That Damned Blessing Ch. 03

"Well he'd better fucking remember," Ryan muttered.

"It sounds like he's the one we should be talking to," Jess said. "Where is he?"

"He knew you'd be coming back," Jake replied. "Since you left he's been out searching the jungle for anything that can help you. Well actually he went out the next day -- the Old Woman worked him over pretty good after you left so he had to rest up that day. His bruises have bruises. When you came in this time, everybody scattered to look for him and bring him back...and because they're honestly terrified of you."

"Why? What did we do?" Ryan asked. "That old dude's the one who fucked up, they should be scared of him."

"Because the most powerful blessing we can give, one that's only been done once in our whole history, has turned into a curse," Jake explained. "For all they know, that means you can spread the curse just with a look or a word or a touch."

Mother and son exchanged a startled look before Ryan asked, "Can we?"

"No! No no no, of course not," Jake said. "Probably not."

"Probably?" Jess demanded.

"You have to understand, nothing like this has ever happened before," Jake said. "We're off the edge of the map. Who knows what's possible?"

Ryan threw up his hands in exasperation, but Jess cut him off with a placating gesture and said, "This ceremony's only been done once? What happened then?"

Jake suddenly looked more sure of himself, as though this were firmer ground for him. "It was about 800 years ago, two centuries after our people first got here. Things were bad then -- there was a huge feud, every clan against every other, people being murdered, all sorts of things. There was one man, bloke named Ratu, who put a stop to the whole thing by talking down everyone who could be talked down and smacking everyone else over the head. He brought peace, divvied up the land, made sure everyone was happy and taken care of.

"Now no sooner had he done that than two rare flowers bloomed that had never bloomed before. The shamans thought that was a bloody good omen so they came up with the ceremony that we did for you. They didn't know what it would do if it did anything at all, but it did something alright."

Jake fell silent, and after a long and portentous moment, Ryan snapped, "You gonna tell us or are we supposed to ask?"

Jake shrugged sheepishly. "Sorry, mate, trying to build tension."

"Well stop it," Jess said.

"Right, sorry. Anyway, they did the same ceremony we did for you on Ratu and his wife Fa'ahotu. Nine months after that, Fa'ahotu gave birth to a son, then a year after that a daughter, and another child a year after that and another a year after that, on and on for sixty years."

"Sixty years?" Jess said with a frown. "How old was she when she started?"

"She was thirty years old when the ceremony was done, and she'd already had six children."

"Wait, wait, wait, you're telling me she was an old woman of ninety and still making babies?" Jess demanded.

"And Ratu was a ninety-year-old man still knocking her up?" Ryan added.

"Yeah, only they weren't old," Jake told them. "They didn't get old, in fact they got younger and stayed that way. They looked twenty when they were a hundred years old."

"Well that's just crazy," Ryan frowned.

"The crazier thing is all their children after the ceremony survived, healthy and strong," Jake said. "That didn't happen back before modern medicine -- half the children used to die when they were still ankle-biters, but all of their kids reached adulthood and had families of their own. Every one."

"I gotta say, that sounds like a fairy tale," Ryan said.

"Or a foundation myth for your people," Jess suggested. "No offense."

"Nah, none taken, it sounds mad as a herd of left shoes," Jake admitted. "But it's true. Up until white people moved here, one of the ways our people counted status was tracing their genealogy back to see how many of those children were their ancestors. Our islands have a small population so within a couple of centuries everyone was descended from at least one of them. But a lot of generations happen in 800 years and those kids went everywhere, so by now everyone is descended from a hell of a lot of them."

"You guys must get a lot of birth defects," Ryan observed.

"You'd think so, but our rate of birth defects is among the lowest in the world," Jake told them with a shrug. "Most folks think the magic done then still hangs on somehow. Or maybe we're just lucky."

"Alright, let's just accept all that no matter how insane it sounds," Jessica said. "What happened to Ratu and...Fa'ahotu? Are they still alive?"

"Nah, that'd be crazy," Jake said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"Right, because the rest of it makes so much sense," Jessica said dryly.

"The stories say neither of them ever got sick a day in their lives after that. They aged, but not much and not fast. They looked like they were fifty when they were two hundred. One day they announced that they were going to die, and then they sat down and did it with smiles on their faces, as peaceful as you please."

Ryan leaned back and crossed his arms. "So you're saying that's going to happen to us? Because I really don't want to knock my own mother up every year until she's ninety."

"That's what Adouwe's up in the jungle trying to prevent. If anyone can figure this problem out, it's him."

"And you said that's the only time the ceremony's been done?" Jess asked.

"Yeah," Jake nodded. "Those flowers take decades or centuries to bloom and they usually don't do it together. Before you came along they'd only bloomed at the same time once more, about 300 years ago."

"What happened then?" Jess asked.

"When the news spread, people went berserk. Everyone wanted it but there was nobody who stood out as more worthy than anyone else, so fighting started. It got bad fast, and so bad that it was brother against brother and father against son before the end. But the fighting went on for so long that the blossoms withered and died and nobody got them."

"So if this is all so valuable and you live half of forever shooting out babies like a tee-shirt cannon, why did you give it to us?" Ryan demanded.

"Well, Adouwe thought you were married," Jake shrugged.

"No, I mean why us and not someone from the islands?"

"Oh. Well, the little boy you saved is someone special," Jake said, scratching the side of his face. "Or at least he's supposed to be. When we're born the shaman of whatever clan you're a part of reads your birth omens -- I've learned to do it too -- and Anerin's omens came out like nothing anybody had ever seen, so big and bright that the only thing Adouwe could reckon is that Anerin is destined to save us all some day, all our people."

"So along we come and save the one who's going to be the island's savior," Jess nodded slowly. "I guess that would turn some heads. But why not give Anerin the ceremony?"

"Some magics you can work on ankle-biters, like blessings for health or to keep away snakes or mend a broken bone," Jake said. "But the big magics are too much for them -- their bodies and spirits can't handle it, it rips them to bits. And the ceremony we did for you, the pilaliuta, is the biggest magic we've got."

"OK, it makes sense," Jess admitted, although she wasn't quite able to fathom why she would say such a thing about such a bonkers story. "You had the ability to perform the blessing for a very limited time and we were the only ones who stood out as doing something big for your island."

"Forget the stories, we didn't come up here for Brothers Grimm," Ryan said. "We need answers. We need solutions. What do we do?"

Across the table, Jess rubbed her thighs together unconsciously, not even realizing how much Ryan's commanding tone was turning her on.

"My advice is to wait for Adouwe to get back," Jake said. "He's the most knowledgeable shaman on these islands, not that there's many others left. Like I said, he can tell you more than I can. We've also sent messengers to everyone who knows anything about the old ways but we haven't heard back from them. How long are you going to be on the island?"

"We fly out six days from now, first thing in the morning," Jess told him.

Jake made a You're shit out of luck face and inhaled sharply through his teeth.

"Don't," Ryan warned him. "Don't do the breath thing, that's never a good sign."

"Listen, this is a really hard problem. I'm willing to bet my gran's gold teeth that even the shamans who thought the ceremony up never considered how it could be reversed. You reverse curses, but who ever heard of a blessing being reversed?"

"Is there any hope?" Jess asked quietly.

"Course there is," Jake said, obviously making an effort to sound positive. "But Adouwe can tell you more so it would be best if you -- "

"Wait for Adouwe," Ryan and Jess finished together.

"Bing, that," Jake nodded, shooting Ryan with a jaunty finger gun. "Anyway, I was just in the middle of some experiments with some different plants to see if I could come up with anything and I should probably get back to them. Will you two be alright here for a while?"

Ryan wasn't at all sure they would be and the look he exchanged with his mother said she felt the same doubts, but right now it seemed much more important for Jake to get back to work than to hold their hands. "Yeah, go on. Where will you be?"

"Behind that house right over there."

"We'll shout if we need anything," Ryan told him.

Jessica waited for Jake to leave and then turned to her son. "I'm not sure how much of that I buy but it all sounded bad."

"Yeah, it's as batshit as the shit of a bat," Ryan said. "But...I don't know if this makes sense, but...it felt true. I don't know if you -- "

"No," she cut him off quietly. "It did to me too."

"I was really hoping you'd tell me I was wrong."

She stared at the full whiskey glass on the table, then picked it up and knocked back a quarter of it in one go. "Sorry. I needed that."

"Don't drink too much, you'll need to drive us down the mountain again. I'd sent us off a cliff."

She nodded. Both were silent for some minutes, each perusing dark thoughts and listening to the alien sounds of the jungle outside. Finally she said, "I think we need to come up with a plan. You know, in case Adouwe and Jake don't."

"The only magic I know is a couple of card tricks." Pause. "And only one of those involves actual sorcery."

She smiled mirthlessly. "I mean, if they can't undo this and...and we keep dreaming and having these...fugues...we'll need to have a plan to handle it so things don't get out of hand between us."

"I guess we need to stay away from each other as much as possible. You know, not be alone together, not be in the same room..." Even as he said it, Ryan's heart gave a twisting, clenching lurch like it was actually going to physically break at the thought of being that far away from her.

Jess looked up at him, plainly trying to speak, but all she managed was a sort of jerky, gun-to-the-head nod.

"I mean, I spend all day with Lexy anyway and you've got your booze ladies. It shouldn't be too hard to keep space between us while we're on the island."

"And what happens when we get home?"

Ryan had no answer for that. Their house back in Milwaukee wasn't small but it was no mansion; they couldn't be more than sixty feet from each other there. "Maybe I can stay in my old treehouse."

"Sounds delightful in a Wisconsin winter."

"There is that," he conceded. "I mean maybe...maybe when we get away from the islands this will all blow over."

His mother locked eyes with him, and he knew in that instant she was thinking about blowing him. Unbidden a taboo porn video began playing in his head of her crawling under the table, undoing his shorts, and pulling out his rock-hard erection, admiring it for a long moment, and then swallowing it down like a pelican taking a herring --

"I think I'd better wait outside," she said abruptly, lurching to her feet.

"No, I'll go," he said as he stood. "You'll fry to a crisp in ten minutes out there. I don't want to have sex with you, but I don't want to bury your charred remains either."

"You'd better take the whiskey," she said, sitting back down. "I won't be held responsible if I'm left unsupervised."

"Trish Hendricks would be proud."

"Trish Hendricks would already be underneath you."

True enough, given her brazen offer of the day before. He gathered the three whiskey glasses, poured their contents into one tumbler, snared the bottle, and headed outside.

Jessica watched him go, then turned a chair so she could look out the window at the river. The last time they had seen it, Ryan had pulled a child out of it and saved the boy's life. It might have been better to let him drown. Oh there it is, the worst thing I've ever thought, good job. Now I'm the asshole.

None of it was the kid's fault. None of it was anyone's fault as far as she could tell, except maybe the old man who let enthusiasm for a reward override his caution. Well, OK, it was a hundred percent his fault, fuck that guy. Ryan better hold her back when Adouwe showed up...or maybe she'd have to hold him back. Well somebody better hold somebody, that was all she knew.

As troubling as everything else was, one thing was at the forefront of her mind: when she had been discussing with Ryan how to avoid each other once they got back home, a very obvious idea had occurred to her: she could send him to live somewhere else, like with her sister in Chicago or to a boarding school. She'd even tried to say as much, but when she did she almost panicked at the thought of being separated from him; her tongue twisted like a fish in her mouth and she couldn't speak, not even the first word of the sentence she wanted to say. Even now, thinking of him living anywhere but with her felt like a knitting needle in the heart.

But they had to do something. The way the dreams and the impulses had escalated over just a few days, what would they be like in a month? Six months? A year? How long could they avoid doing something ruinous? How long would they even want to avoid it?

"Damn it," she muttered aloud, "when Adouwe gets back I am going to kick his scrawny butt to Tahiti."

Time passed, the temperature rose, rain fell in blinding sheets and rose as clouds of mist, and jungle bugs decided she was a buffet. She paced from one end of the small house to the other more times than she could count. Outside Ryan found a stick washed up on the shore and was thumping a rock with it rhythmically as he sat on another rock, dangling his feet in the river; she was denied even that minimal diversion. She checked her watch every minute and each time was dismayed that only a minute had passed since the last time. Her phone had no signal. Her temper wore thinner with every step she took.

Her mind wandered until it fixed itself on the story of Ratu and Fa'ahotu. It was absurd story, an obvious foundational myth -- maybe there had been a war and a story had grown up that they were all descended from a legendarily fecund couple of magic ancestors as a way to end conflicts and bind over old wounds. That made a lot more sense than the idea of a woman kicking out sixty healthy, beautiful, wonderful children in as many years, all with a man who stayed young and virile and fucked her hard and deep whenever she needed it...

And the last thing she wanted was more children! Two were more than enough, and she was perimenopausal and the odds of her becoming pregnant were slim to none...but it would be hot if Paul could get one more into her, wouldn't it? Feeling that life grow, feeling her body change, knowing she had created a whole human being with the husband she loved...nothing could be better, more fulfilling than that. And when she gave birth, she and Ryan could start work on the next, and then the next after that -- but no more than five or six! No matter how perfect it felt to carry her son's children, the idea of bearing more than eight or nine was ridiculous --

She shook her head and made an inarticulate sound of rage. She couldn't even think naughty thoughts about her own husband anymore without Ryan taking over!

"Seetsahm." She turned and saw that Ryan had entered the house. "What are we doing?"

"What do you mean?" she asked, her arousal soaring with every moment he looked at her.

"Why are we fighting this? What's wrong with us?"

"Because I'm married to your father and I'm your mother and it would rip this family to shreds if we..." She faded off. Her words were meaningless noise. "I don't know, babe. We could have so much together."

"I want it," he told her, crossing the room to her and putting his hands around her to rest possessively on the small of her back. "I want you. I want us. I want our kids. I want our lives together. We're being offered something better than anyone else in the world has had for eight centuries and we're pissing and moaning about it. I'm done doing that."

She looked up at his handsome face and imagined it being the first thing she saw when she woke up -- every morning for the next 150 years. It was too much, too good, too pure to fight. She'd have to be an idiot to say no. "I'm done too. I can't walk away from this gift. I can't walk away from you. I want you."

His response was the obvious one: he leaned in and kissed her. She kissed him back and began unbuttoning his shirt with swift movements of her nimble fingers; a moment later she was sliding her hands inside, along his flanks and his broad chest, reveling in the sensation of his skin and his heat.

His hands were busy too, tugging her dress up and up until she had to step back to let him pull it up and off. She stood before him in her bra and panties, her boring, sensible underthings. If only she had worn something lacy, something satiny, something sheer, anything sexy for the first time he saw her this way! But from the avid look in his eyes he didn't seem to care what she was wearing, only that she was the one wearing it.

She took the opportunity to push his shirt off his shoulders and then begin on his shorts. The thing she wanted most was tenting them something fierce, and she paused to run her fingertips over the bulge; she giggled when it twitched under her caress. Then she undid the button, and then she undid the fly, and then she slipped her hands down his sides and into the waistband of his underwear. Another push and he was naked, his beautiful cock pointing to her like a compass arrow.

But he wasn't idle. He reached behind her back and, with a single motion, undid her bra. Another motion had pulled the straps down from her shoulders, and with a single shrug she sent it falling to the floor. He stepped away enough that he could look down at her bare breasts; the delight she saw in his eyes filled her with pride, and she arched her back to push out her chest for his inspection.

And her panties...well hell, her panties were just in the way. She pushed them down and stepped out of them, and when the came together again they were naked just like they were supposed to be, flesh against flesh, heat against heat, the whole lengths of their bodies. When they kissed it felt like her entire body burst into flame.

Her arms went over his shoulders and around her neck and his hands grabbed her ass in a tight grip. He lifted and she instantly understood -- she hopped up, pressing her body to his while she wrapped her legs around his waist. His arms went under her knees and her hands went back to her ass, and an instant later he was lifting her just a little more, then letting her drop a bit --

His cock was aimed perfectly. It slid into her as she descended, filling her up, impaling her on it helplessly. The biggest thrill she had ever had whirled through her as she thought, He's in me, where he belongs, where he'll be again and again and again for years and years...