Harem Scare 'Em Read online

  As she caressed the new hair growing on my chest, the darling harpy said, "I have very delicate, hollow bones. Do you know what that means?"

  "That you'll need to be on top?"

  She grinned, and when she did that she just looked like a sexy woman, not like a girl with a beak-mask on her face. "That's right. And you'll have to be gentle."

  That might be different. The succubi weren't really interested in gentle, and I had little experience otherwise. "All right," I whispered, as I kissed her forehead. I didn't want to take a chance with her lips.

  She just about melted in my arms.

  Up until that point, I had never made love with a woman who had anything but normal hair in her womanly region, nor had I seen any such. Some of the girls at the Bundling House had been sleek and smooth, some very hairy, but Ava had soft down all the way, well, down. But as Young-Father used to say, all women are pink where it counts; and I have to admit, it felt very pleasant as she impaled herself on me, sliding slowly down. I am embarrassed to admit that my orgasm came before she was even finished and could obtain her own pleasure; but the Goddess is merciful, and allowed her servant to remain steely enough to service the young harpy properly. When it was done, she fell asleep in my arms.

  I had no idea until the next day that the dice of fate had been cast, and I had now fathered children with four different dimensional travelers, and one other.

  Yes, Undine had been fertile, too. And she was determined to follow me, along with the other three, once she found out about the Goddess's Plan.

  Rewind:

  My failure to impress during Bundling Day was wasn't something that would get me exiled. Even in these dark days, a man was more than just mobile reproductive organs. No, I did that to myself. I was a proud idiot who couldn't hold his temper until the ribbing and nastiness died down.

  People used to think of Misha and Mennonish as gentle, but we can be as mean as anyone.

  As the rumors flew through the village about my lingering little kidness, the wisecracks came in from all sides, including from elders I had heretofore respected: cracks questioning my manhood, my parentage, the possibility I was demonspawn (though everyone knew Mother), that no normal 25-year-old male could fail to respond to naked young women no matter how underdeveloped, that I must be playing for the other team (which Old-Father had to explain for me), how I'd pissed myself when I saw the girls naked (I didn't), and other earthy insults, ostensibly good-natured, that most people don't realize are surprisingly common even in Misha culture. Then there were the names: Tiny Toby, Limp-Dick Fell, Needledick, Moby Toby (ah, irony), and worst of all, Teeny-Weenie.

  Needless to say, I was in a very bad mood as the week wore on, and so on edge I found it hard to function at all. I fell behind in my studies and skipped work, mostly trying to stay away from people. I helped a few people solve problems with my Truth-Telling ability, but I shouldn't have done even that much. I should have just kept my head down until the silliness died down. I'd done some reading on the subject of puberty in our library, and from what I could tell there was no set age or time for it. Some people didn't achieve puberty until late in their teens in old-years. I wasn't yet 19 in old-years, so it could still happen.

  I should have stayed in my house, studying, but our meals were mostly communal, so we could all socialize properly and become productive members of society. We rotated in our kitchen duties, and it happened that I was scheduled to hand out drinks one morning at breakfast. I had always believed in doing my civic duty, so I went to work that day.

  In many ways, it was the worst and best mistake of my life.

  Most of my fellow Hamiltownians were kind, and said nothing. Of course, the boys were rough and couldn't help but joke and tease. I wasn't happy about it, and it set me on edge, but I didn't respond. Until Mother Yoder tore into me.

  "Hear you fell a little short on Bundling Day, Tobias," Mother Yoder said loudly as I prepared to hand her a stout mug of hot chicory tea.

  It took me a long moment to understand what she meant or why she would say such a thing, since she'd never been mean to me before. After gaping for a moment, I said tightly, "Ah. Clever, since my last name is Fell. And 'short' works, since I haven't hit puberty, and my penis is still rather small." I looked down into the cup of chicory, which was just less than boiling hot.

  "You are a sharp one, I'll give you that," said the mealy-mouthed hag. "But when it comes to what truly matters, it seems there's too little there, and you're just not up to the task."

  I remembered that Cally Yoder had been Cally Miller before she became Hans Yoder's wife. So maybe she didn't like me after all. My mouth dry, I said, "It's true that I'm small, and not yet aroused by girls. But my day will come."

  "Maybe not. Maybe you're just a faggot," she said nastily as I stood there, shocked to my core. That drew some laughter from the others in line. I knew from my reading that a faggot could be a bundle of firewood, a cigarette in British slang, or a homosexual in American slang. I also knew I didn't like boys that way. Girls were cute, I just didn't respond to them yet.

  Both hands on the counter, Mother Yoder leaned close and hissed, "We have no use for faggots here. Maybe you deserve to be exiled, Tobias Fell, JUST LIKE MY SISTER!" The last four words were shouted.

  The laughter stopped.

  I looked at Cally Yoder calmly, but inside I was hotter than the chicory tea. Something in my brain went ping, and my mind calculated temperature, trajectories, and speed in a flash of evil insight. I said softly, "Mother Yoder, it's true that I haven't hit puberty yet. Maybe I never will. But at least my vision is sharp, my nose straight, my smile intact, and I can write."

  "So?" she sneered.

  With a swift flick, I threw the steaming, acrid chicory in her eyes, swung the earthenware mug up, brought the hard bottom rim of the mug down on the bridge of her nose, and then shoved it sideways into her mouth as she opened it to scream. Lastly, I smashed it into first her left hand and then her right, so hard the thick earthenware mug shattered into a dozen pieces.

  Dead silence followed except for her moans and whimpers as I turned and walked away, and I was a full 30 yards toward my home before the screaming began.

  I continued walking at a steady pace all the way home, and no one touched me as they converged on the dining hall. Then I climbed under my bed, curled into a little ball, and wept as guilt crushed me, knowing I had deliberately crippled a woman for life.

  Rebound:

  After Ava helped save me, we accepted her into our little group. Undine declared that she was also going to join us too, as a recent spring flood had severely damaged her lair, and she was kind of lonely anyway. If you ask me, she just wanted my privy member. She certainly wouldn't leave me alone about comforting her again. I was happy to help.

  We followed the river for the next few days, which were mostly uneventful. For reasons they would not explain to me (back then), Slinky and Jenny refused to go back to their home coven, which was located in the ruins of Van Alstyne, a sizable city on the East Fork of the Trinidad north of Ivy, a town I was quite familiar with. But we had a destination now: Slinky knew about an abandoned settlement where it was said the buildings were all made of stone and wood and hadn't been taken apart by the bitties. It was called Scarborough Faire, was supposed to be located due west of the eyeway, and had once been a place where people gathered yearly to celebrate a less complicated and more primitive life.

  Well, we all had that now, and we sure didn't celebrate it.

  Nightly, I serviced each of my women (Goddess, that still sounds so oddly possessive!), and sometimes during the day at their demand. We saw no demons except for a small herd of centaurs in the distance and a lone pixie, who greeted us kindly but soon flew away on her dragonfly-like wings, cursing and spitting like a tiny sailor. She had an impressive vocabulary. I had tried to befriend her, because she was as beautiful as a living doll, but when I called her a fairy she got really upset. I thought she looked just like my fairy
acquaintance, Dewberry.

  Later, Undine told me that fairies had butterfly wings, and pixies and fairies did not get along. I rubbed the place on my hand where the pixie, Kaityline ("call me Kait"), had stuck me with the sharpened nail file she used as a sword after I slipped up. I didn't see what the big difference was. Until that point she'd seemed fine, and had even spent some time giggling with the girls... over a certain part of my anatomy, apparently. It sounded like they were making plans. Like Slinky was pimping me out, almost.

  I didn't see how that could work, though. Said organ was about half as big as Kait, so comforting would never work with her. But I hadn't thought it out, then; there were plenty of pixies in the world, and not one was male. They had to reproduce somehow.

  Anyway, other than that, we discovered that Ava and I made a great hunting team. Small game she could snatch out of the grass or off trees with her taloned bare feet, breaking their backs with a well-practiced flick. For bigger creatures, she would spot game from the air, and would either drive it to me, or I would sneak up on it. Either way, I used a short-bow Slinky made for me to take down the deer, hogs, and jackalopes she found for us. Between that and the ability of Undine, Slinky, and Jenny to forage for vegetables, grubs, insects, and snails, we ate well. They made me eat lots of meat to keep my strength up for what Slinky called their "protein shakes," which made me blush while they all laughed.

  On the fifth day, after a hunt, Ava came in too fast out of the sky and almost crashed. I caught her before she hit the ground. She was weeping. "What's the matter?" I asked, concerned.

  "I don't know. My belly really, really hurts!"

  After clutching herself tightly for a while as Slinky bustled around, clucking like a mother hen, Ava excused herself to go behind a tree. She thought maybe she'd eaten something that was tearing up her stomach, and that a good bowel movement might make her feel better.

  She pooped, all right, after a loud scream tore through the forest. She pooped an egg. Robin's-egg blue with bright golden speckles, about the size of her head. And it didn't come out of her rear end. Ouch!

  She came out of the forest rubbing her crotch and wincing. In her other arm, cradled like a gem in a fine setting, was her egg. Her first child. And mine.

  It took me a while to realize that as the girls chatted excitedly, and then it hit me all at once. The enormity of it, and the oncoming responsibility, and knowing I had sired a child with a demon—er, dimensional traveler—hit me all at once, so hard and so quick that the world went dim... and my lights went out.

  Rewind:

  My trial for assaulting Mother Yoder was simple and swift. I had no real defense and didn't bother to invent one. Even I had no idea why I had snapped. While there were lots of witnesses, and they all admitted that Cally had provoked me, they also thought I had overreacted. Yes, I'd been going through a lot of teasing, but it was good-natured, because everyone (except Mrs. Yoder, it seemed) liked me. Now they saw me for what I was, a danger to the community. So they said.

  Little did we know that just that morning, my testosterone levels had spiked sharply, because I was, that very day, on the cusp of puberty. Hence my rage; so said my Goddess. To quote an old song, Isn't it ironic, don't you think? If I had held my temper, things would have been so different. I would have become a glorified man-whore, comforting women whenever they demanded and giving them children, and probably done little more with my life. But because of that one episode, that one mistake, I ended up reuniting my birth-country.

  After hearing testimony from witnesses, friends, and family, the Elder Council judged me guilty and exiled me to the wilderness, while Mother wept hysterically and my fathers held her, glaring holes into Jensen Miller, Cally Yoder's father, who had cast the deciding vote.

  By then, I didn't give a tinker's dam. I was feeling restless and wanted to move on.

  Rebound:

  When I recovered from my ridiculous overreaction, the women were still fussing over the egg. I sat and watched for a while, then took my knife, honed it sharp on a whetstone, and went to find a quiet spot on the river. Carefully gauging my reflection in the rippling water, I used the knife to scrape off the stubble growing over my upper lip. In time, I would have a proper married man's beard, for if I were to be a father, and it seemed that I was, I was married now in the eyes of the Lord I had been raised to believe in.

  I wondered what my Goddess would think. Would she be jealous, either of my remnant beliefs or of the fact that I had sired an egg? I certainly hoped not.

  Then I went back to the camp, and all the women commented on my handsome new husband's beard, which, though it had first sprouted only 10 days ago, was coming along nicely. Slinky just grinned, not maliciously, when she saw what I had done; having known Misha men in the past, she was aware of its meaning, even if the other ladies were not. I just winked at her. I had no idea how long this situation would last, but I was now the core of a group of women who wanted me, unlike the people who had cast me out; and having been healed of my affliction, I was willing to give them the children they desired. Indeed, I was eager to do so. No matter what others might think, though these ladies were different from those I had grown up with, they were not monsters. They were just different, and that made them exotic... and erotic in all the right ways. Perhaps my little group would someday form the core of a community that would allow humans and dimensional travelers to get along after more than 24 years of conflict.

  And so we had dinner, smiling and laughing, as the ladies congratulated me on my virility and the upcoming birth of my first child. Later, while they fawned over our egg and talked about how the rest of them would soon be showing, I carefully cut some tanned deerskin with my knife, modifying a pattern Young-Father Trent had given me, turned it outside-in, and lined the inside with soft greep fleece, sewing it in loosely. It was a sling for the egg that we would all take turns bearing as we traveled, since we weren't in a safe enough place to stop while Ava brooded the egg until it hatched. That would take almost two months, she said.

  Two months. Only two months! Holy feces!

  Rewind:

  Fortunately, the exiled were allowed to take with them as many supplies as their loved ones could give them, so basically as much as we could carry. Young-Father gave me his mare, Flicka, and Mother and both my fathers piled a half-ton of supplies on a travois Flicka drug behind her on sled runners. They were all weeping unashamedly. I wasn't. I just felt angry and restless.

  The rest of the town was arrayed behind us to watch my exile. Some looked sad to see me go, but most were noncommittal. Clem was there, his face screwed up in a mixture of pain at seeing me leave and confusion as to why I had crippled Cally the way I had; and behind him was the kind girl Becky Runnels, who was looking more at Clem's backside than at me.

  Old-Father Trent wiped his eyes and pushed a much-folded square of parchment into my hand. In a low voice, he said, "This map supposedly leads to the temple of the one they call the Dawn Goddess. I don't know what the hell she really is, but traders talk of miraculous cures she pays them with for basic necessities. Go to her. She can help you. It should be no more than a hundred miles, maybe less. There's a town called Ivy or Irvy or something similar there."

  Young-Father leaned in and pressed a sheaf of lacquered papers into my hand. It was a hand copy of the Forums I'd found, done in pencil in his looping hand, and one of the precious naked lady pictures. "For when you hit puberty, and you will, son," he murmured. "This can tide you over until you find a wife, maybe."

  Mother thrust yet another jar of her mayhaw jelly into my hands and said, "That bitch deserved what she got. She knew what her sister had planned and told no one."

  "I know," I said quietly.

  "Get on with it! Let it be done!" called Jensen Miller, with an unpleasant look on his face, like he had swallowed a whole lemon. Five husky Homeguard women pulled open the village gate, while the rest of the guard stood watch to make sure that no monsters used the ceremony as an opportuni
ty to attack.

  I mounted Flicka, and from my saddle, I surveyed the crowd, which suddenly seemed sad. Not just in aspect, but in their small-mindedness. No, I shouldn't have hurt Cally, but her nastiness was the straw that broken the back of a week's worth of compiled insults, jokes, and jibes. I had some Truths to impart, so I decided to leave them with a series of gifts.

  Jensen Miller shouted, "Henceforth, Tobias Angus Fell is dead to this village! He will be interred in the cemetery on Boot Hill at dawn tomorrow, his name never to be spoken from this day forward! Does the exiled have any last words?"

  "I do!" I called. "Despite the Formula of Exile, Tobias Angus Fell will be a name you will have reason to remember all the rest of your lives—some with fear, some with gratitude, some with friendship, some with worship—and some, even, with lust! This I swear to you! Now: I have some Truths to tell!

  "Clem Milford!" I called out. "For Heaven's sake, you love Becky Runnels, and she can't take her eyes off you! Ask her to marry you! She won't say no." My former best friend turned to look at Becky, hope in his eyes, and they embraced.