Chapter 20: The Search for Eggs and Castra Taurorum

I found a piece of stone that was approximately the size and shape I wanted. I gave it a dirty look that caused it to split precisely the way it should have. That gave me a latter-day version of a hand ax, along with a feeling of accomplishment. I used that to get to work on the deer. I’d never have made a caveman; despite having drained the blood from the doe, I managed to get the residue all over myself.

Tekoni woke up as I was working at skinning it, having emptied the body cavity. There are ways to dress a deer, but what I was doing wasn’t one of them. “May I help, dominus?” she asked timidly. Her use of the term reminded me that I had stolen her from the Wizard. That meant she was mine. Slaves were property. My own family were my chips in the bet that I could keep her – and them.

I wasn’t sure that made any sense to me, but Kogwahee was mine as well, and for the same reason, same bet. In a physical conflict, as we had had with Sabina’s owner, the loser might end up client to the other side, along with all his worldly goods. It was a tough old world, there in the Pax Romana. In the absence of machinery somebody’s still got to do the work.

I was still having a hard time digesting the whole slavery thing on moral grounds that were rooted in my own culture. Still, I had to work with what I had. This was a different culture, with a wildly different system. I welcomed Tekoni’s help, mainly because I’d never dressed a deer with a rock. She was soon as smeared as I was. She’d never dressed a deer with a rock either. She was also weak as a kitten, which made her really clumsy. I sent her to rest some more when she cut the ball of her left palm. It was just a slip, but her hand was in the way. It was the kind of wound that in an emergency room would take four or five stitches. It took that many minutes before I could make it heal all the way. Nevy was a much better healer than I was, unless I was working on myself, and her mother was better than she was. Neither would have left a scar.

“Our family will be here in a few minutes,” I told her, setting the half-skinned deer aside while she sat staring at her palm every thirty seconds to make sure I was still healed. I think she was deciding that wizards might have their uses. “Nannakussi and Kogwahee both have proper knives and we’ll let them finish up. Let’s get cleaned up and gather some firewood. You need some decent food.”

Tekoni was more than agreeable to the thought of getting clean and eating something she could keep inside herself. She set off to gather firewood after wading in the river to get the gore from her slip with the hand ax and our unintentional butchery off. I decided I’d clean up a little later. I started a fire and carefully cut some very small chunks from the deer’s chest area, found an appropriate stick, and started toasting them. If she didn’t get her tummy in shape she wasn’t going to keep our bigger meal down, or maybe in.

She was coming back with an armload of deadwood when our magic blanket came in sight, soaring gaily (in the old sense) through the sky, descending from a few hundred feet. Tekoni stood open-mouthed and dropped the whole armload of wood on her foot, watching as they made their landing approach. I guess it was pretty unusual for her – not that I’d ever actually seen a blanket fly myself. It was just an idea I had. Malnutrition causes you to bruise easy, so I was repairing her foot as the blanket finally settled on the ground.

“Dominus Asmogee!” called our Little Bird, hopping off as soon as the blanket touched down and flattened itself out, as though it was the most routine thing in the world. Her face was one great big smile. She didn’t even glance back to see if her parents were coming. She ran toward me and gave me a hug.

“Did you miss me, Sweetie-girl?” I asked her in English.

“Yeah! Did you miss me?” she responded in the same language. She had even less accent than Nevy did.

“Thought about you all the time,” I assured her, as my sweet darlin’ came to join me, followed by the rest. Kogwahee looked surprised that he couldn’t see through me. He was seeing me for the first time in the actual flesh. He hadn’t been sure I really had any. Nevy and I exchanged dominus et domina-style chaste pecks on each cheek. We both made unspoken promises with our eyes of some major messing around as soon as we could get some privacy.

“I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?” she laughed, glancing at Tekoni as though an emaciated teenager was competition for her. The child was sitting naked on a deadfall, her foot in my hand, her other leg splayed for balance. Neither of us had noticed, but she had gone past naked to pornographic.

“When I wasn’t thinking about Little Bird, I was thinking about you,” I assured my love virtuously. Since Tekoni’s bruising had gone away and she wasn’t going to lose her big toenail, I set her foot down. I hadn’t even noticed what was between her skinny legs, which was totally unlike me. “Your flight was okay?”

“It was wonderful, my love. We have to do that more often. Why all the blood? Didn’t you drain the deer?” she asked.

“Tekoni sliced her hand open. Took me awhile to heal her, and I didn’t have anything to blot up the mess.”

“Do you need lint?”

“It’s all better now. She had a bath. I still need one. No worries, as they say in Australian.” She had no idea what Australian sounded like, even what Australia was, but she could understand “no worries.” “Then she dropped the firewood on her foot when you guys were coming in for a landing,” I continued, “and I healed that for her. Don’t let her get close to sharp objects for awhile. She’s a little clumsy. The deer chunks toasting on the little fire are for her. Don’t let the Little Bird steal them.” The Little Bird stuck her tongue out at me and made donkey ears.

I introduced the gang to Tekoni, both by my nickname for her and by Tekon-Wena-Harake. She and Kogwahee were soon chattering away in some mutual dialect of Iroquois while she rested. I watched the boy; he and the girl were of an age, and – probably because they were the only ones who spoke their language – they seemed to hit it off well. I think he was disappointed when Sabina got the girl into a loincloth. Nannakussi loaned me one too, so people wouldn’t spend the afternoon staring at my buttocks. I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s dinner.

Little Bird, looking virtuous, fed the kabobs to Tekoni, who ate them, somehow combining ravenously, gratefully, and cautiously into a single package – “cautiously” because malnutrition loosens the teeth.

With proper knives and a hatchet we soon had the deer butchered. Nannakussi split the head for the brains, and he took the sweetbreads I’d already set aside for him. They went on the flat rock “grill” I was doing the veggy-less kabobs on. I left preparing the deer to the rest of them. Nevy and I took a basket each, and I led her in the direction of the old village. It wasn’t all that far, and I found where the winter supplies were buried, even though I couldn’t quite smell the place where I had peed to mark it.

“She’s a pretty girl,” my love observed diggingly, as we were filling the baskets we’d brought with us.

“Not too bad,” I agreed. “A bit young for my taste. Putting another thirty or forty pounds on her might draw the masculine eye. Plus she’s sick as a pup, as in ready to give up the ghost sick. I prefer statuesque blondes, myself.”

“You’d better,” she warned. “I visited Millie,” she added. “I scared her half to death when I appeared at her hut.”

“See? It wasn’t that hard, was it?”

“Hah! Watch this!”

There wasn’t anything to watch. One moment she was there, the next she wasn’t. A few minutes ticked my on my imaginary watch. Then she was there again.

“What did you do and how did you do it? And what did you do with the beans?” I demanded. “We were going to eat those!”

“I dropped them off with Sabina. Think about it, sweetheart: Thou cast thyself to where I was, right?”

“Uhuh.” I thought maybe I should write a novel: “The Bluetooth Suitor.”

“The first time thou did it,” she continued in Saxon, “I could see all the way through thee. Thou scarèd my decurion Quintus almost to death. Thou scarèd his men even worse. Their horses likèd it not either. They thought thou wast a ghost. So did I. I thought thou had been killed and eaten by Flying Monkeys. I thought our ship’s captain was going to have a stroke, and thou wast not even so transparent as the first time thou appearèd.”

“Chulëntët had already scared them,” I defended, “floating along like a balloon. What’s scarier than that? All I did was tip them over the edge.”

“Right,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Then when thou met us the last time, thou wast almost solid. The people in Graviscae didn’t even notice. Hardly, anyway. So I just did the same thing, only I went the rest of the way.”

“The rest of the way?” That sounded ominous.

“I just didn’t leave any of myself behind.”

“Huh!” I responded brilliantly, sitting down on a log. And I hadn’t thought of that. I’d even asked if she knew of a way to do it, before she’d figured it. “Our children are going to be geniuses if they take after you, you realize that, don’t you? In the English sense of the word, not the Latin.”

“More likely they’ll be little wizards and witches,” she confirmed, sitting next to me and looking prim. “Or little demons. Or imps. How many children do you want?”

“Nine or ten, at least,” I suggested. “Three witches, three wizards, three demons and maybe an imp, if we can stand the heat.”

I’m editing out the messing around that followed. A certain amount of privacy is called for every now and then, you know. Nevy retained her required professional qualifications, but just barely. My girl had the nicest protrusions a man can imagine. Her butt was a work of art; she’d have driven Michaelangelo crazy. She wasn’t at all shy about exploration either, as long as it was with me. She was absolutely fascinated by the differences between boys and girls.

We popped back into visibility at our camp on the banks of the Mighty Lechewuekink. That caused four women and one young man to jump about three feet into the air and one little girl to loudly demand to be told how to do it. Leofgif looked disapprovingly at my brand new hickey. She sniffed but she didn’t say anything. Harry Potter had nothin’ on us, and we didn’t even need wands. And Hermione didn’t give him hickeys. Or was that Ginny? I couldn’t recall. Maybe I was just feeling distracted.

We handed over the corn meal. I poked through the cooking stuff we’d been lugging around with us and found the salt and flour. “No eggs?” I asked.

No eggs. Nannakussi and Winky and Sabina had the fire going and were basting the venison with rough-and-red and fish sauce and a couple spices, one of them crushed rosemary. We had a choice: Eat porridge, or bread the venison, or go to the “store” for eggs. It was too late in the season for wild bird eggs. Besides, I was still burping worms; it would have felt like cannibalism. I got one of the baskets and asked Nevy and Little Bird if they wanted to come along.