"Ah, dinner!" Ava said, stretching her beak into a smile.
"I suspect not," my First said flatly, scowling. Looking back, I believe she knew what we were going to find. She'd been around, and knew the behavior of most of the demon clans. And their lifecycles.
When we found the animal, Slinky immediately took charge, and I could tell she was trying to hide something, something to do with the streaks of dried blood on the pig's flank as it twisted and moaned in obvious agony. "It's spoiled, ruined," she snarled. "We'll have to kill it now!"
This time I stood up for myself. Was I not a man? Firmly I grasped Slinky's shoulders, and firmly I pushed her aside to look at the animal. The blood streaks were actually bloody words, clearly carved into its flank with a knife. Or maybe a nail file.
stdboi
yr brts yr trn
I had no idea what that meant. But my companions did. Jenna clapped her hands to her face and turned white. Ava vomited loudly. Coulter muttered, "Well, at least she chose an animal."
I turned toward the livid face of my First Paramour. "What does this mean, S-"
I broke off because I caught an odd, unnatural movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked back at the pig, which was a half-grown Poland-Nippon feral with really loose skin for some reason, and saw that something was moving around under its skin, bulging up under the surface like it was trying to get out.
I watched for a while and realized that I could see movement all over the swine's body, right under the skin. I was a little shaken, and just turned to Slinky and said, "Let's kill it," drawing the Dawn Sword in anger for the first time. Its striated blade gleamed in the sunlight, promising death and destruction. "It's infected with something nasty."
"NO!" Coulter hollered. "You can't! That's a pixie birthing host. You kill that pig and all the babies will die. They depend on it for food and growth, and they die if the host does."
"You have got to be kidding me," I said in horror, but I resheathed the sword.
"No," Coulter said shakily, "and there's more. Read the message again, Tobias."
I did, but it made no sense, and I said so. Coulter sighed and rolled her eyes. "I think you might be suffering from testosterone poisoning, kid. Let me spell this out for you. That word, brts? Short for 'brats.' Here's a factoid: pixies reproduce like some wasps. They lay their eggs immediately after fertilization, always in a host creature. Then the mother abandons it to let the larva eat their way out. And to cull each other down to a reasonable number. Now, think. How many 'studbois' around here?"
I looked at the centaur, still a little dazed by her beauty as my mind picked up the facts and fitted them together, rejected the results, and then, because I was nothing if not a realist, had to accept them.
The next thing I saw was dirt as I fainted.
"Flighty thing, isn't he?" I heard Coulter muse as the world faded out.
Chapter 4
I found the stone gymnasium on the opposite side of the former town of Ivy. I spied it from a long distance away, as there were no more of the oddly-named buildings or any others between it and "Ivy Flowers." When I peered at it with binocs, I saw that it had the words "Ivy Middle School" painted on the roof peak. A school! I thought, pleased. Maybe the Dawn Goddess has succeeded in saving some of the books and equipment!
I was really dragging by then, so it took me longer than I expected to approach to within a hundred yards of the temple. I paused there for a while. You don't just skip up and knock on the door of a Goddess's temple, especially when She's not expecting you. A door was actually standing open, with WELCOME! painted over it in a fine hand, but what mere human would assume that was an invitation to come right in? This was a Goddess here. So I advanced carefully, stopping about fifty yards away. "Hello the temple!" I called, then carefully got on my knees. "I have come to beg a boon of the Dawn Goddess!"
Then the whole universe seemed to vibrate, and great, loud words formed in my head. Toby Fell. About time. Get in here, kid!
I got to my feet, knees shaking, and walked as fast as I could into my Goddess's temple.
I almost fainted when I saw Her. She was the image of perfection, bright and beautiful, the finest specimen of womanhood I'd ever had the pleasure of laying my eyes on... and I had seen every unattached girl in our village aged 21 and up fully naked during Bundling Day. I shielded my eyes from Her glorious radiance.
"Sheesh, dial it down, Aurora," She muttered to herself (the first time I ever heard that phrase), and snapped Her fingers. The luminescence dimmed. "Better?"
I lowered my hands, looked at Her, and dropped to my knees. "Oh, my Goddess," I breathed, dumbfounded.
The light had been concealing much of Her effulgent, superhuman gorgeousness and charisma. I could feel my trousers tightening in an unfamiliar way, and tears of longing streamed down my cheeks. "My Goddess," I whispered again, and it was a prayer, a promise, and a devotion all at once.
"Oh, for Quint's sake." Another snap and She turned into a normal woman—between young and middle-aged, almost frumpy. She reminded me of Clem's mother, which took the tightness right out of my pants. I stood up and wiped the tears from my face.
"Come here," She said, and threw a handkerchief in my face when I got close enough. "Wipe your face and blow." I did. "There's a good boy." The cloth disappeared from my hand.
She looked at me, head cocked to the side, a half-smile on Her kind face. "You're here, Toby. Finally! I've been waiting a long time for this."
"But it only took me a week or so," I said.
"Goddesses can see much farther ahead than a few weeks," She said. "I've been waiting for you since you were a baby." She leaned forward a bit, within a foot of my face, and I grew big-eyed as I saw that glow of godhood She was hiding behind the matronly mask. "I can't untangle these worldlines, but you're My best chance of normalizing what resulted from My carelessness."
I had no idea what She was talking about. I could only stare at Her godhood, eyes and mouth wide open.
She pulled back, and it dimmed. "Oops, sorry. My son keeps telling me to take it easy with that, especially with you."
"Thank you, my Goddess," I said, dry-mouthed.
"Call me Aurora."
"Er, thank you... my Goddess Aurora." I looked around the temple, which was mostly a huge, wide-open space with shiny hardwood floors that had been partitioned with portable gray walls to resemble a home. We had some of those cloth and luminium structures back home; Old-Father said they came from something called cubicles, which made him shudder in disgust. Anyway, the main room, in which we were located, was filled with bins of supplies, tall standing cabinets with closed doors, several similar cabinets that lay flat on the floor, and case after case of bound books. I'd never seen so much metal and printed matter in one place. Somehow, these items had survived the ravages of the bitty-swarms... well, She was a Goddess, after all. I saw no other people, Divine or otherwise, and asked, "Um, where is Your son, my Goddess, and what is His name, so that I may greet Him properly when I meet Him? I thought You were alone here."
"Eos? Oh, he hasn't been born yet." She actually giggled. "In fact, he hasn't even been conceived yet. All things in their time, Toby."
She had mystified me yet again.
She looked me up and down, and said, "Great Glory. The people of your village are a bunch of idiots."
Not that I disagreed, but I said, "Er, what?"
"If they'd waited two months you've have been tearing through the girls of the village like a fox through a henhouse–and they'd have loved the results. You're undergoing puberty right this minute. That's why you feel awful; everything's happening at once. That's why you got so angry at that Yoder git. Testosterone poisoning—you were high on pent-up hormones. You're practically steeping in the stuff." She cocked her head again. "The thing about you, Toby, is that the Day of Ruin changed you as much as it changed me. You're not the only one, but you are a rare beast." She winked. "You're where all the whys went. You and your brothers scatter
ed across the world are masculinity sinks."
"But my Goddess, I only have one sibling."
"As far as you know, sure, but I meant brothers in spirit. There are other young men like you coming into puberty now that will be the saviors of this Earth. The Step Through took all our maleness and impressed it into you and your spiritual brothers; now comes the time of giving back. You will lead an interesting life, Fell Tobias."
As with so many things, this was the first time anyone had called me that.
I went back to my knees. "My Goddess Aurora, I am yours to command."
Rebound:
I didn't really faint when I learned about the pig. Okay, I did. But I was out only a few seconds at most, because I fell too close to the pig and it kept screaming in my ear. I scrambled to my feet, scared. It was in terrible pain, and my heart quailed. We had to kill it to put it out of its misery. But at the same time, we couldn't. If Coulter was right, and I had no reason to think otherwise, those things eating the pig alive from the inside were my... my children.
Your sons, came a silky voice in my mind. Little Magic Boy? Then I remembered what I'd said last week about Isaiah, Jr., being my tenth-born son.
I screamed. I didn't want monster sons! But as the ladies pulled me back into the group to fuss over me and make sure I was unhurt, I remembered what Kait had looked like. Wouldn't pixie children be tiny kids with wings, basically? Maybe some of my pixie children would have manly members, and would be able to impregnate pixie girls the proper way, so they could have babies naturally, instead of riddling some host with flesh-eating grubs?
I had a sneaking suspicion that the pixies sometimes didn't use animals for their birthing hosts, from what Coulter had said; and when I asked her about it, she agreed that it was so. "Most hives believe that without a sentient host, their children will be nothing but animals," she told me. "The thing is, they come out of the host acting so much like rabid animals anyway that no one has really tested the theory. It takes a few months for pixies to settle into sentience. The good news is, they avoid people until they've matured enough to handle civilization."
I gulped. "Are fairies like that too?"
"No, fairies give live birth and nurse their children like most of the rest of us do."
"Oh, thank the Goddess." I thought about Dewberry the Fairy. Then I thought about the way Kait had impregnated herself by me, and was by turns aroused and repulsed. The sensuality of it could not be denied (it you could get past the fact that it was basically rape, as I had come to realize), but Kait having to fill herself with handfuls of my seed was just sad. Assuming she was first generation, the pixie—and, I assumed, all members of the smaller races—had not felt a man's love in full in 24 years. For that matter, any subsequent generations—and there might be many, considering how quickly Kait had infected the host—hadn't either. Would they even accept the natural approach offered by my sons, assuming I had any?
Well, it couldn't be long now. We were trooping down the open eyeway, looking for the big stone-and-wood sign announcing Scarborough Faire and its vast parking lots. As we schlepped down the vast, overgrown eyeway past occasional surviving wood and stone buildings, I thought to ask Coulter, whose hair blazed in the sun so fetchingly it was a distraction, how long it would be before my pixie children were born.
She looked back at the makeshift travois where she was carrying the ravaged boar, which had shrunk to little more than skin-covered bone in the last few days as the larval waste was expelled. It no longer squealed; it had passed into a plateau of pain beyond vocal expression. Coulter said, "Couple of days at most. Tonight we need to weave a cage from willow withes before the pixies emerge, so we can catch all the little ones."
"That soon?" I asked in wonder.
"Yep yep. They'll be about as big as your hand and will already be able to fly and talk, but they won't have anything nice to say. We don't want the little savages to escape, so they'll have a better chance of survival. Plus, we need to keep them away from you."
I looked at Coulter askance. "Why?"
"Because you're a fertile adult male, and they'll want to mate with you the minute they smell you. They won't be sentient in this state, and it won't matter to them that you're their father."
Eyes wide, horrified, I said, "Oh my gosh! Seriously? How can you be so sure?"
"I know a lot of pixies," she said. "Our herd trades with pixie hives along the local rivers. I've seen it. Not pretty. Oh, and we also need a lot of meat; they're going to grow really fast. They'll eat each other if we don't provide."
"Okay. Ava and I will get them some squirrels and rabbits and such. Should be easy around here. How many babies do you think there will be?"
"Not too many. Between half a dozen and ten. They're already eating their smaller sisters," Coulter confided. "I've seen bits of wing in the effluvia they've been ejecting."
"Gah! We have to save them!" I said in a panic, running back to stare wide-eyed at the pig, which was seething with activity.
"No, it's natural. Otherwise, we'd be overrun with the little fucks. Only a quarter of them make it to adulthood even after surviving birth."
"Oh my Goddess," I moaned, and realized I was weeping. My children! My poor children were dying, would continue to die! I stood there in the open field with my head in my hands, bawling like a baby, vowing to myself that I would find a way to save them all in the future, that I would end this literally vicious cycle.
Little did I realize I already had.
"Isn't there something we can do to stop them from eating each other!?" I shouted at Coulter as I ran to catch up.
She glanced at me. "Well, they're probably fully formed by now. And if they're eating each other, the pig's gone. I guess after we get a net woven, we can open the pig and let them out."
Half-crazy, I ran to the front of our little group, where Ava led the way. "Ava, sweetie! It's time to hunt! We need lots of small animals for meat! Please please please! Can you bring them back yourself?"
"Uh, sure." She took off her sandals and gave then to me, then popped out her talons. "Off I go."
I stuck her sandals in my pack and hurried to Slinky. "Can you teach me how to weave baskets from all this grass? Can you weave baskets too? Did you teach Jenny?"
"Well, yes, but this isn't the best material—"
"I don't care! My babies are dying RIGHT NOW!" and then I ran ahead, and though it had never been designed for it, I used the Dawn Sword to reap the tall grass in windrows, until we had enough that I could transfer whole armloads onto the travois, back and forth until it was stacked high, and then I started weaving even though I didn't know how. S'linkitha took my sloppy first try from me and then fixed it and kept on, and I watched until I could at least do a rough job, and we began weaving baskets big enough to hold about two gallons of water. Maybe each one would be enough for a baby. I figured a dozen should be enough?
Meanwhile, Ava kept bringing in dead rabbits, squirrels, and raccoons to add to the larder the kids were going to need. Coulter kept plodding along, and toward late afternoon we found the sign for Scarborough Faire.
Rewind:
The first thing the Dawn Goddess did when I swore fealty to Her was say, "Good! Now get in that box right there and lie down."
"Erm..." It looked like a metal coffin.
"It's not a coffin. It's an autodoc, and it'll fix what ails you." She tapped her chin. "Well, in truth it's just going to accelerate your maturity, and remove the seals that have been holding you back since infancy. Don't be surprised if you end up gaining several inches and becoming significantly more muscular than before. You'll sleep while the 'doc matures you by six months to a year, so that you'll be able to fulfill your primary purpose."
"Which is?" I asked as I peered into the plain white confines of the autodoc.
"Repopulating the Earth. Duh!"
"Oh. Right." Sounded fun. With no further ado, I eagerly climbed into the autodoc.
The Lady rolled Her eyes but said kindly
, "You'll need to undress first, darling boy."
"Oh! Okay, I can do that."
"Yes, most young males on all levels of existence are pretty good at doing that. In record time, too."
I stripped unselfconsciously (She was a Goddess, after all, and I doubted I was going to impress Her) and stepped into the autodoc again. This time when I laid down, it started to fill with liquid that soon turned to the consistency of pig-hoof aspic. It was warm and made me feel happy. I barely noticed when the lid closed, plunging me into darkness.
I dreamed about Bundling Day again and all that fine girl-flesh I hadn't previously appreciated, and about the glowing boy. He said, simply, "Thank you, Father," and as his brightness became dazzling, I realized that the Goddess had opened the lid of my iron coffin.
Harem Scare 'Em Page 7