The Forbidden Shore

"Three weeks after my eighteenth birthday, Olaf was back in Ostersund. Grandfather was with him, terrified. He gave him, my aunt and my uncle a choice. They would accept five thousand kroner as a bride price and give me to him, or they would blow out grandfather's kneecaps and cut my two cousin's throats."

"I suppose they thought that the money was a fair exchange, under the circumstances. So...I came to America as chattel."

It was almost too much to believe. "But Mom!" I objected. "How could that happen? It was..."

"Yes, Peter," she said quietly. "It was the tail end of the twentieth century. Things were supposed to be civilized," she said bitterly.

"Well, you know now as well as I that all it takes for evil to flourish is for people to not see what's going on around them and for the victims to be afraid."

"After I arrived in Alaska, I was initially treated fairly well. No beatings, no threats of violence against me and none of them laid a finger on me. I'm sure they felt magnanimous, putting a proper veneer on their behavior, but we all knew what was keeping me in line."

"Lars and Olaf made sure that every few months, that I knew that they knew exactly where my cousins were and what they doing, as well as my aunt and uncle."

"It also turned out that Grandfather passed away a few weeks after I was taken, but I didn't know about it for eighteen months."

"I was treated slightly better than a servant, but not much. I got 'married' about three months after we got to Homer and Gunnar wasted no time in making me 'his,'" Mom whispered. "I was terrified and it was a bloody, traumatic experience, but two months later I knew for sure I was pregnant. When it became clear I was carrying a boy, things actually got to be decent up to my delivery, Lars and Olaf actually treating me with something less than disregard and contempt."

"Gunnar only occasionally touched me after we knew I was carrying a child, mostly I think as a way of marking his property, nothing more. He usually was drunk when he took me. I already had some suspicions, even then, that his...interests lay elsewhere, but that suited me fine."

"In the early stages of my pregnancy, I thought about suicide a lot, but in the end, I couldn't do that to the life I was carrying inside me. And then a strange thing happened after SIgurd was born," she said, raising her head to look at me.

"I held the boy in my arms and I realized I loved that child and that come what may, I was going to be a good mother to him. I shifted the center of my whole universe to your brother and then four years later to you as well."

She smiled a stroked my cheek. "You and your brother were gifts to me that allowed me to keep my sanity and I raised you both to put you outside of your father's influence as best I could. Raising you both into fine young men was both my revenge and salvation. By doing that, I could manage to get up and face every day. The fact that your father was gone most of the time only made my job that much easier," she smiled thinly.

"So Gunnar is, I mean was my father after all?" I asked, disappointed.

"Yes Peter, he is, but there is none of his blackness inside of you, min fin sonn," she smiled tenderly, taking my hand.

She sat there cross-legged on the bed, comforter wrapped around her shoulders, smiling sadly. I had a feeling now where her story was going and I felt a chill run down my back and the hairs rising on my arms.

Chapter 18

"Astrid..." I whispered.

"Yes, Astrid. Your half-sister," she said, squeezing my hands.

"I should have told you long ago, sweetheart, I'm sorry," she said, eyes downcast.

"It's okay, Mom. I think I understand, at least a little bit," I said, squeezing her back.

"I just want to know how it happened. Art Swenson was her father, wasn't he?"

"Yes," she murmured hoarsely, her cheeks wet again.

"Take your time, Mom. If you need a break, we can finish another time. It doesn't even have to be today," I comforted.

"No Peter," she replied resolutely. "Now is the time to clear the air, so we can have our new beginning together. No more secrets, ever."

"Sounds good, my kjare mor," I encouraged. "There's nothing you can't tell me, Mom, nothing."

Nodding in assent, she began again.

"It was your father's tradition to make me feed the crew before the start of Red Crab season for quite a few years. He got to show off his property and pretend for a couple of hours to be an actual human being, but he never fooled anyone," Mom said drily.

"Your father was always all about dominance and control, Peter. I think that the only reason he was able to get it up with me was because it was the imposition of his will and the demonstration of his power over me that got him excited enough to perform."

"In any event, there was one particular time when he thought that I let Art Swenson flirt with me, which he of course then took to the usual extreme and convinced himself I was fucking him."

"He threw out my diaphragm and raped me, to show me who was boss," she said calmly. "And then something snapped inside me. Even though I knew if Gunnar caught me for real, he'd kill me, I knew then that I would have my revenge."

"The next day, I basically seduced poor Art. He never knew what hit him. Best of all, though, Gunnar had no idea. He always thought that anything that had happened was based on his earlier suspicions, which were totally off-base."

"I knew it was my fertile time and I had a feeling, an intuition, that if I slept with Art, I'd be pregnant after that. It would be my revenge. Gunnar wouldn't know if the baby had been his or not. Raising another child to love, knowing that he or she shared nothing with Gunnar was a dark, sweet thought."

"When Astrid was born, I knew she was Art's child. I was torn in two, then. Art was 8 months gone by that time, taken by the sea. I cried for a week when I heard he was lost. At the same time, I felt that I had carved out a victory of sorts against Gunnar. My two beautiful boys were turning out to be nothing like their father and I had a third child who wasn't even his."

"How did you know for sure, Mom?" I asked, puzzled.

"A simple blood test, Peter. They took a sample of cord blood when she was born, a routine thing. Astrid was B+."

"You'll have to explain more, Mom, biology wasn't my strong suit."

"I don't know all the details either, but what I was told was that it's not possible for an A+ father and an O- mother to have a child with a B blood type."

"And Dad never found out?" I asked incredulously.

"I don't think he wanted to know, or even cared, Peter, especially when it turned out I was carrying a girl. He never had much use for women, let alone little girls," Mom declared flatly. "In any event, when Art got washed overboard from the Anna, I think your father felt that book was closed. God knows what would have happened if I'd been pregnant with another son."

Listening to Mom talk, it was becoming clear that she didn't have any idea about what actually happened when Art died. I was completely torn. Wanting her to know what the truth was, but not wanting to add to her pain. But when she began speaking again, the problem solved itself.

"I never believed the official explanation of events surrounding Art's death," she said softly. " I always felt in my heart that somehow, Gunnar had to be responsible."

"You're right, Mom," I agreed. "Sean told me what really happened that day. Dad set it up." I went on to recount all the little details and inconsistencies that added up to cold-blooded murder.

Mom sat through my exposition, nodding her head from time to time as I laid out the facts, as though she was checking off these new pieces of intelligence against some kind of mental checklist. At the end, she sighed once and shook her head.

"So many secrets, Peter. So many lies, deceptions, violence and death. Your father and his family were like a foul black hole, sucking in everything around them and warping it to their own evil and selfish purposes. I don't know how I survived it all."

"You're the bravest, best person I know, Mom," I reassured her. "By rights, Sig and I should have followed in Dad and bestefar Lars' footsteps. But we didn't . Because of you. Only because of you. You were strong. You were so incredibly strong," I said with a note of wonder in my voice. "I can't imagine how you managed. I think anyone else would have gone insane, run away or killed themselves. It's amazing," I concluded.

"I survived because my children needed me and because I was protecting what little was left of my real family," she said self-deprecatingly. "It's what I had to do."

I grasped her hands firmly in mine, squeezing hard. "I don't want to hear any more of that talk, Mom," I scolded. "Don't ever sell yourself short like that, ever again!"

"You're the most amazing, loving person I know. Hilda's absolutely right. You so deserve to be happy," I said fiercely, eyes boring into hers.

I held her gaze until she began to smile, just a little.

"And I'm just the guy for the job," I concluded, cupping her chin gently. "It's going to be a lot of work, though, because your good times account is seriously in arrears."

"I estimate it's going to take, oh say, about a lifetime to bring the books into balance."

"Oh, Peter!" she cried, flinging herself into my arms. "Do you truly mean that?"

I nodded and smiled, teasing back, "Actually, I just need a maid with benefits. Somebody who'll cook my meals, scrub my toilet and bend over when I get an itch that needs scratched."

"Lille dritt," Mom sighed, leaning her head against my shoulder.

"Vakre mor," I murmured into her hair.

Hilda returned to the room some time later and saw us snuggled under the comforters, Mom asleep in my arms. She smiled and mouthed, "Later," letting herself out of the house quietly. I was soon asleep myself.

I awoke the next morning with morning wood that would have put a concrete drill to shame, but Mom wasn't in the bed. For a moment, I panicked, but then my nose told me there was fresh coffee brewing and my ears discerned the distinctive sizzle of sausage in a frying pan. Reassured, I hopped out of bed, drained the snake and put on some fleece pants and a turtleneck.

When I entered, the kitchen Mom's back was to me. She was dressed in her usual morning uniform of old man-pajamas and a quilted, slightly threadbare red robe. Her hips were swaying ever-so-slightly as she stirred scrambled eggs in a cast iron skillet.

Although I awoke with one thought (well, lets be honest, what I had in mind didn't really count as thinking, more of an animal impulse and hunger), I somehow forgot that hormonal imperative as I watched Mom, because it hit me then.

I thought, "Jesus, Peter, just how much better can things get? This is your life now. You get to wake up every morning to this incredible woman. For the rest of your days, you lucky sod!"

I realized that right at that moment, I had everything I needed out of life. Everything else after this was just gravy. I felt like a buoyant cork, bobbing in an ocean of perfect contentment. "Remember this," I told myself, almost sternly. "This is one of those moments, the kind of thing you can remember clearly for decades. Savor it, boy, just savor it."

I found myself at her back, my arms wrapped around her, nuzzling her neck.

"Morning, kjare mor," I murmured.

"Good morning, sweet lazybones," she replied, leaning back into my embrace.

"Thanks for cooking, Mom," I said, my hand finding its way underneath the lapels of her robe. As I cupped the soft heft of her breast through the flannel of the PJs, I could feel her nipple harden against my palm. When I traced the slightly bumpy outline of her areola with my fingertip, she moaned and put her hand over mine, moving it away with slight reluctance.

"So you think that you can just sashay in here while I'm hard at work, say a few sweet nothings and cop a feel, eh?" she mock-scolded me, smiling gently.

"That's about the size of it," I agreed smugly.

"You need to learn how to treat your mother with more respect, you insolent young man," she riposted, her smile widening.

I resurrected the best little boy pout I could muster, whining, "Awww, but Ma...I need to get laid. Puh-lease? Pretty puh-lease with sprinkles on top?"

At that point we both lost it, dissolving in laughter. I pulled Mom away from the stove, ignoring her squawks of protest and sat in one of the kitchen chairs, pulling her into my lap.

Arms encircling her waist, I asked, "So what's the plan today, Mom?"

"In fifteen minutes, Hilda's arriving. She'll take you down to Bert's and you'll go with him to pull the truck out of the ditch. After that, the day's pretty much wide open. Now, let me up before the sausage burns, unless you want to go hungry this morning."

"I'm always hungry," I growled, my hand sliding up the inside of her thigh to cup the divine junction of her thighs.

Shrieking with indignation, she slapped my hand and struggled out my grasp, gathering her robe around her defensively, her color high.

"Beast!" she admonished accusingly. "I do NOT need for Hilda to see you bending me over the table again. She'll think we're a couple of exhibitionist pervos!"

"Besides," she said more softly, "I don't want a quickie. I want a couple of solid hours of good son fucking. So eat your breakfast and take care of the truck. Your reward will be waiting, I can promise you."

Heaving a theatrical sigh, I said, "Well, okay, but only because you're my Mom and I love you. You get a pass this time. But don't expect me to be so understanding in the future, being dressed as sexy as you are."

Snorting a single laugh, Mom shot back sarcastically, "Sexy? You're out of your one-track mind, you nasty boy! If you don't watch your mouth, I'll start wearing a union suit around the house!"

"Mmmm, sounds even better, Mom. I love the idea of an 'easy access' flap," I countered.

"Impossible man!" she grumped, setting a plate down in front of me.

"Irresistible mother," I replied.

She sat back in my lap with her arms around my neck. I fed us both from the one plate as we ate in comfortable silence. All too soon, we heard Hilda's SUV in the driveway.

I got my mukluks on and Mom helped me into my coat. Adjusting my scarf, slightly, she pulled me forward into a kiss. "Don't keep me waiting, Peter," she said, licking her lips. "I need my son back where he belongs."

I had to ask one more time, to be sure. "And you're okay now, Mom? I need to know you're all right, that you know what's happened before doesn't matter to me."

She squeezed both my hands, looking straight into my eyes. Her own were guileless and clear. "Every day with you, I get better and heal a little more, Peter. Every day. I used to survive taking things one day at a time. Now I'm going to savor them, one at a time."

"That's my girl," I smiled.

I gave her a son's peck on the cheek. I think she was surprised that I didn't kiss her on the lips, but somehow it seemed the right thing to do, letting her know I was still her son, as well as lover. I think she somehow understood what I was letting her know, even though it wasn't spoken. I could see it buoying her spirits, knowing that as we went forward together, I wasn't going to lose sight of the good parts of our past.

"See you soon, Mom. Love ya."

"Hurry back, son-lover."

Two hours later, by the clock and two months later in lover's time, I found myself back home. Half-running up the stairs, I could hear Mom in the shower. "Perfect," I thought, beginning to strip off my clothes quickly.

Mom must have heard me, because she spoke quickly, her tone brooking no argument.

"Please wait outside, Peter. I'm almost done."

Grumbling just a little bit to myself, I finished stripping down and got under the covers, looking expectantly towards the door. A few long minutes later, Mom came out in a terrycloth robe, her hair in a towel. She looked dewy, fresh and delectable.

She smiled at me sweetly and then proceeded to get dressed, studiously ignoring my surprised expression. In a matter of moments she was fully clothed in her long silk underwear, jeans, a lumberjack shirt and pullover fisherman's sweater.

Still not quite ready to believe she was leaving me hanging, I finally spluttered to life, saying, "But Mom! I thought you said..."

She came over and kissed me, her hand slowly stroking my thigh through the sheets tented over me and my alter ego.

"I have a couple errands to run, sweetheart son. Please be patient. I'm not deliberately trying to tease you," she laughed. "Well, maybe just a leetle bit," she finally admitted.

"Anyway, my errand is for your benefit, so just suck it up and don't whine," she teased. "I promise you'll be glad you exercised some restraint."

"You're a terrible tease, you know, leaving your poor boy hanging like this," I sulked.

"All good things to those who wait, min fin sonn, all very good things," her voice lowered seductively and I shivered at its implied promise.

"Okay, okay," I sighed in defeat. "I can take a hint. Go do your thing."

"And Mom," I added to her departing back, "Stay out of snowdrifts and ditches, please."

I heard her voice faintly before the door to the carport opened.

"Brat!"

I could hardly hold a coherent thought in my head for the first fifteen minutes or so after Mom left. It was a major effort to redirect my thoughts and blood flow to the big head, but I eventually succeeded. I got online and began looking at appliances. I had decided that the first thing I was going to do for Mom was to re-equip her kitchen and get her some of the things she always wanted, so I started doing research.

I got into things surprisingly quickly and before too long, I heard Mom reenter the kitchen. "Hello, Peter! I'm back, my love," she called cheerfully. A few moments later, she came into the room, several shopping bags in her hands.

She set the bags down and gave me a most promising kiss, which had me raised fully and throbbing in less than a minute. Then she broke the kiss and pulled away, to my considerable dismay.

Gathering the bags back up, she broke away with an apologetic smile, saying, "I'm going to get your surprise ready now, Peter. I need a little time to get ready, so please hang on just a little bit more, okay?"

I nodded in agreement, giving her a smile.

That got me another quick kiss and then she got up. Looking as stern as she could, she said, "Now, NO PEEKING while I get ready, alright? If I catch you stealing a look, I'll cut you off for a month, d'you hear me, you big lug?"

Laughing, I nodded in assent. "Yes ma'am, absolutely, ma'am. Understood, ma'am."

"Good, now that we've got that settled, try and relax for a bit. Just think that you're only a few minutes away from Momma knocking your socks off."

"Sadist," I groaned.

"Lille dritt."

When Mom finally emerged from the bathroom a half hour later, I practically had a stroke. She was wearing an astounding white satin and lace bustier that left most of the tops of her breasts uncovered, lifting them into an incredible cantilevered position, her areolae barely covered by lace.

The middle portion was almost corset-like in construction, accentuating her waistline and flowing sensuously over her hips, incorporating garter straps that held up suntan colored nylon stockings that were an absolutely perfect compliment to her skin and hair.

Then there were her panties. My God, her panties. They were shimmery satin with a semi-transparent front panel that showed the smoky outline of her raven bush. I could see that she had trimmed around her nether lips, which were just on the edge of visibility above the gusset, already looking moist and succulent.