by Logan Jacobs
Ainsley did everything I asked perfectly. Despite the weak arms, I could already tell these women would be fantastic shots when they put on a little bit of muscle.
Sure enough, Ainsley let the arrow fly, and it buried itself right in the center of the bullseye about ten feet away.
A cheer instantly went up in the crowd. All of the women smiled and shrieked excitedly, and then they clamored over each other to try and be the next one up.
I quickly found I had almost more volunteers than I could manage, but one by one, I taught all the women how to shoot. It took hours and patience, but they were all fantastic shots as soon as they got their stance right. The problem was the weight of the bow and arrow. Most of them could barely hold it up for more than half a minute, and the ones who were able to last longer struggled like Ainsley had.
“We need to come up with a different design,” I muttered to Mira when we were out of earshot of the other women. They’d all started to take turns practicing with my or Mira’s bow, and we had little work to do then.
“I agree.” She nodded. “I fear they will not be strong enough in time to defeat the invaders. Do you have any ideas?”
“I might.” I tilted my head as I thought about my home world and the plethora of weapons there. More than that, there were multiple kinds of bows available. A crossbow or a recurve bow, to try and distribute the weight and make it easier to hold the arrow, might work in this situation.
“I’ll need more wood,” I told her.
After a while, many of the women began to grow tired, and the crowd of avid archers dwindled until only Jemma, Theora, Ainsley, and two others were left.
Then Ainsley stepped over to Mira and me with a broad smile on her face.
“Ben, thank you so much!” she squealed. “They have finally begun to understand our need to defend ourselves. It is like a miracle.”
“Just call me the miracle man.” I grinned.
“I was wondering if you would be willing to take me hunting,” she asked as she dropped her gaze sheepishly. “I am not sure many of the other women are ready for that, but I would like to give it a try.”
I glanced up at the sky to see we still had a few hours left in the day. I didn’t know the forest too well, but hopefully that would be enough time for us to find one of those monster rabbits to hunt down.
Or one of the deer I’d seen. A guy could dream.
“Of course,” I said. “Do you think anyone else would like to join?”
“What are you two muttering about?” Theora asked as she walked over, and for the first time since I’d met her, a smile crossed the brunette’s face.
“Where I come from, we eat meat,” I informed her. “And Ainsley has decided she would like me to teach her how to hunt. Would you like to join us?”
I was sure I’d be met with an automatic “no,” but to my surprise, Theora tilted her head and thought for a moment.
“I would like to come with you,” she finally said, “but I am not sure I can stomach the thought of killing and eating meat. Jemma told me you have eaten one of our rabbits already.”
“That thing was delicious!” Mira grinned at the memory of the tender meat. “Ben, if we don’t catch one of those tonight, you owe me as you say ‘big time.’”
“How do I owe you?” I chuckled.
“Because I said so.” Mira shrugged and smiled back at me.
“You two joke often,” Theora observed. “It is a very interesting culture.”
“My sister never jokes,” Mira replied with a laugh. “I just like to have fun.”
Theora watched Mira and me with interest but didn’t say another word. It was almost like she was a scientist observing an alien species. Which, in a way, I supposed she was. Mira and I were as alien to her as they had been to us. Actually, they were probably even more freaked out since they didn’t have Marella’s vision to forewarn them about what to expect.
“Let’s get out of here before the sun starts to set, then,” I told them. “I don’t really feel like encountering one of those wargs in the dark. Seems like a recipe for disaster.”
“Agreed,” Mira affirmed.
So, Mira and I took back our bows, and then the four of us climbed down to the forest floor.
“Rule number one of hunting is to be as quiet as possible,” I whispered to the deer women. “We don’t want the animals to hear us, but we want to hear them. Do either of you know where you might see rabbits or deer often?”
“The rabbits like to pillage our fields,” Ainsley replied.
“We can fix that,” I told her, “but for now, let’s use it to our advantage.”
Slowly and carefully, we started in the direction of the fields, but it turned out I probably hadn’t needed to warn Theora and Ainsley to be quiet. Their footfalls were already so soft it sounded like nothing more than air against the dirt.
Mira and I, on the other hand, had to be a lot more careful as we treaded over dead leaves and fallen sticks.
Sure enough, we’d scarcely been at the field for ten minutes when two rabbits hopped out of the bushes and started to sniff around in search of food.
Mira and I grinned at each other before we each took aim. Then our arrows whistled through the air and pierced each rabbit straight through one of those nasty red eyes.
“Yes!” Mira exclaimed. “Come here, you tasty devil!”
The warrior rushed off in excitement to go collect the rabbits’ carcasses.
I turned to gauge Theora’s and Ainsley’s reaction, especially since the last time I’d tried to shoot one of the rabbits, the strawberry blonde woman had all but given me a heart attack.
To my surprise, both of them stood there and stared stoically at the dead corpses Mira brought back.
“May I say a prayer over them?” Ainsley murmured with a slight frown.
“Of course,” I told her.
She clasped her hands and bowed her head over the dead rabbits in Mira’s hands.
“Dearest Goddess, please forgive us for this violence,” she whispered. “We must simply find a way to feed ourselves before we, too, are dead.”
Ainsley hummed a haunting, eerie tune for a few seconds, and then popped her head back up. A single tear rolled down her cheek, and I reached out to swipe it away with the pad of my thumb.
“That was beautiful,” I told her seriously.
“It seemed necessary,” she replied. “The Goddess has created these creatures, and we have taken them away.”
Ainsley’s perspective was beautiful. It reminded me a lot of the Native American principles that surrounded hunting. Of course, most of them hadn’t been quite so averse to it in the first place.
We waited for another thirty minutes or so and managed to kill three more of the rabbits. To my disappointment, we weren’t able to hunt down any of the deer, but I would save that for another time. I wasn’t too sure how the meat would taste, either, and I didn’t want to serve the deer women some sort of tough, awful thing that would make them want to remain vegans for the rest of their lives.
The rabbits, though, would be a hit. I was sure of it, since it tasted like bacon.
And everyone loved bacon.
Theora showed us where to find some plants that they used to flavor their vegetables, and we gathered a few of the herbs before we skinned our kill and returned to the village.
As usual, there was a bit of uproar in the village when we returned with the meat.
“You killed those creatures!” multiple women gasped every time we passed them.
I just nodded and helped Mira bring the meat to the fire in the cooking tent, so we could prepare it. Theora and Ainsley helped as well, though neither one of them really wanted to touch the dead rabbits.
When the meat was cooked, with one of the rabbits charred to satisfy Mira’s strange taste buds, we cut it up and turned to Theora and Ainsley.
“Do you two want to be the first?” I asked.
It was only then that I realized we had an au
dience. The entire village, all fifty of them, had gathered outside the opening to the cooking hut and watched as Mira and I cut up the cooked meat.
Their eyes were all wide, some with disgust, but most of them just looked deeply intrigued.
“I will try it.” Ainsley nodded.
I handed her a plate with a tiny piece of meat on it, just enough for one bite.
The blonde slowly lifted it to her nose and sniffed. She paused, deliberated, and then took another long whiff.
“It does smell good,” she informed me.
Ainsley pinched the tiny piece of food between one slender thumb and forefinger and then slowly lifted it up to her perfect mouth.
I watched, thrilled, as her pink lips closed around the dark brown chunk. Then she chewed twice before her brilliant eyes went wide, and a smile spread across her face.
“It is tasty!” she informed me, before she turned to the rest of the village. “Meat is good!”
There was a wave of extremely distrusting mumbling that rippled through them, and Theora’s eyes narrowed as she watched Ainsley.
“I will have a piece, then,” the brunette announced.
“To the dark side come over,” Mira chuckled in her best attempt at a Yoda voice, and she completely butchered one of my favorite sayings.
I didn’t even have the heart to correct her right then, though, since I was too excited to hand Theora her own little piece of meat.
Ainsley offered her plate to Mira, a clear sign she wanted more, and the warrior obliged.
I watched as Theora sniffed at her meat just as Ainsley had, but she only took one whiff before she popped it into her mouth and chewed quickly.
Unlike Ainsley, the reaction was not immediately clear on her face, and for a brief moment, I worried she absolutely hated it.
But then, the brunette glanced at me with her hard eyes and nodded.
“Ainsley is right, the meat is tasty,” Theora informed me. “I believe I would like some more.”
“You can have as much as you like!” I grinned at the brunette.
Mira and I quickly filled Ainsley and Theora’s plates before we turned to look at the crowd.
“Does anyone else want to try?” I asked.
Jemma stepped forward, followed by more of them women.
One by one, each woman tried the rabbit meat, and each woman loved it. By the end of the meal, Mira and I had successfully managed to turn all of them on to the wonders of meat.
They had definitely come over to the dark side.
And it was damn good over here.
Chapter Five
After the success of our meat night, Mira and I decided it would also be a good idea to teach the women how to fish. I wanted to make sure they had enough of a varied diet, so when we eventually defeated the orcs and left, they’d be able to provide for themselves completely.
So, the next morning, a few of the deer women gathered the vines Mira and I wanted, and then we all trekked down to the beach so I could show them how to make nets.
The sand was warm under my feet, and the clear, direct sunlight was welcome after the last few days spent under the cover of branches and leaves.
I laid out some vines before me and gave the rest to the six women with us. Jemma and Ainsley were there, as well as four other women they’d introduced to us earlier this morning.
There were two red heads, with wavy hair and dark green eyes. They were sisters, born two summers apart, and their names were Netta and Nima. Then there was a brunette with a spattering of freckles over her nose and clear blue eyes named Bree. The last woman was much shorter than the rest, still proportioned similarly, and with a quiet demeanor that reminded me a lot of Talise. She had silver hair so long it nearly touched the ground and bright green eyes the color of emeralds. Her name was Sarayah.
“So, what we want is to make the holes too small for our meals to swim through, but big enough that the smaller fish can get away,” I explained to the women as we stood on the beach. “This way, we don’t end up with a net full of tiny fish we can barely eat.”
“There are very few tiny fish in the ocean,” Netta pointed out, “but some of the smallest are deadly. Please watch out for that, Ben.”
“Noted.” I nodded. “Tiny equals deadly. Even more reason why we don’t want those suckers on our dinner plates. So, we’re going to do a basic weave pattern for these.”
I showed the women how to tie the vines together and weave them to create a square net. Then we strung the net through sticks so we could have something to drag it through the water.
Finally, when the nets were ready, I waded out into the surf until the waves were nearly up to my waist. I showed the women how to capture fish in the net, and then whack them with a rock so they didn’t flop around and suffer as they suffocated in the open air.
Before long, the women were complete pros at it. They dragged their nets through the water and came up with one or two flopping fish each time.
“Ben,” Ainsley said as she approached me after we’d been fishing for about an hour. “I wish to talk to you about the warg attack. We must move our camp.”
I hadn’t even thought of that. It made sense she would want to do that, though, since this was the strategy they’d used before.
“Ainsley, we don’t have to move this time,” I pointed out to her. “You’ve just started to grow your gardens, and we aren’t too far from the beach.”
“Yes, but the wargs will come back,” she argued, and her full lips turned down into a frown. “They always come back. We cannot risk it.”
“What if we built traps around the entrance so they couldn’t get to the trees in the first place?” I asked her. “ We’ll all know where the traps are, so it won’t affect us, but if the wargs come again, they’ll be stopped before they can even get to us.”
“Traps?” She tilted her head curiously. “How?”
I thought back to the holes the serpent women and I had dug in the sand back home. We’d put some spikes in the ground and covered the pits, and I was sure the same strategy would work here.
“I’ll show you,” I replied, “but you have to trust me. You guys will never thrive if you constantly move. That’s no way to live.”
When we were done fishing for the day, Ainsley, Mira, and I sent the other women up with the fish while we got to work on the traps. It was hard work since we didn’t have a shovel or to dig with, and we were only able to use some of the clay bowls, but I was able to show Ainsley what I meant.
As soon as she understood what I wanted to do, Ainsley called down about twenty women from the village, and we all got to work on the holes.
All in all, by the time the sun was about to set, we’d dug about fifty pits all around the entrance tree, and I made sure to leave very little room in between holes, so the wargs wouldn’t know where to step. Then we picked up branches and sticks from the forest floor and carved those into razor sharp spikes, which we then stuck in the bottom of the holes.
If any of those damn wargs tried to attack us again, they’d fall into the pits and be impaled immediately.
“This is a brilliant idea, Ben,” Theora informed me with what I’d come to recognize as her typical nod. “We don’t have to move anymore, and we are all grateful for that.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I shrugged. “This just seems like a much better way to keep those wargs away. And this way, we can send a message to the pirates: don’t fuck with us!”
“Don’t fuck with us,” Theora tested the words out on her tongue, and a grin spread across her usually stoic face. “I like that. It sounds very forceful.”
“It’s meant to be,” I chuckled.
I was glad to see all the women had pitched in on this project, despite their initial concerns. Once night had fallen and we’d all gone back up to eat some food before bed, I could tell every woman would sleep more soundly, secure in the knowledge that if any of those wargs tried to attack now, they’d be impaled and killed.
; I planned to start with the gardens the next day, although I wasn’t totally sure how I wanted to protect those from foragers and forest animals. I figured a big fence would be my best bet, but that would require felling a tree or two, which would probably be quite a lengthy process.
“I like it here,” Mira announced as we got ready for bed. “The island is beautiful. Except for those pirates.”
Her voice turned dark at the thought of the invaders, and I reached out to squeeze her hand.
“Me, too.” I nodded. “Marella was right with her vision, huh?”
“She was,” Mira sighed and cast her eyes downward. “I do miss home, though.”
“I do, too.” I sat down beside the warrior and wrapped an arm around her muscled shoulders, and she leaned her head against me.
“What do you think they’re doing right now?” she asked after a moment.
“Oh, I’m sure Marella and Arrick are driving their mothers crazy,” I laughed. “Nerissa is probably trying to keep her cool, and Talise has probably had about a million ‘productive discussions’ with Marella today.”
“Talise and her productive discussions,” Mira snickered. “My child will just get a firm ‘no.’ A child needs to learn boundaries.”
“George is probably thinking the same thing,” I pointed out, “and I bet Sela’s being firm with the twins, just as you would. A warrior’s parenting style. The dragons have probably grown tenfold, and I am sure they are all feasting and awaiting our return with excitement.”
“Careen is probably close to giving birth.” Mira stroked her hand up and down my chest.
“Probably,” I replied. I was a little sad I’d have to miss the birth of my child, but I couldn’t wait to get home and meet her.
“Ben, I would like a child when this is all over,” Mira said suddenly. “I think I would make a decent mother.”
I looked into her beautiful gold eyes for a moment, and I was so grateful she’d said this to me. I knew sometimes it was hard for Mira to be vulnerable and honest, and I didn’t want to play down the gift she’d given me.