Chapter 10

We stayed until dinner was over, full bellies settled, conversations were had.

I watched Chiki around my family. She answered questions politely, quickly, sometimes skirting around things, cloaking what I knew to be the truth.

Because how does a son tell his family that he’s marrying a succubus?

Her explanations of her childhood were suitably charming, building an image of life in an alien landscape, dismissing 800 years of time gap. Her years as a ward of Lady Sakura were couched in the framework of a special girls’ finishing school.

Me? I keep my mouth shut.

Chiki was also rather effusive about her connection to rice farming as it was done in Japan on small farms. “You must understand that I saw these things through the eyes of a child, but everybody in my village went to the fields in the spring to plant and in the autumn to harvest. It becomes part of who we are.”

I think her words connected with Dad more than anybody else. “My great-grandfather bought this land. I am the fourth of his line to farm it.”

Okay, I see the light dawning. Chiki smiled. “Robert will be the fifth. He and our children.”

Sam couldn’t pass that chance up. “And you just THOUGHT you’d be an engineer.” She’s my sister. I love her, but I think ‘torment your brother’ is part of her job description.

Chiki’s fingers laced into mine. That’s assurance, right here. “I could do worse. I’m young. Not like I made too big a commitment.”

“Things you learned are always yours,” Chiki said. “And you do not decide today.”

I beg to differ. Thinking of Sachiko seated under the shade of that little grove of trees, watching over OUR fields, Blocks were being unstacked from one plan in my head and being rearranged in another, and it looked suspiciously like what I imagined a farmhouse would look like for Chiki and me.

We left to go back to our apartment amid hugs and happy words and promises (from Chiki) of our soon return.

“Did I do well?” she asked.

“I think I am proud of how well you did. I am also surprised. You want to be the wife of a rice farmer?”

“It is a good and honorable thing. But Robert, if I spoke out of order, I am happy to be the wife of Robert the Engineer. But I see inside you, Robert. Son of your father and his fathers before him.”

“It never tugged at me like today, my Sachiko. It is like...”

“ ... like we are destined. That little grove of cypress trees. Robert, they called to me through time and space. I saw us there...”

“Since you came into my life, Chiki, I have a sense of time and place that I did not have before.”

“You had it. You needed me to see it with you.”

“You’re so right...”

“I hope so, Robert. Now, how do we make this marriage satisfactory in the eyes of your family?”

“First, I had to present them with a suitable wife. I think you made that plain. Mom loves you. Dad thinks you’re cute and smart, and Sam thinks you’re suitable.”

“I am suitable.”

“To be my wife.”

“I waited eight hundred years. I am half a world and eight hundred years from my home. It is suitable for me to find my home here. I love you, your blue eyes and brown hair and white skin and the ways we connect that make me sing songs like a bird in spring.”

“I love you for being that bird.”

“We will build OUR house. It will be our home, a place of happiness and love and laughter, but I want that kangetsuda among the cypress trees.”

“Dad will give us the land for the house. We can borrow...”

“We may talk of money. In Japan, the wife is concerned with the money.”

“It’s between the two of us, Chiki. In America, the man is supposed to be the provider.”

“Then provide, man. Your wife will manage. I worked with Lady Sakura. I know numbers and records. And we already have money.”

“I have a little.”

“I have – you said it was a lot. Enough for a home for Robert and Sachiko?”

“More than enough.”

“With a proper bath. And a kangetsuda?”

“Yes.”

“And you will become a successful farmer like your father.?”

“I can lease land to farm on my own.” And people who farm can seldom work on a full college schedule. Where’s that going to fall out? Dad didn’t raise a quitter. Is this quitting? Or WAS it quitting?

She rested her hand on my arm, fingers gently stroking. “We have eaten. We have talked. There is little to do when we get home.”

“I know,” I said.

Her giggle disassembles me. “Perhaps there is time for a man and a maiden...”

“Are you still a maiden?”

“I suppose that I am not. The maiden was in The Void. When she was no longer a maiden, The Void released her.” Giggle. “Now I am a woman and I want womanly things with my husband.”

Aunt was letting her little dog out for his evening constitutional when we pulled in. We waved at her and went into our apartment. When the door closed behind us, Sachiko was in my arms.

“Now, my Robert...”

“What is your wish, my angel?”

Titter. “From succubus to angel. Quite a journey.”

Miles.

“When will you teach me to drive a car?”

“Shoulda gave you your first lesson in Dad’s four-wheeler.”

“I thought of asking. There are many things. Your device. Phone.”

“You need one.”

“I will not always be right next to you. Tomorrow.”

“Yes. Tomorrow. I have things I must do on campus.”

“Classes?”

“No, I think I will be shedding classes. I – we need to see how we’re going to live on the family farm.”

“Robert, do not make a rash judgment.”

“You ARE my rash judgment.”

“Your rash judgment desires that you bathe with her and accompany her to your bed.”

“Excellent idea.”

We can successfully operate a shower even when we exceed the expected occupancy count and I’m really liking Sachiko’s physical attributes now that I get to see them with all the lights on. Okay, make that the bedside lamp.

“Do I demand too much?” she asked, gently pushing my head downward.

“No. I’m glad you’re interested.”

“Interested? It is like first, I breathe. Second, I eat. And third, I desire my husband to make my body ring like bells at the temple.”

“What did I ever do to deserve you?”

“A question I ask myself, Robert. Come. Bed.”

Tiny thing. Like a feather. Kisses like butterflies landing on my lips, then a push to fuse her mouth to mine, her hands cupping my head.

“Always this part,” she whispered. “Lady Sakura never mentioned...”

“Maybe it was left for you to discover...”

“We discovered each other, Robert.”

“Yes we did, my lady.”

She wiggled. “We still learn.”

We fought over kissing each other’s face.

“We will learn when I am great with our child.” Kiss. “In due time. Our son will grow up on the land of his fathers.”

“You might have a daughter...”

“No, I will give you a son first.” She nestled her body against mine, mobile pelvis searching, then “Ahhhhh...”

“I do so much love this, Robert. I love it all. You pleasuring me with your mouth.” Giggle. “And me with your ... It was the way I was told to pleasure you, except maybe it wasn’t supposed to be pleasure, but there you were, dreaming, and I could not find anything but the desire to pleasure ... I tried to obey completely, but you were so sweet, so innocent ... And so was I...”

“You’re still sweet and innocent.”

“And wanton and hungry...”

“I like that.”

The soft coupling took on an insistent, driving movement, she battling for primacy against me, yet the embrace continued.

Comes the burning bright joyous explosion...

Sachiko’s turn:

Robert and I have made joyous love, first in the ordinary fashion. I think that him holding me atop him is as normal as him atop me, between my thighs, thrusting lustily into me as I welcome him.

Then we loved each other with our mouths. That was the first way I loved my Robert, and today I find it a special way that I show him my love for him. And I quite enjoy it. Lady Sakura told me that a woman who properly attends to her man had more control over him than all the chains in the kingdom.

That may be entirely true, but with Robert it is also the chains that happily bind me as well.

“Robert?”

“Yes, little love?”

“I am very happy, Robert. I am accepted by your family.”

“You are.”

“It is good because I have no family here.”

“You and me, we become a family. And of course, my family is your family.”

“Do you see Robert the Farmer?”

“I never quite saw it before. Today I saw Sachiko sitting beside me in our kangetsuda under the cypress trees, looking over the ponds, over our fields. I was there. There was peace.”

“It was us. Robert, sometimes there is no peace for a farmer...”

“I know. I listened to Dad and his father as well – pests, drought, rain at the wrong time, prices, equipment...”

“Those will all be ours. I will be beside you, Robert.”

“You know this?”

“I am confident of this. It is as it should be. Your father is a man of success. So should you be, if you do the things he does. Why would it be different?”

“Sometimes things get messed up.”

“Like careless simple women toying with powers they care not to understand?”

“Sybil?”