by R Magnusholm
“If it wasn’t stable, I wouldn’t be bringing George aboard.”
They were slowly traveling upstream, taking advantage of the current flowing inland at rising tide. Their meandering waterway split, merged, branched, and led into dead ends. The watery maze west of the mouth of the Fleet stretched for miles, and it would have been easy to get lost in there if not for the sun to navigate by, and if Spot couldn’t smell conifers half a mile to the north.
Soaring tree crowns loomed beyond the stand of rushes ahead. It seemed to be a less low-lying isle than the others they had found so far. They swept around a curve in the passage and reached a wide stretch of open water separating them from the steep-banked island. Aspens, willows, and alders grew in profusion along the shore with oaks and birches farther back. The muddy water in the channel churned ominously as the current fought with the inflowing tide.
John said, “This one looks promising.”
Liz shielded her eyes against the sun as she studied the separating stretch of water. “Oh, I don’t know—the river’s treacherous.”
“We’ve got paddles.”
They gazed at the island in silence. It seemed to be about a hundred yards long and probably half as wide. A picturesque reed-fringed cove with overhanging willows in the island’s middle promised secure anchorage. Beyond the isle lay the half-a-mile-wide main channel.
“Too dangerous,” said Liz.
“But it’s a good place. Well above the tide line, and I bet there are no ursines there.” He turned to the wolf. “Isn’t that right, Spot?”
Spot sniffed the air and yawned. Earlier he had reported two tigers, a herd of aurochs, boars, elks, and deer, but not a whiff of bears.
The tide reached its highest level. In a couple of hours, it would start ebbing. John reckoned the Ra could easily cross the fifty-yard channel, which seemed deep enough to stop the ursines from coming over even at low tide, unless they were good swimmers. He was certain the turbulent arm of the river didn’t freeze in winter, either.
“I’ve a bad feeling about it,” Liz said. “Let’s go back before the fire goes out in the pot. Don’t forget about the tigers.”
John gazed at the island with longing, then shrugged and backed the raft into the maze of twisting channels leading to the mainland. “Next time, eh?” He concentrated on memorizing the path and surrounding landmarks. The secret island would be of no use as a sanctuary if they couldn’t find it again.
George, who earlier lay in his basket, quietly kicking his feet, began wailing, so Liz picked him up and let him feed at her breast. Afterward, she held him upright against her chest and stroked his back. George peered over Liz’s shoulder, turned his innocent blue eyes to John, and smiled.
“Hey Liz, little Georgie wants to be a sailor.”
She laughed and cradled the baby in her arms. “Whatever gives you this crazy idea?”
“We’re on a raft, and he’s smiling at me.”
“So? I was pulling weeds in the garden, and he smiled at me then—meaning he wants to be a farmer.”
John supposed their son would have to be all of those things, but a hunter-gatherer foremost. That’s what all prehistoric people were.
Liz laid the baby back in his basket and turned to John. “He smiles because he loves us, and you do look so relaxed today.” They were passing a small cove of clear water surrounded by lush grass. “Drop the anchor, Captain. This is a great spot for bathing.”
She slipped out of her long deerskin dress and slid into the river. The water came up to her neck. She dove under the surface and swam across the cove. Watching her frolicking naked, it struck him how impossibly lithe and young she looked. Hotter than any supermodel. He lowered a rock tied to a leather rope overboard and pulled off his clothes.
As he jumped over the side among the lily pads, the cool water came up to his armpits. All around him bloomed waterlilies, filling the air with their heady aroma. Dragonflies darted in pursuit of their tiny prey. Rhizome roots of rushes that covered the river bottom felt slimy and unstable under his feet, like sleeping water snakes too lazy to slither away. Or decomposing limbs of drowned mariners.
With some trepidation, he lowered his face underwater, but all he saw was his pale feet on a compacted mat of vegetation. Just the primordial fear of the unknown, he assured himself, pushing the thought away.
Liz mashed some green reeds. “This is like natural soap.
9 My father taught me to use grass in the garden to wash my hands in a watering trough.” She climbed onto a hassock and lathered herself up. “The rushes are juicier than grass. Try it.” She rinsed herself off, then began lathering up again.
He grabbed a handful of lush reeds, wrung and squashed them into a pulp, the foamy green sap dripping from between his fingers. Strange, how a humble plant seemed to contain detergents. He’d never heard about it anywhere, and yet the sudsy evidence floated in front of his eyes.
Spot eyed them bathing from the raft, his pink tongue lolling good-naturedly.
John soaped his head, washed his face, ducked under the surface to rinse his hair, and then scrubbed the rest of himself. As he watched Liz climbing back onto her hassock after another rinse, he wanted to make love to her there and then, amid the floating lily pads and singing frogs.
But then George started to cry, and John realized they had left their baby in the care of a wild wolf, which wasn’t exactly responsible parenting. Thank God, there were no social services in this savage world.
Chapter 59
Calm Before the Storm
Later that day, back in their camp, they replenished the fire, ate a midday meal, and had a nap. In the afternoon, John brought in water and firewood, and with Liz’s help, dug five more foot-traps along the northern side of their enclosure.
“It’s probably useless work,” she said, pushing bramble vines back into place. “I bet the bears aren’t coming.”
“Better safe than sorry. Besides, what else is there to do? No television or books to read.”
“Well, we could . . .” she began, then shrugged and looked away.
“Exactly.” He glanced at his muddy hands. “I’ll wash up and bring more water.”
As he headed to the stream, he mulled over how much free time they had on their hands lately. With the woods full of game, they had no shortage of food. The first mushrooms of the year appeared, and some grew right in their clearing around the young pines. Liz called them slippery jacks or pine boletes. They ate a lot of them these days, sun-drying some for winter.
Although the rabbits kept away from the vicinity of their wigwam because of smoke, hundreds of them dwelled at the other end of the glade. John supposed it wouldn’t take much effort to prop up a heavy log with a wobbly stick to make a deadfall trap. And the Fleet teemed with fish even after the salmon run had stopped.
No, there was positively no shortage of food.
When he returned with two buckets of water, Liz stood up and brushed dry pine needles off her dress. “Are you sure you don’t want to swap your office pants for a leather kilt?”
He gave her a crooked grin. “You want me to channel my inner Scotsman, eh?”
“Less work to tailor a kilt than pants.”
“Uh-huh.” He peered into George’s basket and saw the baby fast asleep. Funny how he woke them up at least twice a night, but slept most of the day. He pulled Liz close and nuzzled her ear. “He’s gonna sleep for a while now, so perhaps you might consider enjoying a bit of Scotsman’s vigor, alfresco—”
Her lips closed over his, hungry and insistent. His hands squeezed her hips, her bottom, slid lower, under the hem of her dress.
She broke off the kiss. “Wait, wait.” She put the baby basket under an overhanging hazel bush and out of the sun, then undid the ribbon holding her hair in a ponytail. Her multicolored tresses, dark blonde near the roots, gray in the middle, and golden at the ends, spilled over her shoulders in a glorious waterfall. She slid her bow and quiver off her shoulder and laid them at h
er feet.
He kissed her neck. She smelled of the river and the mashed green reeds they used for soap. He unhooked the fastenings at the front of her dress and took hold of her breasts. She unbuttoned his shirt and undid his belt. His pants promptly slid off and puddled at his ankles most comically.
Spot loitered by the entrance to the reed hut, watching them.
“Out. Off you go,” John ordered, sending the wolf to patrol the surrounding woods.
“Kiss me, John,” she murmured.
He did, fondling her breasts and sliding his hand under her dress. With her only set of underwear washed and drying in the sun, she was naked underneath. His fingers caressed her down there, in the wet center of her pleasure, until she began bucking her hips and moaning.
“Wait, mmm, wait.” Liz clamped her thighs, trapping his hand. “I want to come with you inside me.” She pulled her dress off over her head. “You make me so hot.”
He took off his shirt and dropped it atop her dress. In the next moment, she was in his arms, pushing her tongue into his mouth. They slid to their knees in the soft moss, facing each other, still kissing. Her bottom was so smooth and warm under his palms. Turning her around, he cupped her breasts from behind. His right hand slipped lower, stroking her flat tummy. He found it impossible to believe she used to be the chubby Liz from Accounting.
She gasped as he entered her. “Don’t come inside me, okay?”
“I won’t.”
“I don’t need a new baby every year.”
He began thrusting. “I have perfect control.”
“One baby every three years. No more.” She lowered her head onto her hands, clasped together on the moss. “Oh, this is so nice. But do use your hand, too.”
He leaned over and reached down to her tummy, slid fingers into her bush, then lower. Lightly rubbing her clit, he continued to move inside her, until she cried out softly, fell forward, flat on her stomach, breathing heavily.
Liz rolled on her back and pulled him on top of her, parting her thighs. “Can’t just do doggy style every time, like some heathens.”
As he slid in and out of her, her hands roamed his back. She started to moan, gasped, and hooked her legs over his hips. Her body tensed, then went completely slack.
“Did you?” he asked.
“Oh yes!” She squeezed his shoulders. “Such muscles . . .”
Her face flushed, she wriggled from under him and pushed him to his back. Straddling him, she sank onto his stiff member. Her eyes closed, she rode him up and down, held her breasts together, then slid one hand down to her tummy. And lower still.
He watched her playing with herself and felt his own pleasure building toward the point of no return. He grabbed her hips to stop her moving. “Slow down, Liz, otherwise—”
She became still, but her fingers kept rubbing herself down there, until with a moan she collapsed on top of him. When she kissed him, her kiss felt impossibly sweet. In a flash, she slid off him, lay on her side, and gripped his aching member. Gazing at him from under lowered lashes, she began sliding her hand over its slippery length.
No longer needing to hold himself in check, he let go, and it flooded out of him, spurting all over her fingers, thick and creamy. She kept moving her hand up and down until the eruption subsided, then lay on her back next to him.
For a long time they remained silent, watching the clouds drift in the limitless blue sky. Finally, he said. “That was great.”
“Yeah.”
“We work too hard. We should rest one day a week and get naked more often.”
“No such thing as a week on this planet,” she said. “And no contraceptive pills.”
“We can work for two days and then take it easy every third day.” He laughed. “As for contraception, I can’t imagine why any woman would want to be on a pill when it’s so easy for a man to control when he comes.”
“Is that so?”
“In the old universe, nine in ten porn videos ended with a guy jerking off all over her face. They called them facials.”
“I was a respectable family woman,” Liz spoke with mock indignation. “I never looked at that trash.”
“My point is every male actor had perfect control. So, if men don’t come by accident, what’s the point of the pill?”
She giggled. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“What?” he said. “You mean the pharmaceutical industry needs to make money?”
“Well, that too, but I was thinking about drunk teenagers.”
“I controlled myself even as a drunk teenager. Although I was never that drunk.”
“So you say,” she said.
The wind picked up, carrying the piney fragrance of the forest. He folded his arms under his head and watched ravens cavorting in the treetops across the glade. It felt so nice to lie naked in the sun on a soft bed of moss. He squeezed Liz’s hand, yawned, and closed his eyes. He supposed when their baby grew bigger, they wouldn’t be able to make love like that—in broad daylight under the open skies. But that was okay, too.
Perfectly okay . . .
A wonderful lassitude infused his limbs. His mind began drifting, and then just like that—boom—and he was in the wolf’s body, skulking in the dark alleys under the spreading oaks. Gnarled craggy limbs stretched overhead, supporting a rustling canopy. As Spot turned away from investigating a hedgehog burrow under the tree roots, his sensitive nose detected a sour wet dog smell. A bear.
Chapter 60
The Ursines Are Back
John awoke with a start and sat bolt upright, reaching for his spear. Liz still slept, her bow lying atop her discarded clothes. A gentle breeze ruffled her hair, and she was smiling in her sleep.
As his hand closed over the spear, he forced himself to relax. The ursine smell had been faint, and Spot was far away as there were no oak groves near Camp Bramble.
The attack wasn’t imminent. And maybe, just maybe, there was no danger at all. He closed his eyes and connected to Spot’s mind again. Looking through the wolf’s eyes, he recognized the area. They had passed through this oak grove when they had explored the approaches to their camp. The wolf was two miles east, and the wind blew from the east, too, so the ursines were another mile away.
He directed Spot to seek out the bears.
The wolf headed east with the easy lope of his species, gliding wraithlike through mottled shadows. Oaks gave way to pines studding a low ridge, beyond which the ground dipped toward the river valley where firs brooded, dark and ominous. Farther still ran the wolf to where birches, aspens, and alders fringed a swamp. Gradually, the wet dog odor grew stronger.
Spot came across four ursines skulking among holly thickets. They peered furtively this way and that, sniffing the air. A deer herd grazed nearby, but the bears paid them no heed. How strange. They reminded John of an army observation post. Scouts.
And with scouts, there had to be a larger force.
Unnoticed by the enemy lookouts, Spot hooked around them and carried on east. He didn’t have to go far before the smell of bears became overpowering. Cautiously, the wolf peered through the thickets. Lush grass grew in the flood meadow ahead. Nothing moved but undulating foxtails. And then a gaggle of ursines appeared at the far end of the meadow. Armed with clubs and sharpened sticks, they plodded in a long unruly file. Scores of them, perhaps a hundred.
The bears were some three miles away and, at the current rate of progress, they’d reach Camp Bramble in an hour. John directed Spot to observe the ursines and disengaged his mind.
He put his hand on Liz’s naked thigh and gently shook her awake.
Her eyes fluttered open, and she favored him with a coy smile.
She met his gaze, and her smile faltered.
“Around a hundred well-armed ursines will be here in an hour,” he said, reaching for his clothes.
Liz sprang to her feet, grabbed her dress, and pulled it over her head. “Where are they coming from?”
“East.”
She slung he
r bow and quiver over her shoulder and picked up the baby basket. George chose this moment to become fidgety and demand a feed. She lifted him out and nestled him in the crook of her arm. The top of her dress was already unfastened, so she held him to her breast. “We have an hour?” she asked.
“Maybe more. They’re still three miles away and not in a hurry.”
“I hope they’ll walk past us. I mean, they don’t know where we live. Do they?”
“No.”
His voice sounded hollow in his ears. A large war party heading their way (with scouts on their flanks) was unlikely to miss their camp. Not with the woods reeking of smoke from their fire. Even if they put the fire out, the smell would linger for weeks.
Liz said, “If they find us, they’ll be sorry. We’ve enough arrows to kill them all.”
That’s assuming they attack as recklessly as before, he thought, noticing an untidy pile of deadwood he had carried into the clearing but had not brought inside the stockade. He started chucking the pieces over the wall now. If they were besieged for any length of time, they might run out of firewood. They had plenty of food, though.
A realization struck him with almost physical force. Water. They would die of thirst way before they’d run out of either firewood or food.
He lobbed the last tree limb over the parapet, scrambled up the ladder, and descended into their narrow courtyard. The trough was half-empty. Two leather buckets of water he’d brought earlier stood next to it. He emptied them into the tub and climbed the inner ladder back to the parapet walkway.
Liz was coming over the wall, carrying the baby basket with the wailing George, who apparently caught the anxious vibe. “John, where’re you going?”
“Water! We need to fill every container.”
He slid down the external ladder and sprinted to the stream. Without pausing, he filled the buckets and headed back at a slow trot, trying not to slosh out the precious contents.
He hauled the buckets up the wall, one at a time, and handed one to Liz, then climbed over the parapet. They brought the buckets down into the courtyard and poured them into the trough.