by R. Lee Smith
“I see.”
“A man is a man in his heart first, not his hunting trophies. Your mate knows this. He is a good leader. Here.” Amy’s mate brought Olivia into a side-passage and displayed the remains of what had truly been enormous boulders.
“There is a good-sized cave past them,” he said, motioning to the darkness beyond. “And water, which might be good. And a strong draft, which means good air and maybe light. We need to bring logs and shore up this tunnel before we clear the opening, but you can see how huge they were.”
“They’re still huge,” she said honestly. She had to stand on tiptoes to shine her flashlight around the chamber beyond. “Did you actually break them up by yourself?”
He flexed his whole body, an impressive sight despite his obvious age. “There are years and years left to this old gulla,” he said, in the oddly purring voice Olivia was beginning to associate with flirting. “My Amy tries my strength a thousand times more than any cavern full of boulders.” Suddenly, he seemed to remember that he was speaking to a female, and a human at that, and backed up, looking flustered. “What I mean to say is—”
“You don’t need to explain,” she said, smiling. “Human females can be very… aggressive.”
He nodded, looking at her with a new gravity. “Tell me, Olivia, what can I do to make my Amy happier here? She doesn’t complain, but I know she still cries sometimes. Is there anything I can bring her? I know what she has lost, but there must be something I can do, something to make all of this…at least a little easier.”
“All I can tell you is that my own biggest enemy was boredom. The human-meets are nice while they last, but the rest of the time, we’re all alone. If you can borrow a book from one of the others, I am sure she’d appreciate it. Give her something to do, a game or hobby, or even work, anything at all.” A thought struck her. “Bring her a handful of different colored stones from the river. Bring a pouchful.”
He looked doubtful, but nodded.
“Um, what goes on here?” someone asked curiously. “The humans are not supposed to leave the commons.”
Amy’s mate flinched a little, fanning out his wings as through trying to shield her from sight, but of course, the tunnel was now lined with gullan, and even those who still pretended to be working were looking their way, not at her so much as at him. Amy’s mate scowled, then raised his head (and his horns) and folded up his wings in two short snaps. His thunderous expression dared anyone to challenge him, and when no one did, he took Olivia by the arm and turned around.
She didn’t turn with him. A gentle hand on his released her, and she took a few steps towards the other gulla, who seemed to be having trouble deciding where to look. The sound of picks and scraping stone had now entirely ceased. She didn’t look to see how many people were watching; she supposed they all were.
“I know who I am,” she said quietly. “I know where I am and who I am with. And I know who I am going home to. I have his approval. Do I really need yours?”
Amy’s mate folded his arms and found a stretch of wall to lean on, watching. The other gulla shifted on his feet, muttering and rubbing self-consciously at the base of his horns. Beyond that, no one moved or spoke.
“There was a time when we needed to be watched,” Olivia admitted, and her thoughts could not help but drift toward Cheyenne and Maria. “But that time has to end if we are going to be tribe. Do you agree?”
He bent his head in a ready nod, keeping his eyes averted.
Olivia turned around. “I think I will go,” she told Amy’s mate. “But you don’t have to come with me if you’re busy. I’m sure I can find the way.”
“As you will,” he said mildly, and showed her the palm of his hand in what was either a salute or half a wave.
The other gullan working in the tunnel squeezed themselves flat to the wall as she passed, and she heard the whispers start up immediately. “Who was that?” someone asked, and the last thing she heard as she climbed out of the tunnel was Amy’s mate proudly answering, “That was our leader’s mate.”
CHAPTER SIX
TRIBE
1
Several days passed in the dark fathoms of Hollow Mountain, perhaps even weeks, and they were, for the most part, good days. She supposed she was rationalizing if she could come to think of them that way and believe it, but it didn’t feel like rationalizing. It was a very different life from the one she’d led before, that life in which she’d had family and a job and running water and TV, but that didn’t make it a bad life, really. The food was tough and came either dried and leathery or stewed and watery altogether too often, but it was nourishing food and she never went hungry. Moving about in the caves meant a lot of walking and a lot of climbing, but she was proud of her growing strength. She divided her days between the ever-more frequent human-meets and Murgull’s often terrible company, and sometimes, having the freedom to go anywhere she pleased, chose to stay in her lair and wait for Vorgullum to come home to her. She tried to be a good mate to him when he was there, not just a sexual partner but a friend, and she knew that he was pleased by her efforts.
The days passed. In the dark. Without the sun. But they were good days.
And then came the night Olivia was shaken violently from sleep. She woke in immediate panic; Vorgullum, like most if not all of his kind, believed that the dreaming world was as real as the waking one, and those pulled from it before their time risked losing their soul in the unknowable void between the two. But it was not Vorgullum’s face she saw looming at her over the top of a flickering candle. It was Murgull.
She was, thought Olivia as she draped herself in a blanket, extremely upset. One might even say furious.
“What is it?” Vorgullum asked, dazed, pulling a flap of hide around his waist.
“Bolga is with child,” Murgull spat.
“What!” Vorgullum dropped the hide and sprang out of the pit, now completely oblivious to his nudity. “How?”
Murgull reached up and slapped him. “How, you festering little wart! Some rutting male has been pounding at her hairy shanks, that’s how!”
Vorgullum wrapped his loincloth around his hips, fumbling with the belt pouch. He already looked angry, more so by the moment. “Who?” he said tightly. “Who put that life inside her? Who is breeding deformity and death inside my mountain?” His voice rose steadily, thick with fury. “Who is it that has defied me and sired a new monstrosity among my people?”
“Bolga cannot say.” Murgull looked fierce and frustrated at once. “I don’t think she knows. She says she was hot and couldn’t sleep, so she went out. She says she met a man who took her into a ‘little place’ and ‘sat on her’. Bah!”
“Where was Horumn?” Vorgullum roared, really roared. Olivia stared at him and saw a monster for the first time since the night she had been taken. His horns were low, his hands were claws, and his eyes in the low firelight were blazing red. “Where was my Eldest if not in her place to prevent this?”
“Where were you, then?” Murgull fired back. “Has she not as much right to sleep as our great leader? There are more than Bolga to hold watch over during the dark hours when the males in your charge, ha, your charge are prowling for an open hole!”
“And she never saw his face.” Vorgullum raked one hand back between his horns; the slick fur there stood up in spikes, like the hackles of an angry wolf. “She has let him put death inside her and still she will protect him!”
“Bolga has clay for brains,” Murgull said, rubbing at her neck. “If she says she did not look, she did not look. She is too stupid to lie.”
“And too stupid to breed! What new horror will she bring upon our heads?” He started to stalk away, and then whirled back and aimed a claw at her, inches from her glowering good eye. “Bring Horumn here at once,” he snarled.
“And what will you do when you have cut away the Eldest from all our lives?” Murgull demanded. “Chain the females to the ground and place a guard around them? And when they all go into se
ason together, what guard do you trust not to rut with all of them, and bring thirty new brothers and sisters dead and bloated into the world?”
Vorgullum towered over her, breathing hard.
After a moment, in a much-restrained voice, Murgull said, “What is to be done?”
“Nothing,” he spat. “There is nothing more I can do, damn you!”
“About the child,” Murgull prodded.
“Nothing,” he said, and his shoulders slumped. “Do nothing. It has as much right to draw breath as its mindless mother.”
“And shall I bring Horumn to you now?”
Vorgullum bared his teeth, but only for a moment. “Let the Eldest sleep,” he said. “Has she not as much right as I?” He turned away and moved to the hearth, showing his back to both of them. “Damn us both and the good watch we hold over our charges.”
“As you will,” Murgull nodded, and heaved herself to her feet. She glanced towards Olivia. “We will say more of this another time,” she said. “When Olivia is not so young. When Murgull is not so old.” She turned and shambled out.
Vorgullum looked over his wing at Olivia. She had never seen him look so defeated, so hopeless. She opened her arms, and he dropped to his knees in the pit to let her embrace him, his arms limp at his sides. “It is all ending for us,” he said, his voice muffled against her shoulder. “I am holding a broken mountain together with my hands, Olivia.”
“It will be all right,” she whispered.
“I would give anything,” he moaned. “My life, my blood, my soul if only health would come back to my people!”
She held him, and he began to weep.
“A child,” he said, sobbing. “A child.”
Neither of them slept more that night.
2
Vorgullum took Olivia to the common cave early in the morning, then left to make a summons. Soon, it seemed all the tribe was gathered. They filled the commons, but not to over-crowding, and as much as Olivia had understood intellectually what the situation was here, seeing them before her was still a shock. She had been in movie theaters with more people than comprised this entire community and half of them, easily half of them, were very old. For the first time, she fully understood that this was it, this was the final generation before extinction, and time was already so short.
Vorgullum climbed up onto the flat rock in the center of the commons and motioned for Murgull, who came forward with a appallingly ugly female with vacuous eyes. It was a face Olivia had seen before, twisted with idiot pleasure beneath a gulla’s open, muffling hand.
“Bolga is pregnant,” he said without preamble.
Across the cavern, wings unfolded and flattened again, reflected light shimmered over shifting bodies, and gullan voices murmured. There was no shock, only a sense of dark concern.
“Who has done this to her?” Vorgullum asked, his voice hard but reasonable.
No one moved or spoke. Olivia looked back through the crowd and saw Cheyenne with her captor’s hand tight on her shoulder. Cheyenne glanced over, her color high and excited as much as furious. She gave her chin an almost imperceptible jerk backwards at the gulla who held her, her eyes cutting like razors where they met with Olivia’s. Tell them it was him, those eyes said. They’d never believe me, but they’ll believe you.
And they might. And certainly Olivia could do it with a clear conscience, knowing that it had been Bolga she’d seen that night and it had been Cheyenne’s captor riding her, but…
But Cheyenne didn’t know that. All she knew was that this was the perfect opportunity to see her abuser dead.
It was still the truth, wasn’t it? Or was it? That silvered crest along his back seemed so unmistakable and even now, she couldn’t see another one in this crowd, but the doubt remained. If only she’d seen his face!
“Once more,” Vorgullum said, his rage barely in check. “Who was it put the spark in Bolga’s belly? Tell me now and you shall have pardon.”
Bolga herself looked blankly out over the crowd, clearly puzzled by all the attention. Clay for brains, Murgull had said, and for once, it didn’t appear to have been an empty insult.
Vorgullum suddenly roared into the silence, “Who, damn you? Who are you that you would rather she die alone birthing your get than admit your crime! Look at her! Look at the child you have seeded with death! Do you think she has any idea what is growing in her womb?”
Bolga blinked owlishly.
Silence, silence from the crowd. Wings were fanned, glances roved across the sea of male faces. Anger and outrage rose from them like mist from dark waters, but no one came forward.
Cheyenne’s eyes stabbed and stabbed at her.
Olivia could actually hear the words she was going to say, not here, not in front of everyone, but later, when it was just her and Vorgullum. He would listen, he would believe her.
And then Cheyenne’s captor seemed to notice that the human under his hand wasn’t watching the performance on the raised rock. He looked down at her, and then he followed the path of her furious gaze.
He looked at Olivia.
He looked at Cheyenne.
He looked at Bolga.
And then his black eyes were back, piercing her with his narrow, suspicious stare.
“If I learn you who are,” Vorgullum said in a low, vehement voice, “I will pour out your blood into the water. I will burn your bones and scatter the ashes. You will end in this world. You will never wake into another.”
He waved his arm curtly and Murgull took Bolga and led her away. The tribe began to break up, the gullan women slinking off while the men drew off into groups and spoke in low, angry tones. The humans pulled together, and Olivia started to join them when a clawed hand closed on her shoulder.
Cheyenne’s captor had her, propelling her swiftly ahead of him out of the crowd until he could push her hard up against the cavern wall and put his face very close to hers. “What is it you think you know?” he demanded.
“Let go of me.”
He did, but slapped his hand flat against the rock beside her, blocking her escape. “Tell me.”
“There is nothing to tell.”
He leaned back slowly, holding her eyes even as space grew between them, then finally let his arm drop to his side. “You can tell me,” he said, now speaking softly, scarcely above a whisper.
Olivia could only shake her head, her mouth too dry for more denial.
He looked at her for a long time, and then finally broke the iron grip of his stare to glance back over his shoulder at the muttering crowds of gullan. “Your mate knows me,” he said. “He trusts me. He will believe anything I say to him.” He looked at her again. “So if you ever decide you have something to say…say it to me.”
Olivia was stone, ice and stone.
Cheyenne’s captor stepped back, folded his wings up tight, and walked away. He found Cheyenne in the grip of another gulla, took her in hand, and left with her. Neither of them looked back.
Breath came back first, and then warmth, and finally she was able to move. Olivia stepped shakily away from the wall and immediately found herself grabbed by another clawed hand. She spun around with a shriek tapping right at the backs of her teeth, only to see Horumn glaring back at her.
“Murgull wants to speak with you,” the old gulla grumbled. “I resent having to bring you messages.”
Olivia sighed.
“She will wait for you in the women’s commons.” Horumn turned around.
“I don’t know where that is.”
“Useless! Naked body and naked brains!” Horumn stomped off, loudly and bitterly complaining. Olivia followed.
The women’s commons turned out to be that same mirror-lit cavern just behind the barred door, the same room where Olivia had been shown the dead whelp in its Coleman coffin. Now there were fires lit in the wide hearth, pots of something simmering over low coals, bread baking in the ashes, and a dozen unknowable chores left half-done around the many work stations, but there were no gullan h
ere, only Murgull slumped heavily on a bench, watching Bolga crouch on the floor nearby, playing with some smooth stones. Neither looked up when Horumn entered with Olivia in tow, but Murgull flapped a hand at them.
“Here is the human,” Horumn announced. “Tell her your secrets since I am too old and ugly!”
“Oh, go soak your foot,” snapped Murgull.
Horumn bared her yellow teeth at all of them, and then limped off down another tunnel and was gone.
Murgull motioned for Olivia to draw near, and she sat on the floor close to the old gulla’s knee. Murgull stroked her hair once or twice, and then simply rested her hand on Olivia’s head. They watched Bolga, chanting to herself in nonsense sing-song as she stacked and arranged her stones.
“It is a heavy day,” Murgull said at last. “Like smoke is heavy. Hate and fear and anger, squeezing on old Murgull’s heart. Old bodies like mine need no encouragement to die. It is a heavy day, hmm, and there will be more, heavier every day until the dying starts.”
“What will happen now?”
“Bolga will stay with Horumn. If the baby can be brought safely into this world, so be it. More likely it will flow out of her screaming body in blood and pain long before its time. If the baby comes in its proper season, it may draw a breath. More likely it will be dead. If it breathes, it may even survive to breed another terrible life. More likely it will die in days. So. If it lives, Great Mother show mercy, this poor tribe will surely celebrate its every breath, for it will be the first in far too many years.”
“And Bolga?”
Murgull looked over at the mindless mother-to-be and grunted. “Most likely she will die in birthing. Her body is weak. Her mind is weaker. Even if she lives, she will not understand what is happening. She does not even understand that she is pregnant. Murgull says to her, ‘You have a child inside you.’ Bolga thinks she’s swallowed it. Murgull says, ‘Why did you couple with that male?’ Bolga says, ‘It felt good.’” Murgull shook her head. “Felt good,” she muttered. “Hot bath feels good. Long sleep feels good. To that idiot, playing with rocks feels good. It would be a simple thing, little sister, to put out the spark she carries and make certain there will never be another, but Horumn says no. Ha. Horumn says what your mate says, that every life is precious, even terrible life, monstrous life. Old Murgull wants to grab her and shake her until her last tooth falls from her fool head.”