by Abby Weeks
*
Chapter 11
IT WAS AFTER DARK AND Heath still hadn’t gotten back to the inn. Aisha was starting to worry about him. Whatever he might be up to with Gracie, the fact of the matter was that he’d recently been badly injured, and she had every reason to fear for his safety in this area. She went down to the front desk and used the phone to call the depot.
Gracie answered the phone.
“Is Heath still there?” Aisha said, a little put out that she had to speak to Gracie to find out where Heath might be.
“They took him out on an air surveillance,” Gracie said. “They’re showing him the ropes.”
“What’s an air surveillance?”
“Basically they ride around in a helicopter shooting at wolves with their rifles.”
“That sounds like a great use of manpower,” Aisha said.
“They have to do whatever they can to keep the population down,” Gracie said.
“How long will it take?”
“No idea,” Gracie said, “but I wouldn’t wait up for him.”
It maddened Aisha the way she said that. Was Gracie trying to taunt her? She hung up and went back upstairs. She was going to be helping Tilly and Hilda, and she had half an hour to get ready.
She decided that if she was going to survive here, if she was going to make it, she’d better start playing hardball. She didn’t know if it was the anger at what Gracie had said that was making her feel reckless, but she didn’t care. She put on the sexiest dress she owned. It was a fancy little dress of black silk that came down just a few inches on her thighs. It was very short. The neckline was low, showing off her ample cleavage. She wasn’t going to allow herself to be left out in the cold. If she needed to win over the men of this town, then she wasn’t going to waste any more time doing it. They all wanted her so badly as it was. She might as well start working it.
“Wow,” Tilly said when she saw what Aisha was wearing.
Aisha flashed her a smile.
“Are you sure about this?” Tilly said. “What if Heath gets mad?”
“Everyone keeps telling me that the way to get ahead in this town is to flaunt what you’ve got.”
Tilly nodded. “It’s true,” she said, “but you might want to break yourself in a little easier. They’re going to go nuts for you in that dress.”
“I don’t care,” Aisha said. “Heath’s back at the depot with Gracie. If he thinks I’m going to wait around for him for the rest of my life, he’s got another thing coming.”
“You don’t think he’s going to mess around with Gracie, do you?” Tilly said. “What about the scarring? He’s barely back on his feet.”
“He’s back on his feet,” Aisha said. “I have no doubt about that.”
“But would he cheat on you? I thought you two were in love?”
Aisha didn’t know what to say to that. She’d never publicly admitted to anyone that she and Heath had serious issues. When she spoke, she felt as if she was lifting a huge weight from her shoulders.
“I’ve never said this to anyone before,” Aisha said, “but Heath has always cheated on me. As long as I knew him, even back in Washington where it’s not acceptable, he did it and he got away with it all the time.”
Tilly was nodding. “I guess all men are the same,” she said.
“It sure looks that way,” Aisha said. “I mean, back down south I could at least hope for an honest, loyal man. I don’t know if I ever would have found one, but I could at least believe they existed. Up here, I don’t think anyone even pretends to be like that.”
“It’s true,” Tilly said. “They don’t. I doubt you’d find a man you could trust up here. You’re going to have to adjust your expectations. This place is like the Wild West used to be. The best you can hope for is to be treated like a whore. I’m not kidding. That’s all there is to life up here for women. That, or become a witch like Ma Hetty and live alone forever.”
A group of men came into the inn through the front door, a rush of cold air accompanying them.
Aisha went right over to them and led them to a table.
“You look ravishing tonight, sweetie,” one of the men said to her.
Aisha flashed him a big smile and ran off to get their beer. When she returned, she placed their beers in front of them and asked them if they wanted to order any food. They were the first table of the evening, and Aisha was looking forward to serving many more.
“You sure look hot,” one of the men said.
Aisha smiled and took out her notepad, ready to take down their order.
“I guess we’ll take four bowls of the stew,” one of the men said.
Aisha wrote down the order and was about to leave when she felt a hard, cold hand on her right butt cheek. One of the men had put his hand right up her skirt and he was squeezing her ass. Aisha was in shock. She’d decided to start playing hardball, but it still came as a surprise once it actually began. She hadn’t been fully prepared for it. She walked away and tried to ignore what had just happened.
Another table came in and Tilly served them.
“Are you all right?” Hilda said when she saw Aisha behind the bar.
“I wore this dress,” Aisha said, “to show the men that I’m ready to embrace the town. I don’t want them all thinking I’m completely tied to Heath.”
“It’s nice to see you’re finally sticking up for yourself,” Hilda said.
“I’m trying to,” Aisha said, “but I’m not sure I’m strong enough.”
“What happened?”
“One of them put his hand up my skirt.”
Hilda nodded. “I don’t know what to tell you, child. I know it goes against your better judgment. I came from the south too. I know this place is strange. It’s not for everyone. Maybe you’ll never be able to fit in here.”
“It just seems like I have to pretend to be a slut, when that’s not who I am.”
“I know that’s what it feels like,” Hilda said, “but there are other ways to look at it.”
“Like what?”
“It’s a game of survival,” Hilda said. “Look at nature. Every animal, if it wants to survive, has to use what it’s been given. They won’t survive unless they can come up with a way to maximize every single thing that makes them unique.”
“And what makes me unique? My pussy?”
Hilda laughed. “What makes you unique here, is that there’s something about you that is making these men take notice. In all my years here, I’ve never seen a girl catch their eye the way you have. I don’t know what it is about you, Aisha, but every single one of them wants a piece of you. That’s power. That’s a power that’s unique to you, and you’re going to have to figure out how to use if you’re going to survive.”
Aisha let out a deep sigh. “I always hated the girls back home who used sex to get ahead with men,” she said. “I judged them. I thought they were sluts.”
“Would you have thought they were sluts if their life depended on it?” Hilda said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, when I first got here, I felt the same way you feel. I didn’t want to play by the rules the way they’ve set them up here. I didn’t want to turn myself into some whore.”
“And what changed your mind?”
“A lot of things. I saw the way they ran the last handmaidens out of the area. I saw them let women die in the forest rather than take them in. I saw them tell women they had to return to Fairbanks, and then watch while not a single man would offer to give her a ride.”
“What happened?”
“What do you think happened? The women had to give the men what they wanted, or they had to leave town. Those that left never made it back to Fairbanks. They died long before they ever reached it.”
“So how is it power, if I’m giving it to them out of fear?”
Hilda shook her head. “I don’t know, child,” she said. “I don’t know how to answer that. You’ve got to come up with some way in your own h
ead to make this place all right. You’re going to have to justify it yourself. Otherwise it’s going to be very difficult for you.”
*
Chapter 12
THE NIGHT WAS A LONG one for Aisha. She was struggling with her own idea of herself, of the kind of woman she wanted to be. Every time one of the men complimented her, she felt guilty for it. She wondered how she was any different now from the girls who worked back at Cody’s. Aisha remembered how she’d felt when she saw Heath flirting with that skinny waitress, when she realized he was cheating with her. She’d always taken pride in the fact that she was going to be a vet. She wasn’t just using her body to get through life.
Now, here she was, dressed in her sexiest little dress, every man in the bar trying to find a way to talk to her.
“Hey, Aisha” one of the men said. Aisha was beginning to realize that she’d have to start learning their names if she was going to keep working at the inn. They all knew her name by now.
She went over to the man who’d called her.
“Me and the guys here were wondering what we’d have to do to get a flash of those delicious breasts.”
Aisha looked at the man. He was rugged and handsome, with a beard and strong muscles. She knew there’d been a time in her life when she would have been thrilled for all this attention. Now she didn’t know what to do with it. She was supposed to be engaged. She smiled at the man and left without giving his question the dignity of a response. As she left, he reached out to her skirt and pulled it up, giving the men at the table, and at every other table around her, a perfect view of her black panties.
Aisha was mortified. She slapped the man’s hand and hurried back to the bar, trying to look like she didn’t care. She was beginning to notice that the more she refused the men, the more desperate they got for her. It was insane. It was like she’d gone to sleep wishing that she was suddenly the most desirable woman on the planet to all men, and woken up the next morning to her wish having come true. She just wasn’t used to this much attention. Every time she passed a table, the eyes of every man seated at it were glued to her legs, her skirt, her cleavage. They were hungry for her.
That wasn’t to say that Tilly and Hilda didn’t still get a lot of attention. They were both attractive women, and the men would have been glad to have either of them sitting on their laps, but Aisha was new, and for some reason, some reason that they weren’t even sure of, she was different too.
The same man who’d pulled up her skirt called her over to his table again. He was standing up, beckoning her over, with thirty or forty other men drinking their beer egging him on.
Aisha looked at Hilda and Tilly who were at the bar with her.
“What do I do?” Aisha said.
“You could refuse to go over,” Hilda said.
“And then none of them will like you,” Tilly said. “And what happens if you need them one day? They’re the ones who keep back the wolves. They’re the ones who control passage to and from Fairbanks. You’d refuse them at your peril.”
Aisha looked at Tilly. She knew that Tilly didn’t know any better. She’d been born in this town. This sort of arrangement was all she’d ever known. She didn’t understand that the rest of the world didn’t work according to these rules. And yet, standing there, the room full of drunk northerners calling her to come over, Aisha realized that Tilly was the one with all the answers right now. She was the one who knew how to survive in this place.
Aisha took a deep breath and went over to the table, her cheeks hot with embarrassment. She prayed nothing too scandalous was about to happen. One thing was certain, she wasn’t going to flash the entire bar, no matter how much they begged. She still had Heath to deal with, and he’d murder her if she did something like that.
“What is it?” Aisha said to the man.
“It’s Harry,” the man said.
“What is it, Harry? Can’t you see I’ve got a full house to serve?”
“Come on over. I just want to talk to you.”
Aisha felt the eyes of every man in the room on her as she approached Harry. She felt so shy that she actually thought of turning around and running out of the room.
“I just wanted to ask what you thought of our little town here,” Harry said.
“I think it’s a barbaric little backwater,” Aisha said, grinning.
The men all laughed.
“And what do you think of the men?” Harry said.
Aisha looked around the room. What was it about this place? Why did everyone care so much about her all of a sudden? Was it really just because she was the new girl in town and there were so few distractions here for the men to entertain themselves? It didn’t make sense.
“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” she said.
The gang of men all roared in laughter. They were crowding around her now, getting so close that she could feel the heat from them. Aisha looked up to see what Hilda and Tilly thought of all this, but the men were so close, and so tall, she could no longer see the bar. She was surrounded by the throng.
“Give her some room,” Harry said to the men. “Let her breathe. You’re going to scare her off.”
The men backed off a little, making an area around her that was a little bit more bearable.
“So,” Harry said. “The men and I, what we all wanted to do, was tell you that you’re very welcome to our little town here, backwater though it is.”
The men all lifted their beer glasses in the air and gave Aisha a resounding toast.
“Thank you,” Aisha said, flattered to be given such a warm and hearty welcome.
“We wanted to tell you,” Harry continued, “that although we’re a rough, unwashed, uncouth lot, that we’re actually quite friendly when you get to know us.”
There was another toast, and Aisha blushed. “Thank you,” she said again to the crowd.
“Every man here would gladly see to your protection,” Harry said.
“Aye aye,” the men all cried in agreement.
Aisha looked around at their faces. They were all rugged, bearded, hardy faces with deep lines and thick, muscular jaws. If this town had a football team, she thought, they could take on the NFL.
“We’d lay down our lives for you,” Harry said.
Again the men cheered.
“We’d kill wolves for you.”
More cheering.
“We’d keep you warm in winter.”
Amidst all the cheers and drinking, Aisha thanked Harry for the toast and showed her appreciation to the crowd of men with smiles and a little bow.
“I’m very grateful,” Aisha said.
“We hope so,” Harry said.
The men grew a bit quieter then.
“I am,” Aisha said.
“Are you really?” Harry said. “Sometimes women from the south come up here, and they tell us they’re grateful for what we do, but then when the time comes, they refuse to show their gratitude.”
Aisha looked at the men. They weren’t bad men, they weren’t evil. They just lived in a different world from the one she was used to, a world where different rules and customs prevailed.
“I understand,” Aisha said to the men. “I know what you’re getting at. I know what you expect from women in these parts in exchange for protection.”
“And we don’t think it’s too much to ask,” Harry said.
“Of course not,” Aisha said nervously.
“So we want to ask you,” Harry said, “are you willing to embrace this community?”
“Of course I am,” Aisha said.
“And are you willing to embrace our customs?”
Aisha looked up at him. She tried to smile at him but the intensity of the look on his face was too serious. She just looked back at him, into his deep eyes, and found that she couldn’t speak.
“I know it’s not easy,” Harry continued. “I know our ways are strange to southerners. I know we’d be locked up for this sort of thing in the rest of the world. But the thing is, this i
sn’t the rest of the world, this is Dead Wolf, and the rest of the world doesn’t live as dangerously as we do. Any one of us could be killed tomorrow. It’s a war out there. It’s impossible for you to appreciate that yet, but we’re fighting a war against the most aggressive and flesh-hungry predators known to man out there. If we fail here, if we lose, what’s to stop the wolves moving in on Fairbanks? What’s to stop them spreading down to Anchorage, into Canada, into Washington State?”
Aisha didn’t know how serious of a threat the wolves were to the rest of the world, but she understood that there was a battle going on between man and wolf here in this town.
“I understand that,” she managed to say, but her heart was beating so hard in her chest that she was afraid she might faint.
“So will you try to accommodate us?” Harry said.
Aisha tried to look back at the bar, where she knew Hilda and Tilly were watching, but she couldn’t see them. She looked around the crowd for a familiar face. She’d even be glad to see Heath’s disfigured face in the crowd, but he was not among the men.
“I will,” she said quietly.
“What was that?” Harry said. “Say it loudly for the men to hear.”
“I will do my best,” she said, “to show you that I appreciate the protection you offer.”
There was a murmur of approval from the men.
“That’s all we ask,” Harry said.
Aisha nodded. She felt so much pressure from the men. It was difficult to stand up to it. There must have been forty of them gathered around her. They wanted her. They wanted her to embrace them and the town, but what they were asking of her, if she understood them correctly, was something that would be impossible for a woman of her culture to offer.
“What about Heath?” she said.
“The fiancé,” one of the men said to Harry.
“The new hunter,” Harry said. “Yes. We mustn’t forget about him. Is he here?”
The men all looked around, searching for Heath.
“In the back,” someone shouted. “He’s here in the back.”
