The source of magic, p.15
The Source of Magic, page 15
As the afternoon progressed into twilight, the villagers were starting to enter the inn. Each brought with them a sack or handful of some sort of food stuff, grains or plants. They handed it over to the innkeeper, who collected everything and took it to the kitchen and then they took a table.
There were quite a few whispers amongst the villagers as they looked over at John and the women. Every time a friend or neighbour entered and handed over their offering, they were summoned over to a table to continue the conjecture and conversation.
“I don’t know how long we are going to be here but we need the locals to like us. Let’s split up and see if we can make some friends. Keep your ears out for any information about soldiers passing through or anything that might tell us where the army is camped. We don’t want them to think we’re spies, so be careful, but we might get lucky,” said John.
The women had an easier time joining tables that had spare seats than John, who after receiving a few cold shoulders from the local women, decided to keep company with Malcolm.
“Is there a bath in this building?” John asked.
“Out around back there is a bath house. There are copper tubs you can fill from the well. Help yourself.”
John went around back. It was almost dark but he found a the well in question off to one side of the town square. The bathhouse was a single-room wooden structure built against the stone wall of the inn. When John looked inside, he concluded that the intention behind keeping it as a separate structure was all the fire that would be burning inside. If the flames got out of hand and took the bathhouse with it then the worst the inn would suffer is a hot wall.
There were two very large copper tubs sitting on raised platforms. There was a hollow space below the tubs where a fire could be started to boil water along with a large rock pit in the centre of the room that could be heated with a fire underneath. There was a small amount of firewood stacked outside, enough to do for the two tubs for the evening.
John rolled his sleeves up to the elbow, grabbed the two large pails at the door and got to work ferrying water from the well to the tubs. The weight was not particularly heavy for one trip; however, after several, he began to build up a sweat.
He felt good to be exerting himself like this. A job at hand that he could put his back into and see finished. It was better than yoga or meditation for clearing his mind.
After the darkness had truly set in, the tubs were full with just enough room left to allow for the displacement of bathers’ bodies. He quickly stacked wood under the tubs and rock pit and, with a flint and striker he found hanging on a nail, he lit the fires.
John closed the door to the bathhouse to keep the heat in and went to find the women. It would take a while to heat that much water, which was lucky because when he entered the inn dinner was being served.
It was the soup-porridge again, though this time the consistency and colour was a little different.
“Everyone brings what they can spare and then we all share the meal,” explained Malcolm in a gruff voice. "A lot of the village will come over the next few hours, though there are some that are too proud or too selfish. I feel for the ones who don’t have anything to bring so they stay away, even though we would have them and not a word would be said by anyone.”
Things were worse in the village than John suspected, or at last he had hoped that his description of effects of the war were exaggerated.
“Where are we, exactly?” John asked in an offhand manner.
Malcolm gave him an odd look.
“Like I said, we were cutting through the woods when we got robbed. We tried to run and they stopped chasing when I threw my coins as a distraction. We ended up turned around and came out in the fields near your village,” said John in response.
“This is Dewville. We’re sixty miles southeast from the capital, ten miles west of the border and the coast is twenty miles south,” said Malcolm, seemingly satisfied with John's answer.
“You would make a good cartographer," John said.
“I was in the army when the war broke out, at small border fort with the savages. I lost this before the army ran and hid.” Malcolm gave a wave of his prosthetic and spat on the floor behind the bar when he mentioned the army going into hiding.
“Thank you for fighting the good fight,” John said.
Malcolm simply nodded, signalling an end to the conversation, and continued serving up half full bowls from the kitchen.
John finished his meal at the bar. He was still a little hungry but there was no way in hell he was going to ask for a second serving.
Melanie bounced up to him as exuberant as ever with a young women in tow. The woman was a little taller than Melanie with straight brown hair and a lanky physique made more noticeable by the deprivation in the village.
“This is Constance, and she was telling me about a river nearby that sounds like the perfect place to find stones for carving. She said she would show us in the morning. Isn’t she swell?” said Melanie with infectious enthusiasm.
“Thank you, Constance. I hope we can repay you somehow. We’ll meet you here in the morning. Melanie, round up Chloe and Selphie and meet me outside. I have something to show you.”
Melanie gave a quick hug to Constance and bounded off, her tail swishing happy from side to side. There were no other catpeople in the village, and though some people had seen them before, she was still proving to be a bit of a curio, especially to the children. John spotted one toddler try to grab at Melanie’s tail as it swung close by.
John interrupted Malcolm in his table service: “Do you have any towels and soap?”
Without comment, Malcolm grabbed a stack of small sheets of rough cloth from a cabinet and placed a single sad-looking bar of soap on top, handed them over, then continued on his world.
John folded the sheets up in half so as not to drop the soap and headed out the door.
The night had grown chilly and by the light of the two moons rising high in the sky John could see Chloe and Selphie shiver a little in their thin dresses.
“I have a surprise for the three of you," John said.
He led the trio around the corner and pulled the door to the bath house back wide in a dramatic fashion. The squeal was piercing. Even Chloe smiled and gave a little jump of excitement.
Swinging his arm in circles he hurried them inside and then followed closing the door.
The larger fire under the rocks was still going strong and cast enough light to see by, while the smaller fires under the tubs had died down to embers and hot coals. He put the towels on a small wooden bench tossed the soap to Chloe.
“Two to a tub, lucky they’re big enough.”He said.
Selphie tested the water temperature with her hand and let out a moan of delight. Her body slumped down in sympathy with the feeling in her hand in the warm water and she paused for a silent moment with her eyes closed thinking of how good that feeling would be all over her body.
“The water’s perfect,” she said.
They all stripped down, tossing their clothes aside only caring about the waiting water. John took the opportunity to steal a look at the sisters - it was the opportunity that was in a relaxed atmosphere were no imminent threats.
Each woman was sexy in their own way.
Chloe’s body was, though womanly, tight and compact with naturally low body fat. Her tits and arse were pert and clearly defined as if sculpted from marble. As she stepped up and over the rim of the tub, John saw that her vulva was tight and her inner labia protruded a little, a promise of the softness that lay inside her tough outer appearance.
Selphie was the personification of the earth mother. Her heavy pendulous breasts and fat round arse suited her softer appearance. She was smooth all over without dimples or cellulite, even in her thick thighs which John was imagining wrapped around his ears.
Melanie noticed him looking and his sizeable member growing into a semi hard-on, then raised up on her toes to whisper in his ear, “Do you think we should have them one at a time or both together?”
He was slightly surprised at the salaciousness of her comment. He was used to the idea that she had a way of transforming in the bedroom. It made sense for a race that had no inhibitions on displaying their emotions overtly. He remembered her reaction to the strip-turned lesbian sex show at the brothel and wondered if that had been a sort of awakening for her. With her newly emerging confidence, she could be a very interesting partner in crime.
John lifted Melanie up and lowered her into the warm water, then standing next to the tub he lent down and whispered to her, “You’ll always be my first woman.”
He stepped into he tub an his muscles instantly relaxed as the warmth from the water seeped into his muscles. Leaning back, he drew Melanie to him and she sat spooned up against him. He liked to feel her body against his and the water was giving her a slick slippery feel that was quite interesting.
They watched through tired half-closed eyes as Chloe soaped up Selphie’s back before they rotated and swapped positions.
When the sisters were soaped up and clean they passed the bar of soap over, and it was their turn to sit and watch as John and Melanie lathered each other up. To tease both John and the other women, Melanie had John stand up and, standing behind him created a lather on his wide chest, worked her way down his abs and then repeatedly ran her small hand along the length of his shaft and bringing him to attention and rolling his balls in the palm of her hand. There was a silence in the room as the two sets of eyes stared in rapt attention to every outline of muscle and stroke of the hand.
Melanie broke the tension that had built up by making a paddle out of her hand and, slapping it down sharply into the water, splashing the sisters and snapping them out of their trance. A water fight ensued between the two tubs as the sisters splashed back. Water that overflowed the edge of the tubs or missed their mark and landed on the hot rocks quickly sizzled and turned to steam.
The laughter was good for their souls, and once the initial barrage of water was over with they were overcome with tiredness. The sheets of cloth provided were not the best at absorbing water but they did the trick. The women did their best to comb their hair with their fingers so as to avoided the knotted rats’ nest that would come in the morning when it dried.
Wrapped only in the drying cloths, John took the lead and signalled to the women when the coast was clear. They would then dash, their literally hot bodies steaming in the cold night air, to the next corner and then peer around waiting for John’s next all clear.
There was a sense of silliness to them after the bath. They had cleaned away the grime of the last few days and shed, at least for now, the grim reality of what they had gone through and what they were planning for. And being strangers to the village, they felt a bond with each other that ignored how little they really did know about their new comrades.
Other than a few prying eyes at windows, curious about the noise, they made it to their room unseen. The big iron key opened a simple lock on the door to reveal a single large room with a single large bed.
Without a word between the three women, John was left standing in the doorway as a stampede of naked feet drummed across the floorboards and they launched themselves into the bed, throwing the covers over themselves and fighting for possession of the two pillows.
John closed the door and watched the display of mock fighting and pouting expressions and half wondered, half hoped that they would start kissing one another.
Eventually he grew weary. The hot water had brought on a lethargy that was dragging him towards the bed. He yanked the blanket back revealing an unholy knot of arms and legs, and one ginger tail. He clambered through them to the middle of the bed, grabbed a pillow and wedged it under his head.
“I’m set for the night, you three sort yourselves out," he said in a loud voice directed at the ceiling.
Melanie cuddled up to him on his right side using his shoulder and chest as a pillow. On his left was Chloe. She had the other pillow and faced away from John, pushing her tight little arse into his thigh and spooned with her sister who was on the outside.
It didn’t take long before they were all asleep. At one point in the night, Chloe seemed to have a nightmare. John woke to see if she was okay, but she rolled over and calmed down as soon as she had her arm across his chest.
Chapter 10
When the morning came, John work to find that Selphie had also rolled over and was using his outstretched forearm as a pillow. Waking them would be easy: all he had to do was start to move. There were some grizzling noises, the universal signal for ‘five minutes more’, but he was keen to get started.
After dressing, John led the way down stairs and went to find Malcolm while the women took the table by the window again.
Malcolm was in the kitchen and before John could ask about breakfast, the innkeeper shook his head in a solemn fashion.
John grabbed four cups and filled them with water from a pitcher and headed back to the table.
“I’m sorry, but this is all there is for breakfast," he said, placing the cups down.
Hydration was important but didn’t do much for the growling that was coming from their stomachs.
“There was a fruit seller in the city,” John explained for the benefit of the sisters, “who said all the food for the capital came from the Academy. When we find stones for totems, do any of you know how to carve a totem that could do something similar here?”
He was being polite including the sisters, though it was Melanie he was looking at. There was a possibility Chloe and Selphie had covered food or growth in their acolyte training or they had seen what was going on at the Academy.
In the Navy he had learnt that when leading a team you use all your resources – the most junior person may have the solution to the challenge at hand. Often not, more likely it was the old chief who was haling on lines when Moses was a boy who had a quiet word to you and you’d pay attention and be thankful for the advice.
“Making something out of nothing or even transforming one kind of raw material into another is a difficult and complex spell. The more complex the spell, the more magic needed the bigger the totem needs to be and the longer to carve,” explained Melanie. “Making a duplicate of something is easier, so if you had an egg or a potato you could make another one. But then you just have two eggs. Not that useful, though, I’m sorry.”
She did seem to be genuinely sorry she couldn’t come up with a solution.
“Don’t be hard on yourself, you do the carving and I’ll come up with he idea. Just don’t be afraid to tell me something is impossible. You won’t hurt my feelings and we’ll only get to a good plan by throwing out a lot of bad ones first,” said John as he gave Melanie a reassuring pat on the hand.
“You see, I told you we could be doing so much more. The kept us reading about totems rather than carving them,” said Selphie to her sister in an exasperated voice of someone who has indeed said so before. "We could have real magic at our fingertips, but they are holding us back.”
“Burn the whole place to the ground for all I care, I just want them gone,” spat Chloe.
John saw that they each still had their own axe to grind and he was going to have to work to keep them on task.
“Keep your plans in your back pocket for when the time is right. The way you make headway on them here and now is by sticking together.”
Constance, the lanky girl from the night before, came into the inn and up to the table. Melanie jumped out of her seat to greet her with a hug as if they were old friends.
“Your timing is perfect,” said John in a slightly too cheery voice. "We’ve just finished up breakfast.”
They got up from the table and followed her out into the town square. The work of the day had well and truly begun. Sleep hadn’t had much of an effect on the villagers’ energy or outlook. It just gave them another day to struggle through.
As they left the village passing the last of the small huts, John stopped and took in the view. The sun sent its rays streaming down as it climbed up into a blue sky. Frost like a blanket of diamonds was melting away into nothing but a memory. The forest which lay ahead on the road was being lit up by the dawn and didn’t seem as dark as it did the day before.
“How far is this place?” John asked taking up step with Constance.
“It’s not far, but we have to go off the road and into the forest so it will be two hours. I found the place when I was younger, before the war, and was playing with my brothers,” she replied.
John wondered if she heard from her brothers at all. If they were literate would they write? If not, would they find someone to do it for them. Or perhaps they she hadn’t heard and presumed them dead. She seemed rather matter of fact about their absence. Perhaps her family just didn’t know.
Rather than take the road into the forest, they veered off the path and skirted the tree line. Where the trees were still spaced wide enough apart to allow light through, there was a generous amount of undergrowth. At a large round boulder, Constance stopped.
“We call this ‘The Giant’s Head’. All the village children used to play here,” she said.
There was a hollow in one side of the boulder that, to a child’s imagination, could be an eye. Melanie walked up to the boulder, looked at it cock eyed for a moment and then reached her hand out and ran her fingertips across the surface in an almost tender fashion. Satisfied in some way, she nodded to no one in particular and turned to Constance.
“This is where we cut into the forest.” It wasn’t a question. Melanie just knew.
John could see how a totem witch would hold a place of respect and leadership in the community if they went around acting etherial and knowing all the time. Being able to produce spells from simple-looking rocks probably helped, though.
Constance did look at Melanie with a little more respect.
“There is a deer trail here that leads through the bushes and ferns. We need to follow the trail. When we get past all the bushes, if you get lost jut keep The Giant’s Head to your backs until we reach the stream,” said Constance.
