Here we go at last. For those wondering about my other projects, this really didn't take much away from those. I've been working on this one for quite a while, and I only just had to clean it up to account for changes and clarifications I've made thus far.
It was all so sudden. A wooden buggy came flying over the next rise, trailing dust from its wheels, and then slamming back down to the earth with a tremendous clatter. It somehow remained intact, but don't ask me how. But that wasn't the only thing to get my attention.
Chocoboes.
Two of them.
Pulling the wagon.
And a pink haired woman in the driver's seat. But for some strange reason she didn’t seem to have any legs - but I just told myself that I would figure it out later.
I rolled down the window and pulled to the side. Fortunately, she pulled up and stopped right next to me. I was taken aback because she had red eyes that glittered like jewels.
"What's going on?" I asked, trying to keep cool even though I was simply floored by how beautiful this girl was.
"There is a great thunderstorm coming!" she said breathlessly. "We must seek high-ground, quickly!" She then blinked and looked at my truck. "What in the great maker's name is this?"
"Worry about that later!" I replied. "You know a safe place?"
"Yes,” she replied, all business once more. “Can you follow in this thing?"
"Yeah, it's self-propelled."
"Truly?"
"Yup."
She blinked as she processed that, then seemed to shelve the topic for later.
"Very well then. Let us make haste!"
With a snap of the reigns and a cry of "YE-AAAHHH!" she was off, leaving me to turn my rig around and go after her. We followed the road until we turned off on a path that I hadn't noticed coming in, and then began to zig-zag through switch-backs, making our way up the hill until we reached the top.
Looking around, I saw an old farmhouse and barn. The place seemed like it had been deserted for years. I followed the wagon into the barn and shut the engine off.
"This place yours?" I asked.
"Tis not. This place has been abandoned for years,” she said as she got out of the wagon.
But that action of hers made my heart stop for a moment as I saw how she got out.
She flowed.
And following after her was a long serpentine body with the most brilliant pearl-white scales I’d ever seen, offset with ruby-red scales in symmetrical patterns reminiscent of an Indian King Cobra’s hood markings, flowing along her entire length.
She had to be at least twenty feet long.
“The elderly couple that lived here went to live with their children in Saint Antonius,” she said, knocking me out of my reverie. She hadn’t noticed my distraction because she had immediately set to securing her birds. “They left this place standing in case someone like us needed it. My Dodo's should be fine here for the moment. Let us go to the house - there should be a water pump inside the kitchen and we can refresh ourselves."
##
The house was a nice one, with plasterboard walls and wood trimming everywhere. However, it was completely empty. Only dust and cobwebs occupied the place.
The Lamia-woman had stopped only to get a pair of wooden drinking cups from her carriage. Once inside, she worked the pump in the kitchen, which was indeed an old fashioned hand-operated well pump, and filled both glasses with cool, clean water.
“Thank you,” I said as I accepted the cup and drank from it. As I had expected, it was that clean and pure water that the Edwards Aquifer was known for. Once I had taken a few drinks, though, the Lamia-woman leveled a piercing gaze at me.
“Who are you and what manner of contraption is your conveyance?”
“Do I even get to know your name first?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
She sighed at that, mildly annoyed, and said, “You may call me Tsukiko. Now, will you please answer my question.”
“Alright. My name Bradly Busby and that is an automobile.”
“An... automobile?” she said, trying the word on her tongue. “What is that even supposed to mean?”
“It's an automatic machine that is mobile,” I stated. “Automobile.”
“A machine?” she said in obvious surprise. “Such things are rare and considered things of simple utility or whimsy. How on earth is a machine such as yours possible?”
“Well...” I said slowly, trying to think. “Do you have steam engines?”
“I wouldn't even know what that means,” she said in befuddlement.
“Hrm....” That left me stuck. If they didn’t even have steam engines, then it was going to be very difficult for me to explain things. I decided to see how easily she would catch on. She seemed smart enough. “Have you ever noticed how a lid on a pot of boiling water will bounce and jiggle?”
“Yes?” she said in askance to continue.
“Well, that's because the steam being created by the boiling water is moving it.”
“But why would that be important?” she asked, still a bit confused.
“Because, you can use that to exert physical force. And force can be utilized in a machine - a self-propelled machine.”
She blinked at that. It wasn’t exactly a light-goes-on-in-the-attic moment, but more like the sort of epiphany where you say, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Tell me more,” she said in a tone that clearly indicated that I had her complete and undivided attention.
With that, I sketched out the basic schematic of a steam engine, showing her how steam, when contained, will pressurize and can be used to move cylinders, which in turn rotate wheels. I showed her that with such a thing, you could build a machine called a tractor - a machine so strong and powerful that it can do the work of a twenty-mule team in minutes.
“This could be phenomenal!” she cried out as the implications began to sink in. “Such a device would drastically reduce need for mana in many aspects of farm work! Just a simple water heating spell would be all you need! And with just that, you could pump water and irrigate entire tracts with something like this! Or even haul entire harvests!”
“That's the idea,” I said with a smile.
Her face then become thoughtful once more.
“But how do you know of such things? Who's family are you a part of? I cannot imagine that a man of your intellect would be permitted to wander so freely! Surely you must be the first-son of a Deca-family! But if so, where on earth are all your guards at!?”
I blinked as she went on and on, but finally I was able to get a word in edge-wise.
"I'm not from this world."
“What!?” she cried out, whirling on me with serpentine speed. “Surely you jest!”
“No. One of your gods took me from my original world and brought me here. He wanted me to... stir things up, I guess.”
“A god?” she asked narrowing her eyes at me. “And what God did this?”
“He never gave me his name. He only said that he was a god of commerce and trade.”
“Is that so? Excuse me for a moment.”
She then took off, her coiling body quickly propelling her down a hall and into another room. A bit unsure of what to do with myself, I followed at a discreet distance, stopping at the doorway. Inside was a small, cozy room with what looked like an altar of some sort - the only bit of furniture in the entire house. Before it, she had lowered herself, bowing her head. I could faintly hear her voice, but not what she was saying. Suddenly, there was a soft, warm glow within the room centered over the alter. After a moment, the glow faded and she raised herself up, turning to face me with a shellshocked look on her face.
“So,” she said quietly. “You were not lying.”
I shrugged, feeling a bit helpless as to what to do for her. “I'm a brutally honest man.”
She scoffed at that. “Quite. So, what now?
“How about you tell me about this Deca-family business?” I asked.
“You do not have ranked families where you are from?”
“No. Where I'm from, social status is determined purely by monetary wealth.”
“Strange,” she said as she considered that. “But what about the number of wives one takes?”
“In most places back home, we're monogamous.”
“Monogamous!?” she cried out in horror. “How!?”
“What do you mean how?” I asked without any heat. “One woman to one man, and that's pretty much it.”
“And what of all the other women?”
“Other women? They just have to find their own man.”
She looked at me in confusion for a moment. “Either there is something fundamentally different about your world, or you're being intentionally dense. And you do not strike me as the latter. What is the ratio of men to women?”
I shrugged. “About one man to every one-point-two women. It varies from one place to another. In a country called China it's especially skewed toward the male side because they instituted a one child per family law. It backfired on them because they never counted on the fact that families will prefer a male child over a female child, and abort the pregnancy if they discovered it was to be a female.”
Her eyes continued to widen as I went on.
“Dear heavens! You really do not know!?”
I blinked as I considered the conversation up to this point. “The male to female ratio is really skewed here, isn't it?”
“Here there are five women to every man!” she said.
I took a moment to absorb that tidbit before I reacted. “Augh, that bastard! I knew he was hiding something when he mentioned that the women here would be to my liking!”
“He said that!?” cried out Tsukiko in shock. And then she seemed to reconsider before saying, “Well, I suppose he would say that. He is probably not wrong.” She then got a worried look on her face. “But this would be very bad for you.”
“How so?” I asked, a bit puzzled.
“You are a completely unattached male without the backing of any family. You have no protection in a world where men are precious beyond measure!”
I was getting a very bad feeling about the way she worded that.
“Uhm... How bad?” I asked, fearing the answer.
“You could be shackled into a most unfavorable union. Without a family to advocate for you, any couplet or single woman could claim you as a husband so long as they can prove to the magistrate that they have the greatest ability to care for you.”
I grimaced at that. “So basically I'd go to whoever the highest bidder is?”
“In a sense, yes,” she said in agreement. “And if there is even the slightest hint of your intellect... All of the most wealthy couplets and singles will beat a path to Saint Antonius to claim you!”
I groaned as I rubbed a hand over my face. “Ai-yi-yi.... How the hell is it that things are like this!?” I asked.
The lamia sighed. “It is an old tale. The oldest that we have in our history. Thousands of years ago, there was a great empire led by a mage who had the ear of many of our gods and goddesses. He was a loved and cherished ruler, fair and just to all.
“But that changed one day. The woman he loved deceived him. She pretended to love him, but in truth only sought his wealth. What was even worse was that when she betrayed him, she intentionally spited him, gloating over how she deceived the great mage-king.
“And so, he went to the Gods to seek out a curse. Something that would force all women of our world to cherish their men.
“Most of the gods told him he was not in his right mind. But one of them, the God of War and Destruction, gifted him with a horrible curse.
“It only lasted for a single night, but in that night, all around the world, two-thirds of all males perished - struck dead wherever they were. And many of them were males in ruling families. Such was the disturbance that many empires collapsed into dust and ruins. The few that survived had lost all of their knowledge and were very nearly reduced to living as savages.
“It took scholars many centuries to puzzle out what had happened that night, but now we are certain. All males who had a tendency to sire just as many or more sons than daughters had perished. And from this point forward, most childbirths were female, with only a few rare and treasured males born each generation.
“Since then, this has been a Woman's world. Though we are tied together by a small number of men, we hold the reins of power in this world.
“Indeed, men are treasured... but they are often treated more as precious things rather than people. Like prized breeding studs. It is better here than in most other countries. We're quite progressive in ensuring the rights and protections of men. But I would not wager on your odds had you arrived in any other country.
“Even so, you would be in grave peril. Your only hope would be that the women that win their bid for your hand are women of fine and upstanding character.”
I had listened to her story raptly, sadly disappointed at the bizarre turn of events in history that had caused this to happen and how it had culminated in the current society. One might think that nominally men would be ruling like kings, but instead the roles had been reversed. Men are the chattel here.
I decided then to take a shot in the dark. Tsukiko was beautiful and highly intelligent. There was also a certain sharpness in her character that appealed to me.
“What about you?” I asked.
“ME!?” she cried out, her cheeks reddening. “Ah... I'm flattered, but I would have no chance at all! I am but a mere trader!”
Only a trader? There was something I was missing here.
“But... Forgive me for being presumptuous, but you have the appearance of a princess to me - those patterns in your scales are gorgeous!”
“Hawa-awaw-awaw!” she sputtered, covering her face with her hands and flushing brilliantly under the praise. It seemed that I had really hit the sweet spot for complementing a Lamia. She slowly began to regain some of her composure, she lowered her hands from her face, only to suddenly look...
...Sullen.
“It is true,” she said quietly. “I am of an incredibly powerful family. But it is in a far off, distant island nation, clear on the other side of the Great Ocean of Tranquility. There, the rules are different. While here in Freeland, there is a limit to the number of women that may wed a man. But not in my homeland. There, men are little better than slaves. Kept locked away. All they are permitted to do is breed. The only real freedom they’re allowed is to dabble in the arts, and no further.
“As for my family... We are of the Great Serpentine Empress - She who is descended of the Goddess of the Moon. I have many, many sisters, and I am among the youngest. I did have an inheritance, but it was a mere pittance. Rather than be trampled upon by my elder sisters and denied the opportunity to ever have a child, I took what little I had and used it to come here.”
I was silent for a moment after that, thinking about how difficult things must have been for her - coming here to this strange nation, having to learn our language and all of its peculiarities, and having to deal with the homesickness she must have felt.
“That had to have been hard on you,” I said in an effort to comfort her. “I’m sorry for bringing it up.”
“You meant no harm,” she said, looking to me with a wan smile. That faded, though, as she turned her mind back towards the present. “But that is beside the matter at hand. What is it that you desire?”
I thought about that for a brief moment before I answered.
“I wish to visit the stars and beat a pathway there for my progeny to follow.”
This is true. I would have loved nothing more than to become an astronaut and visit the other planets in our solar system.
“To the stars?” she said, perplexed. “Whyever for?”
I held a finger up in a wait one gesture as I pulled my messenger bag over and pulled my laptop out.
“This is a bit of advanced technology from where I come from. If it helps, just think of it as an incredibly complex matrix of multiple spells made to carry out multiple purposes.”
“Alright, but I don’t understand what could possibly be.... so.... ....special?”
Her voice hung as she watched the boot up process and the computer’s cheerful greeting as the facial recognition granted me access. She stayed silent as I then pulled up a video file and let it play.
Right away, the message appeared on the screen: “All locations depicted in this short film are recreations of actual places in our solar system.”
“What is this?” she asked in wonder.
“The reason why I want to go there,” I said, just before the late Carl Sagan’s voice played over the speakers over the gentle sound of digeridoos and brass instruments. Depicted were a group of people, steadily making their way along a trail under a brilliant night sky where the Planets of the Solar System were visible.
“For all it’s material advantages,” said Sagan’s voice, “the sedentary life has left us... edgy. Unfulfilled. Even after four-hundred generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood.
After the title, “WANDERERS” appeared and faded out again, a depiction of Earth from low Earth orbit came up. In the middle of the picture, a craft with two spinning rings was gently rocketing up out of orbit.
“What... What is this?” she asked again in a whisper.
“Our home,” I replied reverently. “Seen from many miles up in the sky. This is what our first skywalkers saw as they floated high above the world.”
The video cut to a dark room that was suddenly lit as massive doors opened behind a transparent wall. A man is seen floating inside the space as the Great Red Spot of Jupiter was revealed. From that point forward, Tsukiko had no more words as she was enraptured by the incredible and beautiful images of the alien worlds that lay in our own back yard.
Carl Sagan’s inimitable voice came once again. “We invest far off places with a certain... romance.”
The video cut again to show the frozen surface of Europa, where a space ship similar to the one seen before hovers over the day-night terminator. Seen through the light on the day side, water jetted from geysers the size of volcanoes, turning to hazy ice crystals, softening the light all around.
“The appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival.”
Another cut, this time to a view from within the ice rings of Saturn where an astronaut drifted gently above them.
“Long summers. Mild winters. Rich harvests. Plentiful beam. None of them lasts forever.”
Cut again, this time to an orbital tether with Deimos in the background as an orbital elevator plummets smoothly downward towards a city on the surface of Mars, softly glowing in the night.
“Your own life, or your band’s, or even your species might be owed to a restless few, drawn by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds.”
It cuts then to the surface of Mars. At the edge of a plateau, airships with wide, flat gas bags slowly approach a mesa where Mariners await them.
It then cuts once more to another view on Mars: a rocky ridge where Mariners observe the distant sun, either rising or setting at the horizon.
“Herman Melville in Moby Dick spoke for wanderers in all epochs and meridians.”
Another cut. On a rocky moonlet, domed cities are visible, along with a yang-yang painted in one crater. As the shot pans up, revealing more domed cities linked by a glowing highway along the mountainous ridge, Saturn suddenly appears in the sky, distant but glowing with more brilliance than our own moon.
“He said: ‘I am tormented by an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas...’”
Another cut. An asteroid spinning along its long axis, demarcated by a glowing portal. A line of space ships lie in wait, perfectly lined up to enter the rock. It cuts again to show how this looks from the ship in the lead, and then again to show the interior: a massive tubular space - a landscape that curled up, over, and around itself as aircraft jet along it’s surface, leaving contrails behind them. The space is lit by a massive light source of some kind, simulating the light of the sun, and suspended by a long trusswork running through the center of the space.
Another cut, now to space-suited men trudging along the icy surface of Europa, seen as if from a train, while the marbled surface of Jupiter provided a colorful tapestry and Io hung in the distance.
Then it was Titan, with its murky methane atmosphere that was so dense that people made sport of flying like birds with wings attached to their arms.
On yet another rocky moon, people in space suits drift downward gracefully as they basejumped from a high and sharp precipice. It cuts again to show the view from below, as the men drift, limbs spread wide, silhouetted against the blue orb of Neptune.
And finally, the skies of Saturn from an airship. In the distance, another airship is silhouetted against Saturn’s magnificent rings.
“Maybe it’s a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those are the worlds promising untold opportunities, beckon.”
As the camera pulls back, a deck is revealed where someone in a parka stands behind the railing.
“Silently, they orbit the sun...”
Her face is shown, close up, filling the screen as she gazes in wonder at the world around her. Her mouth cannot be seen because it is covered by the breathing apparatus of the mask she wears, but it can be seen in her eyes: she is smiling with joy.
“...waiting!” finished Sagan’s voice, just before the screen cut to black.
As the credits began to roll, I looked to her and I was not surprised to see that her eyes had welled up with tears.
“That... That’s real?”
“That’s what waits for us out there,” I told her gently. “Your God of Trade? He wants us to explore those places and seek new opportunities. And I think there are other gods that feel the same way as well. Do you understand now why I want to go there so much?”
“Yes!” she cried out. “A thousand times yes! But how could we achieve such a feat? Even the most powerful of magics couldn’t possibly loft us to such places... unless...” Her eyes lit up and she looked to me. “Your devices!”
I smiled. “Exactly. I can give your people the push they need. And it will not take long afterward for us to get there.”
She then shot upright and slithered in circles, clearly agitated.
“Oh, cursed spirits! With this storm we shall not be able to make our way back into the city for two days! Any sooner and we risk being mired!” Her pace then slowed as she then became more thoughtful. “But... We can use this time. You can teach me the essentials. And we can plan on how we are to get you into the city unnoticed.”
“Okay,” I said. “I get that me being a male makes me a prime target, but would I really stand out that much?”
“Oh, for certain!” she replied. “Males are not permitted to travel without a minder of some sort. And before you ask, that person cannot be me. I am known to the guards and they will question why I am returning with a male.”
“Gotcha. I can see how that would be troubling.”
“Indeed. But at any rate...” She then settled down once more and pleaded, “Kindly, may I please see that... thing again?”
I smiled in return. She was beautiful. And if I had read her reaction right, a dreamer like me. It may not happen at all. It certainly won’t happen right away. But even so, I felt that the spark was there.
“As you wish.”
And so I played the video several times over, this time answering the myriad of questions that she peppered me with.
I did think it was strange, though. That I would just happen to find this beautiful Lamia who had that very same itch I did, and so soon at that. But from what I’d been told about this world’s circumstance by Tsukiko, it now came as no surprise to me. My family on both sides had a pretty even distribution of boys to girls.
The gods want that gene to be present once again.
I didn’t mind, though. So long as I was being given the opportunity to achieve my life-long dream, then I’d be more than happy enough to help make as many babies as reasonably possible.
Now I just wondered if it was actually at all possible between a Human and a Lamia.
It was all so sudden. A wooden buggy came flying over the next rise, trailing dust from its wheels, and then slamming back down to the earth with a tremendous clatter. It somehow remained intact, but don't ask me how. But that wasn't the only thing to get my attention.
Chocoboes.
Two of them.
Pulling the wagon.
And a pink haired woman in the driver's seat. But for some strange reason she didn’t seem to have any legs - but I just told myself that I would figure it out later.
I rolled down the window and pulled to the side. Fortunately, she pulled up and stopped right next to me. I was taken aback because she had red eyes that glittered like jewels.
"What's going on?" I asked, trying to keep cool even though I was simply floored by how beautiful this girl was.
"There is a great thunderstorm coming!" she said breathlessly. "We must seek high-ground, quickly!" She then blinked and looked at my truck. "What in the great maker's name is this?"
"Worry about that later!" I replied. "You know a safe place?"
"Yes,” she replied, all business once more. “Can you follow in this thing?"
"Yeah, it's self-propelled."
"Truly?"
"Yup."
She blinked as she processed that, then seemed to shelve the topic for later.
"Very well then. Let us make haste!"
With a snap of the reigns and a cry of "YE-AAAHHH!" she was off, leaving me to turn my rig around and go after her. We followed the road until we turned off on a path that I hadn't noticed coming in, and then began to zig-zag through switch-backs, making our way up the hill until we reached the top.
Looking around, I saw an old farmhouse and barn. The place seemed like it had been deserted for years. I followed the wagon into the barn and shut the engine off.
"This place yours?" I asked.
"Tis not. This place has been abandoned for years,” she said as she got out of the wagon.
But that action of hers made my heart stop for a moment as I saw how she got out.
She flowed.
And following after her was a long serpentine body with the most brilliant pearl-white scales I’d ever seen, offset with ruby-red scales in symmetrical patterns reminiscent of an Indian King Cobra’s hood markings, flowing along her entire length.
She had to be at least twenty feet long.
“The elderly couple that lived here went to live with their children in Saint Antonius,” she said, knocking me out of my reverie. She hadn’t noticed my distraction because she had immediately set to securing her birds. “They left this place standing in case someone like us needed it. My Dodo's should be fine here for the moment. Let us go to the house - there should be a water pump inside the kitchen and we can refresh ourselves."
##
The house was a nice one, with plasterboard walls and wood trimming everywhere. However, it was completely empty. Only dust and cobwebs occupied the place.
The Lamia-woman had stopped only to get a pair of wooden drinking cups from her carriage. Once inside, she worked the pump in the kitchen, which was indeed an old fashioned hand-operated well pump, and filled both glasses with cool, clean water.
“Thank you,” I said as I accepted the cup and drank from it. As I had expected, it was that clean and pure water that the Edwards Aquifer was known for. Once I had taken a few drinks, though, the Lamia-woman leveled a piercing gaze at me.
“Who are you and what manner of contraption is your conveyance?”
“Do I even get to know your name first?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
She sighed at that, mildly annoyed, and said, “You may call me Tsukiko. Now, will you please answer my question.”
“Alright. My name Bradly Busby and that is an automobile.”
“An... automobile?” she said, trying the word on her tongue. “What is that even supposed to mean?”
“It's an automatic machine that is mobile,” I stated. “Automobile.”
“A machine?” she said in obvious surprise. “Such things are rare and considered things of simple utility or whimsy. How on earth is a machine such as yours possible?”
“Well...” I said slowly, trying to think. “Do you have steam engines?”
“I wouldn't even know what that means,” she said in befuddlement.
“Hrm....” That left me stuck. If they didn’t even have steam engines, then it was going to be very difficult for me to explain things. I decided to see how easily she would catch on. She seemed smart enough. “Have you ever noticed how a lid on a pot of boiling water will bounce and jiggle?”
“Yes?” she said in askance to continue.
“Well, that's because the steam being created by the boiling water is moving it.”
“But why would that be important?” she asked, still a bit confused.
“Because, you can use that to exert physical force. And force can be utilized in a machine - a self-propelled machine.”
She blinked at that. It wasn’t exactly a light-goes-on-in-the-attic moment, but more like the sort of epiphany where you say, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Tell me more,” she said in a tone that clearly indicated that I had her complete and undivided attention.
With that, I sketched out the basic schematic of a steam engine, showing her how steam, when contained, will pressurize and can be used to move cylinders, which in turn rotate wheels. I showed her that with such a thing, you could build a machine called a tractor - a machine so strong and powerful that it can do the work of a twenty-mule team in minutes.
“This could be phenomenal!” she cried out as the implications began to sink in. “Such a device would drastically reduce need for mana in many aspects of farm work! Just a simple water heating spell would be all you need! And with just that, you could pump water and irrigate entire tracts with something like this! Or even haul entire harvests!”
“That's the idea,” I said with a smile.
Her face then become thoughtful once more.
“But how do you know of such things? Who's family are you a part of? I cannot imagine that a man of your intellect would be permitted to wander so freely! Surely you must be the first-son of a Deca-family! But if so, where on earth are all your guards at!?”
I blinked as she went on and on, but finally I was able to get a word in edge-wise.
"I'm not from this world."
“What!?” she cried out, whirling on me with serpentine speed. “Surely you jest!”
“No. One of your gods took me from my original world and brought me here. He wanted me to... stir things up, I guess.”
“A god?” she asked narrowing her eyes at me. “And what God did this?”
“He never gave me his name. He only said that he was a god of commerce and trade.”
“Is that so? Excuse me for a moment.”
She then took off, her coiling body quickly propelling her down a hall and into another room. A bit unsure of what to do with myself, I followed at a discreet distance, stopping at the doorway. Inside was a small, cozy room with what looked like an altar of some sort - the only bit of furniture in the entire house. Before it, she had lowered herself, bowing her head. I could faintly hear her voice, but not what she was saying. Suddenly, there was a soft, warm glow within the room centered over the alter. After a moment, the glow faded and she raised herself up, turning to face me with a shellshocked look on her face.
“So,” she said quietly. “You were not lying.”
I shrugged, feeling a bit helpless as to what to do for her. “I'm a brutally honest man.”
She scoffed at that. “Quite. So, what now?
“How about you tell me about this Deca-family business?” I asked.
“You do not have ranked families where you are from?”
“No. Where I'm from, social status is determined purely by monetary wealth.”
“Strange,” she said as she considered that. “But what about the number of wives one takes?”
“In most places back home, we're monogamous.”
“Monogamous!?” she cried out in horror. “How!?”
“What do you mean how?” I asked without any heat. “One woman to one man, and that's pretty much it.”
“And what of all the other women?”
“Other women? They just have to find their own man.”
She looked at me in confusion for a moment. “Either there is something fundamentally different about your world, or you're being intentionally dense. And you do not strike me as the latter. What is the ratio of men to women?”
I shrugged. “About one man to every one-point-two women. It varies from one place to another. In a country called China it's especially skewed toward the male side because they instituted a one child per family law. It backfired on them because they never counted on the fact that families will prefer a male child over a female child, and abort the pregnancy if they discovered it was to be a female.”
Her eyes continued to widen as I went on.
“Dear heavens! You really do not know!?”
I blinked as I considered the conversation up to this point. “The male to female ratio is really skewed here, isn't it?”
“Here there are five women to every man!” she said.
I took a moment to absorb that tidbit before I reacted. “Augh, that bastard! I knew he was hiding something when he mentioned that the women here would be to my liking!”
“He said that!?” cried out Tsukiko in shock. And then she seemed to reconsider before saying, “Well, I suppose he would say that. He is probably not wrong.” She then got a worried look on her face. “But this would be very bad for you.”
“How so?” I asked, a bit puzzled.
“You are a completely unattached male without the backing of any family. You have no protection in a world where men are precious beyond measure!”
I was getting a very bad feeling about the way she worded that.
“Uhm... How bad?” I asked, fearing the answer.
“You could be shackled into a most unfavorable union. Without a family to advocate for you, any couplet or single woman could claim you as a husband so long as they can prove to the magistrate that they have the greatest ability to care for you.”
I grimaced at that. “So basically I'd go to whoever the highest bidder is?”
“In a sense, yes,” she said in agreement. “And if there is even the slightest hint of your intellect... All of the most wealthy couplets and singles will beat a path to Saint Antonius to claim you!”
I groaned as I rubbed a hand over my face. “Ai-yi-yi.... How the hell is it that things are like this!?” I asked.
The lamia sighed. “It is an old tale. The oldest that we have in our history. Thousands of years ago, there was a great empire led by a mage who had the ear of many of our gods and goddesses. He was a loved and cherished ruler, fair and just to all.
“But that changed one day. The woman he loved deceived him. She pretended to love him, but in truth only sought his wealth. What was even worse was that when she betrayed him, she intentionally spited him, gloating over how she deceived the great mage-king.
“And so, he went to the Gods to seek out a curse. Something that would force all women of our world to cherish their men.
“Most of the gods told him he was not in his right mind. But one of them, the God of War and Destruction, gifted him with a horrible curse.
“It only lasted for a single night, but in that night, all around the world, two-thirds of all males perished - struck dead wherever they were. And many of them were males in ruling families. Such was the disturbance that many empires collapsed into dust and ruins. The few that survived had lost all of their knowledge and were very nearly reduced to living as savages.
“It took scholars many centuries to puzzle out what had happened that night, but now we are certain. All males who had a tendency to sire just as many or more sons than daughters had perished. And from this point forward, most childbirths were female, with only a few rare and treasured males born each generation.
“Since then, this has been a Woman's world. Though we are tied together by a small number of men, we hold the reins of power in this world.
“Indeed, men are treasured... but they are often treated more as precious things rather than people. Like prized breeding studs. It is better here than in most other countries. We're quite progressive in ensuring the rights and protections of men. But I would not wager on your odds had you arrived in any other country.
“Even so, you would be in grave peril. Your only hope would be that the women that win their bid for your hand are women of fine and upstanding character.”
I had listened to her story raptly, sadly disappointed at the bizarre turn of events in history that had caused this to happen and how it had culminated in the current society. One might think that nominally men would be ruling like kings, but instead the roles had been reversed. Men are the chattel here.
I decided then to take a shot in the dark. Tsukiko was beautiful and highly intelligent. There was also a certain sharpness in her character that appealed to me.
“What about you?” I asked.
“ME!?” she cried out, her cheeks reddening. “Ah... I'm flattered, but I would have no chance at all! I am but a mere trader!”
Only a trader? There was something I was missing here.
“But... Forgive me for being presumptuous, but you have the appearance of a princess to me - those patterns in your scales are gorgeous!”
“Hawa-awaw-awaw!” she sputtered, covering her face with her hands and flushing brilliantly under the praise. It seemed that I had really hit the sweet spot for complementing a Lamia. She slowly began to regain some of her composure, she lowered her hands from her face, only to suddenly look...
...Sullen.
“It is true,” she said quietly. “I am of an incredibly powerful family. But it is in a far off, distant island nation, clear on the other side of the Great Ocean of Tranquility. There, the rules are different. While here in Freeland, there is a limit to the number of women that may wed a man. But not in my homeland. There, men are little better than slaves. Kept locked away. All they are permitted to do is breed. The only real freedom they’re allowed is to dabble in the arts, and no further.
“As for my family... We are of the Great Serpentine Empress - She who is descended of the Goddess of the Moon. I have many, many sisters, and I am among the youngest. I did have an inheritance, but it was a mere pittance. Rather than be trampled upon by my elder sisters and denied the opportunity to ever have a child, I took what little I had and used it to come here.”
I was silent for a moment after that, thinking about how difficult things must have been for her - coming here to this strange nation, having to learn our language and all of its peculiarities, and having to deal with the homesickness she must have felt.
“That had to have been hard on you,” I said in an effort to comfort her. “I’m sorry for bringing it up.”
“You meant no harm,” she said, looking to me with a wan smile. That faded, though, as she turned her mind back towards the present. “But that is beside the matter at hand. What is it that you desire?”
I thought about that for a brief moment before I answered.
“I wish to visit the stars and beat a pathway there for my progeny to follow.”
This is true. I would have loved nothing more than to become an astronaut and visit the other planets in our solar system.
“To the stars?” she said, perplexed. “Whyever for?”
I held a finger up in a wait one gesture as I pulled my messenger bag over and pulled my laptop out.
“This is a bit of advanced technology from where I come from. If it helps, just think of it as an incredibly complex matrix of multiple spells made to carry out multiple purposes.”
“Alright, but I don’t understand what could possibly be.... so.... ....special?”
Her voice hung as she watched the boot up process and the computer’s cheerful greeting as the facial recognition granted me access. She stayed silent as I then pulled up a video file and let it play.
Right away, the message appeared on the screen: “All locations depicted in this short film are recreations of actual places in our solar system.”
“What is this?” she asked in wonder.
“The reason why I want to go there,” I said, just before the late Carl Sagan’s voice played over the speakers over the gentle sound of digeridoos and brass instruments. Depicted were a group of people, steadily making their way along a trail under a brilliant night sky where the Planets of the Solar System were visible.
“For all it’s material advantages,” said Sagan’s voice, “the sedentary life has left us... edgy. Unfulfilled. Even after four-hundred generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood.
After the title, “WANDERERS” appeared and faded out again, a depiction of Earth from low Earth orbit came up. In the middle of the picture, a craft with two spinning rings was gently rocketing up out of orbit.
“What... What is this?” she asked again in a whisper.
“Our home,” I replied reverently. “Seen from many miles up in the sky. This is what our first skywalkers saw as they floated high above the world.”
The video cut to a dark room that was suddenly lit as massive doors opened behind a transparent wall. A man is seen floating inside the space as the Great Red Spot of Jupiter was revealed. From that point forward, Tsukiko had no more words as she was enraptured by the incredible and beautiful images of the alien worlds that lay in our own back yard.
Carl Sagan’s inimitable voice came once again. “We invest far off places with a certain... romance.”
The video cut again to show the frozen surface of Europa, where a space ship similar to the one seen before hovers over the day-night terminator. Seen through the light on the day side, water jetted from geysers the size of volcanoes, turning to hazy ice crystals, softening the light all around.
“The appeal, I suspect, has been meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival.”
Another cut, this time to a view from within the ice rings of Saturn where an astronaut drifted gently above them.
“Long summers. Mild winters. Rich harvests. Plentiful beam. None of them lasts forever.”
Cut again, this time to an orbital tether with Deimos in the background as an orbital elevator plummets smoothly downward towards a city on the surface of Mars, softly glowing in the night.
“Your own life, or your band’s, or even your species might be owed to a restless few, drawn by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds.”
It cuts then to the surface of Mars. At the edge of a plateau, airships with wide, flat gas bags slowly approach a mesa where Mariners await them.
It then cuts once more to another view on Mars: a rocky ridge where Mariners observe the distant sun, either rising or setting at the horizon.
“Herman Melville in Moby Dick spoke for wanderers in all epochs and meridians.”
Another cut. On a rocky moonlet, domed cities are visible, along with a yang-yang painted in one crater. As the shot pans up, revealing more domed cities linked by a glowing highway along the mountainous ridge, Saturn suddenly appears in the sky, distant but glowing with more brilliance than our own moon.
“He said: ‘I am tormented by an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas...’”
Another cut. An asteroid spinning along its long axis, demarcated by a glowing portal. A line of space ships lie in wait, perfectly lined up to enter the rock. It cuts again to show how this looks from the ship in the lead, and then again to show the interior: a massive tubular space - a landscape that curled up, over, and around itself as aircraft jet along it’s surface, leaving contrails behind them. The space is lit by a massive light source of some kind, simulating the light of the sun, and suspended by a long trusswork running through the center of the space.
Another cut, now to space-suited men trudging along the icy surface of Europa, seen as if from a train, while the marbled surface of Jupiter provided a colorful tapestry and Io hung in the distance.
Then it was Titan, with its murky methane atmosphere that was so dense that people made sport of flying like birds with wings attached to their arms.
On yet another rocky moon, people in space suits drift downward gracefully as they basejumped from a high and sharp precipice. It cuts again to show the view from below, as the men drift, limbs spread wide, silhouetted against the blue orb of Neptune.
And finally, the skies of Saturn from an airship. In the distance, another airship is silhouetted against Saturn’s magnificent rings.
“Maybe it’s a little early. Maybe the time is not quite yet. But those are the worlds promising untold opportunities, beckon.”
As the camera pulls back, a deck is revealed where someone in a parka stands behind the railing.
“Silently, they orbit the sun...”
Her face is shown, close up, filling the screen as she gazes in wonder at the world around her. Her mouth cannot be seen because it is covered by the breathing apparatus of the mask she wears, but it can be seen in her eyes: she is smiling with joy.
“...waiting!” finished Sagan’s voice, just before the screen cut to black.
As the credits began to roll, I looked to her and I was not surprised to see that her eyes had welled up with tears.
“That... That’s real?”
“That’s what waits for us out there,” I told her gently. “Your God of Trade? He wants us to explore those places and seek new opportunities. And I think there are other gods that feel the same way as well. Do you understand now why I want to go there so much?”
“Yes!” she cried out. “A thousand times yes! But how could we achieve such a feat? Even the most powerful of magics couldn’t possibly loft us to such places... unless...” Her eyes lit up and she looked to me. “Your devices!”
I smiled. “Exactly. I can give your people the push they need. And it will not take long afterward for us to get there.”
She then shot upright and slithered in circles, clearly agitated.
“Oh, cursed spirits! With this storm we shall not be able to make our way back into the city for two days! Any sooner and we risk being mired!” Her pace then slowed as she then became more thoughtful. “But... We can use this time. You can teach me the essentials. And we can plan on how we are to get you into the city unnoticed.”
“Okay,” I said. “I get that me being a male makes me a prime target, but would I really stand out that much?”
“Oh, for certain!” she replied. “Males are not permitted to travel without a minder of some sort. And before you ask, that person cannot be me. I am known to the guards and they will question why I am returning with a male.”
“Gotcha. I can see how that would be troubling.”
“Indeed. But at any rate...” She then settled down once more and pleaded, “Kindly, may I please see that... thing again?”
I smiled in return. She was beautiful. And if I had read her reaction right, a dreamer like me. It may not happen at all. It certainly won’t happen right away. But even so, I felt that the spark was there.
“As you wish.”
And so I played the video several times over, this time answering the myriad of questions that she peppered me with.
I did think it was strange, though. That I would just happen to find this beautiful Lamia who had that very same itch I did, and so soon at that. But from what I’d been told about this world’s circumstance by Tsukiko, it now came as no surprise to me. My family on both sides had a pretty even distribution of boys to girls.
The gods want that gene to be present once again.
I didn’t mind, though. So long as I was being given the opportunity to achieve my life-long dream, then I’d be more than happy enough to help make as many babies as reasonably possible.
Now I just wondered if it was actually at all possible between a Human and a Lamia.