Village where all of Ausonia’s secrets are finally revealed and orgiastic sex with the Meliai is freely available. The humans held captive in the Lower Village are called Guests by the Meliai. They don’t yet know why they have been abducted but speak of someday going to the Upper Village as if it were the Promised Land.

One evening in the Dining Commons, David shares a table with Baba Bill and Sheldon (Shel), two fellow abductees who have become his friends. In a subsequent chapter narrated by Baba, we learn that Aneel (the Meliai who is transforming him) has enlisted his help in deceiving David into believing that Janaynie is really Jill. The purpose of the plot is to make David accept transformation from Janaynie because he thinks she’s his beloved Jill and wants to save her life. Baba is sexually and spiritually bound to Aneel and has no choice but to do as she asks, but he’s torn between his loyalty to her and his friendship with David. Whatever he does, it seems he must betray one of them.

Trying to help his friend without specifically going against Aneel’s wishes, Baba gives David an old book he’s found—the journal of a former colleague of Charles Darwin, who was brought to Ausonia 150 years ago. The contraband journal will tell David everything he needs to know about the Meliai, why they need humans so badly and the mysterious erotic process that turns them into trees. Baba also finds a clever way to alert David to the fact that Janaynie is not Jill, without actually saying as much, thus technically not breaking his pledge to Aneel.

The next morning, Janaynie appears at David’s cabin, pretending to be Jill. But wise to her scheme, David decides to play along for a while, thinking that if she wants to use him for her own ends, he’ll turn the tables on her. He will allow her to believe she’s fooled him into thinking she’s Jill and use her for sex until he tires of the game.

We now return to Willie’s story. Two months have gone by since her abduction, and in Selene’s continued absence, Willie has begun a romantic relationship with Sarahleah Kahane, a young girl from Brooklyn who was cast out by her ultra-religious family for being a lesbian. Sarahleah seems a total innocent, and Willie feels safe with her. What she doesn’t know is that she is about to become an unwitting pawn in a game of political intrigue between the Meliai and the Oreads, a rival Dryad clan.

Sarahleah is secretly working with the Meliai to help avert a war with the Oreads, and she’s been instructed to lure the unsuspecting Willie into a trap by promising to take her to the mysterious Upper Village. However, instead of taking her there, she leads Willie on a circuitous path through a forbidden forest. As night begins to fall, it seems they are lost and can go no further. Luckily, they stumble upon a clearing, where Willie builds a campfire and the women huddle together for warmth, waiting to continue their journey to the Upper Village at first light.

But then there is a rustling in the forest, and a troop of savage Oreads bearing flaming torches enters their campsite and roughly take the two women prisoner. From the expression on Sarahleah’s face, a stunned Willie realizes that her lover never intended to take her to the Upper Village at all and has deliberately led her into this trap. When Willie angrily questions Sarahleah, Orelia, the vicious Oread leader, silences her with a blow, and the two women are dragged off into the dark forest.

The capture of Willie and Sarahleah ends Book 1, and as Book 2, Edarta, begins, the women are being force-marched by the Oreads to their distant winter home.

The troop of ten Oreads were moving two abreast, marching double-time through the forest, with Willie and the troop’s leader at the head of the column, while Sarahleah and her own Oread ‘minder’ brought up the rear. The captives had been marching side by side at first, but Willie, furious with Sarahleah for betraying her, kept screaming obscenities at the girl until the troop’s leader grew weary of the fuss she was making and separated them.

Salome, the larger moon, had set, and Yemanya, the smaller one, was hidden by clouds, so the only light was from the torches the Oreads carried, and that was barely enough for Willie to see where she was treading. But the catlike night vision of Oreads was legendary, and they were having no trouble making their way through the dark forest.

Wherever Willie and Sarahleah were being taken, these long-limbed Dryads were in a hurry to get there, and the two human women, with their much shorter legs, were finding it hard to keep up. Willie was practically running, and the heavy backpack—which she’d stubbornly refused to leave behind at the campsite—made the going even harder.

She’d done a lot of hiking with David back home and always kept herself in shape, but after a couple of hours at this pace, Willie’s entire body ached, and her breath came in ragged gasps. She could only imagine how a little city girl like Sarahleah was doing back there. But then again, why should she care since Sarahleah had apparently led her into this trap deliberately? Willie had known the woman was strange from day one, but she’d never dreamed her capable of outright treachery.

Every question Willie tried to ask the Oreads’ leader was met by an emphatic "Kashtok, which probably meant silence!" The Oread Dryads spoke no human languages as far as Willie knew, and since the Meliai were so fluent in English, she hadn’t bothered to learn more than a few words of Pandoric. Now, she wished she’d tried to pick up at least a few useful phrases.

Compared with the Oreads, even the most graceful Meliai might appear clumsy. These Dryads were lithe as ballet dancers, and their tall sinuous bodies seemed to glide and sway as they walked, moving more like sailing ships or willows in the wind than women. Their exceptionally long arms and legs might make them look grotesque if you focused solely on that, but even though they lacked the classic loveliness of the Meliai, this Dryad clan had a savage kind of beauty that was hard to deny. Their regal stature, high cheekbones, and slightly aquiline noses gave them an exotic look that reminded Willie a bit of Jill, though she was sure that Jill had been a Meliai through and through.

But Jill and David were long ago and far away, in another life, and sometimes that life seemed even more dreamlike than the impossible one she was living now. Such feelings were common among human captives here. There was even a name for it: the Ausonia Effect. You gradually lost touch with your former life on Earth, almost to the point of forgetting it entirely. After a while, most humans stopped thinking about their past at all, until it was like they’d always been in Ausonia, living in a kind of bemused ‘eternal present.’ Willie was determined never to forget her past—not her life in San Francisco, not her friends, not her cat Butter, and certainly not the daughter she’d given up so long ago. The Ausonia Effect was something she fought against with grim determination each day by forcing herself to remember everything—even that son of a bitch Harry. Whatever hypnosis the Meliai were practicing on their humans, Willie would not become their thrall.

Right now, though, she had more immediate things to worry about, like where were the Oreads taking her? And what was Sarahleah really up to? The two Dryad clans—the Meliai and the Oreads—were traditional rivals; at least that was the word in the Lower Village. Was Sarahleah betraying both Willie and her Meliai lover, Nellyn, to the Oreads? No, that made no sense at all, given Sarahleah’s absurd notion that the Meliai were literally angels, or Shining Ones, as she called them. Sarahleah would never dream of betraying the Meliai to the Oreads, whom she believed to be demons. But the girl had clearly been pleased, or at least relieved, when the Oreads had come to capture them at the campsite.

‘Hooo-atakahhh.’ That cry had come from somewhere in the trees behind them. It sounded like a fyre owl, the winged night hunters that preyed on the small mammals that scavenged the Ausonian forests by night. The Oread troop ignored it and kept on moving hurriedly. Their leader had her left hand on the small of Willie’s back, pushing her forward, and suddenly Willie felt that hand slip down to her ass. Christ! The bitch was actually copping a feel. She detested being groped, and the fact that it was by another female—who should have better manners—made it all the more annoying. Cut that out, she said, trying to wriggle away. Willie knew the Oread got what she meant, even if she didn’t understand the words, because she laughed and did it again, this time giving Willie’s ass a firm squeeze.

Hey, fuck you! Willie said, pushing the Oread’s hand away. She fully expected a blow in return, but the leader just let out another laugh, seeming quite pleased with herself.

‘Hooo-atakahh,’ the fyre owl screeched again. And then: Owweee! Uh-oh … that second screech hadn’t come from any owl; that was Sarahleah back there.

The Oreads’ leader held up a hand, and the troop came to a halt. At the end of the column, Sarahleah was on the ground, writhing in pain. Owweee, my ankle, she moaned. I broke my ankle! Sarahleah’s Oread minder bent down to her fallen charge, probing the ankle delicately with her fingers. Owwww! Sarahleah shrieked. It hurts!

Her Oread looked up at the rest of the troop, who’d all gathered around the human girl. There were some exchanges in Pandoric, and the leader asked a question. Sarahleah’s Oread shook her head and answered as her diminutive human charge continued to cry and fuss.

Willie finally bent down beside Sarahleah. What happened?

I caught my foot on a root, the girl whined. Maybe it’s not broken, but it really hurts.

While the troop leader was distracted speaking to Sarahleah’s minder, Willie reached into a pocket of her backpack for the brandy. Here, she said. Drink some of this. It’ll help with the pain. But she quickly hid the bottle away again before she could even pull the cork, because the Oread leader turned to her and shouted, Kashtok! Willie didn’t know if she’d caught the surreptitious move with the brandy bottle, but the leader obviously didn’t want them talking.

After a few more Pandoric exchanges with Sarahleah’s Oread, the leader sighed and nodded, stalking off with the rest of the troop to sit under a nearby tree, leaving Willie and Sarahleah alone with Sarahleah’s minder, who continued to examine her ankle. Willie glanced back over her shoulder to where the troopers were now seated. Though the Oreads looked hard as nails, they too seemed grateful for a break from the hard march.

Willie glared at Sarahleah. If it were up to me I’d leave you here to rot, you little traitor. What the fuck have you done to me? Sarahleah’s Oread gave Willie a quizzical look, glanced at Sarahleah, and then went back to massaging the girl’s ankle.

Willie, you must trust me, Sarahleah said, her eyes brimming with tears. You know I would never hurt you.

A chill went through Willie. Those were the exact words Harry had used the first time he’d slithered into her bed, and ever since, hearing the words trust me always made Willie’s skin crawl. Sarahleah had virtually confessed her part in this when the Oreads stormed into the clearing to capture them: They’re Oreads, and they’ve come for us, she’d said. Let’s just be calm and go with them.

You’ve got a lot of nerve asking me to trust you, Willie hissed. What do these ghouls want? Are we supposed to be some kind of human sacrifice? Or maybe it’s just going to be me—in which case, what’s in it for you?

Willie, please, Sarahleah said. I know it looks bad, but I only did what I had to do. We’re absolutely safe. I swear by the God of my Fathers.

Willie sighed. She was reasonably sure that Sarahleah was incapable of planning her murder, especially after taking such an oath. The girl obviously believed what she was saying—or at least she wasn’t lying outright.

Look, Willie said, you want me to trust you? Well, then, earn it by telling me what’s going on. And I mean all of it! I’m not saying you’re lying about our lives not being in danger, but you’re holding back shit I should know. Do you really think the ‘God of your Fathers’ won’t count lies of omission against you?

She hit the mark with that one; it was an angle the pious Sarahleah obviously hadn’t considered when swearing her oath. For one moment, she looked horrified, but she squared her shoulders and held her ground. Willie, I can’t say anything else, and that’s the end of it, she whispered determinedly. "There’s more at stake here than I can explain … much more. Every question I try to answer would just lead to another question, and then another, until you thought I was meshuggah—completely crazy—which I’m not. If God counts holding something back for your own good … if He counts that against me, then let Him. Besides, we’re being watched, and we can’t afford to arouse suspicion by arguing."

Sarahleah inclined her head toward where the Oread troop sat about ten feet away. Yemanya had come out from behind the clouds and was now casting just enough light for Willie to see that the troop’s leader was observing them with evident mistrust. That one, at any rate, was clearly dangerous. Whatever Sarahleah’s role in this, Willie could not forget that she herself was the Oreads’ prisoner and that her fate was totally in their hands. For the moment, it was probably safest to go along with Sarahleah now and settle with her later—if there was a later.

Sarahleah’s Oread seemed far less menacing than the troop commander, at least on the surface. She was a brunette with close-cropped brown hair, who, at about five-ten was at least four inches shorter than any of the other titanic Oreads. Her body was slim, almost androgynous beneath the looba she wore—her face long and expressive, its features sharp yet lovely in a strangely exotic way. Her mocha skin was mirror smooth in the torchlight, though it was not bright enough to see the color of her eyes. The Dryad was still probing Sarahleah’s ankle with elegant hands that were clearly trained for this, and she spoke soft cooing words to the human girl: Ishpa. Ishpa tellshaka.

After a few moments, she rose and walked over to her fellow troopers, and immediately another Oread was dispatched to stand guard over Willie and Sarahleah.

Sarahleah’s Oread spoke briefly to the troop leader, gesturing emphatically, perhaps telling her that their human captive just needed to rest for a bit. The leader’s eyes narrowed, but she nodded reluctantly, and Sarahleah’s Oread went off to sit alone beneath another tree.

Suddenly there was a rustling in the woods, perhaps fifty feet away. It sounded like running footsteps. The Oreads all started, and their commander peered into the night, issuing a terse command: Dageenie delatango. She tapped a member of her troop twice on the upper chest with the palm of her hand. Sakhmet, trandi set si. The one named Sakhmet and two others leapt up, drawing knives from beneath their loobas. Sakhmet indicated a direction, and the other two made to follow her. But the troop’s leader stopped them abruptly. Sakhmet, she said, just as the three were about to run off in pursuit of whatever was out there. Sensi ni ta-akka Meliai, trom pillar!

Sakhmet bowed slightly. "Seeka t’annap," she said before streaking off into the trees with her two cohorts.

What do you think that was about? Willie asked Sarahleah. I thought I heard Ms. Big Shot say something about the Meliai.

Sarahleah shrugged. She’s totally paranoid. It was probably just wood rats running by. They’re everywhere at night.

No way, Willie said. Whatever made that sound wasn’t rats; they were big and two-legged. I think the Oreads might have bigger problems than us right now.

Wood rats stand erect and run on their hind legs when they’re scared, Sarahleah said. Nellyn says they can see farther that way. Maybe they were running from that owl.

Willie sighed again, unconvinced. "Well, I don’t think you’ll be doing much running anytime soon." She undid her backpack and set it on the ground.

No, I guess not, Sarahleah said. My ankle hurts like heck. I don’t know if I can even walk, let alone go like we were before. Anyway, it seems we’ll be here for a while.

Kashtok! the Oread leader said again, walking back over. Clearly she’d heard enough of the humans’ unintelligible prattle.

Willie glared up at her. "Why don’t you go kashtok yourself, you dumb twat? My friend’s hurt, and I don’t see any useful ideas coming from you."

Though she didn’t understand the words, the Oreads’ leader didn’t like Willie’s tone, and this time she gave her face a sound slap. It stung and snapped Willie’s head back. The leader glared down at her, raising her hand for another blow, but Willie defiantly met her eyes and refused to flinch. The Oread’s glare became a contemptuous smile, though perhaps with just a glimmer of respect in it. At any rate, she changed her mind about hitting Willie again, turned on her heel, and went back to her troop.

Best be careful with her, Sarahleah said softly.

Willie sat on the ground beside Sarahleah, feeling very tired, remembering her first encounter with Selene at Club Nyala. Why do Dryads always think they have to slap me?

The light from icy Yemanya was growing brighter, and she noticed that Sarahleah’s Oread was watching her intently from where she sat. The rest of the troop had drawn their long knives and were holding them at the ready, taking no chances on whatever might be prowling the night. Willie glanced at Sarahleah’s Oread, surreptitiously she thought, but the Dryad caught it, smiled and chewed a thumbnail, her focus unambiguously on Willie. Willie flushed, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked down. Now what was that about?

It seemed like over an hour before the scouts returned. Sakhmet’s team had found nothing, and now the entire troop prepared to move out again.

Can you walk at all? Willie asked Sarahleah.

I don’t know, Sarahleah said. Maybe if we take it very, very slow.

As the column formed up, Sarahleah’s Oread came back, dropped to one knee and, to Willie’s amazement, used the first English words she’d heard any of them speak: "I