Pairs of Pumpkins #09: A Heroine Again

Pairs of Pumpkins Episode 09: A Heroine Again

by Jess Faulks

Alone in a celebratory crowd, a somber, vixen adventuress sat on the edge of the tallest bridge in the land, looking east over the river delta's jagged teeth of piers, ships and barges, to the Great Sea beyond. With the waterway a quarter mile below, it was speculated the master craftspeople of the Allicans had built it so wide for no one to see over the nauseatingly high edge without trying.

Stusport, the city sprawling around the bridge, was more alive than she'd seen all week. Behemoth, the massive flagship of the local fleet and one of the biggest ships to ever sail, was setting out to sea.

In her lap was a thick book that would be sliding free were it not for the tremendous bulk of her breastplate clamping down against her thighs. That handwritten ledger held the history of her extensive and unplanned family. At least, not planned by her. It was a ledger of names, ages, sperm donors, buyers, prices and locations. Young men and women bred from her eggs, with the brains, beauty and proportions signature of her lineage, sold as premium adoptions to the rich and unscrupulous.

Children she was never supposed to know existed.

Her first reaction was always to think they'd been stolen from her, but she couldn't forget what Zarron, the wizard responsible had said: she'd given up her ability to bear young for his help in running away from her fate as a Princess, Queen and Mother. She'd never wanted to be a mother, not now and not then. Despite having her memory of the exchange wiped by magic, she knew that was a deal she would have made. Twenty years of life experience later, it was hard to imagine she'd think to add a "don't clone and sell my fertilized eggs" clause to any such negotiation.

All she had to do was lean back and let it go. She would never have the choice to pursue however many hundreds or thousands of her offspring recorded within. She'd been terrified to count.

Portia would never meet any more sons like Joseph or daughters like Marina, who would tempt her to cross the only line of depravity she'd ever regretted. A line that made her sick to think about. One she'd investigated methodically until she was convinced it was neither curse, magic nor illness. Whatever had broken was one-hundred percent her.

She would let the book fall and run back to the Kangaroo, Life Sorceress Darcy, begging for a mind-wipe she was assured was possible. Joseph, Anya, Marina, Edgar and Evita would all be safe with her friend, Booker the Baker in Zentia. The countless others would be no worse off than before, had Portia never returned to the Pale Lands and started this ruinous chain of events.

All those children. Those magically-bred adoptions sold off to who-knows-who for Gods-know-why. They would never know their horrible mother. She could move past all this and continue to cement her heroic legacy in blissful ignorance. She wouldn't remember she had legions of children or that she'd had sex with two of them. Or that only one time was an accident. She wouldn't remember how much she loved it.

How bad could their lives really be?

It was stupid thought. A pathetic excuse. In twenty years of travel and adventure, she'd seen misery and horrors that all came flooding to her. The world had unlimited capacity for cruelty, especially for those who couldn't fight back. Evangeline was born to be Zarron's wife and Anastasia, his apprentice. Joseph was made to maintain Zarron's vacation home. Anya and Evita were both bought and raised to be their buyer's wives. Edgar was meant to be a breeder and Marina was already working as a prostitute. There was no sign any one of them had it any better.

Her lamenting mind tried to fire the muscles of her lower back anyway. She'd never agreed to this quest and would only have to live with the guilt for an hour or two.

Her teeth clenched hard enough to threaten their integrity.

She couldn't do it.

The Counselor, Sebastian

"I'm at the end of my rope," Portia concluded with a sigh, laying back on an overstuffed couch.

Her appointment was the same afternoon she'd left the Life Wizard, Darcy's home office, presumably thanks to some pulled strings. She hadn't had time to cross the bridge back to her Inn to clean up the aftermath of her foursome and the occasional trickle down her inner thigh escaped, from Darcy, Joseph, Ana or whoever she had fucked last night.

He was a chubby, grey haired groundhog named Sebastian that she was grateful to not be attracted to, although after the crushing week she'd had, it wouldn't matter as much. She explained her story and situation in full, demanding repeated promises of his confidentiality. After an afternoon of explanation and questioning, he sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers.

"Miss Pridemoon, I'm glad that you came to see me. You have quite a fascinating life. Princess. Adventuress. Hero. Mother."

"Can you help me or not?"

"Perhaps. I have some theories but first, a few more questions. What does Love mean to you?"

"Really... caring about a person?"

"Okay. Surely you've cared for a lot of people. Who would you kill for? Who would you die for?"

"I've killed for people I didn't know and I've almost died for complete strangers. That comes with the territory in my line of work."

Sebastian rubbed his temples. "Do you love your Mother? Or did you?"

"Perhaps for a short time as a kit. Before I figured out what I was to her."

"Did she love you?"

"Definitely not. No."

He sniffled, more like a tick than an allergy. "Do you love anyone in your family?"

"I loved my siblings, sure, but we were all children. Even back then, Alexi was all business, Bjorn was all heart..." She gagged at the thought of her second oldest brother, Bjorn. She'd last seen him as a boyish teenager. Years later, Zarron had somehow acquired his seed and used it to father at least six of her children as deliberate inbreds. One of those six was Jasper, a son she had yet to meet but was in this very city. She cleared her throat and steadied her mind.

"I loved Valentin and Piotr, but they were tiny, little kits. Innocent. Augustina was still shitting her nappies and Mikke wasn't born yet. Children are children but none of that love survived the upbringing we had. I've seen more affection in a company of soldiers than my own family. I'm certain they treated my departure more like a deserter than a daughter."

He paused and watched her before taking a note in his book. "Your father?"

"Perhaps as much as anyone could in that place, which is not much. The only reason I went back to the Pale Lands was out of obligation. I am not disloyal to my family. I don't want harm to befall them but how can I love them when the entire emotion was discouraged?"

"Would you say you love yourself? You're proud of who you are? Who you've become?"

Portia considered then nodded. "Yes. Until two months, yes."

"Tell me more."

"I ran away from a life of privilege to become something everyone said I had no business being. I trained long and hard until people had no choice but to take me seriously. I proved wrong hundreds of men who've underestimated me and saved more lives than I can count. There are statues of me. Bards write songs about me. Children repeat stories of 'the most beautiful woman in the world' who can dodge any arrow and best any man. Every little girl judged by her appearance, or growing up towards a life of boredom, submission and servitude who hears about me, sees a spark of possibility. Their life can be what they make it. Every bounty I pull or monster I slay, reminds the rest of the world not to judge a book by its cover."

"What of that cover, Portia? Do you lament the way you look?"

"No." Her lip curled, revolted. "Not in the slightest. When I was younger, I was sometimes frustrated, like when I wanted to shoot a bow and was denied or had to learn to dodge, flip and balance with an extra forty pounds wobbling on my chest. It certainly made training a challenge. Now, I've got nothing but pride. I'm amazing, whether people see it or not. I feel powerful when they underestimate me."

"When you are naked, do you like the way you look?

"Absolutely."

"You mentioned the mirror with Joseph. In intimate situations, do you like to look at yourself?"

The moment flashed back with total clarity and her blood raced into action. Joseph, who by then she knew to be her son, was still knotted and hard inside her ass, his massive cock trapped deep in her body, her guts warm with his virginal ejaculation. Her own son begged her to cum again, and she pretended to grudgingly agree, but she wanted it too. His eager hands had tugged off her top to see and feel her breasts. He was bouncing them deliberately with his bucking hips, his young eyes peering over her shoulder, transfixed by their size and motion. He reached around to touch her sex, commenting on how wet she was, knowing how much she loved the forbidden moment before he made her cum with his clumsy, young fingers.

Her thighs pushed together to try to smother the burning. "I do."

A short silence followed. "You said you've had more lovers than you can count."

She adjusted herself in her seat, almost squirming. "Why would I keep count? More than a thousand, I'm sure." She struggled to remember any of them but Joseph, Marina and Ana. Even the memory of Ana, intense as it was last night or this morning, was watered down in the memory for the awareness it hadn't really been her.

"'Lovers' is an interesting word. For all those men, have you ever been in love?"

Portia turned her attention sharply to him, her fire immediately and thoroughly extinguished.

"Perhaps someone has said it to you. Maybe you've said it. Have you felt it?"

"I have NEVER said that. I wanted to be an adventuress. A hero, free to make her own destiny and write her own story. Love and marriage?" she laughed with disdain. "When was the last, great story you heard about somebody's wife? Chain myself to some man just to live in his shadow? Touched by only one person for the rest of my life? No thanks."

"Is it love you have such disdain for? Or is it commitment?"

The vixen sat up, planting her feet on the floor and hunching forward on her elbows. "Love IS commitment."

"With the discovery of all these children, you find yourself in a commitment anyway. Do you love them?"

"I don't know them."

"Perhaps more than you think. Blood has power, even without magic. Do you think they love you?"

Portia flopped back in her seat. "I'm a stranger. How could they?"

Sebastian leaned back in his chair and set his pen aside on an end table. "Portia, I am not a wizard and I can only give you my opinion, not an absolute truth. A million things might be responsible for your condition. People tend to attract similar mates. In the absence of the experienced, common, familial history which usually teaches us to avoid our blood relations as potential partners, no one is more similar to you than your siblings and your children. Subconsciously, you probably sense some connection when you meet them.

"You're exceptionally attractive. I think you'd consider yourself a viable partner, for yourself. Considering that, an attraction to someone who looks like you makes perfect sense to me."

Portia swallowed hard, her eyes locked on the groundhog. He continued.

"You want to be a hero. A legend. A role model. Now you find yourself rescuing your own children from the tyranny of their lives. They've always needed a mother but you also get to be their hero. Every child you save is going to adore you as much as anyone. Perhaps you didn't break away from your courtly life to be free but to be known."

She sat up. "I was going to be the fucking Queen. I would have been known." After a deep breath, she unfolded back on the couch. "The throne would give me that for free. I wouldn't have earned it."

"Would you have been loved? Not for the job you but personally?"

She was silent, glaring now.

"You've managed to avoid love for your entire life, Portia. First, because of the cold, stoicism of your family, who also ensured you'd forever fear commitment. Then, in your fierce independence. You didn't consider finding a husband who was also an adventuring partner? Or a poly amorous relationship? Your fear of commitment choked out any real possibility for love so you sought it, in ways which were safe to your hopes and dreams. Through reputation and admiration from the people you've helped and extensively through promiscuous sex."

"You tear yourself apart over your inability to resist throwing yourself toward love and affection, they way YOU know it: through admiration and through sex. Where you've come to find it in the arms of your own children, you don't stop to ask yourself if it makes you any worse of a mother than yours. A mother who wouldn't hold you once you were old enough to stand on your own?"

Sebastian sat forward, resting his arms on his knees. His posture was soft and disarming. "Now you find yourself the reluctant hero of this story, in an obligation your conscience won't let you reject, to liberate a still-impressionable family from unconscionable situations. A family you never learned to not think of as viable mates, who never learned the same of you. Sons and daughters seeking guidance and love, who are all stunning and beautiful, and likely much more lost and in need than you."

Her eyes rolled away from him to the ceiling as the flood of words sunk in.

"I'm not a sorcerer, Portia. The mind is a delicate thing. Perhaps you got hit on the head and the rest is coincidence? I'm sure you're aware if the wizards who led you to me couldn't change this about you, I can't either. Not without years of these sessions and possibly, never."

She sighed and covered her eyes, first with her eyelids then with her palms. Then a pillow she grabbed blindly.

"Portia, most people in this city have no idea what I do is even a trade. They'll never be able to afford to talk to an expert about their life's problems. And here's my secret, since your session was paid for by a friend: very few people come through here with real problems. The poor have them. The privileged have inconveniences. House flies that seem like dragons because they've never known what real trouble is."

He stood and walked over, placing a hand on her shoulder. "I understand you're feeling a lot of conflicting emotions now but that is the extent of your problems. Joseph was destined to live as a houseboy and Marina as a whore. Both of them are free to do as they wish now, thanks to you. Both consented to sex with you. Joseph didn't know but neither did you at the time and it doesn't sound like it bothered him much."

"Regardless of how your conscience handles this, no one is going to save the rest of them but you. Consider that before you decide what to do next."

She turned in her seat and sat up. "I need to go."

* * *

Knowing Sebastian was right didn't make it sit right. There was an out for her life and conscience but so many young souls would suffer the consequences. She couldn't lean back. She couldn't let the book go.

If she leaned forward, she would only suffer her burning conscience for another ten seconds. She saw the docks below, orderly and military to the South and rough and chaotic to the North. Would her body drift out to sea or wash ashore, bloated, blue and ugly on either side? A drowned corpse was no end to the story of a hero. She owed her legacy better than that.

Behind her, the crowd was cheering. The ship must be close now, and she had no interest at all, staring over the river delta. Something was off about the northern docks. The regular patterns of commerce and travel were ants at this distance but a cluster of those ants on one otherwise empty pier moved unusually. A circle surrounding someone in the center, moving threateningly. The apparent victim clutched something close. A child? She had heard rumors of black market slavers operating in Low Town, North and there it was, before her eyes, a quarter of a mile away. The pier was largely obscured from the main boardwalk by stacked crates and containers. No one else was seeing this. She was the only one who could do anything.

The prow of Behemoth emerged from underneath the bridge. From above, its scale was such that the celebration suddenly seemed justified. It was amazing a thing built by hands and tools of such a scale could ever move but it did with effortless grace, less like a ship across the sea and more like a moon through the sky.

She was a warship with a prow built for ramming, bristling with catapults and ballistae, her top deck covered in her own scurrying ants, betraying the grace of her motion. The first mast emerged, cut from the towering redwoods that covered other, distant parts of the world and reaching so high, it reminded her both scenes existed in the same world. That tall mast offered a bridge between them.

Portia carefully slid the book out of her lap and back into the safety of its sleeve. There was time enough to deal with her troubles later but now, someone needed her help. She had to move. Her eyes darted with ideas, then measures and calculations. A second mast followed, taller still, reaching a third of the way to the bottom of the bridge. She wasn't sure how many masts a ship of this scale would bear but was certain the next one would be even taller.

Portia jumped up on the railing, broad and stable enough for her to easily balance on. Rushing into a full sprint, she turned heads in the crowd that she ignored, seeking the center of the ship.

Third mast. Taller still. There couldn't be many more before they would be shorter again. She was running out of time. With the others in full view, she appraised their rigging in absence of a raised sail. If she could jump and catch one of many thick ropes connecting the mast to the deck, she would slide down safely. Everything after that would be easier.

She was right where she needed to be when the fourth mast came into view. The gasps of the crowd were drowned out by the sound of the rushing wind.

She jumped with a deliberate trajectory. Her eyes were locked to a single, loose line of rigging and she reached back to fetch one of her tomahawks. In free fall, she slipped the wrist strap on, then raised it over her head with a two-handed grip. Fixated on the rope, she calculated what she would need to do with her body when it hooked, in order for her momentum to not rip the weapon right out of her hand and her to fall to her death, whether on water or wood.

The wind was deafening and the fall, long enough for her to consider mid-flight, if she would take this leap three months ago. Her blood was on fire with drive and purpose and at least for now, it was still contained within her skin and fur. Flying through the air, she found her mark again: the pier side altercation. The commotion was clearer and closer now. She couldn't lose track of where it was when she got to sea level.

Portia bent back her body as the thick rope closed in, and she adjusted the height of her weapon to catch it, gripping for her life. The handle hit the rope hard and she swung forward, redirecting her fall into a spin. Wrapped around the rigging but avoiding touching it, her entire body swung around four times before gravity took over, and she slid by the ax handle, down the diagonally-hanging rope, her weight drawing tight the slack in it.

Her heart pounded as she rushed downward. The rope's angle averted the deadly risk of freefall, but she was still moving dangerously fast. The vixen swung herself up to grip the rope in the arches of her boots, applying them as brakes and slowing her to a safe speed but the leather grew hot enough to threaten her feet with burns. Closing in on the deck, the pain was too much and her legs dropped away right before impact. She'd broken harder falls from lower heights and tumbled with practiced skill. The rope ended close to the taffrail and she crashed into it, head over heels.