Chapter 9

(Harvest to Mid-Autumn of Year Two)

After a few moments of milling about, the entire family sat down around the big communal fire pit I'd built the prior year. There were the three of my wives, DeadAndBack, and the six camp women that I considered my immediate family. Joining us was the entire crowd from the old cave, Wrinkled and Seeks, the hunters, the women and kids from the invader family, as well as the kids from the old cave. All in all, we had over thirty people at the fire. As people got settled and exchanged hellos, a couple of the women got a breakfast going. I was quick to volunteer my supplies, as I had no interest in eating the foul muck the stinky bastards were used to eating.

As we ate, Cinnamon sat up on the log and stopped sobbing. She quieted down and alternated between watching us and just staring at the ground. A few minutes later, I cleared my throat. I looked at Cinnamon.

"You know of course, that I should by all rights just have you shot and dumped at the bottom of the gully where we throw the other animal carcasses, right?"

She nodded, and burst out in fresh but quiet sobbing. "I ... I ... sorry" Was all she got out.

"Sorry? What if you'd succeeded? Do you know how to run the mill? How to hunt? How to take care of the garden? Well? Do you?" I wasn't yelling, but I was close to it. The previous few hours had taken their toll on my nerves.

"NO!" She yelled back. "No! Okay? I don't ... I'm a stripper. That's all I know..."

So that was it. She was a stripper. That explained the amazing body.

"What were you going to do if you had succeeded in keeping the compound?"

She looked down again. "I dunno. Fuck. I was going to get dressed and shower. I was gonna sleep in a bed. I don't know ... I wanted to come back to your camp, I'd planned on you saying yes ... but you said no. I didn't know what else to do."

I looked around at the family, who were all watching the byplay between Cinnamon and I with interest but no understanding. "She is an idiot, but I'm not ready to kill her. What do you think we should do?"

WrinkledEvil stared at me for a moment, then at her. "Trade her to the others down the valley for food. They don't know she's stupid, and we could break her mouth bone so she won't talk."

WrinkledEvil ... I made a note not to get on her bad side. Several of the folks around the campfire nodded in agreement with the wisdom of this plan. Hell, for a moment I even half way agreed with her.

SeeksWisdom shook his head in disagreement. "No. She is good for breeding, and she came from the SkyLand. She is intended to be the wife or slave of the GreatOne. Something else must be done."

This brought up a good point. My captors had sent her down to me, the very next morning after I'd gotten the saw mill running, almost like she was a reward for making the sawmill work. Fuck, maybe they actually had done exactly that.

"Cinnamon ... What's your real name?" I asked.

"Julie. Julie Timmons." She sniffed.

"Where are you from?" I looked at Seeks. "Cut her hands loose."

"Hawaii. Honolulu ... I dance in a club there ... danced."

Seeks leaned over and used one of the gift skinners to cut her hands loose. Julie rubbed her wrists as she talked.

"How old are you? You don't look Hawaiian."

"I'm 24 ... I'm originally from Idaho. Moved with my mom, when I was a kid ... to get away from dad."

I sighed. Almost immediately, Bountiful looked at me. I shrugged. "No, GreatOne ... feed her to crows instead."

I shook my head. "No. I'll give her one last chance."

Ashes giggled a little and poked Julie on the knee. "You no kill." She said, in prey broken English.

"Huh?" Julie asked.

"She means," I clarified to her. "That we're not going to kill you."

Julie broke out in fresh sobs again. "Thank you, Josh ... thank you." She suddenly reached out and hugged me. I was taken aback, and I didn't know how to react for a long moment. After a minute of awkwardness, I stroked her hair as she cried.

"Make fuck with her now?" Ashes asked, smiling.

"Maybe later, maybe later." I shook my head.

Shining and Bountiful looked disgusted, like 'just please kill her and let's move on?', but both seemed to accept my judgment in the matter.

"Okay Julie, look. You're too dangerous to give access to my weapons and supplies. You're too foolish to keep far out of my sight. Got any suggestions about what I should do with you? The folks here want me to bust your jaw so you can't talk, and then sell you to the others up the river in exchange for food. Given that we have plenty of food ... your stock isn't real high right now."

"Break my JAW?" She looked around the campfire with some incredulity. As she looked at SmilingFace, the younger girl nodded and said in passable English. "Make smash face!" Julie burst into tears.

"See kiddo, here's your big problem. These people like me. I feed them, I protect them, and I'm married to three of them. I saved one of their kids from invaders, they think I brought one of them back from the dead, and I have this cool blinky light that I use to talk to heaven ... against that, you got what ... nice tits?" I grinned at her a little to take the sting out of my words. "I mean, they are really nice tits, but ... anyway, you've pissed off half the people here and haven't made friends with the rest. So..."

She interrupted. "So, let me start over Josh? Please! I promise to not get into trouble. I'll be nice, I promise. I'll work hard. Really." She looked at me with big teary eyes. Okay fine, I'll admit it. She was one smoking piece of ass, sitting there with a smudged face and looking all contrite.

"Julie ... I can't trust you. I'd have to keep the supply depot locked up all the time, and I'd have to tie you up or lock you in or something at night. That's a lot of work, and I don't think the rest of the family wants you back in the cave. Face it, you're a brat. You're spoiled and mean."

She looked at me really quiet for a moment, then looked at the others. The she looked back at me. "Okay. I'm a brat. Spank me."

"What?"

She stood up and dropped her pants and bent over the log. "Spank me, Josh. Beat my ass. Treat me like a brat ... and spank me every time I fuck up. Just please ... let me stay. Go on Josh..." Then she wriggled that amazingly cute ass at me. "Go on ... Spank me. Hard."

The whole family was looking back and forth between the two of us, like a caveman tennis match. I shook my head. I'd spanked Ashes once for endangering herself, but I'd been scared and upset then. Julie was asking me to spank her in cold blood.

"What she say?" Bountiful asked.

"She tells me to hit her ass like a child. For punishment." I said to the whole family.

Seeks laughed out loud. "We don't hit our children, GreatOne ... just adults. To hit a child is bad, it makes them angry as adults."

I was kind of rocked back by that. No shit ... while they might be smelly, I was impressed at the simple ethics of these people. "Good point." I said.

"Not just me, Julie. You wouldn't want to do that. Everyone here would want a piece of your butt. That would be one hell of a spanking." I was shaking my head.

"Do it Josh. All of them, I don't care. I can't survive out there, and I've pissed you all off, every one of you. All I want is to fit in. I just want to be clean and to be safe ... Please, Josh. PLEASE? Oh, for fuck's sake Josh." She wiggled it again, and I could see the cleft of her pussy. "Just SPANK me ... Paddle my ASS!"

I stood up and backed away a couple of steps. I was turned on, but still a little repulsed. "No."

She stood up, and fast as lightning, ran over and grabbed a switch from the wood pile and handed it to me. Then she dropped to all fours. "Go on ... Josh ... BEAT my ass. They all can. I'm sorry ... let me prove it."

So. Okay, so.

Alright fine, I swatted her with the small oak branch. Not very hard, but I did it.

"Harder, Josh. Tie me up to that pole ... spank me!"

Now, before you judge me, she did ask for it. And really, her ass ... oh my god was her ass cute. And yeah, I was really, really angry at her. So, I lost my cool a little.

I pushed her over to the pole that we used to stretch the bigger animal skins where Ashes and WrinkledEvil reached up and tied her hands to it. Then, as she begged me to, I began to use the switch on her ass. When I saw it start to redden up, I got a little embarrassed and switched to spanking instead. But that made me horny, so I had to stop for a moment. That's right when little old Smiling walked right up and with her bare hand let one rip, right on Julie's ass.

WHAP! That little girl hit her ass so hard, I could see it turn beet red in one hot second. Julie gasped and bit her lip. Smiling hit her again.

WHAP! Julie gasped again, and her eyes watered.

WHAP! Julie sobbed a tiny sob and her tears started.

WHAP, WHAP, WHAP ... Three in a row, right on the same spot each time. Julie started crying, and stood rigid. Then over walks Bountiful and grabs the oak switch...

PAP! Right on the ass hard, and fuck me if Julie didn't just HOWL out a scream when that one landed. Then Shining took a turn.

Bam, bam, bam ... one after another, they took turns beating Julie's bright red ass. They slapped her tits, they slapped her face, they spanked her. After a couple of minutes, I sort of got really in touch with just how angry and scared she'd made me. I waved them all to stop.

"Had enough, Julie?" I was angry at her, but I whispered this in her ear.

As she was sobbing, she gasped out. "Spank me Josh. Spank me."

So, I did. With one arm wrapped around her tummy ... her delicious little flat tummy, I spanked that beautiful but bright red and angry ass. I spanked her hard. Hard. I'm not proud of it, but I spanked the living shit out of that girl. As I got into it, she started just sobbing in my arms, and when she wasn't sobbing, she just kept asking me to spank her.

Now look, cavemen are evil, nasty fucks. These people skin their enemies alive. They eat the hearts and brains of their foes. They don't mind torturing each other. They are mean assed bastards, okay? So ... next to that, this was a very light walk in the park. I'm not making excuses ... weeeeel, yes I am. I am making excuses. Cause ... I liked spanking her.

Once I could tell that she was just flat out gone to the world, I cut her down. I picked her up and carried her in my arms, as she sobbed broken heartedly, over to the cabin and went to lay her down in bed. As I got up to let her lay there, she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me down with her, and curled up with me ... just sobbing on my chest. I held her until she sort of drifted off into a light nap.

When I got up and returned to the camp fire, people were carrying on as if everything was back to normal.

"She wants the mating powder, you know GreatOne." This was from WrinkledEvil. "Maybe if you had made fuck with her when she came from the sky, she would not have gone bad."

Several heads nodded. Ashes was talking to Smiling, and then she looked across the fire towards me. "We make you a Julie stick. You use it GreatOne, she will stay happy, yes?"

I am sure I looked a little bit shocked at the notion of beating Julie. But, as I looked around, most heads were nodding. Did I mention that I had to train them to nod? That they used to 'hoot' at you to mean yes? Fuck was that annoying. "hoot hoot hoot" ... Jesus.

"She will make you fine SkyLand babies, GreatOne ... If you beat her." This came from DeadAndBack. Hell, she shot at him, and if he could forgive her this way, well. So could I.

We ate breakfast and talked. I gave the family more presents in the form of nice fired pottery bowls decorated with iron pyrite and a little glazing. They all liked that and gave me back some roots and more chewed-up-spittle-beer. I was oh so appreciative. I waited until they all left to pour it in the sewer drain. Then I went and got washed up, soaping up three times to get all the foulness off of me. I locked up the supply dump for the first time in most of a year, and hung the key around my neck. The girls and I worked in the vegetable garden, building a composter and weeding. As I was weeding, Ashes nudged my elbow. When I looked over, I could see Julie, stark naked and down on her hands and knees weeding with the rest of us. When she tried to pull out some vegetables, Ashes showed her which ones were weeds, and Julie even said. "Thank you" to her. I was shocked. And horny. That ass was bright red, bruised, welted, and ... and fucking hot. I turned to work elsewhere.

That night we all ate dinner together as usual. The conversation was lively, as we talked about the pregnancies and the coming fall season's work to be done. Julie ate a little away from us, running to get us seconds and to bring water over. She didn't say much, and she sure as hell didn't sit as she ate. When dinner was done, she helped the girls clean up, and then straightened up the camp with the rest of us. Bountiful showed her where to sleep with Dead and the others. Late that night, I could hear her sobbing softly to herself ... until, that is, one of the other women spanked her ass, and she moaned and shut up. That was kind of hot to hear as well.

The next morning, as I went to work, I could see my three wives and Dead all in a quiet whispered conversation. They'd drawn out a circle, and were talking and putting stones at various places around the circle. When I asked them what they were up to, all I could get out of them were big smiles and some reference to a family bet. I couldn't figure it out. So, I went back to work on the composter.

The composter was a big wooden barrel hung by big wooden pin on each end from an 'A' frame. Organic and animal waste went in through a series of openings, and then every couple of days we would give the compost a spin to mix it all up. While it never smelled particularly good, goddamn but it made amazing fertilizer and soil amendment.

To protect the growing plants from the ravages of insects, I had built an oak frame, and over the top I installed some of the thinner 4mm plastic sheeting. Over the sides I installed animal hides that were overlapped and sewn in place with rawhide thongs. This created a primitive greenhouse, and it cut out most of the worst infestations. Down at ground level, we used a thick layer of chaff and straw from the plains that we'd cut down and dried. This made a decent barrier for both insect life as well as later protection from frost.

Now, that was about all I could recall or find out to do about growing veggies in primitive settings. Even so, we lost almost half the crop to insects, rot, and fungus. It wasn't pretty. However, we still got in most of an acre of decent veggies. I worked very hard for a few days making experiments on how I could can the veggies using pottery jars and lids. I didn't have much success. I would need rubber for any real progress on that front.

For the next few days, Julie was on her very best behavior. Just about the time that her ass was back to looking normal, she was marched up to me, sorry and crying a little, as Ashes pulled her by the hair. "She don't want to stir shit in big shit wheel, GreatOne." Ashes announced and handed me an oak switch. With that, she walked off. Julie looked at me for about one half of one second, and dropped to her knees and bent over in the dirt, presenting me her ass.

"Fuck." I said.

"Sorry, Josh." She said.

I don't think that she knew that 'fuck' from me was in reference to her glorious butt. Regardless, the whole family watched as I whipped her ass till she was crying again. Then she surprised the shit out of me when I said I was done.

She stood up, grabbed me by the shirt and kissed me full on the lips.