Monster Girl Mountain

by Edward Lang

  “I’m… not even sure we can have children together…”

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “Look – you have blue skin, I have white,” I said as I grabbed her hand and held it next to mine. Then I touched the tops of one of her ears. “Your ears are pointed; mine aren’t.”

  She shrugged dismissively. “You are a man. I am a woman. We can make baby,” she said confidently.

  I sighed. I wasn’t about to get into DNA and chromosome mismatches – that was beyond my ability to explain at the moment. And it would just confuse her.

  Lelia was essentially a woman straight out of the Stone Age. How do you explain about something so small that a person can’t see it, and never will be able to?

  Moreover, how do you expect them to believe you? They would have to take everything you said on complete and total faith.

  Not gonna happen. Especially when you’re arguing against something they want to believe is true.

  In Lelia’s case, she wanted to believe we could have children together.

  …could we?

  The truth was, whether we could or not, that wasn’t the real issue.

  “You want me to make babies with the entire tribe, though?” I asked.

  She nodded somberly. “Yes. You do not want to?”

  I stopped to consider that question.

  I’d never even had one child back on Earth – and here she was asking me to father five by different women.

  It was… odd, to say the least.

  Well, odd for me.

  Maybe not odd for her at all. This was a different world, a different people, with different customs and beliefs. Maybe those customs and beliefs kept her people alive.

  And being with five different women every few nights certainly had its allure.

  But having children?

  Was I ready for that?

  She interpreted my pause as not wanting what she wanted.

  “You don’t!” she cried out, her face upset, her voice panicky.

  I grabbed her and pulled her to me before she could back away.

  “No, that’s not it. I’m just… I’m not sure I would make a good father,” I said somberly.

  She frowned. “‘Make’ a good father? What does this mean?”

  “It means I don’t know if I would BE a good father.”

  She smiled and touched my face tenderly. “You keep me safe… you love me. You will keep children safe, and you will love them. You will be a good father.”

  In the face of her quiet surety and kindness, there was nothing to do but smile and give in.

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  And then we kissed.

  26

  Whether there were children on the way or not, there was still a lot left to be done.

  Number one priority: if we wanted to move fast, snowshoes would help a lot. And not the ragtag, ass-backwards, janky ones we’d been wearing so far.

  Real snowshoes, ones that didn’t rely on being stuffed with tree limbs.

  So I set about trying to figure out how to create better ones.

  The frames were the problem. The strings crisscrossing the bottom were simple enough: strips made from deer skin. That was just a matter of catching more deer and tanning their hides.

  But the frames were a bitch.

  I had no axe to cut down a tree. And even if I could find a freshly fallen one, I had no tools to cut out a cross-section. And carving out a frame whole, from one piece of wood, would take forever.

  And I didn’t have forever. I needed to make at least seven pairs – one for me, Lelia, Oona, Fieria, Hala, Mazaria, and Teeka. They needed to be relatively quick to make, and relatively simple to replace. I mean, I didn’t want to invest a week into each frame, only to have to replace it if it broke.

  In the end, I figured it out because of the bows I was making for the women… and because of the hide they prepared from a deer.

  The hide came first.

  I explained to Lelia that I was going to need a lot of strings for our new snowshoes, and it would be better if we could remove the fur. She agreed, and as soon as we killed our first deer, Hala was tasked with removing the fur.

  It was an arduous process of scraping it off with a tool they made from bone. I could tell that it was going to take hours and hours, and would probably end up damaging the hide.

  “Why don’t we soak it first?” I suggested.

  “Soak?” Lelia asked.

  “Put it in water and let it stay for a long time.”

  She laughed, bent down, and picked up a handful of snow. “Because this is only water there is.”

  “Yeah, but we could melt it – ”

  “What would we melt snow in?” she asked. “What would we soak hide in?”

  She had a point. We didn’t exactly have any metal cauldrons sitting around.

  We needed a container… something large…

  A pit in the ground?

  No… once we melted the snow, the water would just seep through, not to mention it would be muddy as hell…

  An already-treated, waterproof hide?

  No, it wouldn’t be large enough to hold the water we needed.

  I looked around in despair… and then saw a fallen tree about 70 feet away.

  That’s it!

  “Come with me,” I said.

  She frowned, not knowing what I had in mind, but she put on her snowshoes along with me and accompanied me into the forest.

  We searched a long time until I found what I was looking for: a massive hardwood tree that had snapped in two close to the ground, leaving behind a stump.

  Pines often snapped in two because they were far more fragile than oaks or other hardwoods – but their trunks were far too small in diameter for what I had in mind.

  Most hardwoods that fell over were blown over by a storm and completely uprooted. I didn’t need an uprooted tree, I needed a stump – preferably one with a diameter of five feet or more. And what was essential was that the stump had been around long enough for the center to rot out, leaving a deep depression – almost a natural bowl. And the wood around it would need to be intact and seasoned, meaning that it could hold water.

  Needless to say, it took a while to find what I wanted – more than two hours, since a lot of our likely candidates were buried under several feet of snow. But when we found it, it was perfect: a stump about three feet tall and six feet wide, which had rotted out in the center to create a hollow I could fit most of my body into.

  “Help me clear this out,” I said to Lelia, and we used stones to hack away at as much of the rotting wood in the center as we could.

  Then I created a fire just a few feet away, using one of my matches to light some tinder and kindling. Within ten minutes we had a raging bonfire.

  Then I began finding rocks that weighed around five pounds and placing them amongst the logs.

  While the rocks heated up, I packed the interior of the stump with snow.

  Then I rolled out the rocks and, using sticks as tongs, dumped them into the snow-packed stump.

  They went right through the snow like a blowtorch through butter.

  We kept rotating more stones into the fire, and taking out the ones inside the stump once they had cooled down.

  Once all the snow had melted, it filled up less than half the stump – which was to be expected, because snow takes up a lot more space than water. So we dumped more snow in, which immediately melted and added to the volume.

  We now had a lot of very cold water. But that wasn’t what I had in mind.

  We kept throwing in stones, waiting for the heat to transfer, and then fishing them out and putting them back in the fire.

  We were fighting the cold air, but we managed to get the water up to well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

  “Go get the hide,” I told Lelia, and she took off for camp.

  I stayed and kept the cycle of rock-warming and heat transfer going.

  Part of me wanted to jump in and use the wat
er as my own private Jacuzzi. I hadn’t had a bath since I’d arrived here, and was sure I was past the point of ripe. Funny, though – when you’re out in freezing temperatures fighting for your survival, the little things like smelling good went by the wayside.

  Lelia hadn’t complained. I was lucky in that she didn’t smell bad at all – in fact, if anything, her body gave off a slightly sweet scent of musk. All the women’s bodies did.

  I thought about stripping down and waiting in the water until Lelia got back. I smiled to myself, imagining her surprise.

  Only problem was, it would be a bitch and a half getting out.

  We had no cloth to dry with, so the water would immediately start freezing on my body as soon as I exited the makeshift tub.

  Being soaking wet and getting into my clothing had absolutely no appeal. If anything, I would probably die of hypothermia from the water freezing.

  Plus there was the little matter of what would happen if wolves or skiris attacked while I was in the tub.

  I figured it was unlikely, but Murphy’s Law was all about the unlikely becoming the unavoidable.

  I imagined myself lounging in the tub, bow in hand, firing arrows casually out at skiris and wolves alike.

  Can’t get the bow in the water, though, I thought to myself in amusement. If the wood absorbed the water, it would become too pliable –

  I stopped, my eyes wide.

  ‘Too pliable’ –

  That was it!

  When I selected an ash sapling for a bow, I was looking for ones that were strong enough to keep their shape, but juuuust flexible enough to bend when you strung them. After all, they needed to be able to keep a lot of tension on the string in order to powerfully fire an arrow.

  As I was looking for saplings that were the right size, I came across plenty that were far too pliable. They would bend too much to be useful.

  But the saplings that would be bad for a bow would be perfect for what I had in mind now.

  I raced around and found a hardwood sapling that was too small and flexible for a bow. I cut it down with my saw, then stripped off the bark. When it was finished, I had a very green, flexible stick about an inch in diameter and five feet long.

  I tried bending it into a circular shape, but it would only go so far before I could hear the fibers begin to strain, the first hint of an impending crack and eventual break. So I let up on the pressure.

  The question was, how far would it bend once it was soaked?

  I stuck it in the water until it was mostly submerged. Then I went back to transferring rocks in and out of the water.

  Lelia arrived soon with the hide, along with Hala, who had been working on scraping it and wanted to know what exactly the hell I was up to.

  “Thanks,” I said as I took the hide and stuffed it into the water.

  Water overflowed the top and sloshed out the side, but both the hide and the stick were now completely submerged.

  “What do we do?” Lelia asked.

  “We wait,” I said as I continued swapping out rocks.

  We waited until it was nearly dark to take out the hide – a good six hours – which was now waterlogged with hot water.

  “Try to take off the fur now,” I said to Hala. “Hurry, before the water freezes.”

  Hala pulled out her bone tool and went to work.

  The hair came off about five times easier than before, leaving behind almost completely undamaged skin behind it.

  “What!” Hala said excitedly as she scraped.

  Lelia had the intonation down a bit better.

  “Whaaaat?!” she exclaimed.

  I laughed as the two women went to work removing the fur.

  The water was starting to freeze in the open air, though, so they had to keep dunking it back down into the tub to get it pliable again.

  Meanwhile, I pulled out my hardwood stick.

  Time to see if a good soak had made any difference.

  I bent the rod –

  And it completely stretched around in an oval loop with no creaking or cracking whatsoever.

  “YES!” I cried out triumphantly.

  Lelia and Hala looked over at me in surprise.

  “Why so happy?” Lelia asked.

  “Hold on,” I said, and pulled out a string from the furry deer hide we had made back in the cave before we left.

  I lashed the ends of the stick together, then triumphantly held up a teardrop-shaped curve of wood.

  “Ta-daaaa!” I said happily.

  “What is ‘ta-daaaaa!’” Lelia asked, repeating my vocalization and tone exactly.

  “It’s what you say when you do a magic trick!”

  “Cock magic?” Lelia asked.

  Hala giggled.

  “NO, not cock magic,” I said, grinning. “Just regular magic.”

  Lelia frowned in confusion. “What is regular magic?”

  I was going to have to practice pulling a coin out of her ear to try to demonstrate.

  Too bad I didn’t have a coin.

  Maybe an orange berry…

  “Never mind,” I said. “It’s the frame for a snowshoe!”

  She looked at it dubiously. “Will it work?”

  “Only one way to find out, babe.”

  Once the new hide was completely bare, we covered the embers of the fire with rocks to keep them smoldering overnight, then walked the quarter mile back to camp.

  I took the snowshoe frame back with me and set it on a pile of rocks by the main campfire to dry out as much as possible. The women did the same with the hide, stringing it up on a crude frame so the heat could dry it out.

  When I checked the snowshoe frame the next morning, the wood wasn’t entirely dry – but it had kept its oval shape, even when I undid the string that kept both ends together.

  YES!

  From that point forward, we switched from an arrow-making assembly line to a hide-tanning and snowshoe-producing assembly line.

  Half of us would go out hunting with our bows and arrows. Lelia, Fieria, and I were the best shots by far, so the hunting usually fell to us – although once all the bows were finished, the entire tribe and I would go out hunting to improve our chances. No more than two days would go by without one of us bagging a deer.

  Once we had a hide to work with, two women would swap out rocks at the hollowed-out stump (where the water had turned to ice overnight) until the water was warm enough to soak the hide.

  I also cut a supply of sapling sticks, and the women would soak those, as well.

  At the end of the day when the hunting party returned, we would strip the hide of fur, and I would lash the flexible ash rods together to create teardrop-shaped snowshoe frames. Then we would let the hide and frames dry out overnight by the fire.

  Then the women would tan the hides with the deer brains and smoke them to remove the rest of the moisture.

  After the hides were done, another women would use my knife and cut the hide into long strips.

  They actually fought over that particular chore. My steel knife blade was so technologically advanced that they were fascinated, and actually argued over who got to use it.

  Once I had enough strands of flexible hide, I set to work creating snowshoes.

  I would carve notches in the frames so that the strings wouldn’t slip. Then I would tie one end of the string as tight as possible to one notch… string it across the frame… and tie it tightly again. If there was enough length, I would double up and retie it on the other side.

  I also fastened wider, flatter pieces of hardwood to the tops of the snowshoe frames. They were a hell of a lot more comfortable than the round branches I’d been using as a base for the sole of my boot – and they allowed me to maneuver the snowshoe easier, too.

  After about twenty pieces of string going lengthwise and widthwise across the frame, I had what looked like a crudely made, ugly-ass tennis racket with two wooden slats on top of one side.

  But it worked.

  The first time I lashed it t
o my boot, the improved snowshoe worked orders of magnitude better than the crappy ones we’d started with. They kept me balanced atop the snow better, and I could move three times as fast without stumbling around as much.

  I waited until I had two finished snowshoes before I showed the women, though.

  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?”