fandomania | The Adventure continues...

Our eggs:

Our hatchlings:

The Story:

“What???!!!”

“My father raped me and got me pregnant with his child, all at the instigation of my husband.”

“What???!!!”

“I thought you would be disgusted by me.” I started to get up to leave, but Donal held on to me and wouldn’t let me get up.

“Patra! No, love! No, my sweet, poor darling! I am not disgusted with you! I am disgusted with what those monsters did to you! You are the victim! You are not the sinner, but the sinned upon! I am just having a hard time understanding how a father could do such to his own daughter.”

“How will your family take it when they find out that Jayzon is the product of incest? They aren’t going to hear that I was raped. They are going to hear that I had carnal knowledge of my father and because of that I gave birth to an abomination. You may understand that I was forced, but there are a lot of people in this world who think if a woman is raped but conceives a child, she must have wanted to have had sex with its father or else she wouldn’t have gotten pregnant.”

“How is the family going to hear anything, if we don’t tell them?”

“Because there were witnesses. They watched as my father raped me. They even cheered when he penetrated me and when I screamed and cried and begged him to stop. But will they tell the truth in a court of law? I doubt it. I know one of them is here. I saw him, or rather, I heard him yesterday. He was one of the men who took Reuel. And it wouldn’t surprise me if he was one of the men in Riverford who accused me of murdering Jaizel.”

Donal began to curse again.

“I am expecting, any day now, that the next attack on me will be through accusations in the courts. I am positive that I will be portrayed as an incestuous whore, who willingly had sex with my father. How do I know this? Because afterwards, after my father finished with me, Jaizel tortured me with that. Especially when it became clear that I was pregnant. He would tell me over and over again what the penalties were for a woman who was caught in incest. The judge would have the choice of burning her at the stake or having her beaten to death with cudgels. Jaizel would describe it to me detail by gory detail. I am sure that he did it as a new way to torment me and keep me under his thumb. Or as a way to disgrace my family and an opportunity to see me die in the most excruciating and degrading way.”

Donal was quiet for a few moments. “Instead of waiting for the axe to fall, we must take measures to prevent this from happening in the first place.”

“But how? I have no idea how to do that.”

“Neither do I at the moment. In the morning, let us talk with Orlando, and Pahpey and Uncle Haral. Perhaps older, wiser heads can come up with a plan. I may not be good at a lot of things, but even I know that it is better to be prepared for attack than to wait and be surprised.”

“I am sure that you are right, Donal, but I am so afraid.”

“Afraid of what, love? Of what that man may accuse you of?”

“Of course, I am afraid of that. But I am more afraid of what Pahpey and Uncle Haral will think. I am afraid that they won’t believe me; that they will think less of me than they already do.”

“What do you mean love? Pahpey loves you! If he didn’t, he wouldn’t spend so much time with you or ask for your opinions. He has spent more time with you since we arrived than he has spent with some of his great-grandchildren during their whole life so far. He is very taken with you. Yes, he will be shocked about your situation, but he won’t think lesser of you. He will think as I do, that you are a victim who needs help and protection.

“And if he doesn’t, then to hell with him. We then will leave here and go somewhere where no one will ever find us. You and I and all the children. And I will try my hardest to be the husband and protector that I am supposed to be.

“But before we do that, we have to try to fight this, no matter how hard it is to do. I know you don’t want this, but what else is there? Let Jaizel win and finally destroy you? I won’t let that happen. As long as there is breath in my body, I won’t let that happen!”

“All right, Donal, if you think that this is best, I will do this. Will you be there with me?”

“Try and stop me. I won’t let you do this alone. I will be with you every second.

“The first thing in the morning, I will send a messenger to Uncle Haral and ask him to come as soon as possible. He has been part of the Alfarian royal court for many years. I think he will know who to consult and what favors that can be called in.”

We left the studio soon thereafter and went to bed, but sleep wouldn’t come to me. By morning, I was a wreck and it showed.

True to his word, Donal sent off the messenger. Uncle Haral was busy, but would come after lunch.

I tried to involve myself with the children. The older ones went to class at the new school. But even little Reuel noticed my agitation and asked if I was angry with him because of his kidnapping. “Oh, no, sweeting! I am not angry with you! I am just not feeling myself right now.”

The younger children were taking their afternoon naps when word came that Uncle Haral had arrived. Donal came and got me and took me outside to an old gazebo near the lake. It was surrounded by open lawn, so that no one could approach it without being noticed. We would have privacy there.

Haral, Pahpey and Orlando were already seated when Donal and I arrived. Haral immediately stood up and said, “Lady Patra, you are looking very ill. After your ordeals of the past two days, perhaps we should postpone this until you are well again?”

“No,” I replied. “This is something that might only get worse, if we wait. I will be okay.”

Donal put his arm around me, which helped comfort me.

Donal started talking for me and gave a synopsis of my life as the wife of Jaizel. Orlando already knew the stories. Pahpey had heard some of them and had surmised a lot. Haral hadn’t heard them before. His face got angrier and angrier as Donal went further and further into my history.

Haral finally said, “That man is most fortunate that he is dead already. I know that I am supposed to be a man who espouses peace and forgiveness, but tonight, in my nightly prayers, I will be asking the ghods to condemn him to the deepest depths of hell and spend the rest of eternity in torment. But that isn’t why you brought us here is it?”

“No,” I said shakily. “Things got worse.” I then went on to describe how Jaizel had come home with friends one night, how he had dragged me naked from my bed, dragged me to the sitting room where they were, and how I was held down by them and raped by my father, while the others watched and cheered. “And that was how Jayzon was conceived.”

The three men looked stunned. Haral suddenly got up and angrily smashed his fist through one of the gazebo posts. When he could control his rage, he came over to me and knelt in front of me, taking my hands in his. He looked me directly in the face. “And now you are afraid that you will be accused of incest, aren’t you? Why are you afraid of that now? No one who loves you would do that. Your father’s dead and so is that monster of a husband. Why the fear now?”

I looked at him back as resolutely as I could. “Because of Jaizel’s friends, who witnessed everything. One of them showed up at Riverford where we were living at that time and falsely accused me of murdering Jaizel. He is now here in Daihor. He was one of the men who abducted Reuel. He has lied about me once. I am sure that he will again. This time I am sure he will say that I willingly slept with my father. But I swear to you by all that I hold holy; I swear on the heads of all my children that I never, ever willingly slept with my father! And that if it hadn’t been for my children, I would have killed myself that night.”

“I believe you, my dear girl, I believe you. You are in quite a bind here. But you are Family, and I will do everything that I can to help you out of this mess. Fortunately, I know several of the high court judges and I know several very good legal experts. I will call in every favor that is owed to me to get the best deal for you that I can. Will you trust me with this?”

“Yes. Thank you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

“Good. This will take some time. Good deals never happen overnight. I will work as fast as I can, but don’t despair if it takes a week or more.

“In the mean time, Piatrus and you, Orlando, why don’t you use your vast resources and try to find this lying wretch and see that he is eliminated? If he cannot speak, he cannot lie.”

Both Piatrus and Orlando nodded in agreement.

“I will be back when I have something concrete to offer.” And Haral left the gazebo and the compound.

Piatrus came over and sat next to me. He took my hand in his and said, “I am glad that you shared your darkest of secrets with us. I know that it took a lot of courage to do so. You have gone through so much at the hands of your first husband. I am so sorry that you had to go through such hell alone. But you are with family now, and we will be here for you no matter what happens. You will never be alone again.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek and then left also.

Orlando also came over. He put his hand on my shoulder and simply said. “REST ASSURED THAT IF THE PLANS OF YOUR FAMILY FAIL, I WILL BE WITH YOU AND I WILL SEE TO IT THAT NO HARM WILL EVER BEFALL YOU. YOU HAVE MY WORD ON THIS.”

“Thank you Orlando. That means the world to me.”

Orlando smiled and went off to make his plans.

Donal and I were left alone. He took me and sat me on his lap and held me silently in his arms for a long time. I finally broke the silence when I said to him, “Thank you, my heart, my love, my hero. You have helped me face one of my deepest darkest fears. Thank you.”

Uncle Haral still hadn’t returned two weeks later. I found it increasingly more difficult to either eat or sleep. I also found it difficult to deal with my children. They noticed how different I was and I just couldn’t concentrate on what they were doing and saying. Soon, I only went into the nursery to feed the babies. Otherwise, I spent my time pacing the floor of my room or curled in a fetal position in bed. With each passing day, the sense of impending doom sank deeper and deeper over me

Tauntie Rosa must have instinctively known something was going on because she kept visiting me, trying to worm information out of me. From what she said, she was very miffed that neither of her brothers was talking to her. Donal eventually banished her from my room. I know that he was very worried about me because he asked Aunt Suthi to come and examine me.

I could tell that she too was curious, but kept a more professional detachment. She started off by telling me that she had given the boys their three week examination and found them to be healthy, thriving babies. She told me that both Loysa and Reuel had recovered well from their ordeals. She also mentioned that Loysa had potty trained herself. One day she was in diapers and the next she started using the potty chair without having to be persuaded. Hearing that only made me feel worse, because I should have been there to witness such a milestone in her little life.

Donal came in when Suthi had finished. She drew him aside, but I could still hear what she said to him. She felt that I was suffering from childbirth depression, brought on [in her opinion] by too many babies in too short a time. She lectured him on the responsibilities of a man to protect his wife from pregnancy. She also told him to get me out of the house more and to keep me in a “cheerful, happy environment”. She also gave Donal a bottle of sleeping tablets for me to take. Donal kept his temper admirably. He listened to his aunt and said very little. I pretended to be asleep and I heard the two of them tiptoe out of my bedroom.

I lay there unable to move or cry or think. All I could think about was being burned at the stake or dying painfully from having every bone in my body broken, having my still living body dragged through the streets like a piece of garbage and then being thrown to wild dogs to have them eat me alive. I knew that I should have resisted those thoughts. They had been put in my head by Jaizel. He was succeeding in destroying me and I had no idea of how to stop it. I saw the bottle that Donal left on the night stand. It occurred to me that I wouldn’t dream anymore if those tablets did their job. I poured myself a glass of water from the nightstand carafe. I took a few tablets, with some water, and then a few more, until the whole bottle was gone. I was starting to get groggy when I lay back down and closed my eyes.