by Logan Jacobs
“You would make the most amazing mother,” I told her seriously.
Our lips met in a slow, easy kiss, and at this point, there was nothing I loved more than kissing Mira. She had this magic about her that made even the most mundane of kisses luxurious.
The next morning, we got up and gathered Ainsley, Theora, and Netta to go and work on the fence around the gardens.
“How do you propose we get in?” Theora asked as we surveyed the dark dirt of the field. “Once this fence you speak of is in place.”
“We’ll build a gate,” I told her matter-of-factly.
“What is a gate?” Ainsley asked, and I was reminded once again how some of the things that seemed so normal to me were so different to them.
“It’s like a door,” I replied, before I realized they had no idea what a door was. “Um, I mean, it’s something that opens and closes, but it has a sort of latch, so animals can’t get into it.”
Again, I was met with blank stares.
“How about I just build one and then show you?” I laughed.
The women nodded.
First, I walked around the field to measure out the exact space of the garden. My guess was that it was about a hundred square feet, which wasn’t super big.
I knew the basics of fence building, like using posts and some sort of cement to make sure they stayed in place. I planned to cut big posts from the trees, and then tie them together with vines, and use the clay as a sort of cement. It wouldn’t be the sturdiest thing in the world, and it might not stand up to a storm season just yet, but it would be enough to keep the rabbits away from the fields and save the food for the time being.
“Ainsley, can you show me where you find the clay?” I asked her.
She nodded and led me through the forest to the edge of the beach.
“We dig here where the forest meets the sand,” she explained. “The Goddess has blessed us with clay in the earth down here.”
“Great,” I replied.
We dug down and retrieved a bunch of the red, mushy clay, which we then transported into a bunch of pots to take back to the gardens.
Next, I searched around for one of the smaller, younger trees. I didn’t want a sapling, exactly, but I definitely wanted a tree that wasn’t a hundred freaking feet tall, since that would be a bitch to cut down.
It took about an hour, but we finally managed to find a tree about five feet tall. Mira helped me, and we cut it down with our sea glass swords, and then sawed it into logs.
Boy, was I ever thankful for the indestructible dragon-made sea glass. Even with a sharp saw back home, it would have taken us hours upon hours to cut that tree into the posts we needed, and the blades would have dulled eventually. Our swords cut through the wood like butter, though, and it didn’t take us long to have enough pieces of wood to go back and build the fence. Even after all the cutting, the blades were sharp enough to shave with.
Just as I’d planned, we dug some holes around the perimeter of the garden about five feet apart, and then stuck the posts into clay. When the clay dried, the posts were almost impossible to move and had created a good skeleton for our fence.
While we waited for the clay to be completely dry, we cleared a space of about five feet outside the perimeter of the gardens by cutting down the trees. That way, their branches and leaves didn’t block the sunlight from hitting the garden.
Then we all started to line up thick branches and the leftover posts, and we tied them together with the thick, green vines.
In the center, I made sure to leave a gap so I could build a gate. I tied vines around a flat bundle of the posts to make a square about three feet wide and five feet tall, like a slab. Then I tied one of the end sticks onto the post with the vine by wrapping it around both of them simultaneously. I did that in three different places, just like the hinges of a door. Lastly, I fixed a makeshift latch from a few pieces of carved wood.
When we were done, we had a fence about six feet high around the entire garden.
“That should keep those rabbits out,” I said with a proud grin.
“Ben, this is amazing!” Ainsley gasped as she marveled at the structure we’d built.
As if on cue, a little fur ball leapt out of one of the bushes and made a beeline for the fields, which used to be wide open.
Only this time, the rabbit ran head first into the fence and knocked itself silly.
So, I quickly whipped out my bow and shot the critter right in its eye before it could make another move, but I now knew the fence worked.
“There we go!” Mira exclaimed and pumped a fist in the air. “And, we’ve got dinner.”
We were all exhausted, so we trudged back to the village and made sure to step between the large, nasty holes we’d dug into the ground to trap the wargs.
“Thank you for all of this, Ben,” Ainsley said as we made it to the main platform. “Tomorrow, we would like to have a feast to honor and thank you and Mira for all you have done for us, if you will accept.”
“Of course.” I smiled. “We would love that.”
“Then I will see it done.” Ainsley was just about to walk away and follow the others when I caught her elbow and stopped her.
“Wait,” I said.
“Was there something else?” she asked as she blinked at me innocently.
“Actually, yeah.” I nodded. “I wanted to talk to you about something, uh, kind of touchy? If you have a second?”
“Touchy?” Her eyebrows knitted together, and her blue eyes trailed down to my hands.
“Oh, not that kind,” I chuckled. “Yet.”
“Ah.” She smiled, and a slight blush rose to her cheeks. “What do you mean?”
“Touchy is, like, serious, but it might bother you,” I explained. “I’m just not sure how you’ll react to this, but I feel like I have to put it out there.”
“Alright.” She nodded. “I promise not to be touched by it, then.”
“I’m going to assume you mean you won’t get mad, and go on ahead,” I laughed. “The thing is, you guys need some sort of government system. The way you live is great, and all. You know, it sounds nice, in theory. But there are a billion reasons why hippie communes just don’t work, and I can see some of those pitfalls here already.”
“A hippie commune is what we are?” Ainsley asked, and then a tinkling giggle fell from her full lips. “That’s a funny name. I like it.”
“Yeah, it is,” I laughed. “A hippie commune just means people living together without any real structure. Which, again, is totally great in theory. The problem is, where I come from, they never really worked. Even the ones without some sort of evil, sinister person who tried to manipulate everything failed. Because if you aren’t united under some sort of system, nothing ever gets done. I mean, look at what happened before I got here.”
Ainsley thought this over for a long moment, and her eyes were so intelligent and emotive I could almost watch every single thought pass through them.
And I could also see when she finally understood my idea.
“So, we need this system of leadership because you will not be here forever,” she responded.
“Yeah.” I nodded slowly. “I’ve got kids back home, and wives, people to take care of, but I can’t leave until I know you guys will be okay without Mira and me.”
“I do suppose the two of you have been like leaders to us.” Ainsley tilted her head to consider this, and then she dipped her chin. “Yes, Ben, I agree with you. We must structure some sort of system. We can have our own Dragon King!”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” I teased. “After all, there’s only one of me.”
“A pity,” Ainsley giggled before she grew serious once again. “I will have to gather the village and talk to them about this. Who should be our leader?”
“Actually, that’s why I pulled you aside,” I told her. “I think you should do it.”
“Me?” she gasped, and her blue eyes went wide. “But I am not the oldest, or w
isest--”
“That doesn’t matter,” I cut her off before she could drown herself in a pool of disbelief. “It’s not about age, and you’ve got plenty of wisdom. But you’re the one who’s always open to challenges. You trusted me first, you tried the meat first, and you were willing to allow Mira and me to help you and your village.”
Again, Ainsley was silent as she thought my words over. In the last few days, I’d come to recognize that as a trait of this woman. Silence, in this case, wasn’t a bad thing. Ainsley merely took the time to think everything through in that brilliant brain of hers.
Which was yet another reason I thought she would make a good leader.
“Alright,” she finally conceded. “I will talk to them about it. We must make this decision as one, first, and then, if the rest of the village agrees, I will be the leader.”
“Good.” I grinned. “You’re going to make a fantastic president.”
“President?” She furrowed her porcelain brow. “Is that like a king?”
“A king who’s elected by the people.” I nodded. “It means you were chosen to lead, not born into it.”
“I rather like that,” Ainsley said with a beautiful smile, and the deer woman kissed me on the cheek before she bounded off.
For a second, I just stood there, stunned at the intimate gesture. Her lips had been soft and warm, like vanilla ice cream just melted over peach cobbler, and I felt the tingle of her lips on my cheek long after she’d gone off to gather the village women.
Before I could get my bearings, though, I heard a deep, dark growl come from the forest below.
A warg.
For a moment, my heart seized in my chest as I heard the sound echo below me, but then I remembered the traps we’d set earlier today.
Oh, I so needed to watch these mother fuckers get impaled out of their own stupidity.
I looked around to make sure none of the women saw me before I lowered myself back down off the platform. The last thing I needed was for a bunch of them to see me and follow me down.
I slowly stepped down the ladder until I was right above the last layer of branches. It had gotten a little harder to see in the twilight, but thankfully, my dragon vision made sure everything was still clear. Then I carefully flattened myself onto my belly on one of the huge branches and peeked through the curtain of leaves below me.
Just as I’d thought. Wargs.
There were two of them on the outskirts of our invisible traps, and they wore those disgustingly creepy smiles on their faces as they stared gleefully at the tree I was in.
“This is where Chegg and Timbo said the village was,” one of them growled.
The beasts had names. That was new information, so I tucked it away in the back of my mind, in a folder on just how intelligent these ugly brutes seemed to be. Monstrous, but smart. That was a dangerous combination.
Then I drew myself from my thoughts and watched in anxious excitement as the wargs inched closer and closer to the traps.
“Did you hear the rumor?” the other wolf-man asked in a raspy voice. “Some of the others think these women have help somehow. We’ve lost four in a week. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“Where the hell are they going to get help from?” the first warg growled again. “They don’t fight back, remember? Not even their menfolk fought us.”
“It’s just a rumor.” The second beast shrugged.
“Well, stop listening to gossip, you numbskull!” the first bastard snapped and popped his companion on the head, hard.
Then they took another blind step, and a sharp crack echoed through the air.
The fuckers hadn’t even seen where they were going. All of a sudden, both of them broke through the thin layer of detritus that covered our traps, and they instantly fell into the deep holes.
Two anguished screams echoed from the wargs as they were impaled and killed, and I couldn’t help the satisfied smirk that spread across my face.
Served them right. Ugly assholes.
I climbed back up to the main platform to see all of the village had already gathered at Ainsley’s behest.
And they all stared at me with wide eyes.
“What was that?” Theora demanded, and the brunette looked skittish.
“Our traps worked,” I told the women with a proud grin. “We just got two of the wargs caught in our holes. They’re dead now.”
An excited cheer echoed throughout the village, and it almost made me laugh to think about how, only a few short days ago, these same women had been so against any sort of killing at all.
Now, here they were, excited about the deaths of two of their enemies. I couldn’t have been more proud.
“I’m going to go down there and make sure they’re really dead,” I informed the crowd, and soon, I’d climbed all the way down the tree and carefully inspected the traps where the wargs had fallen.
Boy, were they impaled.
The fat, disgusting lumps of their bodies laid in the bottom of the two pits they’d fallen into. Actually, they couldn’t really be called bodies anymore. They were more like deformed heaps, with spikes stuck up through their middles in various places. Dark blue blood oozed out of the wargs as they stared up with cold, dead eyes, and their nasty snouts were both open from their final screams, but no sound came out.
They were both dead as a doornail.
With a sigh, I realized I had to clear these bodies out of the pitfall trap before they started to decay. I certainly didn’t want to wake up in the morning and smell dead, rotting warg corpses. Plus, the stench would give away our traps and alert any other wargs that something was amiss.
So, I climbed just a bit back up the tree and stuck my head above the platform.
“Mira,” I called out. “Can you help me?”
The jade haired warrior was down the tree in a flash, and I could tell she was just as excited as I was to see the dead wargs.
“Nasty fuckers of mothers,” she muttered as she looked at their twisted corpses.
“You can say that again,” I chuckled. “Let’s grab a vine and haul them out.”
We found a nice, sturdy vine and twisted it up into a lasso. Then we hung it down into the traps and carefully slid the hole around the first warg’s body. When it was secure just under his shoulders, we tightened the rope and hauled the body up. It came away from the spikes with a disgusting squelch as the mushy innards pulled away from the sharp wood, and Mira and I fought to pull the perforated corpse out of the hole.
“Gross.” I gagged.
We repeated the process with the second warg, and then we had two monster bodies filled with holes.
“We should bury them,” I told Mira. “So, their smell doesn’t attract any of their buddies.”
“It seems wrong to give these wargs a proper burial,” she growled as she stared down at the corpses.
“I’m with you.” I nodded. “Lesser of two evils, I suppose.”
We dug two crude graves for the wargs and then unceremoniously dumped their bodies into them. Mira made sure to give the corpses a kick or two before we piled dirt on top of them and patted it down.
To make sure the ground looked undisturbed and didn’t cause any suspicion, we also picked up some sticks and detritus to lay over the graves.
When we finished, we climbed back into the trees and were met with cheers and smiles from the village women, and once the celebration finally settled down, Ainsley took her place in front of the crowd.
“Dear sisters,” she started, “I have something I want to discuss with you. Our dearest Ben has brought up a point I am afraid I cannot ignore, and I hope you cannot, either. We currently have a wonderful, ages old system that has served us well. We do not have a leader, and we all live our lives as we wish. However, when the invaders came, and since then, it has become apparent this system does not work quite as well anymore.”
“Doesn’t work at all, if you ask me,” Theora grumbled to my absolute surprise.
“Uh, thank yo
u, Theora,” Ainsley responded, but she also looked a bit shocked at the other woman’s words.
“Ben has basically been a leader to us these last few days,” the brunette explained with a shrug. “And we have functioned and existed better than ever before.”
A murmur of agreement rippled through the crowd.
Ainsley cast a glance my way, and I could tell she wanted me to speak up.
“Theora’s correct.” I smiled at the brunette and nodded in gratitude. “But I can’t stay here forever. I’ve got kids to get back to. So, it would be wrong of me to try and be your leader. However, you all have someone here who’s just as smart and capable as I am. Plus, she doesn’t have a home to get back to. I think Ainsley should be your leader.”
I wasn’t sure exactly what response I would be met with, but, thankfully, the crowd almost instantly agreed.
“I like this plan.” Jemma grinned as she bounced on her toes.
“You would trust me with this task?” Ainsley breathed, and her eyes shimmered with unshed tears as she looked around at her people. “It is a great honor. Thank you all.”
A second later, Ainsley was engulfed in a mass hug filled with fifty deer women and two little girls. They all murmured words of encouragement as they embraced, and I had to admit, it was a pretty damn sweet thing to see.
“Look at you, getting all sappy,” Mira chuckled as she playfully elbowed me in the ribs.
“I am not.” I rolled my eyes. “It’s just nice, okay. It feels like I’m seeing the beginning of something important.”
“Yeah, I feel that way, too.” She smiled and nodded. “Let’s go eat, though. I’m starving.”
For dinner, we had some of the fish we’d caught earlier that morning, along with some bright red sea fruit Jemma had harvested after we’d fished. While we ate our modest fare, I planned to go out in the morning and try to track down one of those deer for the feast tomorrow night. It would be the first real hunt, and I wanted to take Ainsley and Theora again. Hopefully, they’d be able to shoot something this time, so they could really start relying on themselves and their own hunting abilities.