I singled out Oona, who still didn’t trust me, and had her stand on a rock next to deep snow. Then I tied the snowshoes to her foot bindings.
She watched me nervously.
“Okay, done,” I said, patting her foot bindings. “Go ahead, try walking.”
She glanced at her fellow tribeswomen like, Do I HAVE to?
“Go,” Fieria ordered her. “Walk.”
Oona sighed like she was greatly put-upon, then lifted up a leg cautiously… set it down…
And her jaw dropped open as she stayed atop the snow.
“Bala na salana soo avala!” she cried out excitedly as she took another step with her other shoe, and still didn’t sink.
The women cried out in delight and laughed as Oona began walking quickly and gracefully across the snow.
“Yay!” I cheered, and clapped.
“What does this mean?” Lelia asked, perplexed, as she smacked her hands together in a single clap.
“It means ‘very good.’”
“Oh!” Lelia said brightly, and began clapping. The other women followed suit.
The other women wanted to try, so we let them, one by one.
At the end, though, I handed the snowshoes to Oona.
She looked at me in confusion.
“These are yours,” I said. “Oona’s snowshoes.”
She stared at me for a second – and then she looked at them in her hands like they were the most precious thing she had ever seen. In fact, I thought she might cry.
Then she looked over at her friends in alarm.
“It’s okay,” I reassured her. “I’ll make more for everyone. But you get the first ones.”
A tear spilled down her cheek, and she smiled shyly… and clutched the snowshoes to her chest.
I thought giving her the first pair might improve our relationship. Little did I know how much.
That night as we were getting ready for bed, Oona peeled off her furs entirely and knelt before me.
“Please,” she whispered.
I stared at her in amazement. “Are you… are you sure?”
“Please,” she repeated, and began tugging at my pants, trying to undo them.
I looked over at Lelia, who nodded happily.
Hala and Teeka were beside her. They just knelt there, naked, waiting expectantly for the show.
I took it slow and easy, giving Oona lots of foreplay and oral sex before I slowly entered her.
She came before I was all the way inside her.
Then she came twice more before I couldn’t hold on any more and exploded inside her.
“Ahhhh,” Oona sighed happily, then kissed me.
Lelia, Teeka, and Hala suddenly started clapping.
I looked over in alarm. “What are you doing?!”
“It means very good!” Lelia said, and I thought back to my explanation earlier when I’d clapped as Oona used the snowshoes.
I burst out laughing when I remembered.
I’d never gotten applause for sex before, but I can’t say that I minded it.
Especially when Lelia, Hala, and Teeka crawled over to me to join in the encore.
27
We settled into a rhythm as a group: archery practice. Hunting. Tanning the hides. Constructing the snowshoes. And at night, lots and lots of sex.
I started demanding to help the women on the night watch.
“No,” Fieria said resolutely.
“Why not?” I demanded.
“We need cock magic,” she explained. “If you do cock magic and try to guard, you will not sleep. We need cock magic more than we need you guard us. We can guard us. We cannot do cock magic.”
All the other women nodded in somber agreement.
Well… when she put it like that, I wasn’t going to argue.
So in a way, I did first watch every single night… but with only a specific part of me standing at attention.
It was a good life… but I couldn’t help remembering the skiris that had chased Oona. I was worried that its fellow monsters might come looking for their fallen comrade.
So after the women were relatively good with the bows and arrows, I decided we needed to concentrate a bit on tactics. I built a ten-foot-tall snowman to approximate the height of a skiris, and then we practiced working as a team.
When I yelled Together, everyone would fire at the target at the same time.
When I shouted Protect, three women would kneel in front with spears to keep the skiris at bay, and I and three other women would stand behind them and fire as fast as possible.
Usually it was Hala, Fieria, and Lelia in the back with me since they were the best shots, but I had everyone practice, just in case something happened – like, say, one person got injured and couldn’t fire an arrow.
We also practiced running in different directions when I shouted Scatter!
The women also learned to fire at the target from all different directions. We practiced drawing an arrow and nocking it while running in snowshoes… stopping to aim… then firing and moving again.
I also stressed that we should try to keep trees between us and the skiris, and that we should always take the high ground, if possible. Way easier to aim when you’re up high.
I hadn’t been in the service, so I had no military training – but I figured that those tactics would stand us in good stead in case of attack.
And yet, the skiris never came.
It didn’t matter. I kept drilling the women, convinced it was only a matter of time.
It was.
Ten days had passed when it happened. By then I had completed all the snowshoes – 12 pairs in all: one for me, Lelia, Fieria, Oona, Hala, Teeka, and Mazaria… and five extras, for when we found the other tribeswomen who had been kidnapped. They were going to need a quick way to escape when and if we found them.
We also made sure that everyone had two quivers with 15 arrows apiece, 30 in all. We had more than enough meat frozen in an outdoor larder. And when we weren’t foraging or hunting, we drilled and practiced archery, then drilled some more.
All that drilling and practicing was good, because the attack came on the eleventh night.
I was sleeping deeply after a particularly delightful evening when I was roughly shaken awake.
Fieria whispered frantically as she knelt there in front of me. “Jake, no
