The Fathering Land

by Tripp Greyson

  "Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyyymmme," I sang back, remembering. "We have that song too. No wonder the name of this place was so familiar... they must have named it after the song."

  "I named my last babies after spices," she said quietly. "Pepper and Cayenne, because I was a cook in the army. Cayenne died when she was three weeks old."

  "I know," I told her. I squeezed her hand in mine and said fiercely, "I'm so sorry, sweetling. We'll do our best to make sure that never happens here. So...?"

  "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme." She pointed to them as she said their names.

  "You can't call him that!" Pepper cried out as she pointed to her blond brother. "Rosemary is a girl's name! Let me trade names with him!"

  We looked at each other, Gem and I, and she shrugged. "Okay, then, Parsley, Sage, Pepper, and Thyme."

  "Yay!" said the newly-rechristened Rosemary, as she clapped her hands. Then her little eyes went wide. "I have four brothers!" She dashed out of the house yelling, "I have four brothers! I have four brothers!" and I heard the citizens nearby raise a ragged cheer.

  "And I have 27 sons now," I said, smiling, before I kissed their mother. I spent the next hour getting to know the new boys. I learned that, like vixen, baby wolfin have very sharp teeth. I was both grinning and wincing as I stepped out of the birthing house, on my way to my next lover. As it happened, I was meeting with the first of the second set of nine women from the local minotaur herd, the one they called Big Bertha. Nearly as tall as Montana, she lived up to her name. I'd learned that despite their large size, the tauras, as we'd come to call them, were not oversized where it counted, and that the hairlessness there was natural.

  But as I like to say to the boys when they overshare, TMI.

  ❖

  As much as I came to love my daughter-in-law Fiona, I have to say: cobbers can be a right pain in the ass.

  It turned out that the original cobbers had all been lawyers. Why a legal team was required to accompany the Colonization Force I have no idea, but I suspect it was because lawyers, or barristers as they liked to call themselves, were the ones who had drafted the colonization plan—so they just wrote themselves in. They were always arguing about rules and regulations, were forever taking advantage of loopholes in our slowly developing legal code, and refused to live in what they called "drafty tumbledown giant huts." They preferred nasty moist holes in the ground instead. Finally, I sent them to live in what had been The Sun's safe room, which we weren't using for much. It measured about 20 feet square, and another ten high. They all cheered when they saw it, and proceeded to build their own little city down there, complete with multilevel dwellings. The fact that none of them were more than a foot tall made that easily possible.

  Sometimes I wonder how a sentient being so small could possibly have enough brainpower to argue me under the table, but they do. All of them. If they were as strong as they were smart, they could easily take over the place by force of arms... assuming they could ever get organized. But they're too in love with having long meetings in order to draft complicated organizational charts to actually organize anything.

  It turned out we had 13 of them. The positive thing was, they didn't eat much, and liked to hunt down as prey the smaller pests that we didn't bother with, including the big grasshoppers that sometimes hatched out and overran the area when the autumn and spring were wetter than normal. As I learned later in the year, the bugs, which could grow to be as large as Montana's middle finger, could easily feed a cobber. Even better, their tough chitin made decent armor for the little green girls when properly prepared. They had a couple of "blacksmiths" who knew how to handle it. They were happy to let the fire ants pick it clean first, which made me happy. I'd never found a use for the mean little insects myself, and they made sure to keep them outside the walls. I had no idea how they killed the ones inside the compound, but I wouldn't be surprised if they entered the mounds personally to slaughter the queens. I know they domesticated the larger red ants, who tended to be peaceful unless you bothered them.

  The cobbers, I soon discovered, really loved my Dixies, and my Dixies really loved them back. If I couldn't otherwise track one down, I knew I'd find him shacked up with one of the cobber girls. To the cobbers, the Hero Dixies were big, burly men with big, burly privy members who had amazing endurance. The problem was, once a cobber got ahold of a Dixie, she didn't want to share, which diverted them from their primary mission in life. This caused problems, because they would keep them busy for days sometimes, until they could barely stagger out of Cobberville and back to their barracks in Pecan Grove. After that they weren't good for much for a while, though they couldn't stop grinning.

  The newly-christened Fiona Fell, whom I privately thought of as Fell Fiona, refused to share her man Gration with other cobbers, though she was fine with letting him service the other small races, including the memegwesi who'd come in with the cobbers.

  Of those, there were 21. Like the cobbers, I had never seen one until the day of the battle with the bandits, but I was vaguely aware of their existence; they were modeled after Native American Little People from the mythology of Iroquois, a nation far to the northeast. They also apparently liked to ramble. They were slender, doe-eyed women, all dark-eyed and red-haired, dressed in beaded leather dresses, with bright green and ruby hummingbird feathers in their hair. They looked like female versions of the Indian in the Cupboard, from one of Hamiltown's rare children's books that the bitty-swarms hadn't converted to blank paper. They couldn't have been more different from the cobbers—they were even twice their size—but the two groups got along well. The Memmies made their homes in a stand of young peach trees, the hopeful remnant of a failed settlement years before, that I made sure was carefully fenced in so no one would blunder into their homes or step on them. They built fine log cabins of gopherwood and oak that they welcomed the Dixies into at every opportunity.

  To the memegwesi, my pixie sons were handsome, sturdy young lads who were inventive lovers, if a little on the small side.

  It turned out the memegwesi and the cobbers were different in another fundamental way: like most of the other smaller races, the memmies have pregnancies of a length approaching the human norm. Cobbers, on the other hand, breed like rabbits, no offense to any sylvies who read this. (If I know cobbers, I'll be served with a mountain of libel suits and cease-and-desist letters as soon as they read this, no matter what I do. But I'm immune to prosecution as the Father of Our Country, so nyeh.)

  [I am also immune to prosecution, so stuff it, cobbers.-TG]

  Cobbers have one child at a time (twins can happen, but they're rare), and their gestation period is only 41 days. As I've said, cobber women really, really love their studly Dixies, so cobber girls don't stay unpregnant for long. Their babies also mature quickly, and start walking and talking within two or three months. I'll never forget the day, not long after a rare snowfall in January, when a gang of tiny bundled-up boys attacked me with snowballs hurled by miniature trebuchets and mangonels they'd build themselves. They shouted, "Haha, Old Man, got you!" Take that, Gramps!" "Bullseye!" "Too slow, Grandpa-man!" "Quit yer whinin', Old Guy, it's only snowballs!"

  Yes, it was "only" snowballs. Consisting of snow they had carefully packed around small stones, and that they had made sure to melt and refreeze in layers so the snowballs wouldn't be blown apart by the force of the catapult toss. The silly things hurt, and damn near put out my right eye. I'll admit to yelling and making a few threats, but they thumbed their noses at me and yelled, "Ha-ha, Old Man, you can't see our faces, so you don't know who we are!" "Nyah-nyah!" "Good luck finding us!" By then I had almost thirty cobber grandsons, and admittedly all these had tiny scarves covering most of their faces.

  But I still had sharp eyes, and I could clearly see that all their eyes were red. So I took it up with Bellerophon, who was a special favorite in Cobberville, and the next day a half-dozen brothers who couldn't sit down were standing on my office desk, apologizing halfheartedly a
s I glared at them through the one good eye that wasn't taped over with gauze. I chewed on their asses for a while, emphasizing carefulness and responsibility, and sent them on their way.

  I have to admit that the tiny horde of six-inch snow figures I found blocking the path to the Fathering Chamber the next day, including a number of snowboys who had been chewed up or bloodily beheaded by a giant, jagged-toothed, straw-haired snow-cyclops bearing what was obviously supposed to be the Dawn Sword, was quite clever. I was still laughing as I joined the latest taura mother-to-be, Sigrid.

  Tripp the Scribe was not happy when he learned that the cobbers had liberated a can of his red hematite ink for the blood, however. [It took me weeks the grind the stuff! That still chafes my hide! -TG]

  Chapter Six

  Spring arrived in early March. By then our farmers had onions, turnips, lettuce, and cabbage in the ground, and I had so many children I had to keep track of them in a ledger, including their birthdays, mothers' names, and favorite things. (My memory might be near perfect, but only when I prompt it.) My sons so far, in order of precedence, were pixie, harpy, sylvie, wolfin, vixen, and faunlet. All my wives were heavily pregnant, with the exception of Coulter and Montana, who had longer gestation periods than Slinky, Jenny, Ava, Undine, and Freddie. Ava had in fact already been with child, and gave birth to the twin eggs that would become my sons Davin and Trent when they hatched. That they hadn't already was due to the fact that cold slowed the development of harpy chicks to a crawl, so that they wouldn't hatch until sometime near the first anniversary of the Battle of Scarborough Faire.

  The cobber population explosion had slowed somewhat, but I now had close to fifty cobber grandsons, all crafty little brats, and a tiny white fennec fox grandson named Ferrin. Apollo was strutting around like a bantam rooster, bursting with pride, and was teaching Ferrin what he called "proper manners and diction." Or he would be, when Ferrin was out of the cradle and could actually talk. Meanwhile, Gray's olbytla honeys were well along, half the memegwesi were pregnant, the pixies at Clearwater Hive were preparing to welcome about a hundred sons (and were already demanding that the Dixies come back and fill the wombs of the next quarter of the Clearwater population), our two Red Caps had fallen for Bill's charms and were themselves heavy with child, and our few fairy ladies were also with child by way of the boys—though given their preferences for entertaining multiple partners at once, no one was sure or even cared who the fathers were.

  To my astonishment, three of the younger sylvies, whom I had not touched because I considered them too young, were also pregnant! I had a stern talk with the Dixies about that. No one admitted anything—that was ingrained in the racial memory they'd inherited from their master sergeant mother—but one of the girls later admitted it was "the sexy one with the blue-and-gold uniform." Apparently Gration had not been the only Dixie to find ways to pleasure women many times his size. The fact that the sylvie teens' babies had yellow eyes when they were born didn't surprise me at all, so Eros and I had another talk. He acted all contrite and apologetic, but I didn't believe it for a minute. He was delighted to have sylvie children, as the first of the Dixies who had lain successfully with one of the big races.

  I didn't know whether to have STUPID CUPID branded on his forehead, or hand him a cigar. So I yelled at Eros about waiting until girls were adults before boinking them, and he agreed he would. He kept his promise, as I had expected, but he didn't stay away from the "biggies", as he called them. I knew I shouldn't be surprised to see even yellow-eyed, white-haired terran toddlers in a year or two. He was very popular, very inventive, and always "rockin' a boner."

  We were soon to be flooded with Icarus pixies, and Sabranna's was the first. He was living proof that I had no idea what I was talking about, or else the universe was showing off its sick sense of humor again. Icarus III (there was already a sylvie-Icarus, remember) was born with black hair with a streak of white right down the middle, just as I had told my son he wouldn't be; but surprisingly, he didn't get the yellow eyes. They were amber, a compelling mix of Sabbie's dark eyes and her lover's yellow ones.

  Icky-3 wasn't a day old before Eros bragged that he'd already bred Sabranna again. Not like he had a choice, because this time he woke up to find himself tied down, and then—

  I shut him up, and only found out later that the "and then" had involved two of Sabranna's sisters, whipped cream, and strawberries, the lucky little stiff.

  I was in the middle of the airgun dream again when Little Magic woke me with a mental shout. DADDAY! Papa Toméz has been captured by Alfas!

  "Oh no," I groaned, as I wrote down a quick note to hunt for the airguns hidden in Pecan Grove.

  Oh yes! He was about 30 miles out when they took him! They are ravishing him even as we speak! He sounded bewildered, sad, excited, and disgusted all at once. We have to save him from their nefarious clutches!

  "Yes we do." I got out of bed, dressed in my armor, and shook Undine awake. "Darling, our new stud, Toméz, is in trouble. Can you wake the giantesses and faunlets for me? We're going to go get him. Oh, and see if Brunhilde wants to come, too." The latter lady was one of the tauras who was visiting.

  By then, my wife was awake and wide-eyed. "What about the Dixies?" she asked, rubbing her swollen tummy.

  "Can't take them. There are Alfas involved. They'd die of horniness."

  "Then maybe you shouldn't go," she said sulkily.

  "The big girls will hold me back. Now, we have to get ready to leave. Dawn's in about an hour."

  Fortunately, Queen Gertrude of the Tauras had gifted us with a herd of fifty or so mustangs they'd captured on the plains between Tejas and Indiahoma, so most of us had mounts. Brunhilde and the larger faunlets were forced to run, because they were too big for horses (the very reason Gertrude had given us the 'stangs instead of keeping them), but they had no trouble keeping up. Nature, or the Step Through at least, had designed them for running.

  ❖

  We were too late to save poor Papa Toméz.

  But only, thank Goddess, because he saved himself. He met us on the trail two days later, leading six devastatingly handsome teenage boys with pointed ears and sharply angled eyebrows who quietly deferred to him. The boys wore only kilts or loincloths that seemed to be made from the rags of silk dresses, for some reason, with stone knives tucked into them. Each of the boys, I noted, also toted a tiny baby in a makeshift chest carrier. The babies were all little girls with hypnotic eyes who were hard to look at. They reminded me of something, but I couldn't place what—except that when I looked at them, I kept seeing Icarus as he was just before he died.

  When I spied the slender, dark-haired young man about my age in the back of the flock, I asked incredulously, "Father Toméz?! Is that you?"

  He smiled gently and said, in a faint Spanyol accent, "Papa Toméz now. You are Fell Tobias?"

  "Yes!" We clasped hands and embraced heartily in what my wives would have called a "bro-hug." I blurted, "You're safe! Thank God—! He told me you were captured by Alfas!" I remembered not to call Her 'Goddess' at the last minute, because She appeared to Toméz as an old bearded man rather than as a delightful young woman.

  "I was," he said simply. "The power of God saved me."

  "Praise Him!" I said fervently. "And who are these fine young men?"

  Toméz grinned broadly, making his normally homely face into a thing of beauty. "¡Son mis hijos!" he said joyously.

  I understood enough Spanyol to say, "They're all your sons?"

  "My first batch."

  "But how?"

  "It is a miracle of the Lord," he said, and made a T-shaped sigil over his head and chest that I later learned was called "crossing himself." He went on, "It is a long story, but I will tell you when we arrive at our new home."

  When I asked Toméz about the babies, he looked at me solemnly and told me first, "Another part of the long story. And you must not overreact when I tell you about them, agreed? You must wait until you understand all."

&
nbsp; "Of course. Why would babies make me overreact?" I asked, puzzled.

  "Because of who and what they are. Remember, Fell Tobias. They are babies first. As for their race—they are Alfas."

  I reached for my sword without thinking, and all the young men immediately went for their own stone weapons after quickly but gently depositing their infant charges on the ground.

  "STOP!" thundered a loud voice, and suddenly there was a luminous ten-year-old boy standing between my group and Toméz's. "Sheath your weapons, all of you." He glared at me. "Really, Fell Tobias. They're babies. All 12 of them. You need to chill out."

  This time Little Magic was dressed in very baggy denim shorts and a long, collarless shirt emblazoned with the jagged letters AC/DC. I recollected that had something to do with electricity, but why would it be printed on a shirt? He also wore those puffy plastic shoes again that my wives said were called Nye-keys. "You grew again," I told him.