Heroes and Villains by Angela Carter

muchness, you know.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘I’ve been to very many.’
    ‘Only as a visitor,’ she said. ‘You’d always have been just passing through.’
    He shrugged and put away his knife.
    ‘Come off your bough and teach me your vocabulary,’ he invited. ‘Sooner or later, we might be able to converse.’
    ‘We wouldn’t have much in common,’ she pointed out.
    His shadow sprang out as he approached the tree, accompanied by the faintest jingling of charms and amulets. He was inevitable, like the weather, and even more ambivalent for his face was not constructed to support a smile and she could not tell what he was thinking or if he were thinking at all, even.
    ‘We’d have to establish common ground in order to communicate as equals, of course,’ he said. She heard his tutor’s high, thin voice behind his uncouth one and found, to her fury, she was crying again. She exploded with tears and rage and flung herself off the tree on top of him. She took him by surprise; they fell down together in the undergrowth and struggled for a while. He gasped and coughed horribly but he was a good deal stronger than her and soon she knew she would have to return to the camp with him by force. But this did not make her any the less angry to find herself trapped beneath him with her arms pinned down to the ground behind her head.
    ‘I think I’m the only rational woman left in the whole world,’ she said, spitting the words into his face; she could have said nothing to offend him more. They had fallen beneath the surface of the long grass. He pressed her down into the rich, moist earth itself and began to unfasten her clothes.
    ‘You’re nothing but a murderer,’ she said, determined to maintain her superior status at all costs.
    ‘You’ll find me the gentlest of assassins,’ he replied with too much irony for she did not find him gentle at all.
    Feeling between her legs to ascertain the entrance, he thrust hisfingers into the wet hole so roughly she knew what the pain would be like; it was scalding, she felt split to the core but she did not make a single sound for her only strength was her impassivity and she never closed her cold eyes, although the green sun made out the substance of his face to be polished metal and she recalled the murder she had witnessed, how the savage boy stuck his knife into her brother’s throat and the blood gushed out. Because she was difficult to penetrate, he spilled several hot mouthfuls of obscenities over her. Taken by force, the last shreds of interior flesh gave; he intended a violation and effected one; a tower collapsed upon her. Afterwards, there was a good deal of blood. He stared at it with something like wonder and dipped his fingers in it. She stared at him relentlessly; if he had kissed her, she would have bitten out his tongue. However, he recovered his abominable self-possession almost immediately. She began to struggle again but he held her down with one hand, half pulled off his filthy leather jacket and ripped off the sleeve of his shirt, as he had done before when he had treated her snakebite. This repetition of action would have been comic had she been in the mood to appreciate it. He held the rag between her thighs to sop up the bleeding, a bizarre piece of courtesy.
    ‘It’s a necessary wound,’ he assured her. ‘It won’t last long.’
    ‘It was the very worst thing that happened to me since I came away with you,’ she said. ‘It hurt far worse than the snakebite, because it was intentional. Why did you do it to me?’
    He appeared to consider this question seriously.
    ‘There’s the matter of our traditional hatred. And, besides, I’m very frightened of you.’
    ‘I have the advantage of you there,’ said Marianne, pushing him away and endeavouring to cover herself.
    ‘Don’t be too sure,’ he replied. ‘I’ve got to marry you, haven’t I? That’s why I’ve got to take you back.’
    When he saw the expression of horror which