Totem Chapter 10: Attempted Shotgun Wedding (Patreon)

I fell into a trance. As I sank deeper and deeper into the task of channeling the natural energy into my core, the world dropped away from around me. I didn't even feel the lingering exhaustion, which was big, considering I had spent the entire night fighting.

When my task was complete and there was no more energy to condense to my gosling core, I opened my eyes and felt as if I had enjoyed a good night's sleep.

That was confusing because I was certain that I hadn't slept. However the play of light filtering down from the trees shifted, and the shadows had deepened. It was early evening.

This meant that it was nearing dinnertime. My stomach grumbled, and for a moment, a memory stabbed through me: Coming home to my dingey apartment back on Earth and popping something into the air-fryer microwave. Thirty seconds later, my ration was all cooked and ready to go, the cheese perfectly baked on top.

Things were different here. For one, there was no refrigeration, so unless you had a deep root cellar—which wasn't even common due to the nearby swamp—you wouldn't be able to store many fruits, vegetables, or meats, unless preserved in salt.

Dinner was a time-consuming affair, and I had to return to the house to help prepare it. It was a hands-on, all-hands-on-deck situation.

I stood up and stretched, only then realizing that Ash was gone too. The spot where he had been sitting showed no imprint in the grass. This meant that the grass had sprung back up. He’d been gone for some time.

I hope he hadn’t changed his mind about taking me to the city.

With that sudden stab of fear that came along with that though, I knew I had made my decision. After all, I was an adult now, at least technically, by all the rules.

It was time for me to act like one.

I went back home, noticing that the crew had been hard at work, cleaning the rest of the damage from the Deformed. The bonfire of corpses had turned to ashes. Once we were certain they had cooled, we'd spread them out on the new field.

Look at that: the Deformed were useful after all.

Some of the reinforced shutters were in the process of being fixed too. I waved to a few of the workers as I passed.

I knew what I would be doing tomorrow. Home defense was going to be a priority because sometimes Deformed attacks came one right after the other.

I walked into my house and stopped short, the greeting still on my lips.

Annika's mother still sat in the living room and was being served tea by my mother, who had a sour look on her scaly face.

My dad sat across from her, looking awkward with his big furred hands on his knees, appearing like he would rather be anywhere else.

Had they heard what Ash had offered me? Had Ash told them? And why was Annika's mother still here?

I assumed that she would've taken her daughter back to her own house for care. That was how things were done around here, in a place where there weren't any hospitals.

"Seth, you're back," my father said, with notes of relief in his voice.

"Yeah…" I said, awkwardly, then decided that politeness was the best course of action. I looked at Annika's mother. "I hope your daughter is doing well?"

The woman flinched and then leveled an angry gaze at me.

Uh-oh.

"Unfortunately, Annika’s suffered quite a lot,”  My mother said, as if I didn't already know. I was there.

I felt a new wave of guilt. "I'm sorry.”

"If you had any honor at all, you would take her as your wife," Annika's mother blurted.

My mother turned to her, annoyed. "That's too far."

"It's true. She’s in his bed. How can you account for that?"

"She's in my bed because she's sick, and it was the only bed available," I said, shocked. "You think that I—"

"No one is saying that," my mother cut me off, and my father rose from his seat to stand behind me, one big hand on my shoulder.

I had grown up pretty tall, but my dad dwarfed me in size. I appreciated his silent support now. Horrified, I looked to my mother. After all, she had been subtly pushing me towards Annika before.

But to my immense relief, she looked as angry as an alligator forced to defend her nest as she turned to the other woman.

"My son saved your daughter's life. If you had any integrity, you would be down on your knees, thanking him."

"Thanking him?" Annika’s mother replied, aghast. Her fury carried her up to her feet. "If he had any mercy at all, he would have let the Deformed finish their job—"

My mother made a spitting sound, half an alligator hiss, cutting her off. "Enough!"

Annika’s mother stopped and backed up with mincing little steps, looking very much like a bird.

For the first time since I had really grown to accept this place, I wondered if mixing with their totems like this was okay for human beings. How close were they to becoming Deformed?

But the rest of me just stood there, horrified and in shock.

My father rumbled out, "You are distressed. And rightfully so, this has been a terrible day for us all. It’s not right to expect poor Annika to make the journey to your home in her current condition. Therefore, we will take care of her tonight. Hopefully, when you return tomorrow..."

She opened her beak-like mouth as if to speak, but my father continued with a slow, but powerful gesture with his hand.

"When you arrive tomorrow, hopefully, you will be in much better spirits. I find that I am, when the sun rises."

My mother took the teacup from the other woman’s hands. "The door is that way," she said, gesturing.

The look Annika’s mother sent to me was full of hate, but it was tinged with despair and pleading, too. She wanted me to agree to marry her daughter. I'm sorry, but that was not happening.

Finally, all dignity gone, she turned and left.

We all stood there, waiting until we heard the last door slam. My mother let out a breath and swore.

"I knew that would be bad," my father sighed, "but I still hoped it would not be like that."

"I don't want to marry Annika," I said.

Again, my father made that little gesture. "We don't expect you to. She's desperate, and to some people… what happened to Annika will be a strain on their family."

"It’s not our problem," my mother said. And wow, she had certainly done a 180. I guess things were different when the perspective daughter-in-law was messed up by the Deformed.

I winced internally, chiding myself. "How is Annika, really?"

"We've done what we can for her, but the wounds are extensive," my mother said. "She’ll almost certainly lose an eye. There may be some salvaging of her looks when she acquires her totem if she works hard. But…"

She didn't finish. The changes could take years, and they married young in this neck of the woods. Annika would pretty much be an old maid if she didn't get hitched by twenty.

Poor girl.

My mother shuddered. "It is not your problem, Seth. And you did do the honorable thing by saving her life."

"I know I did," I said, though inside, it didn’t negate the fact that Annika had some tough times ahead. If I'd only been a little faster, if I had taken from my totem like everybody else for that instant easy power boost, I knew I would've been.

Almost as if my mother heard me, she came over and gave me a hug, just like she used to do when I was small. She had been treating me more and more like a man over the last couple of years since I hit puberty, but now she squeezed me tight before standing back, proud. "So, tell me about your totem.”

"And why, if you have a totem, you don't have a divine mark," my father added.

Ash had explained a little of this before, but it seemed that my dad wanted to hear it again. He was kind of like that. So I decided to fudge the truth. I had been keeping the secret of eating those pills for a long time, and I wasn't going to spill it now.

"I don't know," I said. "I'd always felt like there was light inside me, and I just got into the habit of condensing it into a ring."

"You could see the energy? That is a divine thing.” Mom exchanged looks with my father. "You didn't tell us?"

"Totems are personal," I said with a shrug, using their words against them. Felt good.

Reluctantly, they nodded.

Here came the interesting part. I braced myself. "I was visited by a goose totem."

“A goose?" my mother looked at me, then looked at my father in surprise, almost as if she could not believe her ears. "Oh, well… you have always been useful around the farm--"

"No, Mom, it's a Canada goose. It's a wild goose." I hadn't really given it a lot of thought yet, but the distinction felt important to me. I wasn't a domestic goose, or a goose that one raised and slaughtered for a good meal or used for its feathers.

My totem was a wild creature. One that traveled around. One that could not be tamed.

"It's a Canada goose," I repeated.

She frowned. "A Canada goose? I've never heard of that one."

And I realized with a tiny little shock that I had not seen a Canada goose around here, either. Of course, I hadn't seen one back in the old domes. All the wildlife on Earth was dead, and saved in DNA caches. But I had seen pictures of them, and I knew down to my core — literally — what I was.

Thankfully, my father stepped in.

"It's his totem. He is sure. Our Seth is a different breed of goose." He gazed at me with assessing, new eyes.

"And you don't have a divine mark? Not even a quill feather?" she pressed.

"That's… the other thing," I admitted. "My totem told me not take from it, but to feed it."

They both blinked: My mother quickly, my father slow. Naturally, Mom was the one to speak first. "That's ridiculous. How will you do magic?"

"Apparently, it's a different way to cultivate."

"Mara," my father said, "you know there are different ways to cultivate."

"Yes, but what if it's one of the dangerous ways? What if he—"

"I don't think that this will turn me into a Deformed," I said. "Ash, the man I met earlier, said there were places in the city I could go."

"That's nonsense," she said.

"Mara, he is an adult,” my father rumbled. “It’s time for him to make his own decisions.”

"But he doesn't have any divine marks. How will anybody know he’s not a child?"

It wasn't fear; she didn't think of me as a kid, and she believed me, but she was afraid for me.

I really wished Ash was here to help explain this stuff, but I understood that he probably didn't want to get involved in the family drama.

"I'm going," I said. "When Ash leaves, I will too. But I'll be back, I'm sure. A goose is my totem, right? They, uh, migrate."

My mother's eyes filled with tears, and I felt bad. Maybe I shouldn't have joked.

But then she hugged me again, fiercely. "Forgive me. It's hard to see that my son has become a man."

Well, I guess they believed me. This was their blessing.

I found I was blinking back tears of my own. "Will you be okay with the farm?"

"Yes, of course," my father said. "But what will you do?"

"I don't know," I thought, but inside, I did know.

I wanted to find the Deformed and level up. Cultivate up? Whatever, I wanted to get stronger. And I wanted to search for some damn answers to why I was here on this planet in a new body.

I had waited long enough.

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