by R. Lee Smith
She reached again and wouldn’t let him back away, catching him in spite of his stiff neck and empty eyes and pulling him back against her. He was cold in her embrace, cold, and even with both arms around him, she couldn’t quite touch him.
“…but who would take care of her?” he finished matter-of-factly. He gave no sign that he felt her at all. “I flew all night, but I came back. I waited all day to be sure, and then I went home to her. Yawa was cleaning her. I tried to do it, but Yawa wouldn’t let me. She cleaned her and then she took me back out into the other room and fucked me.”
The word he used was not one Vorgullum had taught her, but its meaning—in literal translation, the word-picture was that of the fabled Yawa pounding him repeatedly with a rock—was immediate and unmistakable. It shocked her a little to hear it, but with his distant voice, his terrible staring face, she supposed no other word would do.
“I didn’t want to. That is, I must have wanted to because…I didn’t know I wanted to, but she got my belt open and I…”
Slowly, his hand came up and rested on Olivia’s arm. She could feel the tight set of his shoulders shudder once and finally ease. He took a shaky breath.
“I must have hurt her,” he whispered, beginning to sag slightly into her embrace. “I’ve never been like that before. I must have hurt her, but she just put her hands on my face and said my name, over and over. ‘I see you, Bundel. I am with you.’”
‘Good for her,’ thought Olivia, and felt a surge of love for this faceless Yawa so ferocious, it might have been indistinguishable from hate, but she said nothing out loud, only held him.
His story, such as it was, seemed to be over. He sat and leaned into her side and stared straight ahead as the rest of the world went on spinning somewhere else. At last, he said, “You’re very strange, do you know that?”
“Am I?”
“You’re comforting me.” His fingers stroked once along her arm where they rested and then were still. “After we stole you. And hurt you.”
She didn’t want to have to come up with an answer for that, but she supposed she’d used up all her healing silences. This one would only wound him. So she said, “We are tribe,” and left it at that.
He took a deep breath and let it out as something of a ragged laugh, pulling away from her. “I believe that, when you say it,” he said, and looked back at the madwoman. “When they talk about you, I can almost believe that we can still be saved. But I only hear about you. I go home with her.”
“It won’t always be this difficult,” she told him, Vorgullum’s words, and she hoped they were still true ones.
“It will be for me.” Bundel stood up and touched the madwoman’s arm. Her eyes opened, wide and clear and lifeless. She stood when he pulled her to her feet, turned where he aimed her, walked when he started walking.
She could have followed him, walked beside him or perhaps even held his hand. There was something in her that ached to give him some human touch—a living touch—but his back was very straight when he walked away from her and there was a warning in him somewhere, telling her in silence that he had bared enough wounds for one day. She let him go with all the weary dignity that he had left to him and she sat in the commons, alone.
Footsteps. The quiet tap of gullan claws on stone. Someone came to her across the empty cavern, waited, and then crossed before her staring eyes and sat beside her on the bench. Vorgullum. She knew it even before his familiar voice sounded.
“Your words are always wise,” he said.
“I didn’t say much.”
“Sometimes that is best.” His arm pressed on hers and stayed. He was leaning into her, just a little. She could feel the dry touch of his wing just brushing at her back. He’d opened it some, half-wrapped her, inviting her to come in against his side, to let him wall her off from the rest of the world.
“You have got to let her go,” Olivia said.
He did not answer. After a moment, she heard the low rustle of his wing retracting, folding tight.
“She’s killing Bundel. She’s killing his soul.”
“I know.” He took his arm away, leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees. “I have thought that I might send her to the Eldest after she has been set with child, and so free him of the burden of her.”
“After…?”
His jaw tightened. “Her mind is gone, but her body is still fit enough.”
“You can’t mean that.” She looked at him and saw, not Vorgullum, but the tovorak sitting tallest in his skin. And all at once, that hard shine that she had seen so often in his eyes seemed to stab out and enter her, freezing her heart in her chest and crawling outward inside her veins until all she felt was ice. “You need to decide,” she said, in that voice that had made even Cheyenne draw back and look at her. Now Vorgullum did the same. “You need to decide whether you want us to be tribe or just wombs.”
“Olivia—”
“Because if it’s true for one of us, then it’s true for all of us. So you decide. Right now. You decide and you tell me to my face whether I am your mate or whether I am your animal, your baby-making thing that you can fuck—”
He flinched.
“—and put in a dark corner to grow your baby and push it out and wait for you to come to fuck me again. Because if that’s all this is, then there is no saving you, there’s no saving any of you, and we might as well end it all now.”
He leapt up, walked away, swung around and came back. “Do you think I want to do these things?” he demanded. “Do you think I want these thoughts hammering at my head? Do you think I like the taste of them spitting from my mouth? I am leader! A leader must be hard!”
“Shit on that!” she spat, and he stepped back and gaped at her. She advanced on him in that cold fury, and he backed away. “Shit on that and shit on you for saying it! I can forgive you for taking us. I can forgive you for giving us to your hunters like strips of meat from your kill—”
He flinched again, harder, as if she’d hauled back her hand and slapped him.
“—and I can forgive you making us bear your children because I know that you’re dying here and we might be able to stop it. That was being a leader, that was being hard, and I can forgive all that, but fucking a woman whose mind is gone because her body is still fit enough is shit, it’s nothing but shit, and I do not forgive you!”
“You want me to kill her, is that it?” He raised both hands in a sudden sweeping motion and struck himself on the chest hard enough that for an instant, she thought the sound it made was that of a rib cracking. “You want me to take that star-filled fool and put her in the ground? To fuck her would be obscene, but to murder her your mercy?”
“I want you to let her go!”
“No! Never!”
“Because she can still give you a ba—”
“Because they will fix her!” he roared, and the sudden scrambling sound of people fleeing behind them was the first she knew that they were no longer alone. “They will find her and they will use their damned river-magic and make her whole again! Who will I save when she brings your hunters here? Who will I save when we are all pulled out into the sun and torn open by their thunder and iron? Leave us, damn you all!”
The half-glimpsed gullan crowding at the doorways vanished in a wind of whispers and running feet. Vorgullum stormed away from her, turned, slashed at the wall, turned again, and came back.
She looked at him, that terrible ice melting away under the heat of his eyes, but she did not drop her gaze. He stood, his breath heaving in and out of him, and then abruptly stepped past her and sat heavily on the bench, elbows on knees, empty hands hanging.
She sat beside him.
The mountain stood. The cool, mineral-sweet air of the caves blew over them. Light dimmed and glowed out again as the mirrors caught clouds moving over some unseen sky far overhead.
His arm brushed at hers and stayed. She leaned into him a little.
“I have to go,” he said at last. “There are
still many traps to check before sun-down, and there will have to be a night hunt. I won’t be back until very late.”
She wanted to ask him to think about it, but instead, she stroked her hand along the base of his horns and said, “I’ll be waiting for you.”
He grunted, glanced at her, and finally sighed. “I should not have shouted at you.”
“It won’t be the last time,” she said, and offered him a small smile. “I’ve never had to live with anyone before and neither have you, I think. All things considered, I think we’re doing rather well.”
He waited, and then it was his turn to smile. “You were supposed to apologize for saying that you shit on me.”
“I have to work up to that. But when I do say it, I will mean it.”
He bent down and bumped his brow against hers. She slid a hand around to the back of his neck, holding him against her while the moment lasted. Then he drew back and stood up.
“Be careful out there,” she said.
He raised his hand to her and walked away.
Olivia sat on the bench, scuffing at the uneven floor with the toe of her sneaker, then rolled her eyes at the empty room and ran after him.
She caught him giving last instructions to his hunters there at the bottom of the entry shaft, already three good clawholds up the wall and still climbing, but he looked back when she came bursting in on them. Looked back, let go, and leapt down so that she could throw her arms around him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, while his hunters shifted on their feet and looked awkwardly at their spears. “I am.”
“Your words are always wise,” he murmured, combing his claws through her hair. He gave her another brow-bump, right there in front of everyone, then gently disengaged and resumed climbing up toward daylight and all its dangers.
6
It was far too early to go back to bed just because she’d managed to screw things up so spectacularly. Olivia trudged off down the mainway, knowing she had nowhere to go but back to an empty lair and nothing to do once she got there. The common cave was still empty. She didn’t think she wanted the company of anyone who’d overheard the fireworks anyway.
But another human face might be nice. Amy’s, maybe. Amy would probably point out that telling your man you shit on him in front of his whole hunting party was not the best way of engendering a lasting friendship between their two peoples, but that was all right. If she could apologize to Vorgullum, she could hang her head a while in front of Amy. She had to do something, anyway. She just didn’t want to be alone.
So she walked herself down the winding mainway to the women’s tunnels, savoring the self-pity while she had it, knowing Amy would probably knock it out of her soon enough. The darkness was good for depression. The lanterns were lit, widely spaced, just enough to keep her oriented along the many crossways and side-passages, but they didn’t last forever and eventually she was obliged to bring out her flashlight.
Someday, this would all be familiar enough that she could walk it in the dark, like Murgull. Someday, it would even feel like home.
She heard the noise before she saw the light spilling through the iron door that separated the women’s tunnels from the rest of the mountain. She’d probably been hearing it for some time without noticing, too lost in her own depression, but a final metallic banging ended all her thoughts of Bundel and his mad mate. The caverns and tunnels of Hollow Mountain had been carved wide and made smooth, but still, sound did not carry easily along its uneven surfaces. Nevertheless, the sound of a giant iron pot falling empty to the stone floor could not be ignored, not even out here, not even by her. Immediately following came a long, loud groan and then Horumn’s furious shout: “Don’t just stand there, pick it up! Up! Up! Over the fire! Not in the coals, you stupid girl, use the damned hooks!”
Hesitating now, Olivia made her feet carry her the last little distance, and each step forward brought her closer to the sounds of voices—gullan and human both—crushed together in the wordless rooba-rooba of crowd-speak, sometimes rising into a discernable, “Over here,” “Show me again,” “Now what?” or “Ouch!” Beneath that were pounding sounds, rapid and arrhythmic, scraping sounds, blades chopping, metal clattering, and the omnipresent rush of running feet.
She reached the door. It was unlocked and slightly ajar. She opened it up and stared into chaos.
Olivia had never been back here without Murgull, and even though she’d strongly suspected the old gulla had ordered it emptied for their meetings before, to see it now in the full riot of its use astonished her. She’d been told there were only forty gullan females; it didn’t sound like much, even with the human captives thrown into the mix, until she saw so many of them here and hard at work. The closest thing she could think to compare it to was the kitchen of a high-scale hotel, except that all the work stations were on the floor: One woman swept roasted nuts off the hearth stones for the woman who shelled them, who then dumped the meats into the bowl to be carried to the woman who ground them into a mealy flour. At another station, another woman swiftly deconstructed cattails one at a time from a huge stack so that the leaves, tips, roots and stalks could all go to different hands. All around her, things were roasted, chopped, plucked, boned and peeled, and as busy as it all was, Olivia knew they weren’t all here because there was a constant stream of gullan rushing in and out from the many back passageways.
Olivia hovered in the doorway, still holding onto the bars, overwhelmed by it all. Through the press and flow of bodies, she could see people she knew—Amy, pounding away at some roots; Anita, mending nets at the far end of the room under a critical gullan eye; Liz, running full bowls of raw food to the cookpots and filling up the empties—but she couldn’t see how to get to them without putting herself in the way.
“Get in or get away!” Horumn limped up to her, scowling, and smacked her hand so that she let go of the door. “What do you want?”
“I was just looking for something to do.”
“Bah! Croaking frog! You are Murgull’s headache and you won’t find her here!” Horumn glowered back over one hunched shoulder as a large pot slipped Beth’s hands and banged to the floor amid cries of annoyance and dismay. “You would know better where to find her than I.”
The naked bitterness in those words made it a struggle not to squirm. “Can I help out here?” Olivia asked weakly.
“Ha! Help enough I have from your useless kind.” But Horumn gestured for her to wait and then stumped over to snatch up a shallow tin bowl filled with cooking scraps: boiled bones, stale crusts, overripe fruits and wilted leaves. She thrust this dubious fare into Olivia’s hands and said, “As you go, set this in the waiting place.”
“What place?”
Horumn gave Olivia a swift slap to the ear, then spun her roughly around and shoved her out through the open door. “The place,” she snarled, “where people wait who are not welcome here! Go!”
“What is it?”
“For Logarr.” Distracted by a second crash, Horumn zeroed unerringly on poor Beth and yet another pot, this one now spilling stew merrily across three work stations, and shouted, “Curse your hands and your eyes and your hairless hide! Out! Get out! Thurga, take this grease-fingered fool out to rake dung! At least that she cannot break!”
Olivia retreated as well (not fast enough to miss Horumn’s incredulous, “Are you crying? Sweet Mother of the Moon, someone get this mewling whelp a milking teat and get her out of my sight!”). She made her way back up the dark mainway, swinging her flashlight from side to side until she saw a small alcove. It wasn’t much, just a wide place cut into one wall, shored with rough timber and furnished with a simple stone bench. She set the bowl down, took a few steps away, and then turned to go and shone her flashlight directly into a gulla’s face.
It was a male, not one she knew. He didn’t flinch, didn’t raise a hand to shield his eyes, didn’t really seem to care. He waited.
Slowly, Olivia lowered her flashlight. “Are you Logarr?”
> “Yes.” He showed no surprise at the question, gave her no cue for how to proceed.
“Do I know you?” she asked, because he looked, to her eyes, remarkably fit. His pelt was very dark and shone with good health. His horns told her he was relatively young. He was not as tall or as powerfully built as Vorgullum, but he was considerably fitter than either Beth’s mate or Amy’s. If Vorgullum had paired the humans with the healthiest males, he certainly ought to have one of them.
“No,” he said after a moment, and that was all he said.
“Well…I think this is for you.” Olivia gathered up the bowl of garbage and held it out to him.
He stood quite a long while before taking the two steps necessary to reach out and take it. Seeing him up close gave her something of a start; his eyes were pale, neither blue nor grey nor green, but some pale and watery color for all that, when every other gulla she’d seen had black eyes. It would have made her wonder if he was blind, except for the intensity in his quiet stare which told her indisputably that she was being seen. Seen and measured.
But he did take the bowl, and as soon as he had it, he turned around and took it away with him back down the mainway. He did not say any kind of goodbye or give her one of those open-handed salutes. He just left, and let the darkness swallow him.
Creepy. She wasn’t even sure just why it had affected her so deeply, but in the aftermath of this brief encounter, she was oddly loathe to continue on to Murgull’s secret room. She sat down in the little alcove instead, the waiting place, shining her flashlight now and then in the direction of Logarr’s departure, although of course she saw nothing. So great was her concentration, or her lingering unease, that she did not hear Murgull’s approach until the old gulla dropped onto the bench beside her, cackling at the shrieky little gasp this startled out of her.