To: (Withheld)
Date: 2 Feb 1998

At your request I have examined the remaining four chapters and the original book in which the ciphertext is written. As you surmized, the ciphers increase in complexity. The fourth and fifth ciphertexts have resisted the cryptanalytic techniques used so far and I have set up a batch analysis.

While the techniques used in the earlier chapters strongly suggest that the ciphers used in the later chapters are breakable, the client should be aware that there is something of a tradition of multipart ciphertexts in which the first texts are crackable but the final text is merely random data. It is generally believed that the Bealle ciphers are of this form.

My initial report is attached. In brief the first three texts are a first person account of a woman, a virgin undergoing a sexual initiation. It seems likely that the climax of the ritual is found in chapter five.

As you will see in my report, I believe that the remaining two chapters are encrypted using another text as the key. It would therefore be of great assistance and reduce the cost to your client if they were willing to allow access to other materials in the corpus as it is almost certainly drawn from an esoteric text.

Given the nature of the material revealed and the cost of the analysis, I thought it prudent to provide these results to you as soon as possible and confirm that the client wishes to proceed. Should this be the case I would appreciate payment for the balance in advance as per our prior agreement.

Yours, Byron.

The book is measures 6 inches by 4 and is hand bound in black leather. The pages are hand bound, the technique used suggests use of professional material and tools but the execution is naive in parts. Embossed (somewhat shakily) in the cover are the only words not in cipher:

An it harm none do what ye will.

The text is written in a circle with a pentagram.

Inside the book is divided into five chapters written in the same hand using what appears to be a fountain pen with a medium italic nib. The ink is commercial, consistent with Parker Qink, Permanent Black.

The paper is commercial acid-bleached and shows some signs of age suggesting that it was produced at least 25 years ago. Though without chemical analysis it is impossible to know whether the paper is old or merely something that someone wishes to look old.

The handwriting is neat, orderly and consistent in the first two chapters, becoming less so in the later chapters written in non-Latin alphabets. There are no corrections and the composition etc. strongly suggests that the text was written out in plaintext, enciphered and then written in the book.

Each chapter is written in a different cipher the complexity of which increases as follows:

Chapter 1: Latin alphabet employing a simple Ceasar cipher with 5 character displacement (A becomes F, B becomes G..)

Chapter 2: Latin alphabet employing a substitution cipher with linearly increasing character displacement, 5, 10, 15 characters. Since 5 is prime mod (x,5) does not repeat.

Chapter 3: The substitution cipher of (2) with transliteration into what appear to be J.R.R. Tolkein’s Cirth runes as specified in the description given by Tolkein. Since the Lord of the Rings was published in 1955, this combined with the apparent age of the paper would suggest a date between 1955 and 1975. While the glyphs used are not unique to Tolkein, the order in which they are used is.

Chapter 4: The alphabet is Futhorc (Anglo Saxon) employing 26 glyphs. Character frequency analysis suggests that the text is enciphered using another text as the key, though possibly with repetition.

Chapter 5: The alphabet is Ogham (4th Century AD, Irish). It appears that the cipher is another text.

An important crib is the fact that each of the first three chapters begin with the phrase ‘ An it harm none do what ye will. ’ The text on the front cover thus provides a key to deciphering the rest. Another important crib is the fact that word spacing is maintained, though punctuation is (mostly) absent. Implicit punctuation has been added to assist the reader.

Air

Today Eve made love to me with her fingers and I made love to her.

I woke early in the morning, my head cloudy from the wine the night before. Not quite a hangover, but close to one. Eve and Keith slept naked beside me.

I must remember what happened. Write it down as soon as I can. There is a desk with a pad of paper and a pot of pens. It will do fine.

The room is cold but my clothes are nowhere to be found, probably downstairs. I sit down and start writing.

How to write about it? I don’t really know. I am a writer but nothing has trained me for this. I don’t even have the vocabulary. Penis, vagina, coitus, copulate all sound so clinical. I want my words to be magical, not medical.

Should I say fuck instead? Fuck. An honest Anglo-Saxon word. Fuck[,] frig[,] fiddle[,] all good words. But what of the genitalia. Prick or penis, vagina or cunt?

I try to just get the words out on paper.

As I am writing, Eve comes and puts a shawl around my shoulders. I want to talk but she puts a finger to my lips and tells me to just keep writing.

Eve brings coffee and orange juice and sits in bed watching me as I write. By the time I am finished, Keith is gone. He must have slipped out while I was writing.

We sat on the bed and talked. Eve asked if I was serious about the craft and I admitted it was probably a reaction to having religion pushed at me by parents and school. Eve said something surprising, that she had reacted against the craft because her mother had pushed it at her. I had never met anyone whose parents had been in.

We talked about what had happened the night before. I let her read what I had written. Eve told me how she had lost her virginity but I made a promise not to tell anyone or write it down. I must be careful with what I write and who I show it to. Even though everyone is of age, anal sex between a man and a woman is illegal.

Eve made a proposal. I accepted.

It was three days to the quarter day of Beltane. Coincidence? Auspicious? In the meantime she would help to prepare me.

Taking the day before as the first day, that makes five days in all. There were five of us present. So the number of the ritual will be five.

Eve traces out the pattern of our ritual on her jewelry and I realize that what I had taken as identical rings are actually slightly different. Her right earring has a small flame pendant. One end of her left nipple stud has a small breath of wind. One end of her right nipple stud ends in a ripple. Her left earring has an inverted flame. The ends of her clit stud are spheres. Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Spirit.

The lesson of air is the lesson of touch. Eve turns on some music, places a little oil on her hands and touches every part of my body. It is slow and sensuous. Then I touch her in the same way. It feels good to touch and to be touched. I find myself awake yet almost drifting off into sleep.

We lie on our sides and examine every inch of each other’s private place. I ask why Eve shaves her hair and she tells me she doesn’t shave it and I will soon know the answer.

I want to kiss her, lick every inch of her. But that is not allowed till tomorrow. I part her labia with my fingers and slip a finger inside. It is warm and slippery but not quite smooth.

Eve came. I came. We rested for a while and then began again. This time Eve’s fingers worked their way along my whole crack and into my arsehole.

If this shocked or disgusted me, I was past caring. All I knew was that Eve was taking me to a place I had never managed to find on my own. It was only afterward that I realized that I had just made love to a woman, that I had enjoyed it and that I wanted to do it again as soon as possible.

Mills and Boon have failed to prepare me. I am given other books and told I must read them.

Water

Today I made love with two women.

I didn’t see Sue or the boys at all yesterday. The rest of the day was spent in Eve’s attic studio reading while Eve drew and photographed me. Nude of course. I did not wear clothes all day.

I woke in Eve’s bed to find that Sue had slipped under the covers next to me. We kissed and cuddled and soon the kissing and the cuddling became more. I dived under the covers and kissed Sue’s cunt. I felt a strange sensation in the pit of my stomach. I was hungry, hungry for a woman.

I buried my face in Sue’s slit, licking every inch of her. Eve joined us, sitting astride Sue’s face to let her kiss her cunt. There is an orgy of kissing, licking and sucking until both women come to a loud climax.

We rest and then I spread my legs for what I hope will be my turn. But the women have other ideas. The unruly thatch between my legs must be removed before they can begin. I lie back on the bed as they take turns attacking me with tweezers and combs. It is less painful than I expected. I barely feel it when the hairs are taken out. But their treatment leaves me feeling sore and painful.

Afterwards, they kissed me better.

I have become very comfortable with the idea of sex with women but I can’t wait to be fucked properly by a man.

We posed together for Eve in the studio, then returned to the bedroom to satisfy our desires. I watched Eve and Sue make love together in a 69. Sue was on top, her ass hovering deliciously above the other girl’s mouth. I slipped a finger inside her cunt to wet it, then traced a little circle round her arsehole with the tip.

For some reason I can’t quite explain, I bent down and kissed the little pink bud. Sue gave a little moan of pleasure so I kissed her again, this time for longer. Perhaps I just wanted to see whether I would do it. But I do seem to be becoming fascinated by the anus. Eve held me close against her body and finger fucked my arse while Sue licked my cunt. It felt divine. Eve says that I a getting looser. Apparently this is a good thing.

Today is the third day so there are three of us and we will make love a third time in the evening.