by R. Lee Smith
“Now when I come to the pit, she is there before me, holding out her arms with a look of fire and air in her eyes. She moves all around me, she cries out and freely takes her pleasures from me. Here!” The thump of a fist sounded once. “Here, my chest still burns where her hand pushed me down—pushed me, I say—so that she could have her way.”
Olivia couldn’t help but smile. His insistent, half-hummed words were weaving a magic of pure longing. She could feel the collective lust in that room rising like smoke into the air. Old Murgull was a genius.
“She’s in season,” someone said quietly.
“She is not!” Vorgullum insisted.
“No,” said another, the madwoman’s caretaker. “She’s overwhelmed by his mighty mountain.”
“Go back to your own human mates,” Vorgullum urged. “Give them praise. Give them gentle hands. Look into their eyes and see if they will abandon themselves as my Olivia has done.”
“Show me the spark,” Cheyenne’s captor said grimly, “and I will do as you say. Give me proof that any of this is worth the effort, and I will tumble mine into my pit and keep her there for days, but my mate is no Olivia.”
Mutters of agreement answered that.
“I’m sorry, Vorgullum,” someone else said. “But he’s right. If I used gentle ways on my human, she’d have my stones in one hand and my eyes in the other. Until I see a human belly made hard with gullan child, I won’t even try.”
“I’ll try,” said another stranger, but in a dubious tone. “Hell, it’s been one month, she’s ripped out half my damn hide, and I have no shame left at all. What exactly are you doing in the pit?”
“You have to look at her,” Vorgullum replied at once.
“Look at her? I can’t take my eyes off her! She’s trying to kill me!”
“It’s a different kind of looking, I think,” said a second voice.
“No, no,” said that easy-going, rolling baritone. “By all means, let’s stand here and discuss it all night. I’m sure the herds will wait for us. Go on, Vorgullum, you were saying?”
More laughter and the rattling of weapons as spears were taken up once more. Olivia slipped away down the tunnel as the hunting party moved out, smiling to herself. It seemed that she had bitten Vorgullum, to use his own words, and now he was biting others. That could only work out well for her.
14
Olivia went back to the commons first and peered inside. The other women were still there, all but Judith, and most of them were finishing up the mid-day meal.
“You’re back!” Sarah J. said, surprised.
Olivia came all the way into the cave. “I just couldn’t stay away from your happy faces. Where did Judith go?”
“She wasn’t feeling well, so she went home. Where were you?”
“Pining for want of your pleasant company.”
Amy batted her eyelashes. “We took a vote,” she said. “Your new name is Noglagumms. Finger-Lickin’ Good. What are you naming your fella?”
Olivia sat down with the others, weighing risks, then shrugged and said, “His name is Vorgullum.”
“Vor—” Amy began, grinning, and then her expression melted into one of amazement. “Is that his real name?” she asked, astounded.
Olivia nodded.
“How did you do it?” Amy asked.
“I spun him a web of sexual ecstasy and forced him to tell me.”
“No, seriously,” Amy persisted, leaning forward.
“He just did it one night,” Olivia said with a shrug. “I kept asking and I guess he finally decided he could.”
Beth nodded. “Wurlgunn told me the same way. It’ll happen. It’s just, you know, this whole Mojo Woman business.”
“Vorgullum,” Amy murmured. “I’ve heard that name before. Great Scott! He’s the leader of the tribe! You’re the Captain’s woman, Olivia!”
“Yeah, I know. Try not to hold it against me.”
“Hey, luck of the draw,” Sarah J. said with a shrug. “It could have been any one of us. Of course, with my luck, my man’ll be the gullan equivalent of a ditch digger.”
“Popularity isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, believe me.”
“I heard about that,” Sarah J. remarked. “Anita told me all about Ms. Viktabitch’s little snit. She’s not exactly pleased to be thought of as ‘your’ human, but she admits it’s not your fault they do.”
Olivia scowled. “Yes, well, it would have been nice if she’d said something, instead of sitting there and letting that bitch bite my ass.”
“You shouldn’t let her get to you,” Amy commented, leaving her bench to come sit beside Olivia.
“Well, for crying out loud, it’s not like I went to bed that night saying, ‘Gee, I hope I get swooped off my feet tonight by a big, hairy bat-man and carried off into the mountains.’ What does she expect me to do, just pretend none of it is happening? I’m twenty-four, for God’s sake! That’s a hell of a long time to pretend!”
“You’ve got a point,” Amy replied calmly. “I’m twenty-three, but I have to admit, I’m still entertaining pleasant thoughts of rescue and/or escape. Never gonna happen, of course, but it helps to pass the time when all I have for company is a deck of cards with four missing diamonds.”
“Don’t forget the sex,” Sarah J. said archly.
“Who could forget that?” Amy asked as Beth blushed and giggled. “When do they even give you the chance?”
“Too true,” said Sarah J. “Every night, my aching back. And frankly, although my man isn’t too shabby as far as equipment goes, I don’t think he’s read all the way through the operator’s manual. And God knows I must make him nervous because he still can’t get through it without apologizing. That kinda kills the mood, you know?”
“It do, don’t it?” Amy mused. “Take my guy, for example. For the first three days, all he did was go on about how he didn’t want me, wasn’t interested in me, didn’t find me the slightest bit attractive, but he had to do it. Over and over, so earnestly. It was really hard on my self-esteem. Finally, I said, ‘Look, pal, I’m no prize, but I’m all you’ve got, and if I were you, I’d be trying to make me feel as romantic as possible.’”
“What did he say to that?” asked Sarah J., smiling.
“He just about fell out of the pit trying to tell me how devastatingly attractive I was all of a sudden. Oh, he was praising everything. My eyes, my teeth, my toes, my friggin’ ears! Honest to God, he’s sitting there waxing rhapsodic about how the freckles on my nose are the most amazing freckles, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I burst out laughing, and he sat there for a few minutes and then went, ‘Heh heh,’ and that just got me going harder.” Amy shook her head. “So I kind of tossed my hair and said, ‘Come on up here, cowboy, and ride this hoss.’ I don’t think he quite got the reference, but he sure got the message.”
“Mine doesn’t speak not one word of English,” Sarah J. announced. “It’s a damn good thing I picked up gullanese so quickly, otherwise neither of us would know what the hell the other one was going on about. Do you know how long I had to play charades before he realized I had to find the bathroom? And then what do I get?”
“A bucket,” said the other two in perfect unison, prompting Olivia to start and stare around at them.
“A bucket. To think that I worked two jobs through four years of college just to piss in a bucket. Oy vey. But I can’t blame him for that,” she added. “He has to use the bucket, too.”
Beth raised her hand like a child at school. “Speaking of which?”
Both Amy and Sarah J. pointed at a particular side-passage.
“You better take a candle,” Amy said as Beth stood up. “It’s not a long walk, but the ground drops away. God give me strength to get used to public unisex bathrooms,” she said in an aside to Olivia. “But at least the one down here has running water. Of course, it’s running all over the floor, but it is running.”
Olivia murmured something and did not mention she had one just like it in the privacy of
Vorgullum’s lair.
“I can’t complain about the man much at all,” Sarah said after a while, gazing thoughtfully at the wall. “The fur takes some getting used to, but at least it’s not nasty, shaggy, smelly yak-fur. And really, he went so far out of his way that first night to make me comfortable. He gave me a blanket. He gave me a tent. He showed me a place in the corner that could be all mine, and gave me a candle. He arranged all the things that I brought with me in a place where I could see them.” She paused there, because Beth was coming back, and once the other woman had settled herself back on the bench, she went on, “Then he got undressed, pointed at himself…you know, down there…then pointed at me…same place. He looked so grim, like he was getting ready to muck out the chicken coop.”
Beth snickered.
“What do you say to an enormous…thing… pointing you in the eye?” Sarah J. demanded. “It was the first time I’d even seen one that wasn’t circumcised! Now, keep in mind, this is still the first night, and I was still a little woozy from whatever it was they slipped in our water. So, he climbs in the pit and makes himself comfortable, then reaches for me, all business-like, and I don’t know what happened next because I fell asleep.”
All of them erupted into laughter.
Sarah J. shook her head, the apologetic effect ruined slightly by her smug smile. “Talk about a major faux pas. He couldn’t even look me in the eye the next day. He didn’t touch me again for damn near a week, and when he did, it was so half-hearted, I couldn’t help laughing at him. You want to talk about killing the mood?” She seemed to think about this to herself, caught between wonderment and amusement. “Can you imagine how devastating that has got to be to a man’s ego? To have the woman you’re making love to fall asleep?”
“Well, dammit, you were tired!” Amy said grandly.
“Exactly, but he wasn’t convinced. Like I say, he had no English, I had no gullanese. We were a hell of a match.”
“It couldn’t have been all bad. At least the food’s kosher.”
“This is true,” Sarah mused. “How proud my parents would be.”
Beth leaned back on her hands and wriggled her petite chest. “Speaking about the first time,” she announced dramatically, and everyone gave her polite and undivided attention.
“I was wasted for forever after they first got me. Honestly, I don’t even know how long. So it was a long time before he even tried anything. I mean, he slept in the same pit with me and stuff, but it wasn’t the same. About the time I decided I wasn’t hallucinating this whole thing was the same night he decided I was all better and it was time to get busy. So I look up one night after dinner and he’s getting naked. I guess I must have freaked out a little, because he started making all these nice, soothing hand gestures and kind of humming at me, and I started to relax and he started to come toward me…” Beth paused theatrically, then grinned. “And then he did a total belly-flop right on top of me. Knocked the breath right out of me.”
“Bonzai!” laughed Amy.
“That’s sure what I was thinking, but no, he just tripped.” She shook her head while the others laughed. “He’s so clumsy, I just can’t believe it. He’s always tripping over things and whacking into benches, and dropping back into the pit and smacking his head on the edge of it. I spend half my time checking him to see if he’s bleeding.”
“Maybe he needs glasses,” Amy suggested.
“I don’t know what the trouble is,” Beth said. “He went out hunting elk the other night and one of them gored him all the way across his chest! It isn’t very deep, but it goes from his right shoulder to his left breast. He just gives me his ‘Aw, shucks,’ expression, but when I think of him flying around with spears, I get goosebumps.”
“Amazing that they would take him on a hunt, considering the reputation that he’s got to have,” Amy remarked.
“I know, I know.” Beth sighed. “But he takes it so personally when they suggest that he stay behind. Hunting is this great sign of manhood or something. And he knows that he’s clumsy, that’s the worst of it. He always feels like he has to prove something. He has to steal more food, and bag the biggest game, and get the most sex, and just be better than everyone else.”
“Is he?” Amy asked innocently.
“Is he what?”
“Better than everyone else.” Amy wiggled her eyebrows up and down.
“I don’t know,” Beth returned. “I haven’t tried everyone else. But the day’s young.”
“What goes on here?” a male’s voice called to them.
“We’re trading tribal secrets,” Amy called back in their language. “Come and join us.”
“I shouldn’t stay.” The male was not so big as Vorgullum, and was graying along his back and at the base of his wings, but his horns were much more impressive. He also favored his right leg, which had a strangely unhealthy sheen to the fur there. In one hand, he carried a much-battered metal pail packed with apples and loaves of bread, which he held out as if to show him his pure motives for peeking in on them. “I only wanted to see that you had food.”
“Someone took care of that already,” Amy replied. “But sit a little, please. I want to show you off.”
He eyed the other women, but eased onto the bench next to Amy and sat, holding the lunch-bucket and looking awkward.
“This is my mate,” Amy announced. “Look on him and tremble.” A subtle nuance in the last word indicated a shudder of arousal rather than a tremor of fear. The gulla glanced at her, amused. “See the marks of valor he wears, bravely gotten from pit and prey. Mostly pit.”
He covered his eyes briefly, but fanned his wings out expansively, suggesting that he was not entirely displeased with the description. “Has my Amy been telling you stories all this time?” he asked, pained.
“Yes,” Olivia replied, straight-faced. “But we do not believe her. It would take ten men to lift the pick she claims you mine with.”
He looked up sharply, suspicious. Olivia had not used the tones that made plain a pun, but by the little snorts that escaped the small circle of straight-faced women, he had to be fairly sure that it had been one.
“Well, I told you he was big,” Amy commented, keeping up the joke. “And after all, the tunnel is so deep, you would need a big pick to mine it.”
Beth nearly lost it. She was turning red by slow degrees, tears of suppressed laughter welling up in her eyes. She tried to hide behind Sarah J., whose shoulders were twitching in an alarming manner.
“I move my share of rock,” the male agreed warily. “Yesterday, there were two big boulders—”
That was as far as he got before Beth and Sarah J. broke out in fits together. He studied them, confused. “What is the matter with them?” he asked.
“We don’t know,” Amy said seriously, regarding the laughing pile of women as though she’d never seen them before. “They’ve been doing that all morning.”
“Tell us more about the boulders,” Olivia suggested, and Amy made a snerking sound, despite her expression of polite interest. “Were they big boulders?” she inquired.
Amy began to tremble minutely.
“They were huge boulders,” replied the male, setting down the food so that he could gesture with open arms to indicate the exact size.
Amy underwent the hilarity equivalent of spontaneous combustion, rolling off the bench in howls to join the others on the floor. If he had been confused before, he was baffled now.
“I sure would like to have seen those boulders,” Olivia said wistfully. The other four went into renewed hysterics.
“I could show them to you,” answered the male, looking down sharply at the women, who set up simultaneous howls. “They’re not as big as before, but—Great Spirit, woman, what has gotten into you?” he demanded of Amy, who had begun to beat on the floor with her fist.
“Never mind her,” Olivia said, flapping one hand in Amy’s direction. “Show me your boulders.”
Amy rolled onto her back, grabbing herself aro
und the middle and shrieking with laughter.
The male glanced down at her, half-worried, half-confused, then held out his arm. “You are Olivia, yes?” he began. “I’ve heard of you. Good things.”
“Oh my God, I’m gonna die,” gasped Amy in English.
“I’m flattered,” Olivia replied, ignoring Amy. “I’ve heard good things about you, too.”
He led her out of the commons and into the maze of tunnels, letting Olivia’s flashlight go before them, although he didn’t seem to need it. “Your mate talks of you sometimes.”
“Does he?” Olivia murmured, smiling. “And what does he say?”
The male cut her an embarrassed glance. “Oh, this and that thing. How clever you are in speech. How friendly and…active. He hopes to see you catch his spark very soon.”
“He might get his wish.”
“If the Great Spirit wills it. My Amy, she wishes for a daughter. I would take any child, any child at all, but Amy says, ‘A daughter I can understand. I never knew much about boys, and I never liked them much, either.’” He limped along in silence, and then said, “I am old to be made a father for the first time. I think I am older now than my own father was when he saw the last of my brothers born, and I was the eldest of six.”
“Maturity is very attractive to humans,” Olivia said, and he gave her an odd look.
“That is exactly what my Amy says.” He brought her down a set of carved steps and into a wide tunnel, hung with lanterns. All around were sounds of picks striking stone, voices raised to one another, and rocks dropping heavily onto rock. Some stopped their work to look at her, but most only rested their eyes and let their bodies continue to toil.
“What are you mining?” Olivia asked curiously, watching the workers watch her.
“Oh, nothing. Not here, anyway. We take out the metal when we find it, of course, but between us, the metal-maker has enough raw ore in his stores to last ten thousand years. No, this tunnel has always been here. We’re just making it bigger…smoothing it out…” He glanced around and lowered his voice to something scarcely above a breath. “Make-work, to say the truth. To make old fools like me feel useful. Not all of us can hunt every night the way we used to.” His eyes shifted to a much younger male with withered, stunted wings. “Not all of us can fly.”