Chapter 3

“You’ve gone white as a ghost. Are you alright?” Palus asked, standing up with concern.

There was no time to recover, no way to extricate myself from the situation. Pushing forward while they were on an emotional high was necessary. I had to accept there were holes in my understanding of the marsh culture, and generally what passed for normal on this continent.

Waving Palus down while pointing to a chair for Tharin, I decided to confront my fears. It was time to bridge the technology gap and share some knowledge. The differences between my home world and Haven couldn’t be starker, but we had a plan to expose our technology in bits and pieces. While plotting the path for our return on the spaceship, my companions debated how to inform my people about modern technology. Merritt had an idea, the best one, really, to tell the story in pictures. Together we developed a number of “story” presentations on a tablet. The ship’s A.I. even illustrated the stories for us. Our shuttle held a number of cheap, rugged, personal device assistants for educational reasons. We even downloaded my implant storage of their language, and installed that translation on our computers. I retrieved the one in my backpack.

They waited patiently as I collected a couple of hand-maidens who had walked down the stairs, having finished their housekeeping chores. The two marsh women were the newest additions to the tower. My tower wives had decided to mold young women to be like ladies-in-waiting on a noble’s estate. Laudus and her sisters were their trainers since all three women were Convey nobles in their own right. For now the three sisters were only interested in running my household, my harem and the childcare. They hadn’t felt noble after being captured by slavers, ravaged for years, and used as breeding stock. Nevertheless, Swarta and I were determined to renew their belief in humanity and coax them back into accepting their heritage and position.

Everyone looked oddly at the PDA when I sat across from them. The computer tablet was dark, so I powered it up. The backlight on the screen went white, which startled both handmaidens. They let out a couple of “Oh moon mother!”, while Tharin raised an eyebrow. Coven turned his lips out, making them look plump, his face wearing a contemplative expression. My wives leaned forward trying to get a closer look, wholly trusting my magic.

One at a time, Laudus tilted the chins up of the skittish handmaidens, demanding “Trust your master. Proper young ladies show confidence in their man and themselves. You will watch and listen with dignity.”

After entering the security code and touching the teaching application, a wolf head flashed on the screen.

Laudus’s warning eyes kept the handmaidens in check, but Swarta spoiled it. “Wow, our clan totem.”

That broke the tension and Coven and Tharin both laughed. The animated illustration’s sharp teeth and wicked canine grin amused them.

“What magic is this?” asked Palus, she reached out and touched the screen in the wrong spot and the animated wolf snarled. She reacted as if she’d been bitten.

Laudus broke her serious face and farted loudly, which made both handmaidens smirk at each other. No one was brave enough to comment on the raw smell or the noise.

I touched the wolf’s nose and slid to the next slide, showing me mortally wounded in the forest. The witch rested on the blood-soaked ground, with arrows in her back. Sparrow was in the background with his bow. It didn’t really look like Sparrow, but it looked like a preteen boy of similar shape and size. Touching the screen again, two ebony women were rushing out of the background with Sparrow drawing another arrow, firing on them. The next slide illustration grunted a record cry of Kate being hit in the hand with his arrow and her firing a stun gun. Recorded with the sound of a stunner, on the next slide Sparrow froze up and fell to the ground. I flicked the next few slides showing Kate and Merritt dragging me to a ship, a fictional boxy-shuttle with a mast and a white canvas. The ship’s door closed, and then the animation floated the ship above the trees, flying to a full moon.

“Moon mother, is that how it really happened?” Laudus asked.

I just nodded, flicking to the next illustration of a tidal whirlpool surrounded by stars, into which the canvas-filled shuttle disappeared. The gurgling sound of the ship being sucked down impressed Coven. He gulped down a swig of water from his mug. With another flick of my finger, the ESC Entous appeared with the ice planet in the background. The illustration was an actually a photo with a cartooned filter. In the next cartooned animation, Merritt opened the healing bed, which showed me in it. “She is beautiful,” one of the handmaidens whispered. For once Laudus didn’t correct her.

“Yes, Merritt is a fine woman, a magic healer of sorts. She is my wife now.”

“That’s nice,” Swarta commented, as if to say in a pleasant tone what a nice day it is. “What’s the next picture? That is an amazing magic mirror.”

Another flick of my finger showed a cartooned picture of Kate flying the shuttle on approach to the hanger deck. It was a back of the headshot. The next picture was a side shot of Kate at the controls, focused on her task.

“Von, another black wife?” Palus asked.

“Yes,” I admitted. “That is Kate. She is the captain of the little ship that rescued me. She was my fiancée before I was lost in the Great Swamp. Her sister Merritt braved the extreme dangers of flying among the stars. Facing moon mother and moon father is no small feat.”

“Brave women,” Palus answered, unconcerned. “Kate has strong features, a warrior?”

“Yes, she is both a warrior and a ... scribe.” It would have been hard to explain her scientific training, but they knew a scribe was a learned person.

A few more flips showed cartoon illustrations of the ship’s bulkhead door and a couple of corridors and then my cabin. Individual pictures of the ship’s captain and my other lovers followed, all illustrations rather than photos. Kate had insisted the storyboard of my adventure include the raiders’ attack. A few illustrations of me fighting with my carbine and boarding sword were included, with the dead at my feet. An illustration of spider bots fighting the pirates was included too. The sound of their lasers firing made them jump in their seats. Merritt had included an illustration of me in full battle gear outside of medical after we vanquished the pirates. I didn’t think it was flattering, I looked tired and sad. A slide of the captain, shaking my hand was in there, as well as a wedding picture on the hanger deck of the Entous. The last few illustrations were of our flight home and a picture of the twin moons over Haven.

“That is the epic journey of Von Solon in story form,” I chimed, amidst the silence.

Swarta ran around the table and sat on my lap. As Laudus had, her lips flourished over mine, wielding passion and want. We savored each other. Palus sneaked up on us and when Swarta took a long breath and leaned back; taking advantage of our parting, Palus captured my face in her hands, and brandished her tongue in my mouth.

“That was amazing. You fought your way back to us, conquering moon father’s enemies in the stars,” Palus stated in a rush of words. “And ... you claimed more wives!”

“A busy and tiring trip,” Coven threw out with a barking laugh, thinking his comment funny.

“No doubt there are more Solon heirs on the way,” Tharin added, patting Coven on the back.

“My very thought,” Coven said with a more choking laugh.

Laudus slapped Coven on the back, hard. The whack caught him by surprise and he might have bitten his tongue, because he stopped talking. Laudus gave an evil-eye glint at Tharin, daring him to make a similar ill-toned sound.

Tharin smirked and lifted his hands in surrender. “I was just enjoying the magic mirror show, don’t mind me.”

The handmaidens were shocked at their mistress’s violence, both wide eyed with fallen chins and protruding jaws.

“Actually, you will meet my new wives tomorrow.”

Swarta and Palus looked at each other.

“Are they staying?” Tharin asked.

“Fortunately, they will. Only one of them stayed on the other side of the whirlpool. Kate and Merritt are setting up a camp site upon the mountain with the others. We will build a stone, wizard’s tower there.”

“We need to clean the guest room,” Laudus declared, not flustered in the least. She waved at the stairs, as the two handmaidens darted upstairs.

“Ask Celine to help!” Palus shouted at the women before they hit the first step.

“This is going to be interesting,” Coven commented. “A stone tower is going to take a lot of men and years to build.”

“Actually, we will use few men, if any.”

“Building magic?” Coven asked, to which I only nodded. “That’s okay then, we won’t need to slow down the ship building.”

It amazed me how they trusted my claims.

“A magical tower is going to raise more than a few brows on Convey. Your Moon mother temple-friends already have plans to build here. Now with the arrival of more moon children, the temple priestesses are going to want a cathedral in Juniper Hills,” Laudus observed, putting her hands on my shoulders and rubbing at my stressed muscles.

The men laughed, but Swarta’s nodding head and wide eyes expressed her agreement.

“We need to deal with your stress,” Laudus whispered in my ear, loud enough for Swarta to hear.

Under the table Swarta stroked my inner thigh suggestively. Palus winked at me, knowing what was going on. My male friends were oblivious, taking turns at flipping through the tablet’s presentation again.

“Are you going to share this magic mirror with anyone else,” Tharin asked in an off-hand manner.

Swarta’s teasing distraction held my interest, so I only half heard Tharin. After a moment, he repeated himself.

“Oh yes, with all the women.”

“Can your magic mirror do other things?” Coven asked, interested in the device.

“Ah, yes. We are going to use it as a teaching tool, once we get settled in.”

Swarta had moved to a more sensitive part of my anatomy and I was enjoying the gentle stroking through my pants. Tharin and Coven looked at each other, rolling their eyes and shaking their heads.

“It seems you have other things on your mind,” Coven declared.

“He certainly does,” Laudus confirmed.

“Before you’re totally distracted you need to talk to the town from the window,” Palus insisted.

“Hum,” Swarta grumbled. “Sister-wife, you are right, of course.” She stopped toying with me and stood up. “Let’s get duty behind us.”

Palus stood too, as did Tharin and Coven.

“Second floor window?” Palus asked Swarta, who nodded back.

We crowded around the bedroom window facing the commons. We could see the gathered crowd filling the open grassy area all the way to the Wolf Pavilion and Women’s Center. The town folk wanted to see us. Swarta and Palus stood on either side of me as I reassured the crowd I was here. After a few minutes of listening to their cheering, I praised my wives for holding the town together, and ran through an abbreviated explanation of my disappearance, making sure to thank Sparrow for his unexpected aid. The rest was left as a mystery for the time being. Swarta added a few words at the end, mentioning we would walk the town in an hour’s time. Laudus shut the window shutters when it was clear we’d finished the proclamations.

“Now, gentlemen, it is time for you to mingle with the town folk for an hour,” Laudus announced to Tharin and Coven. “This is an opportunity to build your own good will.”

They took the hint and left to spread bits of my adventure; both of them knew a lot more than had been told to the town.

“Laudus, take your sisters to the Women’s Center and make sure all is in order,” Swarta suggested.

“As you say,” she replied in a humored spirit, without looking back, leaving the door open.

Swarta and Palus quickly stripped me in the middle of the room. They walked around me, examining my body for any sign of new wounds; finding nothing shocking they undressed in slow motion, letting my mind switch into the appropriate mood. Palus pushed me back onto the bed once she was naked, giggling like a school girl. We hit each other with pillows, as two handmaidens walked by the door, seemingly unconcerned about our laughing and frolicking on the bed. It didn’t take long for the laughing to stop and the caressing to start. We accomplished our acts of passion in record time. The handmaidens peeked in on us the entire time; if my wives noticed they didn’t acknowledge their presence. Once Swarta was sure I was well on the way to a nap, she went and closed the door for us. The three of us cuddled, but I drifted off, fully satiated and suddenly tired.

After our happy reunion and restful nap, the three of us went for a walk. The crowd had dispersed; life was not so easy that work could be forgotten for long. Children needed care, and food had to be gathered, hunted or fished. We had mineral water shipments to prepare and craftsmen had their own work too. Perhaps the most tedious tasks were for the fixed guards we had at various stations; they rotated four hour shifts to avoid boredom and have time to deal with their own real life issues. A few tower guards were on duty at all hours, a couple of palisade-gate guards, a hidden guard to watch the beach, and another guard was at the barge dock, but only during the daytime. We were in the wilderness, and the remoteness of our location was a protection in itself, but since we had been attacked by slavers, some vigilance made sense. Our militia wore light leather armor, sandals and most days they didn’t wear headgear. They favored spears and crossbows for garrison duty, having to deal with wild animals at times.