Jenny's Summer Ch. 02

Windigo started laughing and his mocking laughs echoed around the cave. "I know every inch of this island. Did you really think you could hide from me here?"

I looked at the other two and put a finger to my lips.

"Oh, come there Jenny. You know I can read your mind. I know where you are and I can see that the three of you have come to destroy me. My love, you impress me more and more. You will be a welcome addition to my colony in the cairn. Your many fears shall feed me for centuries. That stupid water faerie didn't tell you that I am able to keep them alive indefinitely, did she?"

Phil and Sabrina were supposed to bring their guns. Sabrina still had hers and held it like a club. Phil must have dropped his in the lake. I glanced around for a stick or rock to use to defend myself.

"You know what I can do, my love. Do you really think I'll let you anywhere near my pets now? You have no chance. If the three of you give yourselves up now then I'll be merciful. Well, as merciful as I can be."

Why was he not attacking? I searched the cave with my eyes, looking for some unusual feature that might prevent him from attacking us. There was a single green vine dangling down from one of the holes...

Sabrina let out a scream and was swiftly dragged up towards one of the exits and then disappeared from our view. Phil and I acted quickly. He followed where she had been dragged out and I climbed towards the other exit. Sabrina screamed again.

"Oh, hello there. You are not afraid of much, are you? But there is one thing I sensed when I was in bear form: you are terrified of being eaten alive."

Sabrina screamed in terror just as Phil and I emerged on to the surface of the island. She was dangling in mid air above the plateau with the cairn. A tendril or tentacle was about her ankles and she was staring down in absolute horror, but I could not see what she was looking at. Phil and I climbed upwards as quickly as we could, ignoring scrapes and bangs.

Phil reached the large flat rock before I did and stood at the edge, staring in shock. As I reached the plateau, the tentacle released Sabrina and she fell. Right below her, Windigo had taken an amorphous form with waving tentacles and a single large, needle-toothed maw at its top. As I pulled myself up, Sabrina fell into the enormous mouth. She seemed to splash into the translucent and amorphous body and as her screaming suddenly stopped, the mouth above her clamped shut.

Her eyes went wide and her fists pounded into the gelatinous goo that was the body of the thing. Her face pleaded with me to do anything I could to release her from this nightmare. And there was nothing I could do.

Phil, on the other hand, charged at Windigo. He picked up Sabrina's fallen gun with a sweep of his arm and began striking at the outer skin of the blob. Sabrina was gripping her own throat and had opened her mouth. Phil struck again and again, screaming in fury as he did so. Windigo's tentacles lashed the air.

I picked up a loose rock and charged the creature as well. Before I could reach the fight Windigo's form shifted. A suffocated Sabrina was belched forth from the goo and Phil collapsed while trying to catch her. I watched as Windigo took on my form, complete with my current clothes and wet, stringy hair.

"Phil! Phil!" Windigo said in my voice. "Why couldn't you save Sabrina and me, Phil? We depended on you. You're the man. You're supposed to defend us with your dying breath. Why did you let us come to the island? We could have escaped while you delayed Windigo..."

From the look on Phil's face, he believed that was me chastising him. Tears streamed down his face as he cradled Sabrina and whispered how sorry he was.

I threw the rock at my doppelganger and hit her square in the face. Windigo turned to me.

"I remember your most mundane fear, my love." He shifted again, growing four more arms and becoming larger and larger. Black hair sprouted from the pale flesh of my duplicate and ferocious, fanged mandibles burst forth from her mouth. Soon, an enormous tarantula was before me, rearing up and ready to lunge forward and plunge its venomous fangs into me.

But it wasn't being slain by a spider that I feared most right now, it was fear of what might happen or what might have happened to my two lovers. I charged Windigo and began to strike him with my bare fists. My mock courage took him by surprise and he retreated a couple of steps. I kept up my attack out of fury and fear.

"So, a giant spider still scares you but you have learned not to be terrified by it. Well, how about this, my love?"

His form burst in a black explosion and I was pelted by hand-sized portions of him. I threw my arms over my face. Then I felt something crawling on me, all over me in fact. I uncovered my face to find that the ground around me was crawling with normal-sized, eight-legged, black haired tarantulas. I had a dozen on me as well and they moved over me, crawling over my hair, my legs, my arms, my chest and my face.

I screamed and a spider put its arms on my lips and tried to crawl into my mouth. I bit down and as half of it fell to the ground, I tasted something furry, syrupy and metallic in my mouth. I spit out the remainder of the arachnid.

Then the spiders began to bite. Intense pain struck me all over as their fangs plunged into my flesh and injected their toxins. My jeans and flannel shirt were no protection, nor was my thick, wet hair. I lashed about with my arms trying to knock the beasts from me, but others leapt onto my legs and began crawling upwards. I danced about in some horrific dance of fright and pain and I felt the poison coursing through my system.

I slipped on a tarantula that I had crushed beneath my hiking boot and fell into a pile of stones, knocking some of them over. The cairn! I pushed some more stones off and more spiders leapt on me and plunged their fangs into me. My legs collapsed under me as I looked down into the cairn. There were a couple dozen small, mice-like animals staring fearfully up at me.

I grabbed a rock that had fallen into the hollow. "I'm sorry! Please forgive me!" I wailed and I smashed the rock down onto the floor of the hollow. I raised it and blood and fragments of flesh dripped from its underside. More spiders leapt on me and injected me with venom, although I could not feel the pain of their fangs any longer.

My field of vision seemed to be getting smaller, as if I was backing into a tunnel. Oh, this is what tunnel vision is like before you pass out, I thought. I saw the lemmings inside the cairn look up at me and then look down at the pulped mess that had once been the other lemmings. The remainder scuttled over to the crimson gore and looked up at me expectantly.

I brought the rock down again and again. Eventually, it fell from my hands and I collapsed. As I lost consciousness, I could feel the hairy legs of spiders as they crawled over me. Why weren't they biting anymore...

XXIV

...someone was bathing me..."her eyelids fluttered"...

...Phil's voice: "I don't give a flying fuck! She's an ambassador from the North Pole. If you won't listen then I quit!"...

...someone is squeezing my hands...

...spiders...spiders...I've always been afraid of spiders...

...oh, hello Casper. What are you doing here? Am I dead...

..."not a lesbian," said Sabrina. "Please hold me, Phil."...

...Vicky's voice: "two have been here the entire time?"...

...a stranger's voice: "going to make it. I think in large part because of both of you"...

XXV

I awoke. It wasn't my normal and gradual awakening as my brain shifted from unconscious to conscious; I was simply and suddenly awake. I felt thirsty. I hurt all over. I was exhausted. I could feel that I was in bed and someone was holding my hands. I smelled ammonia and urine. I could hear a doctor being paged over an intercommunication system. I was in a hospital!

I opened my eyes. The room was dimly lit by light shining in under the door. I was facing a window and I saw darkness outside. So it was night. People are supposed to sleep during the night. And do other things, I suppose, although I certainly wasn't in the mood right now. I must be on drugs.

Why am I here? Oh, God! Windigo! I remember! Then I was distracted from those terrible memories by a beeping noise that was growing faster and faster. That monster wouldn't have taken me to a hospital. How did I get here?

Wait, Phil and Sabrina must have destroyed him. Then they rescued me. Oh, they are just wonderful. I love them so. I wonder where they are?

I looked past the many tubes extending from my face and arms and saw Sabrina on my left and Phil on my right. Each was holding my hand while they slept peacefully with their heads resting on the green sheets of my hospital bed. They also had an arm stretched across the bed resting on my blanketed legs and their free hands were clasped there with the fingers interlocked.

Oh, how sweet. And I drifted into sleep again.

XXVI

I awoke gradually. My eyes opened and the lighting was too bright so I closed them again. I could hear I was still in the hospital and I could feel the bed sheets, but there were far less tubes stuck into me than there had been. I could feel an intravenous connection on each arm and a catheter, but no other intrusions into my body.

Something was missing, though. I opened my eyes a crack and couldn't see anyone. Where were Sabrina and Phil? I guess they got tired of waiting for me to get better. I heard some water running behind a door and a few seconds later Sabrina came out of what I assumed was a restroom.

She noticed I was awake as she walked over to my bed and she broke into a fabulous smile. "Don't talk, Jenny. You've been through a lot and you're safe now." She sat down beside my bed and I shifted my hand closer to her. She took it in both of hers and kissed my fingers. "Phil has just gone out to have an early dinner in the hospital cafeteria. We take turns with our meals so you're never alone. Do you need anything?"

A nice hug from her was what I craved most, but she was still cradling my hand and that would do for now. At least until I was well enough to reciprocate some physical affection. "Water," I gasped through my dry throat.

Sabrina reached out of my vision and then brought a cup of water to my lips. She helped me raise my head a little and I took a brief sip. Then she settled me back down.

"I know you can't talk easily, Jenny, but are you willing to listen?"

I nodded. It was such a weak movement and it took so much out of me that I wasn't sure that Sabrina had actually observed it until she spoke.

"Okay. Well first, thank you very, very much for saving Phil and I from that monster. Once you squished all those poor, little creatures in the cairn Windigo seemed unable to change back from all those spiders. We pulled you away from them and then spent half an hour squishing every one we could find under our boots or under rocks. Some might have escaped, but the water faerie assured us that none would live through the winter, especially as predators came back into the area."

"You've been in the hospital, here in Ottawa, for about two months now and the doctors say you're recovering beautifully. Vicky, Douglas, Holly, Cecee and Yuri have been in to see you several times. Douglas and Yuri picked us up at Windigo's island and several elves performed some special elf magic on you to keep you alive. The doctors here counted about three hundred individual spider bites. They brought in a spider venom specialist and he left in a huff, saying that someone was pulling some kind of sick joke on him."

"Now that you're waking up, the nurses say they're going to get you exercising and it will probably be another month before you are free to leave. Don't worry about the medical bills. As an official ambassador from the North Pole who was critically hurt while hiking, the Canadian government has been desperate to make amends. Phil says they simply want some good publicity for saving an emissary of Santa Clause."

"Now about some private stuff: you told Phil that I'm a lesbian?"

I gulped, hurting my still dry throat and gave a small nod. Maybe I didn't have the right to tell Phil, but it just came up in conversation. I hoped the fact that Sabrina was still here meant she had forgiven me.

"I kept wondering why, in all the time we've spent together, Phil has not made even one pass at me. Even when we thought you might die he came to me for comfort but not for sexual healing, so to speak. Jenny, I'm not a lesbian. I'm a bisexual. Just like you; well, not just like you. Phil told me about your particular variation. I am happy with either men or women and I don't need both."

I was getting drowsy. I struggled to stay awake, though.

"Jenny, Phil and I have grown very close and have had sex since we were rescued. We both assumed that you'd be comfortable with that as we also talked about the possibility of the three of us..." and I drifted off to a dreamless sleep.

XXVII

"Are you sure you're up to leaving the hospital?" I was asked for the fourth time, although this time by Phil.

"Yes. Stop being such a mother hen. I'm feeling much better and I'm at the point where I will start going crazy if I don't get back into a normal life. Dr. Singh has given me the okay to leave, you know."

"We just want to make sure you're fully recovered, honey."

I put my palm on his cheek. "I know. I do love both of you and would probably be fretting just as much if one of you two had been confined here." He smiled in response and then picked up my bags. As he struggled out the door I took one last look around the room. Three months I had stayed here and from what Vicky and the nurses told me, Sabrina and Phil rarely left my side while I was unconscious. They had greatly facilitated my healing, both physically and mentally.

I followed Phil out into the bustling hospital hall. Sabrina was at the nurse's station, filling out the last minute paperwork and getting everything else sorted out. We said our goodbyes to everyone.

Once outside the hospital, I was surprised to find a large limousine and driver waiting for us. The three of us climbed in and smiled at each nervously. "Well, I guess we're off to a hotel. Where did Holly and Doug arrange for us to stay? I hope it's not too ritzy."

Sabrina and Phil exchanged looks.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I sort of assumed that the three of us would stay together for a while. Well, I'd hoped that would be the case." My heart began to sink.

Phil chuckled.

"Actually, Phil and I talked about a more permanent arrangement between the three of us," said Sabrina.

My heart leapt. "Oh?" I tried to sound casual, but the eagerness in my voice would have been impossible to miss.

Sabrina looked at Phil again and he nodded to her. "First off Jenny, we're not going to a hotel. We've purchased a large home, suitable for an ambassador, here in Ottawa. That is, the three of us have purchased it."

"Cecee didn't give us the money, did she? I know she's very rich. It was nice of her but the two of you shouldn't have accepted it."

"No, Cecee didn't give us any money. You remember that Windigo had that large area that was his land and no faeries could go there? Well, people also avoided it and those that didn't usually disappeared. With Windigo gone there has been some exploration of the region and a few valuable resources were uncovered. We three are the principal owners as we sort of staked out the land. So we're rich!"

"We aren't prospectors," I pointed out. "We were merely fighting for our lives against a horrible monster."

"Well, your friend Cecee worked out something with the Feds and the National Assembly in Quebec. The suggestion was made that we weren't one hundred per cent positive that Windigo had been destroyed, so both branches of government were eager to keep us involved, just in case. I made sure the natives get a share of the pie, as well," finished Sabrina.

"Please don't tell me that there is a chance he survived after all we went through."

"No," Phil said with finality, "he's destroyed or at least is so weak now that he soon will be destroyed. After you had destroyed his victims he kept imprisoned in that pile of stones, Sabrina and I stamped on every spider we could find. The water faerie and Breeleigh assured us that predators and cold would take care of the few stragglers. There aren't many spiders that far north, especially big ones like tarantulas. The faeries are going to keep a close eye on the region to ensure he doesn't live through the winter."

I shivered. "So we are going to live together, then?" I asked.

They looked at each other again. Sabrina nodded at Phil this time. He took a deep breath. "We talked it over and realized that you might have religious or ethical problems with 'living in sin'."

"With you two, I'd be willing to chance it," I said and I was rewarded with big smiles from both of them.

"And there is a problem with getting someone to perform a three-way marriage. But there is nothing to stop three people from marrying each other in their hearts." Phil put his hand in one of his pockets and pulled out a velvet jewellery case. He handed it to me and I slowly opened it. Inside were three gold wedding bands.

I quickly took one out and placed it on my ring figure. I passed the box to Sabrina as I scrutinized the lovely ring. It fit perfectly and almost seemed to glow. Sabrina had placed hers on her finger and her face shone as she examined the look of it on her ring ringer.

As Phil put his ring on a question occurred to me. "So how do the brides get kissed? Do we kiss three way or do we have three kisses and if so, who kisses first?"

Ever the gentleman, Phil suggested "ladies first."

Sabrina and I were sitting across from each other and Phil was sitting beside her. I patted the seat beside me and Sabrina took my offered hand and changed seats. She had on a woman's white business suit with matching skirt that came down to her knees. When she sat, the skirt rose up her legs a little and I reached out and put a hand on one of her knees.

She looked at me shyly and I wondered why this should be. I gently caressed her knee and then moved my hand up her leg, under her skirt. She glanced at Phil and I realized that she might never have been in a threesome before. I turned to Phil and the awkward look on his face told me that he was a neophyte as well.

I leaned over to whisper to Sabrina's, after I brushed her straight, black hair behind her ear. "Since we're married then that means that your body, every wonderful inch of it, is mine to play with, correct?"

She nodded, keeping her eyes on Phil.

I moved my hand a little further up her leg and then down between her thighs. "And every inch of my body belongs to you? And Phil's too?"

She turned to face me, opened her mouth and I kissed her. I put my left arm over her shoulders and pulled her to me. The kiss was wet and desperate. And it lingered long enough for me to inch my hand up to her panties and begin teasing her with the tips of my fingers.

I broke the kiss, but continued to tickle her through her panties. Her legs spasmed a little and then opened a little wider. She continued to stare at Phil, whom I saw through the corner of my eye. He was trying to be polite and not watch our intimacy. But his eyes kept coming back to us every few seconds.

I put my hand under Sabrina's pointed chin and turned her face to mine. "I would have very much liked to have lifted your veil in a formal ceremony and kissed you in front of a crowded church."

"I would have liked that, too," she sighed, dreamily. "Now, who gets to kiss Phil first?"

"Well, I know I kissed him before. And you two have already told me that you made love discretely in my hospital room, late one night. So it's not really a first kiss, but I think I'll be the first of his two brides that he kisses, if you don't mind Sabrina?"