No Chants at All

"Mayday! Mayday! We're losing power! Mayday!"

It was tense in the chartered Twin Otter, a reliable aircraft that had flown many similar routes in its life. This flight was taking it over the vast Landes forest on the way from San Marino to the beaches at Mimizan on the Gold Coast of France. But the Atlantic was still a long way off. Here there were only trees out to every horizon.

Along with the frantic pilot two passengers were on board: Steven Muir, a successful middle-aged broker and his companion Silvie Klein, a former in-demand fashion model several years his junior. This was a vacation trip, a chance to unwind in the sun and restore some steam to their love life.

Things were looking grim. The plane was sinking, the engines sputtering from what the pilot figured was watered fuel. They could only glide for so long, maybe 10 minutes given their cruise altitude. But there was nowhere to land, just a sea of pines and hills. The pilot scanned for a clear spot while calling for help and relaying their coordinates to any listening tower.

Then he saw it: a patch of open land where no clearing could be expected. Whatever its condition it had to be better than certain death in the treetops. He lost even more height as he banked to align the plane with the short narrow strip. Fighting his instincts he trimmed the plane for landing and shouted to the couple to brace for a bumpy ride.

The wheels touched but this wasn't just grass, it was untended brush. The gear jolted over ruts and stumps, collapsing the left strut and then the right. The belly thrashed over the rough terrain. Still, they might have made it if the clearing had been longer. A wall of trees loomed ahead and then they were at it, still going about 30 knots. The fuselage found an opening but the wings sheared off as the plane plowed into the woods.

The pilot was unlucky. A low branch punctured the windscreen and his neck. He was dead before the sliding stopped. Muir hadn't fastened his harness properly and the sudden stop threw him against the interior hard enough to scramble his gray matter. Silvie Klein was luckier, though she did take a blow to the head. The awful cacophony of the crash faded from her ears leaving only the ticking of heated metal cooling under the forest canopy. She passed out, for how long she didn't know.

*************

The odor of spilled fuel slowly brought her out of the fog of concussion but left her with a fierce headache. She checked Steven's pulse and found none. The pilot was obviously beyond help. The radio and controls were destroyed.

She released her safety harness and scrambled out the hole left by the sheared-off wing. She struggled painfully to put distance between her and the plane's load of fuel but no explosion came, no fire. She backtracked to the clearing, following the path carved by the plane. One look and she knew no one was going to spot this wreck from the air, buried as it was under the pines, invisible from above.

Silvie's life was one of comfort and privilege, of chartered flights to the surf and the attention of wealthy men like Steven. This was far beyond normal yet she didn't panic. She felt unusually calm as she assessed her situation, knowing help might never arrive at this dense and desolate place. She'd have to be her own rescuer.

She scouted the area around the ruined plane. Bits and parts had scattered, especially where the wings had come off. She couldn't find her handbag but did spot their small suitcases, battered but basically sound, and rummaged through them. They'd packed for a few days at the shore, not for camping or hiking, so there was little of value. Nothing to start a fire, nothing to eat or to use for shelter. Her phone was missing and Steven's was smashed.

Since the clearing was manmade she supposed there was at least one path leading to it. She walked the periphery looking for openings. After half an hour she'd seen only animal trails and it didn't seem prudent, or really very helpful, to follow a track that might end at a bear's den.

Finally she found an overgrown opening hacked out by machetes and scythes. She fought her way through and found what had once been a well-trodden trail. She weighed the merits of staying put and waiting for an uncertain rescue versus forging ahead to possible civilization. She chose ahead. She assumed there were villages scattered in the forest but had no clue if one was nearby. Perhaps if she found a stream she could follow it.

At times the way was clear and carpeted with pine needles but in several places it almost disappeared at a wall of brambles. Each time she pushed through her clothes ripped a little more and scratches multiplied on her arms and legs. She had no idea how far she'd come in her two or three hour foray. The sun wasn't visible but she thought she had another three hours of dim daylight left.

Just when she'd decided to retreat to the airplane for the night she saw something blocking the forest light ahead. She picked up her pace and soon came to another clearing. Facing her was the corner of a building, and not just a cabin. This was a rough stone mass two stories high extending tens of meters in each direction. It seemed almost medieval and while its presence offered hope, its imposing solidity lent it an air of menace. Smoke curling from somewhere above gave evidence of occupancy.

The clearing covered quite an area and included a lush but compact farm planted with all manner of vines and vegetables. There was an unpainted wooden barn but she could see no animals.

Centered on one stone wall she found a large oaken door hinged in black iron, with a small shuttered viewport. She knocked but she may as well have spit for all the noise her knuckles made. She switched to a fist, pounding out a tattoo that resonated weakly in the interior.

Nothing. A minute, two minutes passed and she tried again. Still nothing. She began to shout and found a rock to increase the volume of her hammering. After another frustrating ten minutes the face of a startled and confused man appeared in the portal.

"Thank god, please help me, our plane crashed and the others are dead."

No reply. She repeated her plea in French, and getting no response she switched despairingly to her limited German. Then the heavy door started to open. As soon as there was enough of a crack the man slid out. Silvie couldn't have been more surprised. The figure before her was as medieval in appearance as the setting: a robed and cowled monk.

As confounded as she was by his appearance she knew she must seem equally odd to him. She was dressed for light travel in shorts and a blouse but her clothes had been shredded by her trek. Her hair, usually carefully tended, was in disarray. Scratches streaked her limbs. Nevertheless the monk eyed her up and down with great interest.

After gazing longer than seemed polite he held up a palm and retreated. Several minutes later the door opened wider and she was greeted by the sight of a dozen or so monks in a large courtyard, all agape. Some were gesturing but none spoke. She was apparently a spectacle beyond their ken, a beautiful if currently disheveled woman whose tattered clothes no longer fully covered her. She towered over them at a statuesque 5 feet 9 inches to their perhaps 5 feet 4. She must have seemed an Amazon goddess.

One monk stepped forward and pointed to a carved plaque worded in an old French dialect: "Ceci est le monastere de Saint-Denis de Mornay..."

Silvie translated: "This is the monastery of St Denis de Mornay. We are a contemplative order and have taken a collective vow of silence. This vow prevents us from conversing with anyone."

"Does this mean you can't help me?" asked Silvie, taking the sign as a cue to speak French here.

The monk shrugged and waved her into the cloister. The interior was a large open hall that occupied about a quarter of the building. The monk led her down a series of branching corridors to a small room. By gestures he indicated a bath was available and left her in privacy with a robe identical to his own. Considering his height it would be somewhat short on her.

It was a scene that might have been unchanged for centuries - unheated water, raw soap and a towel that would serve for ritual excoriation. Yet she welcomed the bath gratefully. Afterward she cleared the leaves and twigs from her hair and worked it into a loose braid. There was no toilet near the bath, something she reminded herself to look for.

Donning the cowled robe, and only the robe, Silvie stepped into the hallway to explore. In spite of her predicament she felt a little naughty being naked under the cloth, especially because of the stimulating rub of harsh wool on her breasts. She briefly wondered if the monks also wore only robes, then chided herself for having such thoughts about holy men.

Along an outer wall ran a set of open cells where apparently the monks prayed and slept. Across a long corridor the parallel inner wall was broken up by doorways into the inner spaces. One led to a kitchen where she found the source of the smoke she'd seen from the trail. A large iron pot hung over a cookfire glowing in an open hearth. The sound and smell of a bubbling stew reminded her she hadn't eaten in many hours. She was suddenly famished.

The cook pot was tended by a monk. She had no idea if she'd seen him before because they'd all looked the same in their monkish garb. And since they were unlikely to speak their names, she'd have to supply them. This one she decided was Cookie.

"So Cookie, can a girl get a bowl of whatever you're making there?"

Cookie seemed uncomfortable with the sound of her voice. She realized this would be foreign to him in several ways and that out of respect for their traditions she should try to speak as little as possible. He'd gotten the message though and shook his head no. She was puzzled by this, expecting more of the hospitality she'd received. But apparently there were limits, and she'd just found one.

She explored further, encountering a few monks engaged in housekeeping but speaking to none of them. Peering out the front portal she saw most of the brothers were working the crops in the last sun of the day. It seemed oddly fitting that their crude tools were made of wood and iron, well matched to their callused hands.

At some unheard signal the monks moved first to the barn to stow their implements and then into the courtyard where Silvie was watching. She joined them when they entered the great hall, sat on long benches at large tables and engaged in a quarter hour of meditation. Others served them with wooden bowls of the stew she'd seen earlier, but no tableware. It was a hearty mix of vegetables and broth with no hint of meat but satisfying for all that. She slurped along with her hosts.

If this was the full complement of residents then about two dozen men lived, worked and prayed in silence here. They ranged in age from early twenties to perhaps fifty. Though short they appeared hale and vigorous, no doubt the result of outdoor labor and this simple fare.

Her thoughts returned unbidden to the state of her dress and her speculation about theirs. She caught a few of them checking out her female protrusions, something her life as a fashion model had inured her to, and in turn she casually tried to detect any hint of male equipment disturbing the drape of their robes. The more she looked, and the more they looked, the more evident it became that indeed, these were men and indeed, they enjoyed looking at her. Silvie blushed at the direction her thoughts were taking and lowered her eyes to her bowl. Why was she thinking like this?

It soon became fully dark with only a few guttering candles providing light in the vast gloom of the hall. The monks retreated to their cells for prayer, leaving Silvie alone. The older monk she had named Elder pointed to an empty cell holding a coarse blanket, a lumpy straw mattress and a pitcher. Exhausted from the horrors of the day and her forest trudge she fell into a deep sleep of vague but lurid dreams.

*************

Morning came silently, of course, but she woke to the movement of the monks after their early prayers. She again followed them to the hall where a meal of eggs (so there were at least some chickens) and boiled potatoes was served. More prayer followed and then the monks returned to the fields. Silvie's goal now was to find a path leading to the village she knew must be nearby. These monks couldn't be living in total isolation, they must get supplies somehow. She'd find a road, a phone, and a way home. She had to.

But she didn't. Except for the trail she arrived by, nowhere in the long perimeter of the clearing was there any evidence of an opening in the wall of oaks and pines surrounding the monastery. She did find an outhouse where she could finally relieve herself. She was apparently stuck in this compound and she had no idea how, or how often, the monks mingled with the outside world. Respect or not, it was time to start talking.

She approached Elder. "Please, tell me how I can get to a village. I must find someone to deal with my friends and help me get back home. I beg you, if you won't talk then just write something, use sign language, anything."

Elder looked at her kindly but just shook his head. He spread his arms and turned, as if to say, 'This is what there is'.

"But what if one of you becomes ill? How do you get medical attention?"

He looked confused by the question. She asked a different way, thinking maybe their dialect wasn't a good match to her Parisian French. This time he nodded in recognition and pointed to an area she hadn't explored. To her dismay it was a simple cemetery. This was what passed for health care.

*************

So went this day and the next. The only change in the monotony of the cloister was that increasingly the monks found reason to brush up against her, not quite groping but making it plain they were interested. She was poked by more than one hard penis. This seemed very strange: surely an order that spent long hours in contemplation must also promote purity of thought?

Then she considered the limited contact these monks had with the outside world. It had probably been a long time since any of them had seen a woman, let alone a tall and sexy one. She was eating with them, sleeping in one of their cells, washing in their bath, rubbing herself with their towels, wearing one of their robes and nothing else. They could smell her musk. My god, she thought, this could be a time bomb.

On the fourth night the bomb went off.

It started as a sound. Hearing was a vital sense because the night was so utterly black the eyes made their own twinkling phosphenes for want of something to see. She had no idea how long she'd been hearing it, just that it was enough to bring her partway up from a deep sleep. It was repetitive, almost scratching, and all the more unusual because until now the only night sounds had been the nocturnal hum and calls of the forest and a few monkish snores.

As she roused to the noise she could tell it was nearby, which added to the sensation of an approaching presence in her cell. She tensed but held still and silent as a groping hand touched her robe and began to explore. It found her flank then stroked upward to her breasts. In a flash she realized the sound was a monk masturbating.

Her time as a model had left her no illusions. She long ago came to the realization that thousands of men had masturbated to her images and to the idea of her naked body. It had ceased to trouble her; it was just a curious fact of life and of the nature of men. In truth it had given her a feeling of power over those distant, faceless men.

But this was quite different. This wasn't some notional abstract teen at his computer. This was a real and present man, his one hand stroking her garbed breasts and thighs while the other gripped and rubbed his taut erection. And this man's seed would not be spilled into a tissue.

His pace quickened and his touch became spastic. He was clearly at the cusp. Suddenly his rigid tool was spewing a load of viscous semen. It squirted and splashed in gouts onto her face and hair and robe and hands, a musky mess that had no doubt been brewing since well before she arrived.

A shuffling marked his retreat, leaving only the sounds of the forest and her own breathing. She groped in the dark for the basin and pitcher that stood by her rude bed. Stripping off the soiled robe she washed as well as she could without light, drying with the garment then soaking and wringing it out. She shivered not from a chill, for the night was warm, but from the knowledge that this could have been much, much worse. And she knew for certain if she didn't get to civilization, worse would come.

*************

The next day Silvie forced herself to the morning meal, aware that her night visitor was among these men but finding no clue in their hooded faces. She refused to cower, choosing instead to gain enough sustenance to get her back to the downed plane where she could hold out for a week with what water remained. She would spend today gathering provisions. Tomorrow she would leave as soon as there was enough light to navigate the trail, while the monks were in morning prayers.

It wasn't her imagination that the brushing and groping had increased. She couldn't say if all of them knew what had transpired last night but there was a clear change in attitude and in boldness. She would not sleep tonight.

She made it through the day as the monks worked the farm, venturing out only to visit the rough toilet. The midday and evening meals passed without any real incident. She retreated to her cell to stand vigil on her last night. But fear and tension could not win out over darkness and boredom. In truth she knew she could never resist even two of these short but rugged monks, let alone a group of them. Why had she waited until the next day to leave? If she were honest with herself what she really felt wasn't dread, but anticipation.

Whatever her plan it fell to inattention. After hours of watchful waiting Silvie's guard slipped and her head drooped. As her breathing became deep and regular a new sound filled the corridor: scuttling feet converging on the one cell that held a desirable woman. Before she could react the darkness was filled with the eerily silent press of naked male bodies. No one wore the robe tonight, save one, and she was soon divested. A candle was lit and its flickering revealed a line of monks extending into the hallway, every one erect. Silvie shuddered: their organs looked impossibly large for men of such short stature.

She writhed and squirmed but there were too many. Three monks subdued her, their hands and mouths on her breasts and sex. Callused fingers probed her openings; a stout penis pressed through her compressed lips. A tongue rasped at her from anus to clitoris and back. Their rough attention soon had her juices flowing. She couldn't stop this. She wasn't sure she wanted to.

Elder stepped in, spread her wide, and speared her with a member that had not entered a woman in decades and which would not now be denied. Silvie gasped at his girth, then again at his length. She surrendered to pleasure. The monk had not forgotten how this worked. He plunged and retreated in equal measure, filling and emptying her rapidly lubricating chamber. Novelty and eagerness brought him to a speedy end. He filled her vault with a generous deposit long before she could become fully aroused. Another stepped forward and the process repeated, his entry eased by Elder's emissions.

It took only one more man for the plain mechanics of the act, the friction and contact, the lewdness and inevitability, the knowledge that she was on public display, to bring Silvie to a tense and straining peak. Her mind wanted to resist but her body needed to climax and nature won that battle. It was the first of several orgasms, but definitely not the last. Her moans of submission were the only sound: the monks kept their vows.