by R. Lee Smith
“Beth, Bethie.” The blonde sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Elizabeth Berpins.”
“Pull yourself together, he’s getting nervous. I told him you were tired out from all the excitement, but if you keep having hysterics, he’s going to think you hurt yourself.” Olivia ripped a strip of canvas off a tattered tent to blow her nose into. “Or that one of the others hit you or something,” she added. “You don’t want to get them in trouble, do you?”
That silenced the blonde. She held the canvas in trembling hands, her face streaked with tears.
“Clean yourself up,” Olivia commanded. “Smile at him.”
Beth wiped her face and blew her nose, then peered around Olivia’s shoulders and offered the gulla a watery, quivering smile.
“Is she all right now?” he asked, obviously relieved. “Does she know I won’t harm her?”
“Did you understand any of that?” Olivia asked.
“No.” The blonde sat up, wringing her rough handkerchief in her hands. “Sometimes I can kind of figure him out if he talks slow and points at things, but not much.” She uttered a shaky laugh. “I took Spanish for three years, and I can’t even order a taco! God, I’m so useless!” She began to fold under again, but Olivia gave her a quick, furtive pinch and Beth straightened up.
“First of all,” Olivia said, “not even they know if it’s possible for us to have kids together. Secondly, even if it is possible, no one knows if the whole…hybrid vigor thing is actually going to work. Finally, who’s going to know if it’s you or him having the problem? Pull yourself together, no one’s in any immediate danger.”
Beth sniffed, thought about it, and relaxed a little. It wasn’t much, but it was encouraging. “I guess I don’t have to tell him right away,” she said hesitantly.
“You may not have to tell him at all.” Olivia gave her a pat on the arm. “But for God’s sake, they’re not going to kill us!”
“Are you sure?”
Was she sure? Olivia thought about it and decided that she was. For a dumb reason, maybe, but it still felt true. “My…” It didn’t feel right calling him her captor when she was trying to reassure someone. “My guy says they won’t hurt us. I believe him.”
“That’s what he says.” Beth looked toward the gulla pacing at the foot of the pit. “And I believe him, too.” She sniffed some more, wiped her eyes.
“Will she let me over there?” he asked timidly.
Olivia relayed the question and Beth nodded and held out her arms. He crept cautiously to her and took her up as gently as a child. She sniffled and clung to him, and he patted her back and folded his wings around her as though walling her off from the big, bad world.
Olivia sat and watched, feeling uneasy and a little lonely. For Beth, the problem was over, but for Olivia, the questions remained.
8
Olivia’s captor came, as promised, later. Unfortunately, he apparently meant much later. Olivia passed the day with Beth in the cramped quarters she shared with her gullan guardian trying not to look either impatient or bored, but no one came for her. She had to share their loaf of hard bread at meal times, share the crude toilet facilities (which amounted to a bucket half-filled with ashes), and eventually, share their sleeping pit, too thinly padded with musty goat-skins and canvas tents to be comfortable.
It wasn’t comfortable for any of them, really. Very aware of Olivia’s presence, he was careful not to remove his loincloth, although she could imagine how awkward it must be to sleep in. He and Beth snuggled up together in the warmest sleeping bag, as far from Olivia as possible without physically pushing her out of the pit, while she tried to find a way to fall asleep without the gentle weight and warmth of a gullan wing draped over her.
In the dark of that unrestful night, she finally got up, tripped loudly over a camping cooler, stubbed her toe on a stone bench, and then walked directly into a wall trying to find the bathroom that wasn’t even there. Her muffled yelp of pain and subsequent curses were relatively restrained, but before the end, light flared in the darkness as Beth’s captor thumbed a Zippo and held it up to peer at her. Light should have helped, but instead, the sudden reassertion of reality over where she thought she was disorientated her even further; she backed up into the same stupid cooler and fell flailing into the pit.
Beth slept right through it.
“Are you all right?” the gulla asked drowsily, already beginning to slump back into the pit, although he made an effort at holding the lighter higher.
“I keep forgetting where I am. Can you light a candle for me? And leave it lit? Just in case?”
He grunted and rolled over, reaching to hook a taper from its setting on a nearby bench, and Beth murmured and groped for him. Her little hand found his thigh and clenched on it, very much as a child will do when seeking Teddy in her sleep. The gulla gave her a pat as he lit the candle, then flicked the Zippo shut and settled himself against his human once more. “Better?” he mumbled, braiding his limbs through Beth’s with a complete lack of self-consciousness.
“Much. Thank you.”
She waited uncomfortably as long as she could stand to, then picked up the bucket and moved it to the wall for what little privacy that allotted her. She thought he was sleeping when she returned, but as she crawled back under her goat-skin, he roused himself to ask, “Are you cold?”
Honesty warred with tact. Tact won.
“No, I’m fine,” she said, and tried to wrap herself a little more snugly in her goat and part of a nylon tent.
He grunted again, then pried his eyes open and peered at her. “You are different from my Beth,” he said, sounding somewhat more awake. “Is she younger than you?”
“I think she is, yes.”
“She’s so small,” he observed. “And not strong. I’ve been trying to teach her how to speak, but she isn’t learning.” He studied Beth in silence for a short while, then looked back up at Olivia. “Will her hair grow dark like yours when she’s grown?” he asked.
“No. Humans look different. That’s how we tell each other apart.”
His head tipped. “But you all sound different. You all smell different.”
“Humans don’t hear as well as you gullan, and we have trouble with smells.”
He grunted, dropping his head back into the bedding and nuzzling Beth’s neck until she rolled over and threw an arm around him. “I did wonder,” he muttered. “You have such little noses. How young…” He yawned, rubbed at his snout, and then apparently forgot the rest of the question and simply went back to sleep.
After many cramped, cold, envious minutes, Olivia finally joined him.
9
She woke again to the sound of gullan voices. She opened her eyes and found herself alone in the pit with Beth, who was still sleeping soundly. Olivia turned her head and saw her captor seated on a bench with a lantern on the floor between his feet. Across from him, lacking another bench, Beth’s captor crouched, elbows on knees and wings slightly fanned for balance.
“It sounded that way, but what do I know? I don’t speak human,” Beth’s male was saying. “I know that she was worried about something, but I don’t know what. Your Olivia said it was because she thought I would be angry with her, but I think she was lying.”
Olivia’s captor made a non-committal sound in the back of his throat.
“She was obviously trying to calm Beth down about something, though. I just wish I knew what. She’s been scared like that before, but I thought that storm had blown by.”
“Pregnant women can be nervous without cause.”
“That isn’t it,” Beth’s captor said. “Murgull came by only yesterday. She says women have a scent when they spark. Beth doesn’t have it.”
“A scent,” murmured Olivia’s captor, amused.
“I don’t know any of that woman stuff,” the other grumbled. “If old Murgull told me sparking women shed their wings and feathered nests with them, I would have to believe her. Old Murgull says males can’t
smell mother-scent anyway. She says season-musk is all we can smell.”
“Murgull may be right,” Olivia’s captor said, but he was no longer smiling. “When my Olivia came into her season, I took her like a rutting goat. I thought I would have the wit at least to explain to her, but Great Spirit! Her scent struck me like a spear. Like ten spears! We thrashed all day and night and then some, but her blood came all the same.”
Olivia was aghast. She had no idea that he could smell her period. And she had thought she was being so clever, washing out the bloody rags in secret every morning, so careful not to leave a mark around the chambers. And he knew! The whole time, he knew!
“Discouraging,” the other gulla was saying.
“Worse than that. I think perhaps she didn’t know she was in season.”
Beth’s mate tipped his head to regard Olivia’s captor with a dubious eye. “How is that even possible?”
“I don’t pretend to know. But she didn’t seem to know what was happening and I…I was not kind.” He shook his horns and grunted.
“My Beth hasn’t gone into season yet.” He glanced worriedly back at the pit. “If she doesn’t know she’s having one, how am I going to explain to her? We couple,” he added, giving the base of his horns a self-conscious rub. “She knows about that, but—”
“It is not the same,” Olivia’s captor agreed grimly. “Most of the others have had a season by now. It hasn’t gone well for any of them. That scent…If you think it will be like the scent of our women, prepare yourself for a shock.”
“I don’t want to hurt her. Maybe I should send her to the tunnels for her first—”
“No.” Olivia’s captor reached out and grasped the other’s shoulder in a reassuring, if preoccupied, grip. “Think of healthy young,” he said.
Still frowning nervously in Beth’s direction, the other male gave his wings a nervous flutter. “Old Murgull says it might not happen right away no matter what we do. She says when a woman feels threatened, it can make her belly hard, so she can’t catch sparks. However, I remind you of what I know of females and feathering nests,” he added with a trace of irony.
“That would make sense,” mused Olivia’s captor. “Then, if the threat is a drought or famine, they could not bear a child they couldn’t feed. Hm.”
“So maybe I should take my Beth to the tunnels,” the other persisted. “Just until she understands.”
“No.”
“But if it won’t work anyway—”
“We don’t know that. If there’s even the slightest chance she could spark…” Olivia’s captor set his shoulders stiffly, staring down the other gulla with a hard look that Olivia knew only too well. “You will keep her with you for her season.”
“I don’t want to hurt her, vorgullum!”
“You’ll do what you have to do,” he said.
“Vorgullum!”
“You will do,” he said, very softly, “what you have to do.”
Vorgullum. That wasn’t just another unfamiliar gullan word. That was his name! Olivia’s heart gave an extra-hard lurch before resuming its steady beat. His name. She knew his name! He was Vorgullum!
She must have made a sound, because the voices were instantly silent, listening. She feigned sleep, lying as still as she could. Vorgullum.
“Was that yours or mine?”
“Mine, I think.” He stood, Vorgullum, and she heard him come a few steps closer, enough to look in on her and Beth in the pit. She didn’t move, concentrated on taking deep sleep-breaths, and she must have been convincing, because he just stood there and watched her. It was the other one, Beth’s captor, who ultimately said, “She’s clever.”
“Yes.”
“It’s a little unnerving.”
Vorgullum grunted, or perhaps it was a short laugh. “I know.”
“But she seems like a good…well, person, I guess. She’s kind.” A pause. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
No reply, at least not one that she could hear. Her skin crawled under the weight of their stares; her fingers kept wanting to clutch; her brows, to wrinkle. Olivia gave in and rolled over, away from them, hoping she looked as though she’d done it while still deeply asleep.
“I need to take her home,” Vorgullum murmured, and then he came for her, reaching down to gather her carefully into his arms without waking her.
There was no way she could pretend to be asleep if he was holding her. He’d feel the tension even if she managed to look innocent. So she opened her eyes, raising one hand to shield herself from the glow of his lantern.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said, setting her on her feet.
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I thought you’d be here a lot sooner.”
He started to duck his head, then glanced at Beth’s captor and straightened up again. “I had things to do,” he said vaguely, and gave a nod to Beth, still sleeping soundly in the pit. “Is she well, do you think?”
“I think so, only a little tired. All the excitement of seeing her own kind again.”
It seemed to her that he looked at her for a long time, but in the end, Vorgullum gestured towards Beth’s captor and said, “He says you think his Beth is young. Is she a child? A human child?”
“No, not a child. She is a grown woman, she’s just younger than I am.”
“But old enough for…for a mate?” Beth’s captor persisted, concerned.
“For babies, you mean?” Olivia asked, puzzled.
He brushed that off absently, searching out how to voice his thought. “Is she old enough to couple? To know what it is?”
“Yes, she knows. She is quite old enough for that.”
“Good.” He leaned back in relief, fanning his wings slowly in the close quarters. “I didn’t look closely at you humans when we gathered you that night. I didn’t realize how much smaller she is.”
Puzzled, Olivia glanced over at the sleeping teenager. “Not that much smaller,” she said. Beth was thinner, and lighter in build, but she was just as tall, if not taller than Olivia.
“Not her height,” Beth’s captor explained. “Her shape.” He indicated Olivia’s breasts.
She was too surprised to reply at first, other than to blush.
“I don’t think that has much to do with it,” Vorgullum remarked, looking thoughtfully over his shoulder at Beth. “All the humans look different there, but none of them give milk.”
“Oh.” He didn’t sound disappointed. If anything, he sounded relieved that Beth’s relative flatness was not another indication of her sexual immaturity. When he noticed Olivia’s expression, he added, “Our females are all the same size. When they have young, they swell with milk for feeding. When the child is grown, they lessen. I thought it was the same with humans.”
“We’re different in a lot of ways,” Olivia managed.
“Let us hope,” Vorgullum said quietly, “that we are not so different. Come, Olivia. It is very late.”
She went with him and let herself be carried down the squeezing passage into the tunnels. Once there, he let her carry the lantern as they walked back to his chambers. The sound of their footsteps in the otherwise empty tunnels seemed very loud.
“You impressed the others,” he said at length. “They thought you were very clever. I am the only one with a human who speaks so well.”
“I squeak like a mouse,” she teased good-naturedly.
“Apart from that, I mean.” He carried her up the chimney to his rooms, brought her into the sleeping room, and hung the lantern over the fireplace. He had dinner laid out on the bench by her alcove already. “I thought you might be hungry,” he said, gesturing towards it.
After spending the day trying not to eat someone else’s meager meal, Olivia was famished. She fell on the food eagerly, devouring the apple slices and the cut of beef that came with it, saving the tough loaf of bread for last, as had become a habit with her. The bread filled her stomach, which was the kindest thing that could be said of it, but she dreaded havi
ng to put it there. Hunger was almost preferable to the ache in her jaws that was the inevitable result of her battle to eat the stuff.
It wasn’t the first time she’d wondered where they were getting the bread, but to keep from having to eat it, she asked him.
He seemed surprised by the question. “The women make it.”
“They grow it?” she echoed, picturing with some disbelief a number of gullan with tillers and hoes working the neat rows of a wheat field.
He flapped his wings for a shrug. “There is a…like a basin…on the mountainside where the washwater comes out. A foul place, full of bugs, but the women do something there that makes some good, wet, black earth, good for growing things. This food grows as long as the weather is warm, and the women dry it out and grind it up and make that nasty stuff. Does it hurt your mouth?”
“It can be difficult,” Olivia hedged.
He laughed once, as dry and sour as the bread itself. “My father used to tell me never to eat it in the dark, or I might eat a rock by mistake.” He cut his eyes away. “Or by preference. I hate that food and I wish I had meat to give you, but I cannot spare the hunters yet.”
Because he’d turned them all into wardens, Olivia thought, guarding their human captives.
She ate her bread, hating the silence, and finally dredged up a new question for him, a safe one. “Where does the water come from?”
“Up,” he said vaguely. “The snow never melts entirely from the high peaks, but what does melt runs down and makes little rivers that run through the rock. I forget exactly where the rivers come from and where they go. I could go down to the sigru and look, but I do know it comes from far enough away that it is clean by the time it gets here. Our ancient ancestors made canals for it to flow along so we do not mistakenly drink where we make our waste.”
She echoed the strange word he’d used, realized she’d heard one like it and not too long ago, and said, “Is the sigru and the sigruum the same thing?”
He gave her a startled look, and then a little laugh. “The sigru is where the sigruum does his work. He paints his stories there. Not stories like these,” he added, flicking a claw at an ancient issue of Field and Stream, “although he keeps those as well. Real stories. From the old days. He sees them in dreams.”