by Erik Reid
“It’s happening again,” Clara said.
“Me too,” I replied, pumping my hips harder and faster until my body lost all control and erupted in orgasm, pumping my seed inside Clara’s core as her body shuddered in bliss.
Her feet slid down the rock wall until they touched the floor again. I pulled free of Clara’s grip and waited until I could tuck myself back into my pants. She smoothed out her skirt and adjusted her top before turning around to face me. The despondency in her eyes was replaced by something new, a fiery determination that spoke of confidence and strength.
“You’re a good man, Kyle,” she said. “I know this, but my brethren do not. They will not take on faith that their lives will improve by your side, not unless you lay down the coin it takes to welcome them as your givens. To march forward is to waste time when we have none to spare.”
She turned and walked back the way we had come, abandoning our quest to enlist the kobolds directly.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To see my mother,” Clara said. “It’s time I stood up to her.”
CHAPTER 27
Clara strode down the corridor and back into her mother’s central chamber with her back stiff and head held high. The other girls and I fell in behind.
“Mother,” she said. Her voice was loud and even, with a confidence I had never heard from her. Dani shot me a look that was half surprised and half impressed. Kaylee just stood and watched with her hands clasped behind her back, bouncing on the tips of her toes.
“Kyle Landers is the taker you must assign my siblings to.”
“I choose what’s best for my business,” Momma Jumbo said. “I have a reputation to uphold.”
“I know first-hand how scarce clean water is in the heart of winter,” Clara said, “and how sparse our food stores grow by early spring. I know the hungry cries of the children you send to their nursery chambers, and the sadness in their lonely eyes as they wonder why their own mother relegates them to the darkness.
“You are a businesswoman, first and foremost, and Kyle Landers has an offer you would be foolish to turn away. The money he offers you would purchase food, water, and clothing. You could offer your children the life any child deserves, but few of yours ever achieve.”
Momma Jumbo listened patiently, calmly reclined against the back of her oversized stone seat. Clara’s face tensed as she stood up to her mother, but her voice never faltered.
“Is that so?” the woman asked.
“You know it is,” Clara said. “I have lived here longer than any son or daughter you ever birthed. I have seen generations of kobolds cry themselves to sleep, agonizing over empty bellies and uncertain fates.
“Kyle is a good man, and a good taker. He may not be the taker you gave me to, but he has treated me with all the kindness and respect a given is due, and then some. Dani has done the same. Together, they have nurtured and supported me — mind, body, and soul. They would care for any kobold the same way.
“Do not let your personal feelings get in the way of a sound deal. That would make a charade of the very business you profess to love above all else.”
“The things you say to your own mother,” Momma Jumbo said, her lower lip quivering as her mouth pulled into a wide smile. “Such reason and conviction. Had I known you harbored any shrewdness in you I’d have been proud long ago, but later is better than never. You finally live up to our family name.”
The red woman began to chuckle as tears escaped the corners of her eyes and trickled down her plump red cheeks.
“This is not a child’s tantrum and I will not be mocked,” Clara said. “You refuse a generous offer for children too old for a proper taking and why, to further consign your flesh and blood to a life of hard labor and malnourishment? You have tunnels enough for all your needs, but you force your own offspring to tunnel the hard rock far beyond your exalted seat. They dig, and they dig, for no reason other than your whim.”
“They dig for you, you ungrateful twit,” Momma Jumbo said.
This jarred Clara into a surprised silence.
Momma Jumbo continued. “Your siblings tunnel beneath the earth to find a spot where you can become your own kobold queen. You have sweetness in you Clara, and I’ll never understand where it came from, but you could break this cycle. Raise your own children with affection instead of crude calculation.”
“You could have tried that approach,” I said.
“I did,” the woman replied. “You see the result.
“Clara,” she continued, “you don’t know this now, but one day the urge will strike you. You will nest, allowing your body to give its strength to the children you foster within. You’ll start a family, and your kobold instincts will demand that you find a safe lair beneath Silura’s hard stone shell. When that time comes, I want you to have a breeding pit worthy of my magical daughter, selected from all our kind by the Goddess herself to contain the precious gift of healing.”
“It is a gift you punished me for each day,” Clara said. “You called me weak, defective, braindead. My gift was the reason you never sold me. You were ashamed.”
“It is the reason I never sold you,” Clara’s mother said, “but shame played no part in it.” The woman’s voice cracked as emotion welled up inside her. “Your sisters always left without looking back, but they were short-tempered and needy. They were myself in miniature, and I couldn’t wait to be rid of them, but you? I liked having you around too much. You offered me obedience, and I told myself it was love.
“You were always my favorite, Clara. I was harshest on you, I know. I’m not a perfect woman.
“If your time on the world’s surface has been good for you, I’m content in that. Go, learn about the world, and take your siblings with you. If their efforts will help you, I’m sure they’ll be happy to join you.”
“So you’ll release your children from their work?” I asked.
The woman wiped away the tears that had run down her cheeks. “For all the coin you’ve brought, yes. This is still a business, and you’ve made me an offer. It’s one I accept.”
Clara took a slow, intentional walk toward her mother. The woman watched with nervous apprehension until our slender, pink-skinned healer wrapped her arms around the seated woman and pulled her into a long embrace.
She wouldn’t activate the magic instilled in her mind by the divine touch of some unnamed Goddess, but she didn’t have to. That solitary gesture was enough to heal the bond of mother and daughter, and offer some solace to an older woman whose nature hurt herself as much as anyone else.
“Now go,” Momma Jumbo said. “You’re in a hurry, aren’t you? Only fools hang around after they’ve gotten what they came for.”
She leaned over then and took hold of a long tube with a large, conical mouthpiece that she yelled into. “North tunnel, this is your momma speaking. I have found a taker for each of you. His name is Kyle, and your sister Clara promises he’s a good man. Serve him boldly and don’t fuck this up. It’s your only chance to get out of this dump.”
She set the speaking tube down and gestured behind her. “At the north end of my chamber is the trolley line. I don’t normally let outsiders use it, but I will make an exception.”
Clara led Dani and Kaylee past the kobold matriarch and toward the arched doorway at the rear of the chamber, with billowing torches on either side and ornate carvings adorning the stone.
“Thank you,” I said. “For giving Clara some peace of mind, but also for letting us take your trolleys. Anything that speeds things up is welcome help.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said. “You have to pump the cart yourself, and it’s an eight mile stretch, but it should take you to your new givens faster than the looping corridor you started down earlier.”
I gave her a puzzled look. She arched an eyebrow in response.
“You saw that?” I asked.
“Enough to know that you’re a man who takes care of a woman first,” she said. “Now don�
��t misbehave in my tunnels again. I have ways of knowing who goes and who comes.”
“Point taken,” I said. “Thanks all the same.”
“For all these rounds,” she said, “I should be thanking you. I’d have sold them for a tenth of this. They’ve worked hard enough. It’s time I let them live their lives.
“Look at me,” she continued, “the pregnancy hormones are making me such a softy!” She erupted in a hearty laugh then, tearing up at the corners of her eyes and jostling her loose breasts as they rested atop her heaving belly. As she laughed, she tried to cross her legs, but it was too late. The rag that covered her waist dampened.
“Before I go,” I said, “can I just ask how you keep getting pregnant?”
“No,” she said. “You may not.”
“Okay. Feminine mystique and all that. A woman needs her secrets.”
I left Clara’s mother and approached the rear of her dome-shaped chamber, toward the dark archway the girls had just passed beneath.
A long, wide tunnel stretched out before us without any torches to light the way. Three sets of rails ran in a straight line, one empty and two containing a mining cart resting against a bumper. I climbed into one cart, testing its stability with a few light jumps and then rocking it from side to side to see if it flipped off its rails.
It didn’t. The cart was well-made, and its wheels gripped the rails tight.
Kaylee jumped into the adjacent cart and mimicked my movements, though it was clear she didn’t know why she was jumping and rocking. It was cute, watching her pounce around inside that small mining cart, her eyes squinting with seriousness.
“I want Clara on my team,” Kaylee said. “She’s light and has the most perfect balance. Clara, what do you say?”
“We’re doing teams now?” Dani asked.
“It’s a race, isn’t it?” Kaylee said. “Please, please, please! Tell me it’s a race!”
“Of course it’s a race,” I said. “One I’m going to win.”
“I accept your invitation, Kaylee,” Clara said. “I’d like to get there first to introduce my brethren, so I’d like to join the winning team.”
“Clara,” I said. “Talking trash now? You’ve grown so fast.”
“I have our bags,” Dani said, holding up the saddlebags we had carried with us all week. The horses were gone, but the rations weren’t. “Even with these weighing us down, we’re going to beat you.”
“Go!” Kaylee yelled, and then Clara climbed into the cart.
“Not fair,” I said, reaching out to help Dani into ours while Kaylee started to lift the metal arm that pumped the wheels of her cart. Clara took the other side of the long, see-saw lever and they started to inch away from the starting spot. That lead was short in terms of distance, but the longer it grew in duration, the farther ahead they’d get.
A spark of adrenaline ignited in my core and I flashed Dani a grin. “I do love a good race.”
“Less talking,” she said. “More pumping.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I pumped the crossbar on my end of the lever and we inched forward.
Dani’s crossbar lifted as mine sank. She pushed her end of the lever downward, forcing the crossbar in my hands to lift. When it peaked, I slammed it downward, jolting our cart further ahead. The terrain was flat and the rails were straight, so the inertia we built up with each thrust would carry us faster and faster into the northern tunnel ahead.
Then Oscar took over.
Dani gasped as the metal bar flew upward faster and harder than before. My hands didn’t just thrust down now, they also yanked the lever upward, taking control of the whole process despite the added effort that would require.
“Sorry,” I said. “Sometimes I can’t control him.”
“What did Benoch say about that?” Dani asked.
“I didn’t tell him,” I said. “Your latest lesson in human-ology: masculine pride. It’s stupid but it’s strong.”
Dani braced against the mining cart’s rear while I worked harder and harder at driving us down the rails. Long stretches of darkness stole any hope of seeing the tunnel ahead, with torches mounted only every half a mile or so.
“Hey!” Kaylee called from behind us. Her voice was distant, and muffled by the wind we created against our own ears. “How’d you get so far ahead?”
“Mushroom,” I yelled out. “Watch out for banana peels!”
“Is that some kind of monkey joke?” she yelled, though her voice was fainter as we sped away.
“No? Well… maybe in a roundabout way.”
My muscles flexed faster and faster and my heartrate soared from the effort Oscar demanded of my body just to keep up with him.
“I had a moment with Clara,” I said, relying on our lead to keep this confession from reaching the cart behind us.
“I thought you might have,” Dani said. In a flash of light that came and went quickly, her dark hair was streaming behind her, her wings tucked against her back where the wind wouldn’t whip at them. Then she vanished again, lost in darkness for another half-mile.
“Her whole demeanor changed,” she continued. “She’s so sure of herself now.”
“Normally, I don’t kiss and tell, but I can’t keep things from you, Dani. It knots up my stomach worse than firehouse chili.”
“I’m not mad,” she said. “I’m relieved. I care about Clara, and I want her to be happy. That’s what happens when you grow close to someone. It would be silly to think you caring about her takes away from you caring about me.”
“You’re so enlightened,” I said. “I love that about you, Dani.”
“You what— watch out!”
In another flash of light, the tunnel curved ahead of us. Our cart took the bend at increasing speed, one side lifting an inch off the rails as Oscar continued to pump the lever harder and harder.
When the rails straightened out, we landed against the metal tracks again with a shower of sparks and kept careening into the dark.
I took my free hand and gripped the crossbar underhand, pulling when Oscar pushed and pushing when he pulled. He didn’t slow, and straining against him only forced my body to work harder.
Sync Progress: 10%
New Somatic Boost Level: 3
“That’s enough,” I said. “Oscar. Oscar!” I pried his fingers off the lever and pushed myself away from it, yanking Oscar off the mining cart’s handlebar and holding him steady.
We took another turn, lifting off the rails higher than last time, but landing faster as the cart slowed from lack of manual effort. A flash of torchlight revealed Dani’s hands covering her eyes.
“I’m gaining on you!” Kaylee yelled.
Dani opened her eyes and reached for the cart’s handle in the next flash of light.
“I’ll take it from here,” she said, pushing and pulling the lever the final mile of our journey. The grinding screech of metal wheels on metal rails behind us signaled Kaylee and Clara zooming past us.
“Pull the brake,” Dani said. I reached back and found a small lever near the floor, then pulled it up. The wheels locked and ground against the track until we rolled to a stop against a spring-board bumper that barricaded the track’s end.
Kaylee was already standing beside her cart, bouncing on the tips of her toes with her simki tail whipping and curling behind her. “I did it!” she yelled. “That was my first cart race. I’m a natural!”
I put my hands on my hips and stared at her, waiting.
“Oh,” she said. “Right, I mean we did it. Clara was a good teammate.”
“Congratulations,” I said.
“It’s quiet,” Clara said, walking further down the tunnel. There were no kobolds in sight, but there were a few old tools strewn about. Piles of rock lined the tunnel’s edge, as did long strips of metal that might one day become rails on the ever-growing track toward the north.
The sound of construction tools banging and chipping away at the stone had once echoed so loudly through the underground maze th
at we heard it not far from the entrance. Yet here, eight miles closer to its source, there wasn’t even a whisper.
When we passed another torch mounted into the wall, I took it. The light was unreliable, flaring up into a wide aura of orange one second, then receding into a smoldering glow that barely lit the back of Clara’s calves as she led us deeper.
After a few more paces, she broke into a run.
I jogged ahead to keep up with her, ensuring she didn’t charge into the darkness unaided. She seemed to sense her direction anyway, heading straight for a vague lump that rested along the tunnel’s edge.
“Franco,” she said, kneeling by the side of a particularly scrawny red-skinned boy. He lay against the rock wall with his arms limp by his side and a distant look in his eyes. “Brother, are you okay?”
“Clara?” he asked, his voice weak. “Did you come to feed me, like when I was small?”
She held the boy’s hand and reached toward his hip, lifting a bag that was tied to a rope around his waist.
“How could she let this happen?” Clara asked. She stood and stepped over Franco, toward another kobold that lay flat on the rock floor. She inspected the pouch he carried, then peered further ahead.
I lifted the torch, illuminating two dozen kobolds in their young teenage years, all either lying flat on the rock or resting against the walls with barely enough energy to breathe. Their skin was uniformly red — like their mother and much darker than our Clara. Every last one of them was a boy, which was hardly a surprise, given how precious the girls were as a commodity.
“Their food pouches,” Clara said. “They’re all empty. Mother must have given up on them, long before she agreed to a taking.”
“We never did ask to see them before we made our purchase,” I said. “Buyer beware. Half-dead kobolds are no use to us.”
“Then let’s bring them back,” Dani said. “I have all of our rations here in this old saddlebag.”