Olivia

by R. Lee Smith

“Of course they do,” Ms. Africa, Victoria, replied frostily. “That’s the one I was telling you about. That’s Olivia.”

  They all stared at her, suddenly quiet. Olivia stood there awkwardly, feeling a chasm open up between them, pulling her away from the others. She could almost see space stretching out, separating them, making them smaller with distance.

  “Um,” she said in a little voice. “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand why you seem to think that means something.”

  Anita looked around at the others, then picked at some loose threads on the frayed edge of her rough halter. “It’s not you, exactly, it’s just what-all some of the furries say about you.”

  “What do they say?” Olivia asked apprehensively.

  “Oh God, you know. Stuff.”

  “Why can’t you speak as well as Olivia?” Carla muttered. “Christ, I get that one all the time.”

  “Olivia doesn’t need new clothes every day,” said Ellen, sing-song, rolling her eyes. “Forgive me for wanting to change my underwear.”

  “Oh, and my personal favorite—” Karen held up both index fingers to her head, indicating horns, as she adopted a deep gullan voice. “Olivia eats it. Why don’t you? And if you are eating it,” she added, dropping her hands onto her hips, “whose fucking teeth are you using? I lost a crown on that fucking bread, no joke! Eight hundred dollars of dental work right down the drain!”

  “And let us not forget,” finished Victoria, every word dripping acid, “that this is the same Olivia who wants to make certain we all play nice with the animals who have abducted us. Olivia, the good slave, who wants us all to start having nice furry babies.”

  “Hey, that’s not fair,” Olivia said. “All I’m trying to do is get along down here.”

  “And of course, the easiest way for you to get along is make the rest of us look bad.”

  “I’m not making you look anything!” she protested. “You’re doing what you’re doing on your own!”

  Victoria merely cut a thin-lipped smile at her, but Karen angrily said, “What are we supposed to be doing, huh? Lie there and pretend to like it when one of them is shoving his hand up your trap and growling in your ear? I shouldn’t have to ‘get along’ with these things! I’ve been kidnapped, for Christ’s sake!”

  “It’s not going to get any easier unless you give them a reason to start trusting you!” Olivia said.

  “What’s easier?” Carla asked. “Whether you run around in a big cave with a bunch of them or a little cave with just one of them, you’re still in a fucking cave with a bat, aren’t you? Nothing I do is ever going to convince him to take me home.” She shrugged, but her eyes stayed with Olivia and stayed hot. “He doesn’t get to tell me I have to be happy about that and neither do you.”

  Olivia looked at them. Anita dropped her eyes and Ellen had already turned away to pick at little flakes of stone on the bench where she sat, but the other three glared right back at her and she didn’t know what she was supposed to say to them. “It won’t always be this difficult,” she said finally.

  “Yes, it will!” Karen snapped. “I’m pissing in a bucket, goddammit! And that’s never going to change no matter how many times I make happy eyes at that fucking furball! He kidnapped me and I’m going to hate him!”

  The gullan guard on duty today looked over from his post across the cave, one hand reaching for, but not quite touching, the spear leaning up against the wall beside him. Karen glanced that way, then sat back down with a muttered curse and started braiding her hair again.

  “For the rest of your life?” Olivia asked softly. “Can you really hate him for the rest of your life? Because I can’t.”

  “Well, aren’t you the prize?” Victoria sneered. “Aren’t you just precious? Well, let me just tell you something, Olivia. If these monsters want to see a smiling face under them, they can all have you.”

  Carla and Karen snorted twin votes of wordless agreement. Anita and Ellen were very quiet.

  “Well, go on,” Victoria invited, smiling so tightly that the fine surgery scars underneath her chin stood out as white as ice on her furious face. “Defend yourself.”

  “Defend what?” Olivia demanded. “I’m not going to apologize for trying to get along. You’re right, Carla, nothing you do is going to convince anyone to take you home, but hating them might just convince them to put us in chains, so yeah,” she said as Carla began to frown, “I’m getting along with them. Olivia the good slave, you bet, because something tells me that pissing in a bucket isn’t as bad as this place can get.”

  Now Karen frowned as well, although she kept her eyes fixed on the hank of hair between her fingers.

  “Now come on.” Olivia forced a smile onto her face and held out her hand to Victoria. “We’re all in this together, aren’t we? I don’t want to fight.”

  The other woman regarded the hand as if it were a nest of writhing worms. “You are a bat-fucking whore,” she said evenly.

  No one else spoke.

  “Right.” Olivia made the effort to put her hand down without pulling it into a fist and punching Victoria right in her hateful smirking face. “Fine. You win. But this bat-fucking whore is walking out of here. Have fun with your guard.” She turned on her heel and stalked away, leaving them in whispers behind her.

  10

  Olivia made her way out of the main passageway and into the sloping, seldom-used tunnel that was the way to Murgull’s cave, letting anger carry her but trying not to let it carry her so much that she fumed off down the wrong tunnel and lost her stupid self in the bowels of the mountain. Paying attention to where she was going, however, did a lot to cool her internal fires and by the time she reached the end of the passage where Murgull’s secret room should be, her boiling rage had simmered itself down into sulky resentment, and that cooled even further when she realized she didn’t know how to find or open the hidden door. She felt along the wall where she was pretty sure she’d been standing earlier, but couldn’t detect a crack or seam that would indicate an opening. She pushed, but there was no give to the very solid-seeming rock under her hands.

  “Oh hell,” she muttered, trudging to the far side of the wide tunnel, and feeling her way along the full width of the wall, trying to find an indention somewhere which would mark the door. Her hand slipped into a broad hole with a lever of some sort inside. She tugged on it, heard a muted click, and felt the block become somehow loose.

  She pushed again, and this time it fell back easily, gliding on rails about twelve inches deep into the cave. Light poured from around the stone door as the block shifted tracks onto a horizontal running rail. Olivia slid it to one side and came into Murgull’s dwelling.

  “Clever Olivia,” Murgull said. She was sitting on a bench against the wall, watching. “I was beginning to think you would give up.”

  “I don’t give up easily,” Olivia said, closing the door again.

  “Unless you are captured by monsters and taken away to their mountain to breed with them,” Murgull suggested.

  “Well, yes, unless that, but where everything else is concerned, I don’t give up.” Olivia put her hands on her hips with a darker glower than she felt like making. “I was holding onto a really bad mood, and you just ruined it for me.”

  “Old Murgull ruins everything,” Murgull sniffed, a little smugly. “Now come here, little sister. I made a promise to you, and I intend to keep it. Old Murgull lies to everyone, sooner or later, but Olivia will be later. Come and hear the tale of Bahgree, mother of your kind.”

  Olivia sat on the floor at Murgull’s knee, a position that seemed oddly natural to both of them.

  “My story begins when the world was still young, but not so new. The ancestors of my people were fresh as children, and they played as children do, exploring the world the Great Spirit had given them, and all the creatures in it. The Great Spirit was new as well, and like all men new-come to coupling, wished to spend each moment with his prick pounding between Urga’s open thighs, ha! But with ea
ch coupling, Urga conceived, and flew back up the sky to be the moon, leaving the Great Spirit alone for all the days and nights that her belly grew fat, all the days and nights that she grew slender again, for not until her season came upon her once more would she fly down to share the Great Spirit’s endless passions.

  “As it happened, one day the Great Spirit and Urga coupled near a river, unaware that a strange, new soul had begun to grow there, and was watching them. Urga conceived that night, and disappeared into the sky before the dawn, and Great Spirit was left on the bank, enraged with lust. As he lay there, the water began to flow upward from the river, forming itself into a shape inspired from Urga, but reflecting the river’s own nature.

  “It was a shape like yours, little sister, with long hairs that flowed like water from her brow down her back. It was a shape with curves like a winding river, so different from the lean Urga, with breasts as full as a milking mother and hips full as the fullest moon around her tempting sex. This was Bahgree, and she came to the Great Spirit and said in her low, laughing voice that he need not wait for Urga’s return. Bahgree the River Woman was always there, and could flow around him and drown him with passions.

  “The Great Spirit tried to defy her, but Bahgree danced on the water and cast back the light from ten thousand stars, and she was irresistible.” Murgull paused, thinking, and added, “And if the Great Spirit was anything like every other male since, his efforts at resisting her were very short-lived.”

  Olivia giggled.

  “Bahgree came into his arms and she was all she had promised to be. They were like a single beast. Their thrashings built mighty chasms in the ground. Their sighs and moans of passion stirred up terrible storms. The sweat that ran down both their bodies caused devastating floods. But when it was done, the Great Spirit fell back, gasping and weak, and Bahgree slipped smiling back into the water.

  “Every night she came to him, poured herself around his body and rode him to frenzies of lust and madness, and leaving him only when he was too weak to move. With every new day, the Great Spirit only wanted her more, until he trembled with need of her. He did not sleep, he could not eat. He grew thin and pale and sick, but still he fell into her arms and drowned in her embrace.

  “In the meantime, Urga had long since birthed her child and sent it to the gullan to be mortal-born and reared. She waited, growing slim and beautiful in the sky, thinking only of the day when she would return to her mate’s arms. But when she entered her season and slipped from the sky, the Great Spirit was not there, awaiting her eagerly in the customary place. Confused, Urga walked over the world, calling for him.

  “Coupling feverishly with Bahgree, the Great Spirit heard his mate, but could not leave the River’s grip. He cried out with shame and rage and sorrow, but Bahgree only had to move around him and he was lost inside her.

  “With the coming of the dawn, Urga flew back up to the sky, unfulfilled and lonely. Ten seasons came and passed in this manner, and Urga was thin and pale throughout. Every night, her light grew dimmer as she turned further and further away from the world she had helped to populate. Finally, the night came when anger swelled up in place of her sorrow.”

  “Finally,” muttered Olivia, and Murgull burst out laughing.

  “Would not take as long for Olivia to go hunting her mate, hm?” she demanded. “No, it would not! And it would not take Murgull one season, no! If the Great Spirit wants to swim around with Bahgree, old Murgull will find herself another male to thrash with! Any tool fits an empty hand, my mother used to tell me, and old Murgull is very, very good with tools.”

  “Very wise woman, your mother,” Olivia said.

  “I was never so fine in face as the other females,” Murgull replied. “Certainly not after I went in search of others. But I had every male old enough to use his tool crying with his legs crossed at the crook of my littlest claw.” She shrugged her bent shoulders and fanned her good wing. “No sparks ever came to Murgull. Punishment, I suppose, for all those males I stole away from their mates.” She glanced down at Olivia, scowled, collected her thoughts, and began again.

  “Urga walked the world, and this time, she did not bother with calling for her mate. She stalked him like a cougar, with claws hidden but at the ready. And after many days had passed, she found him coupling with Bahgree on the banks of a river.

  “Urga began to be furious, and then she saw how sick and thin and weak he was, even as he thrashed in the River Woman’s grip. Dawn came at last, and Bahgree slipped back into the waters, leaving the Great Spirit unconscious on the shore. Urga ran to him, but when he opened his eyes, there was no memory of her inside them. Urga realized that Bahgree was stealing the life and the soul out of the Great Spirit, and she vowed to have vengeance done. First, she moved the Great Spirit’s sick and sleeping body away from the river. Then, she used her powers to transform herself into the shape of the Great Spirit, and she lay down on the river bank to wait for Bahgree.

  “When night fell, Bahgree rose from the waters, as naked and beautiful as ever, and she moved towards the transformed Urga with a mocking smile. Urga grabbed hold of Bahgree’s arms, then changed back into her true form, and began to fight with Bahgree. Bahgree struggled, trying to go back into the water, for there she would be safe, but Urga flew with her up into the sky and then plummeted back to the ground, pounding Bahgree into the rocks again and again until she pounded all the power out of Bahgree’s body. Helpless, Bahgree fell to her knees in the sand, begging for her life.

  “‘You shall live,’ Urga told her. ‘But the earth will never welcome you again, and you shall have no power over it and its kind. You will be as water, formless and cold, forever cursed.’ And then she kicked Bahgree in the side and sent her scurrying away into the water.

  “Now,” Murgull continued, “You would think that would teach Bahgree a lesson, but Bahgree was angry now, and she wanted revenge. With her watery body, she returned to the Great Spirit while Urga whelped her new child up in the sky. Even without her powers, Bahgree could not be resisted, and the Great Spirit coupled with her for many days, until he sparked inside her.

  “When Urga came back to the world and found Bahgree’s belly swollen with child, she was furious, at the Great Spirit as well as Bahgree. Urga ripped a handful of fur from the Great Spirit’s back. ‘To remind you what you should avoid!’ she spat, and threw the fur at Bahgree’s sex, where it remains to this day.

  “But Bahgree had what she wanted. She bore a little, bald female child in her own image. Wingless, hairless except for the hair that flowed down her back like water, and the curse Urga had placed on her sex. That child was the first true human, and all of your kind are born of her. Bahgree’s daughter, like Bahgree herself, continued to breed among Urga’s children, seducing males away from their mates and driving them mad with passion.”

  “That’s kind of a scary story,” Olivia said slowly. “Is that…Is that really what gullan believe? That humans are descended from…from a demon?”

  “Old stories.” Murgull shrugged. “Legends. Was the first elk truly born from the hollows of a tree that Tovorak the First One struck with his spear? Were the first fish truly beads of semen that spilled down Bahgree’s leg as she crawled back into the river, eh? Long nights and cold winters have a way of making stories, and stories have a way of changing from one age to another.”

  “Don’t you have any other stories about humans?”

  “Many.”

  “True stories?”

  Murgull eyed her, pulling and scratching at the loose folds of her neck. “A thousand years ago, they say, when this tribe was new, one of its hunters spied a human female bathing, and was so inflamed with desire that he stayed all night, watching her. For nights, he followed her to her tribe and gazed on her, until he went mad with wanting her and carried her away, here to Hollow Mountain. For days and nights, he lay with her in a secret lair, and at last she caught his spark. But the crying of the child drew many ears and his tribe discovered her. The
leader cast mother and child both from a cliff and killed them, driving her mate so mad with grief that he cut his wings and threw himself from the same cliff, so that he could lie with their broken bodies forever.”

  “Do you think it really happened?” Olivia asked.

  “I have never found anyone who did not believe it,” Murgull said. “Especially now, because it says our kinds may breed together.”

  “Cheyenne…One of the other humans said that there’s been some bad feelings from some of the other gullan who don’t have human mates.”

  “True, very true.” Murgull rubbed at her neck. “Feelings and more than just feelings. There has been talk, dark talk, angry talk. They fear you, yes, fear your human powers and the madness you hide in your smooth bodies, but fear does not keep them from wanting to bury their little pricks in a nice, tight hole.” Murgull sneered, then gave Olivia a thoughtful sidelong stare. “This Cheyenne, eh? Does she call herself the Mojo Woman?”

  “No, that’s someone else. And you don’t have to be afraid of Mojo Woman anyway.”

  “Afraid?” Murgull straightened sharply, incredulously, then blew out a gust of her witchiest laughter. “You think old Murgull is afraid of that poison-spitting fool? Ha! Ha ha! I have crushed more than one snake in my days, oh I have! I fear nothing in all this mountain, and nothing under your human sky either. Ha. But she does your kind no good with her talk of trapping souls.”

  “I know. I only just learned my mate’s name, after all this time.”

  “And you are the first, I think.” The old gulla eyed her, rubbing at her neck. “Brave man, to give a daughter of Bahgree such power over him. He must truly trust you.”

  “Maybe he just finds me irresistible. He told me my name was like water to him. He compared me to a river.” Olivia looked up, hurt. “Does he really think of me that way? Like Bahgree?”

  “And is it so terrible to be irresistible? Is it such a curse to drive men mad when they come to your pit, eh?”

  “I guess not,” Olivia grumbled. “Sure feels that way sometimes.”