Each day she white knuckle gripped the sides of the canoe the whole way, her face in a mask of terror. At night, though, she curled up next to Dag and behaved as any women in the clans were expected to act. To him, it was more than a little confusing. He was able to learn that her name was Nissa, and the words in her language for fire, river, eat, and sleep, but very little else. Not that she was trying to hold back on him, but time was short on land, and no amount of calming seemed to work when she was on the boat.

The girl didn’t seem unhappy with them, and even spared Dag coy smiles when they were on the land, and as close as she slept to him, left him in no doubt that she saw herself as a wife to him. More over, that she wasn’t unhappy with that, as long as he didn’t put her in any boats.

Frustrating as she was about boat travel, Dag found that he actually liked the girl and even respected her sharp intellect. No one with eyes could mistake her for a fool. She was always looking around and absorbing the world that passed them by. At least as much of it as could break through her terror of boat travel. On land she diligently tried to learn English, while providing Dag with her clan’s words for any item he could ask, assuming that he was asking the right questions, or more accurately that she understood the question he was asking.

He felt a little guilty. She was sweet. A bit spoiled, but kind and open to him. She actually tried to make him happy. It reminded him of a teenager with a crush, and with Lavern still weighing on his mind, he felt bad taking advantage of the girl’s efforts. It seemed wrong for her to think that he was her husband, when he already had a wife, and yet, he had no way of explaining what had happened to her because of their language barrier.

Lavern was unlikely to be happy about this, and Nissa was likely to feel betrayed when she understood enough to know what had happened. Dag could see himself stuck between a rock and a hard place, and instead of finding a way out, just smashing both the rock and the hard place just to survive. When did his life become this complicated?

◆◆◆

Out Numbered

Lavern wasn’t happy. “How could you let this happen? Have I displeased you? Have I not given you children and taken care of your home? Do I no longer excite you?”

Dag groaned, this wasn’t the first time he had gone through answering these questions. “Look, how hard is it for you to understand that I didn’t realize what I was trading for until it was ‘too late’ to back out without risking a fight?”

“You say this, but I’ve seen the girl, and she is beautiful!” Lavern pouted.

“You are beautiful. Why are you mad at me?” Dag asked.

“You are choosing to replace me!” Lavern accused.

Dag rolled his eyes, “Of course I’m not planning to replace you! You are driving me a little crazy over this mix up. I’ve not touched the girl, so we just explain that there was a mistake when she understands our language enough to understand.”

Lavern looked at him like he had just threated to kill the girl. “You would just discard her?” The tone of her voice confusing Dag.

Dag shook his head, “No! She can still be part of the tribe, but she just finds out that unlike what her chief had planned, she hasn’t been sold to me for a bundle of trade goods. That she is, in fact a free woman, and can find a husband from any of the people.”

Lavern shook her head and looked like she was in tears, “You would just cast her off like that? She was promised to a clan chief, but you would just throw her to one of your men like a gift?”

Dag blinked hard, trying to understand why he was having this argument. “What? Why would you put it like that?”

Lavern looked at him angrily and snapped, “It is how she will see it, and her father. If his clan really is that big, you don’t want her getting word to him that she was treated so disrespectfully.”

Dag hung his head and rested it on the palms of his hands. He had already tried to explain this to Nissa and been less than successful in conveying his message. Only to come back and get the third degree from Lavern. Complete with shifting reasons for disapproving of his actions. He really was at the point of tossing both of them into a tower and locking the door. In a last desperate attempt to understand what the crazy women wanted, Dag just asked. “So, what do you want from me? Because it sounds like you’re arguing for me to keep her, but will be mad at me for doing so!”

It was Lavern’s time to stop, blink, and rub her hands over her face. “I was surprised by the situation, and was hurt to think that you were getting rid of me...”

“Arg! I’m not getting rid of you, damn it!” Dag roared in frustration.

Lavern shrank down just a little, and he suddenly felt like a heal for shouting. “I know that now...” she said in a small voice.

Still not ready to completely let go of his anger, Dag replied, “Well, at least that is something!”

Lavern was quiet for a long time, and Dag let out a long sigh, “I’m sorry that I lost my temper and yelled at you. You still haven’t told me what you expect me to do?”

Lavern nodded, “The only thing you can do. Be her husband. I was just afraid that you were casting me aside because I wasn’t as pretty, or maybe was getting too old...”

Before she could continue, Dag crossed the room in three strides and took her in his arms, “I was never planning to put you aside. I think you are beautiful. You are the mother of my children. I could no more cast you out than I could cut off my own arm. I was going to send the girl away because I hadn’t sought her out as a bride in the first place. I already have you, after all.”

Lavern was crying and shaking in his arms, “You can’t. It would dishonor her and our clan. It could even cause a fight. You wouldn’t be the first man to have more than one mate. I don’t want to see her hurt, as long as she isn’t replacing me.”

Dag was stunned. Even with Ajax’s situation, he hadn’t really considered it for himself. Yet, if Lavern wasn’t mad about it, or would get over being mad about it anyway, he didn’t see any reason why he should object. He tilted her head up so he could look down into her eyes, “Are you sure you don’t want this just so the two of you can have me outnumbered?” he teased. “Is this your plan to get help trying to hen peck me?”

Lavern fought back a laugh. It felt good to have him joking rather than yelling. She slapped his chest playfully and tried to draw out of his arms. “Oh, like this was my plan?”

Dag just swept her up in his arms, over powering the rather unenthusiastic struggles, and tossed her into their bed. “Quiet wife! I have been away too long to fight with you.” He growled playfully at her, while muffling her replies with kisses. It had been a long time, and Nissa curled up so close with him on the whole way back, had been a temptation that he had thought he was doing right to resist. Still, it had taken its toll, and he needed time with Lavern. Before their world turned on its side, he wanted to reassure her that all of her fears of being abandoned were baseless.

◆◆◆

Culture Shock

Nissa had thought her people advanced, but when she came to live with her new husband’s people, she had the shock of her young life. Not only did they travel on the water without sinking, and sleep under the stick and skin shelters, but the very earth grew up to provide them with caves in any shape they wanted. Plants grew all of one kind, in nice neat rows for them, and even the animals did their bidding. It was magic beyond imagining.

More than that, she watched her new husband go below the sea in a funny suit, and stayed below longer than any man could hold his breath. When he came back, he had a the biggest fish she had ever seen. One that they called a shark, and it lived out in the waters without end.

Water for them obeyed just like the earth and the plants and animals did. It went where they told it, even spraying up in the air as a fountain, and gathering in carved rock pools. Everyone from old to young, and from chief to the lowliest gatherer, all went to those pools, either to escape the heat of the day, or almost always as the sun set.

The vast wealth of these people was beyond her ability to comprehend. If only her father had known before agreeing to her bride price... While all of the exotic things that her new husband had paid for her, had seemed an exorbitant price at the time, seeing the wealth of these people made her feel as if she had been traded off cheap.

When she had first met her husband’s first wife, she had been a little shocked. She chided herself that shouldn’t have been. He was a great chief, after all; she had expected to be treated badly by the woman, as often happened in such cases in her own tribe. To be fair, the woman did seem very upset at first, but over the days they had spent together caring for children and tending to menial tasks, that in her clan was always handled by the lower class of nobility like her, she had learned that the woman didn’t seem to harbor any ill will toward her.

In fact, they seemed to be making more progress with communication than she had made with her husband on the trip down. She was still concerned that he hadn’t taken her in the manner of husbands and wives. When she spoke to the first wife, a woman named Lavern, the woman said her husband wanted to be able to talk to her first. That speaking with his women was important to him, and that he wouldn’t take her to bed as a husband should, until they could talk to each other. This seemed absolutely insane to Nissa, but each clan had a shaman to tell them the will of the spirits of that clan. As the new wife, it was her duty to learn her husband’s ways, not to question them.

She found that it did give her more incentive to learn the language quicker. She wondered if the same was true for him? He did seem very nice, at least compared to many men she had known in the past, her father and brother included. She had seen him angry though, and knew she never wanted to make him angry. Even if Lavern didn’t seem to fear him, she wasn’t about to take the chance. Maybe Lavern had never seen him roar a bear to death?

More Time

Family Life

As the months ticked by, Nissa settled herself in and made her new clan home. She worked hard to pick up the language. More of a struggle was coming to accept the miracles around every corner as normal. She found her spot among the women. Both Lavern and Shirley had made her transition to the clan much smoother than Dag had feared. Ajax’s second wife conflicted with her some, which confused Dag. He would have thought that of all women in the clan, the two of them would have understood the other better, but mostly it just proved to Dag how little he really understood women.

As confusing as American women had been, the women here were completely different. Usually in a good way, but no less confusing. He still found himself outnumbered in any argument, but unlike back home, once he made a decision, both women would simply start trying to make it work. This was especially hard to understand on the few times he had made the wrong call, and they had been right. Never did they undercut him in public, and only rarely did they become unreasonable in private. Crazy? Sure, that was just a given due to the different ways men and women saw the world, but finding himself with not one but two real partners instead of would be rivals was an unexpected boon of living in this world over his own. Beat the hell out of having internet any day of the week.

Not that everything was sunshine and lollypops. There were still small struggles to make sure he had enough time for both of them and the kids. John was growing fast, and the twins were starting to want more daddy time now too. He spent hours each day in writing, and slowly the small library began to grow. That led him to begin carving ivory letters. He first started with a few wooden blocks for the kids. It gave him practice in making the right shapes and having crisp outlines for the letters. Then he started carving typeset out of ivory.

It was the first step toward a printing press. He had left plans for it in a safe place, just in case anything happened to him, but he really wanted it working long before he passed on. He found that the grinding wheels and small drills in the workshop were quiet enough that he could talk to John while working. The boy was clever, and Dag knew if he were going to take over for him one day, that he would need to make sure the boy was ready. So, while he tried to pair the lessons with other work that needed done, he never lost sight of what the primary task was.

When he could finally talk with Nissa, he explained to her that she had a choice in all of this. At Lavern’s urgings, he didn’t tell her that marrying her had been part of a mixup, but instead positioned it as giving her choice in the situation. As much as she had grown on him over the months, a part of him actually hoped she would back out, just for simplicity’s sake. Even so, he was hardly disappointed when she said that she wanted to be his mate, and had come to love his family as her own.

After that first night together, Dag moved to one of the newer towers up on the ridge, and gave the girls and children the lower floor that was only accessible by the upper floor, and put his own room on the upper floor. It allowed Dag to protect the only entrance to his family. It also meant that many nights of the week, the ladies could take turns, either staying with him or watching over the little ones.

John, of course, was approaching the age where he would be too old to stay with his mother, and would need to move to the boy’s quarters, where all the boys training to take their place as hunters and protectors of the clan slept. They ate, slept, hunted together, and basically lived closer than brothers did back in Dag’s homeland. It was Dag’s hope that this familiarity would not breed contempt but rather comaraderie. It was really too early to tell, but with so many young boys in his clan that didn’t have parents as an option, it seemed to be the only logical solution.

The girls tended to stay with their mothers, or Oona in the case of those without a mother, much longer. They didn’t need to build the same sort of bonds as the boys needed, as they weren’t out hunting in packs like the boys. Even so, under Jill’s guidance, they each spent plenty of time each day learning how to shoot the bow and defend the walls. While he wasn’t looking for Amazon warriors, he wouldn’t have them and the children defenseless if the men fell, or starving for lack of a few game birds if the men weren’t available to hunt for them. The girls took to it well, for the most part. They didn’t seem eager to compete against the boys for what they saw as boy stuff, but a way to feed their own babies in time, and protect them... well that piqued their interest quite well.

One of Oona’s cronies had died that summer, and Dag noticed that it took its toll on the woman. She was still as feisty as ever when it came to running her portion of the camp, but he could tell that age was catching up with her. He was glad that she had Jill to help, but knew he would need to find someone else to take over. Jill wasn’t fated to running the orphan’s home. She would be snapped up very soon by one of the young hunters. He could see her just starting to blossom into a young woman. It would still likely be a couple of years, but he could see hints of the woman she would become, and he knew he wasn’t the only one to have noticed.