Chapter 41: The Matriarchs' Inspection
The private jet, the sudden shift from perpetual neon to sprawling, dusty green, the silent driver who never met his eyes—it all felt like a dream. A fever dream. Aidan followed Nala, his translator, along a narrow path through a village of round huts with conical thatched roofs. Chickens scattered. Children paused their games to stare, their eyes wide.
Nala was maybe twenty, with intelligent eyes and a cautious demeanor. She wore Western jeans and a simple t-shirt, but a brightly colored wrap was tied around her waist. “They have been expecting you,” was all she’d said on the bumpy ride from the airstrip. “The offer from the Tanaka consortium was very generous. But the matriarchs wish to… assess the terms personally.”
Now, she stopped before a larger hut, its entrance covered by a heavy drape of beaded hides. The air here was different. Thicker. It hummed with a low, rhythmic chanting from inside, a sound that vibrated in Aidan’s molars. The scent hit him—crushed herbs, something smoky and ancient, damp earth, and over it all, the sweet, cloying smell of incense.
“This is the place of speaking,” Nala said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Do not speak unless they ask you directly. Look at the floor when they first address you. It is respect.”
She pulled the hide aside. The interior was washed in the deep gold of the setting sun, filtering through bamboo walls in long, shifting stripes. Five elderly women sat on low stools in a perfect semicircle. Their robes were explosions of color—vibrant oranges, deep indigos, intricate patterns of green and gold. Their faces were maps of wise wrinkles, their eyes like polished stones. The chanting stopped abruptly.
The silence was heavier than the sound.
One matriarch, her robe the color of dried blood, spoke. Her voice was a dry rustle of leaves.
Nala translated, her own voice steady. “She says welcome, traveler. She says our new friends across the water promise great prosperity. But prosperity must be rooted in strong stock. They wish to see the seed.”
Aidan’s mouth went dry. He understood. Of course he understood. It was the same language, just a different accent. The penthouse dressing room, the corporate board, the sacred hut—all the same damn thing. His body was the contract.
The central matriarch, wearing a headdress of blue and white beads, pointed a bony finger at him. She barked a short command.
“Remove your clothes,” Nala said. A faint pink tinged her cheeks, but she kept her gaze fixed on the matriarchs.
His hands felt clumsy. The zipper of his travel pants was loud in the silent hut. He pulled his t-shirt over his head, folded it, set it on the packed earthen floor. He toed off his shoes. The dirt was cool and solid under his feet. He pushed his pants and boxers down together, stepped out, and stood straight, trying to mimic the stillness of the women before him.
The air touched his skin. He was already half-hard, a treacherous, autonomic response to the intensity of the gaze upon him. As his size became fully apparent, thickening under their scrutiny, a murmur went through the circle.
The eldest matriarch clapped her hands once, a sharp, dry crack. She grinned, revealing a few missing teeth. She spoke rapidly, gesturing at him with animated hands.
Nala listened, her flush deepening. She cleared her throat. “They say the white river clay forms strange but mighty shapes. They say the spirits have blessed this visit. They are… excited.”
Another woman, younger but with eyes just as fierce, leaned forward, adding her own stream of words, her hands shaping curves and lengths in the air.
Nala translated, her voice gaining a hesitant, almost apologetic quality. “For a spear of such… such girth and promise, the number must be six. It is a lucky number. A complete number. You will need six brides. They will select them from the most attractive, healthiest women. To balance the gift.”
“Brides?” Aidan heard himself ask, the word a croak.
The central matriarch nodded vigorously, speaking again.
“Marriage here is not a paper or a party,” Nala explained. “It is a state of conception. You are not a husband until all your wives carry your child. The marriage exists in the swelling of their bellies. Nothing else counts.”
Aidan felt the world tilt. The cool earth seemed to lurch under his feet. Six. Children. The sheer biological finality of it dwarfed every transactional encounter he’d had before.
The matriarch in the indigo robe spoke last, her tone lower, more reverent. She touched a carved wooden pendant at her chest—a figure with exaggerated, rounded hips and buttocks.
Nala listened, then took a small breath. “Our fertility goddess… she reveres the gateway of life. But she also specifically honors the curves of a woman’s backside. It is considered sacred. A direct channel for blessing.” She faltered, forcing the next words out. “To show full devotion, and to ensure the goddess smiles on each conception, you must… you must place your seed in both temples. Each wife. Every day. Until all are with child. This is the requirement.”
The five old women looked at him, their approving smiles serene, absolute. In their eyes, it was the most logical decree in the world. A spiritual and practical instruction manual for the tool before them.
Aidan stood speechless. The dusk light bled across the hut floor, reaching his discarded clothes. The incense smoke coiled in the stripes of gold. From outside, he could hear the normal sounds of the village—a goat bleating, a mother calling, the crackle of a fire—a world continuing, utterly indifferent to the binding sentence just passed upon him.
Nala finally looked at him, her professional composure cracked, revealing a flicker of something like pity, or maybe just stark fascination. “They are sending for the chosen women now,” she said quietly. “You should prepare.”