The source of magic, p.17
The Source of Magic, page 17
“I went to the Academy because that is what my family does, and Selphie was already there. When you’re there you don’t have to worry about food or a roof over your head or even what to do the next day. Everything is planned and taken care of. All the acolytes learning and working together feels like a second family. But you don’t have any freedom. And they lie and do terrible things right under everyone's nose.
“And now that we’re here in this village, I feel even more helpless. I should be in the capital doing something” She stared back out into the night.
“Moving from on from something familiar is always a little scary," John said sympathetically. "But it doesn’t have to be a choice between being in a family and being on your own. When you strike out in the world, the choice you’re making is to create your own family from scratch.
“Your sister’s here, and that’s a start. And you can keep travelling with me as long as you like. Give it some thought.”
Chloe didn’t respond, but she did seem to relax a little and finally picked up the bowl of stew and started to eat.
That night Chloe lay awake longer than the rest. She had one side of the bed to herself. Selphie was spooning with Melanie on the other side of John. When sleep did finally come, she rolled over and hugged into John’s arm. She wouldn’t admit it to anyone else, but she found it comforting.
Chapter 11
In the morning there was breakfast, though it was cold stew from the night before. Melanie and Selphie continued working on the totem while John and Chloe found their own ways to pass the time.
Chloe was quiet, but lacked the set jaw that was indicative of the chip on her shoulder that was usually her constant companion. She kept to herself after breakfast and was doing a lot of staring off into the distance and kicking of random stones along the ground.
John found an axe in a tool cupboard at the back of the inn and got to splitting wood and piling it up outside the bath house. He found the feel fo the smooth wood handle and the satisfying thunk of the wood as the axe head buried itself into the small logs calming. It gave him time to think over the events of the past week since arriving on this world.
When the sun was high overhead, they all converged on the inn. Selphie and Melanie were waiting for them with a carved totem sitting in the centre of the table. The totem looked somewhat like a large egg the size of a football.
“We’ve carved this to fill with magic. All the villagers need to do is place it on The Giant’s Head for a week and then it will be ready to cast a spell that will make seeds grow into adult plants,” said Melanie, with obvious pride in her work.
“Let’s see if anyone in the village has the coin to pay for it, then. You can tell them how to activate it,” John said.
“Don’t you think that a demonstration would be event better? We could do one today, if I could get ahold of you upstairs after lunch," Melanie said archly.
Plates arrived with slices of cold roast venison and a small amount of grains on the side.
He wasn’t sure if Melanie was trying to be distracting or if it was the newness of their relationship coupled with some left over hormones from his teenage years, but he couldn’t stop staring at her cleavage. Every time Melanie laugh or moved or even took a deep breath the two mounds of inviting flesh jiggled pertly.
John ate quickly, barely even taking the time to chew properly. He could feel the length of his cock growing as Melanie's suggestion bounced around his head.
Melanie, on the other hand, was taking her time with her meal which she kept stopping to have a private conversation in whispers with Selphie.
Even Chloe was noticing the behaviour and relieved her frustration with the secretive behaviour by partaking in the ancient ritual of sisterly violence dealt under the table.
John wasn’t sure if Chloe’s volatile reaction was normal, or due to jealousy of her sister’s growing friendship with Melanie.
Finally Melanie stood up, picked up the totem, and walked around the table to stand behind John and leant down to whisper in his ear, “Are you ready to come upstairs?”
He could feel her hot breath on his ear and it made the small hairs on the back of his neck stand up. When she walked away Melanie’s tail brushed up against the side of his face as if it were beckoning him to follow her.
John was beyond the point of bashfulness with the sisters. Had he not had sex with one of them while the other was in the room, he might have blushed a little at the thought of excusing himself from the lunch table to go and have sex.
Following Melanie up the stairs, John was able to watch her arse at eye level. He was mesmerised by the way her arse playfully shifted and undulated beneath her skirt. He only just resisted the urge to reach out and grab a handful of one of the juicy cheeks.
When they reached the room, Melanie grabbed John’s hand and whipped him around to the bed and playfully pushed him over onto the bed. She placed the totem on the floor right by his head and then slipped out of her clothes.
John removed his shirt just in time for Melanie to climb on the bed. She carefully knelt with her knees on either side of John’s head so that her cunt was level with his mouth facing down his torso. He could see the glistening slit peeking open between engorged lips. He could smell her musk and feel the heat of her thighs either side of his head. He realised that the waiting game at lunch must have been just as difficult for her to get through.
Melanie lowered herself down into the sixty nine position to untie his breeches and slip them down. He arched his back, lifting his arse off the bed to help her and he could feel the cool air as his cock sprang forth from its confines already fully erect.
Melanie wasted no time and lowered her head down onto his manhood as he thrust his hips upwards to further enter the warmth of her mouth.
John lifted his arms up to wrap around Melanie and with a plump cheek overflowing in each hand pulled her hips down so that he could feast on her juices that were starting to run down the inside of her thighs.
He darted his tongue out and found her clit. He could feel how hard the sensitive button was against his tongue and began swiping left and right. He knew he was onto something when he felt Melanie pause in her work and her body gave a little shiver as she pressed her hips into him. He was in danger of suffocation with her hot sex pressed down on him but he was determined to press on alternating between up and down, and left and right motions.
With her expert work on his cock highhanded by having his face buried in her cunt, John could not last long before he exploded into her mouth. He felt her clamp down and suck the cum right out of him and swallow every last drop. He was lost in ecstasy as the magic poured out of him and flowed into the totem.
Melanie was quick to hop up, which caught John – who was still paralysed in post-orgasm bliss – by surprise. Until now, Melanie had wanted to snuggle up to him and purr after they had finished with sex. John lifted his head slightly to see what she was up to.
“I have a little surprise for you,” Melanie said with a cheeky tone in response to his questioning look.
She walked over to the door and opened it to reveal Selphie standing in the hall way. They didn’t speak, Selphie just walked in and Melanie closed the door behind her.
They stood before the bed, side on and in profile for John’s viewing pleasure and Melanie lifted selfies cotton dress up and over her head.
Selphie’s body was the opposite of her sister’s. Everything was deliciously round and soft. The weight of her tits was obvious and her hips bowed outwards and John imagined what they would feel like to grip onto. Her aureolas were huge, and she hand little soft nubs for nipples.
Selphie leaned over and passionately kissed Melanie on the lips, her tongue exploring the other woman’s mouth. Coming up for air, Selphie looked John right in the eyes and said, “So that’s what you taste like.”
John was not of the delusion that he was some sort of sex superhero. He only had so many goes in him a day and would normally need a good half hour at least to be ready for sex again. This time was different. He was at full mast watching the two big breasted women making out in front of him.
The two of them moved to the bed and John scooted back to make room for them. Melanie lay down her head at the foot of the bed while Selphie got on all fours facing her. When she lowered her head into Melanie’s crotch, John got a full view of her large heart-shaped arse, her legs were spread wide allowing him to see everything. Her tiny pink arsehole was peeking out from the cleft of her arse cheeks, which he followed down to her pussy. Her inner labia was the largest of all thee women and extend outward in two delightful wrinkled, wanton lips of skin. John could see that they were already coated in her own juices and surmised that she had been listening at the door fingering herself to the slurping and moaning from within.
John didn’t hesitate with this beautiful buffet of carnality on display for him. He got up on his knees and slid right into Selphie’s cunt. His aim was true and he bottomed out easily with little resistance on his first thrust, giving credence to his fingering theory.
As he started to pick up his rhythm, each thrust caused his body to slam into Selphie’s arse sending a wave of vibrations and jiggles down her body. Selphie timed her licks of Melanie’s cunt to coincide with John’s thrusts, bringing her closer and closer to orgasm.
Melanie was leaning back, propping herself up on her elbows, and was watching John with a look of bliss on her face. She saw him look up from his cock pounding into Selphie and locked eyes with him. She then grabbed the long blond plait with one hand and used it like a leash to pull Selphie’s head closer to her own cunt and the other hand held the back fo Selphie’s head and pressed it down as if she was determined to suffocate the woman in her sex.
John could feel himself building up and the sight of Melanie grinding her hips into Selphie’s face cased him to violently spill over at the same time that Melanie’s legs quivered and lost control in the throes of her own orgasm.
The magic flowed from John again, this time all of it went directly into Selphie just as it had with her sister.
Selphie’s eyes glowed white and she felt strong, as if the magic were filling all her muscles and she felt as if she could just flex them to create or unmake whatever she wanted. It was an amazingly euphoric experience, better than anything she had felt in her life.
They washed the sweat and musk of sex of off themselves and dressed. As they walked down the stairs Chloe looked up. She waited until all three of them could see her and then she stormed off and slammed the front door of the inn behind her.
Selphie swore under her breath and chased after her sister.
John and Melanie were left standing on the staircase holding the green pulsing totem.
“I think we should give them some space,” said John. “We have some work to do anyway. Let’s find some seeds.”
It was another fine day and the people of the village were looking happier going about their work of the day. The were aware that John had been the one to bring in the deer, and it had gone along way to endear him to them. As they walked down the paths and streets of the village, they received a friendly nod from the women at work and children would run along with them for a short distance before sprinting back to their homes and chores. The totem they had with them caused as much interest as the visitors themselves. It was the kind of thing people in the village heard about but had never seen up close.
They eventually found a makeshift drystore where the seeds were kept. It was a small hut that had been converted for the use. Inside, most of the floor had been covered into a raised wooden platform to keep the stores of the ground. Bunches of sage and lavender hung from the walls and ceiling and filled the small space with a pleasant but strong oder. John surmised that they were to repeal insects. There was a mean looking moggie lying in the sun at the entrance to the hut with a pleased look on its face and half a dead rat nearby.
There was no food in the dry store, only some small hessian sacks of unmarked seeds.
“Are any of these familiar to you?” John asked.
“I grew up in the capital. I don’t know much about farming,” Melanie explained.
“This one’s obviously corn. That’ll do the trick,” said John, holding up a handful of yellow triangular seeds.
The rest of the sacks contained various small black and white seeds, some of them as small as a pin head. Without horticultural assistance he didn’t have any idea what they were. John felt that if there was such a thing as intelligent design then the seeds of fruit and vegetables would just be miniature versions of the thing they would grow into.
John grabbed the bag, hefted over his shoulder and walked to the fields beyond the village. In one of the fallow fields, John and Melanie walked along the rows of dirt inserting the seeds every few feet.
They drew the attention of some children who watched what they were doing. There were five of them and they looked to be about eight or nine but from what John had seen around the village they would already have a relatively complex set of chores to keep them busy, though they weren’t averse to skiving off to play now and then. Child labour laws didn’t mean much when if you were barely subsisting.
“If you help, you can have front-row seats to see some magic," John promised.
In the capital, while not performed on the street, magic was a present in people’s minds with the Egg, the Academy and constant magical attacks. It seemed to John that the only magic in the village consisted of someone’s grandad doing the removable thumb trick.
They ran over to the bag and each grabbed a fistful of corn and scurried along the field. The children were both closer to the ground and experienced in planting having taken part in planting in the past, meaning they raced past John and Melanie.
With the children help the field was completed in short order and they sat dangling their feet from a fence.
“If we want everyone from the village to come and see something how would we do that?” John asked the children.
“Ummm, the bell,” one girl said.
“Yeah,” a boy chimed in. "There’s the village bell up the tower.”
The tower was a section of the village hall that was built up to a third story. John found that gaining entry wasn’t a problem. The hall door was unlocked. When he went inside he saw why. It really was just one big room. The only thing to steal was the bell.
The bell itself resembled an oversized cowbell hanging from a low beam with a hammer like tongue inside that you could cause to strike the bell by whipping a long rope attached to it.
When John rung the bell the sound was one part thud one part clang. It was loud enough to carry over the village and into the fields nearby and John managed to get out two strikes, a second whipping the rope back and forth. After ten seconds he felt he had done enough, everyone would have heard, but it was before he started to hear any ringing in his own ears.
The majority of the village had gathered in the cobbled square. John could see Malcolm looking unimpressed standing in the doorway of his inn. Many villagers seemed equally unhappy upon seeing John emerge from the town hall. He could overhear a few snippets of conversation happening in the crowd nearby and it seemed that one thing the children failed to mention was that the bell was reserved for emergencies. People had shown up expecting to fight a fire or that there was some sort of raid about to happen.
“Everyone, I have something to show you that I think you’re going to love," John called out over the growing chatter of the crowd.
He then strode through the assembled people boldly. The key to commanding the group was to not show any hesitation or allow any suggestion that you had anything but the absolute right to do what you were doing. The people followed, mostly out of curiosity, as John led them to the field sown with corn.
Melanie was waiting with the totem pulsing green light. John stopped the crowd just short of the fence at the side of the road. The children who had helped did indeed have a front row seat.
“We have created a totem that we wish to sell to the village,” John called out, silencing the crowd. "The magic it holds can be released by anyone and it will cast its spell. And you will be able to fill it with magic again to use whenever you need it.”
At John’s signal, Melanie pointed the egg-shaped totem at the field and drew two large circles with it. Moments later, green magical energy came cascading out of the totem and spilled over the field like water, bubbling over mounds of dirt and pooling in divots.
A moment passed without change. John started to sweat a little, thinking that perhaps a test run before summoning the village would have been a good idea.
One woman at the edge of the crowd shouted, “Look, there!”
She was pointing a tiny green shoot, which looked like a blade of grass, that was rising and growing. It filled out and became larger, then filled out to become the stalk of a corn plant. By then, other shoots were coming up and the entire field was becoming a thick mass of quickly growing corn stalks.
John thought that it most closely resembled the time-lapse filming shown on documentaries about rainforests where you got to watch a vine or something snake its way along the ground and up a tree. What was happening here was a much smoother version and happening in real time.
The cobs of corn started from rolled up leaves and then burst into life as a sea of green plants all came to fruit within an instant.
Finally, the last drop of magic was spent and the spell was over. John stepped up to the nearest plant and twisted off an ear of corn, shucked the papery husk back from the golden kernels within and too a large bite.
The corn caught him off guard. When he bit in there was an explosion of cool, sweet juice that was one of the tastiest things he had ever eaten.
The crowd watched on as he finished the mouthful and handed the cob to a dirty-kneed child sitting on the fence who didn’t hesitate in chomping down himself before passing it along the row to his prepubescent workmates.
“It looks like you’ve all got some harvesting to do," John called out to break the silence that held the crowd in check.
