The Fathering Land

by Tripp Greyson

  I rolled my eyes. "I told you to stop calling me king!"

  Montana said bluntly, "You two don't look nothin' alike."

  I glared at her. "He adopted me as a child and raised me to adulthood. He's as much my father as Isaiah Fell was."

  She scratched her head. "Oh, I get it! So he's the one you named Ava's egg after?"

  "Yes, and his son, Trenton the Younger."

  "Well, then, who's that Davin guy you named her other egg after?"

  "One of my other fathers," I said softly. "He was taken by a... a DT after fathering my brother Calvin."

  All Old-Father Trent could say was, "Wives? Wives, plural? And who's Ava?"

  "I have seven wives now, Dad," I told him proudly. "Ava's one of them. She's a beautiful harpy lady."

  "Well, they're all beautiful," he muttered, "which is why we lose so many men to them."

  "That's coming to an end soon, Dad. It's one of the things we need to talk about. Where can we speak privately?"

  "Inside," Old-Father Trent said. "But there are some... situations you'll need to set straight before you do anything else." He leaned close. "And if I were you, the first thing I'd do when I step in that gate is declare this town part of your new nation. Icarus, was it?"

  "Yes," I said grimly, "the Commonwealth of Icarus. Named after my ninth and youngest pixie son... who paid the ultimate price when he flew too close to a witch called 'the Sun'. I wish you could have met him. He was a marvel."

  I ignored the muttering above me. "Marvel, was he?" "I guess he was." "Well, we're marvels, too!" "The ladies all say I'm astounding." "SHUT UP, STUPID CUPID!"

  Father looked at me for a long moment, expressionless, then looked up at the Dixies and said, "I see there are many things that I must hear. Welcome home, son."

  We walked, my father and my wives and I, the Dixies swirling above my head, through the open gates of what had briefly been Hibernia and was now Hamiltown again. As soon as we were in the town proper, I drew the Dawn Sword, held it aloft so that all could see the blade glint blindingly bright in the golden light of the westering sun, and jabbed it down into the soil. Then I spoke, and again my voice was amplified so that all the people of the village, and the rest of my army outside, could hear: "I claim this town and all its citizens in the name of the Dawn Goddess, my Lady Aurora, as part of the Commonwealth of Icarus. It is henceforth to be known again by its former name, Hamiltown. You are now under the protection of the All-Father Fell Tobias. So it is!"

  Unexpectedly, a bolt of lightning split the sky and struck the Dawn Sword, sending jagged blue-white electricity through the ground in all directions. Almost as one person, the people in the crowd fell to their knees and intoned, "So mote it be!"

  Nice job, son, I thought to Little Magic, and I could feel his grin in return. Theatrics never hurt a ceremony like this. Then I looked over the kneeling crowd and shouted, "Rise, free people of Icarus!" I was concerned by the fact that the crowd was thinner than it should have been, in terms of numbers; and so were the people, in terms of calories.

  I leaned toward my Old-Father and asked, "What's going on, Dad? Where is everyone?"

  "That's one of the things you need to set straight, my boy," he said, his voice unsteady; and it was then, as a gust of wind wafted toward me, that I smelled the first hint of corruption. The old man could only point toward the far corner of the township where the east and south walls of the palisade came together. "I... I can't go back there again," he said, weeping openly.

  My vision of whatever was there, rotting, was obscured by intervening buildings. I pointed at Towana Miller, Edgar Dubois, Caleb Kensie, and Boyd Carlo, formerly sharp, honest, strapping boys who had been reduced to tired-looking men with hollow bellies, sharp hips, and visible ribs. They were still among the strongest-looking of the people there. "You four," I barked in a voice that would brook no disobedience. "Come with me."

  Silently, they followed. As we moved closer to the barbarism I knew we'd find, I asked Towana, whom I had always known to be a straight shooter despite his duplicitous father and sisters, "When did they come?"

  "Almo'z d'ree mon'z ago," he said quietly, and when I looked at him, I saw that his speech impediment was because his mouth had been smashed. His lips were a mass of scars, and what teeth weren't gone were jagged and broken.

  "What happened to you?" I demanded, outraged.

  "I fough' 'em," he slurred. "Dey punizhed me."

  "And you're still alive?"

  "Only 'cauze o' my Dad," he said simply, and as I came to a halt, so did they. He continued, bank-faced, "He begged 'em nod da kill me, zo," he gestured toward his face, "dey did diz inzdead. Hadda punizh me, dey zaid." He looked at the ground, silent tears streaming from his eyes before he hid his face in his hands.

  "Your father let them in, didn't he." It was a statement, not a question, and all the boys around me nodded.

  Towana looked up at me, his face bleak. "Yah. Him an', an' Cally. An' Dori."

  Caleb said quietly, "After she was exiled, Dori went east to the Tejarkanye and became their whore. Apparently, she slept her way to the top and gave some war-chief a son. Then she talked him into coming west, breaking the treaty, and taking Hamiltown. Wanted to make us suffer," he hissed. "My father's dead because of her, and my Mom's a cripple. I hope you repay her a thousand times over, Tobias Fell," he finished, his face filled with hate.

  "Tobias Fell is dead," I replied. "He lies yonder on Boot Hill. My name is Fell Tobias. Do you accept me as your leader? Will you become my personal armsmen? Will you help me right this wrong?"

  "YES!" the four men shouted in one voice.

  "On your knees in a line before me. Do not fear," I said in a strong, firm voice, feeling that I was guided by my Divine Lady. They lined up as instructed, and I drew the Dawn Sword. I touched them each on the right shoulder with the flat, stating their names aloud. "Towana Miller. Caleb Kensie. Boyd Carlo. Edgar Dubois. I bind you to the service of the Dawn Goddess Aurora, her consort Fell Tobias, and their son Eos, God of Morning, until such time as the Goddess calls you home. Rise as the first four of my personal armsmen, and Lords Protector of the North, South, East, and West marches of the Commonwealth of Icarus, which by my word and deed, I vow will stretch to encompass the entirety of the old Confederate States of America before I, too, am called home by She who guides me in all I do. So it is!"

  "So mote it be!" my four new Protectors intoned fervently.

  "Now rise and begin your new lives!" I cried, and as they rose, a shimmer surrounded them; and when it passed they were their old, strapping selves, well-fed and strong, all wounds healed; and Towana, my new Protector of the North, had a full set of intact teeth and was no longer scarred. They all wore laminated wooden and Kevlar armor of a type that my sylvie armorers had only recently proposed, and that I was certain would turn both marbles and bullets, not to mention arrows. Each had his color: Towana's was red, Caleb's black, Boyd's golden, and Edgar's green, all in translucent enamel. Each set of armor was a work of art.

  Another nice job, son, I told Little Magic mentally.

  Uhhhhh... yeah. I didn't do that, Dadday, my unborn demigod stated.

  Well, thank your Mother, then.

  There was a brief pause, and Little Magic said in a small voice, She didn't do it either, Dadday.

  Now it was my turn to be stunned. I tried not to show it to my new Protectors, and without a word I turned and marched toward the awful place that lay ahead.

  ❖

  It was an atrocity, and I will not speak of all the things I saw in that charnel pit. Suffice it to say that it contained the remains of those who had fought the Tejarkanye incursion, and more besides. Many of the old Homeguard were there. I know because I recognized the deliberately preserved heads on the pikes, among the other horrors.

  My Young-Father Trent was among them.

  When I saw the small faces, hung like trophies displayed on a hunting lodge's wall, I fell to my knees, vomited, and cried so hard I thoug
ht I'd never stop.

  I recognized them. All twenty of them. My only quantum of solace was that my brother Calvin's face wasn't among them.

  Then I screamed at the sky, in a voice to rival a god's, "BRING ME JENSEN MILLER AND HIS DAUGHTERS!"

  ❖

  By the time the three of them had been cast at my feet ten minutes later, the girls on either side of their father, I was calm again. Barely. I looked from Jensen Miller's pale, haggard face to his honorable son's, and asked, "Any other quislings and collaborators?"

  Towana Miller, my new Lord Protector of the North, named half a dozen men and women as his father and sisters quivered and stared at him, in awe at his transformation. I was surprised to learn none of the names, for they were among the most venal and petty-minded of the people of Hamiltown, and said, "Bring them here to meet their fates." Without a word, he turned to head for the main gates.

  "How? How did you survive?" Jensen Miller had the courage enough to gasp. "How did a weakling like you become... become this?"

  "I grew up," I snapped. "Fast. Thanks to you." I walked up to him and looked down; I could smell his fear and wanted to spit on him, but I did not. "I was never a weakling, you morally deficient worm," I sneered. "I was a Truth-Teller, which you couldn't abide. Moreover, I was simply a child. I had a mystical seal on me that kept me a child far longer than most, but I was in puberty even as you and your loathsome daughter were skewering me and my reputation with your spite. Since then, I have gained seven wives and legitimately fathered hundreds of children. All of their mothers asked for those children and love them dearly."

  I stepped back. "But you? You fathered children on women you raped and threatened to kill if they told, and on those you cheated with, spurning your good wife. Your son was forced to give up the love of his life when he discovered you were also her father. Then you betrayed your own people. You enslaved those who elevated you. You killed those who fought against your betrayal and refused enslavement. You had your only son crippled. YOU TORTURED AND MURDERED CHILDREN!" I roared.

  He and his daughters flinched backwards, and I could smell the sharp reek of urine on the cool evening air. Calm again, I continued, "And those are only the things I know of and have seen in this hideous place. I know there may be worse. But it's enough to convict you, and the sentence is death. To be carried out immediately. So it is." I swept the Dawn Sword out of its sheath in one smooth motion, struck downward in a continuing arc, made a quick turn-and-flick motion to sling off the taint of him, and resheathed it.

  My sword is a very sharp blade. Jensen Miller stared at me for a moment, unaware yet that he was dead, and then made the mistake of opening his mouth to say, "I-"

  I never learned what his dying words would have been. The vibrations of his vocal cords from that one small word propagated into shivers up and down his body, and then, without further ado, he fell in half lengthwise in a shower of brains, viscera, and gore. His left half fell into the lap of his daughter Cally, who fainted dead away. The rest of him fell the opposite direction, onto Dori, the woman who had given us up to the Tejarkanye.

  "And. So. Mote. It. BE!" I shout.

  My Lords Protector looked on, expressionless; and Towana was no more emotive when he returned with the four men and two women he'd named earlier. To my disgust, the men had their hair up in faux Tejarkanye topknots. Four flicks of my blade, and the topknots were gone before the men even noticed I had moved.

  "Pikabo Caylen. Mildred Fayre. Dylan Sweed. Kieran Swaley. Solomon Brother. Hyman Goldstein," I named them in turn. "You are hereby sentenced to a life of hard labor for betraying your people, rendering aid and comfort to the enemy, and collaborating in travesties like this." I gestured at the charnel pit. "Your first task will be to dig graves on Boot Hill for the people displayed here like taxidermy samples. You will dig night and day without rest if you have to, until I am satisfied that you have dug graves enough for each of the dead. Each grave will be six feet deep and three wide. Then you will build coffins for every single soul displayed here. When that is done, you will remove each set of remains, place each in his or her own coffin, and bury each one in their individual, well-marked graves."

  In the end, there were 79, including 20 children who could not possibly have caused any damage to the Tejarkanye. Two I recognized as children of the quislings cowering before me; and yet they had still collaborated with the enemy!

  "Cally and Dori Miller," I announced coldly, "you will aid them. Your father's remains will stay here until you are done with all the rest, and then you shall gather him up, burn him in the middle of this atrocious place, and salt the earth so that nothing ever grows here again. But know that even then, I am not done with you." I looked at my Lords Protector. "Gentlemen. Make it happen."

  Then I turned on my heel and went to find my sole surviving father.

  Chapter Eleven

  I made sure that I was out of sight of my Protectors and their charges before I slumped against a building and stared at the ground. Old-Father Trent had told me there were things I had to deal with, and this one thing I had just handled had nearly killed me with rage and grief. I didn't know how I'd be able to move on to the next thing, whatever it was.

  I had some idea what to expect, having noticed that many people were missing, and not all of them had been in the charnel pit. I was sure that some had swelled the ranks on Boot Hill, but surely not that many?

  When at last I roused myself to return to the gates to locate my Dad, I found him several hundred yards to the west, helping lead sick, skeletal figures out of a pair of new longhouses made of rough timber. There must have been a hundred people sitting outside in the square, undernourished and filthy. And that wasn't the half of them; many were still bringing the imprisoned out into the twilight, while others were bringing them water and what food there was to be had.

  Dissidents, I didn't doubt.

  I recognized my former best friend, Clem Milford, hunched over a woman in the front row. It took a close look to recognize the poor thing as Becky Runnels, the girl who was in love with him, and whom he had loved. The girl I had advised him to marry as I made my Exile speech. She was skin and bones now, barely recognizable as the girl I'd known. He was trying to get her to give him something, speaking with her gently and insistently, but she kept shaking her head. I realized with rising horror that the tiny, bloody bundle in her arms was a newborn child. It was obvious even from where I stood that the baby was dead, and probably had been for hours.

  Why couldn't I have gotten here just a little sooner? Why?

  After all I had seen that evening, after all I had done, I would have thought that I was numb to atrocity by then. But children... I've always loved children, and have always been drawn to protect those who cannot protect themselves, and to punish those who hurt them. This was why I had already decided to disobey my Goddess in the Waykan affair. And now this thing. This last little travesty visited upon this poor young couple, two people I had brought together with the best of intentions, on top of the greater travesty of the Tejarkanye invasion and the Miller betrayal... it almost broke me.

  Almost.

  I fell to my knees and choked out, "No! My Goddess, not that... please don't let it be true!" and threw my arms into the air beseechingly. I still don't know why. But I do know that a sudden warmth filled me, and a golden light surrounded Clem, his wife, and their dead child... and suddenly, it wasn't true anymore. The baby kicked his feet and moved his arms, and started to wail, weakly but audibly. Becky almost dropped him, and then both she and Clem were crying tears of joy. So was I.

  Old-Father Trent stared at me from the back of the crowd, and then suddenly placed his hands together, palm-to-palm, and looked into the darkening sky. Then he shouted, "Mother Edisa! The baby!"

  Our best nurse stopped staring, and hurried to the Milford family, where Becky, tear-trails streaking the dust on her face, was nursing her child for the first time. Clem looked up at me, his face wrinkled with deprivation but fille
d with wonder. "Toby! Your father... he told me you'd saved us." He glanced at his child, who was sucking lustily at his mother's withered but seemingly serviceable breast, and said in a low voice as I approached, "But you didn't get here in time to save my son... it was a difficult birth, and that bastard Miller wouldn't spare medical supplies or aid for a dissident. He, he... the baby died this morning, just a few hours after he was born, and Becky wouldn't give him up..."

  He choked, and rose to throw his arms around me before he started to cry in great, wracking sobs, gasping out, "But you... you saved my son anyway! What did you do?"

  We didn't do that either, Dadday, a tiny voice said forlornly inside my head.

  I know, I replied. Tell your Mother I think I know what happened to the rest of the populations of both Earths.

  I heard a distinctly female voice in my head. Tobias? You have a theory?

  I patted Clem's back as he divested himself of all his sorrow, and then released him suddenly as I saw another familiar face. Huddled in the back row, wearing only a ragged pair of shorts, was the slim form of my younger brother, Calvin, who had recently hit age 20. I released Clem and staggered toward him. I still hadn't seen Mother, but at least my brother, Young-Father Davin's legacy, was still alive.