by R. Lee Smith
“Lurking in dark places, eh?” Murgull prodded at her ribs with a singularly sly smile. “Sign of devious intent, that. You must be a wicked woman. Ha! Old Murgull knew there was a reason she liked you!”
“I was just looking for you,” Olivia said lamely, rubbing her side.
“Lies,” came the comfortable reply. “You are sitting on your slimy frog’s rump. Ha! But busy minds need rest.” Murgull’s good eye narrowed in a conspiratorial leer. “What goes on in your busy mind?”
‘Nothing’ seemed like the wrong answer. She said instead, “Horumn is teaching all the other humans how to work.”
Murgull drew back, her hideous face contorting in an expression that was two parts contempt to one part doubt. “And you hide here?”
This slur on her honor—as if she were a spoiled child dodging chores—stung deep and Olivia’s temper flared. “I’m not hiding, she threw me out!”
Murgull grunted and settled back, now casting her scornful glare down the passage that led to the women’s tunnels. “Miserable old bat. So she sends you to me for work, does she? Then work we shall do. Come, little sister.”
That vise-like grip came down over her arm even before old Murgull had gained her feet, pinching off all protest—had Olivia been foolhardy enough to mount one—and they were off at once, moving at Murgull’s lurching run despite the selfsame’s immediate litany of physical complaints. They did not go deeper into the dark either, not to Murgull’s secret room, but right back the way she’d come, to the women’s tunnels and through the unlocked door into Horumn’s riotous domain.
Some of the humans paused to watch them pass, but the gullan uniformly made themselves scarce if they could and small if they couldn’t. Murgull cackled as she dragged Olivia across the cavern, leering at all of them and none of them, alive with that merry malice that so often defined her when things were going well. “Work, you frogs!” she cried, simultaneously flapping one hand to dismiss the quality of that work. “Hop for Horumn!”
And oh God, but there was Maria, rising out of a trio of gullan with all her mojo-markings smeared by sweat and resentment blazing in her eyes. She threw down the rough stone she had been using to grind meal, threw it hard enough to send chips bouncing back behind it as it rolled away, and shouted, “Don’t you call me a frog, you ugly old bruja!”
Murgull stopped. She eyed Maria with a crooked, close-mouthed smile, letting everyone see her inspecting the spirals and stars painted in lipstick and ashes over Maria’s bare arms and legs. Then she released Olivia and gave her a dismissive shove away from her, clearing the battlefield. “Is it not a frog that I hear croaking?” she asked, so mildly that at least a dozen gullan backed uneasily away. “Use your tongue to catch flies, before it gets you into trouble.”
“You only think you know what trouble is,” Maria sneered, and raised her hand in that forked fist. “But you are about to find out.”
There was no silence in the wake of this challenge. There was instead a great many-voiced caw, not unlike a flock of crows (a murder of crows, Olivia’s brain commented, and yes, thank you, murder was just the right word) startled into flight. Tools were dropped, labors abandoned, and gullan fled seemingly at random through every and any available egress. In moments, there were only three left (Horumn, of course, and two others as ancient and unimpressed as she) and the humans, and Olivia didn’t know whether to be amused or dismayed by the apprehension she saw on too many of their faces. It was not like a group of women about to see a good old-fashioned catfight erupt, but a group of schoolyard girls filled with the superstitious terror that comes from seeing one of their own step boldly on that mother-crippling crack, or begin the chanting summons for Bloody Mary. Carla, Karen, Liz, even Beth—all shrinking back as from the shadow of the Devil Herself, and not from Murgull, who was at least sincerely horrible, but from Maria, from that big, fat, phony Mojo Woman.
But Murgull didn’t flinch. Murgull didn’t move at all. As humans and gullan alike scattered around her, Murgull regarded Maria with a tender smile beneath a cold and burning stare and only after it was quiet again (and here was the silence she had first expected, a whole cavern’s worth of held breath) did she speak. “Do that, little frog,” she said. “You do that. We will see which of us has stronger magic. There are so many things a little bald frog can eat, and drink…and breathe… and brush her little bald flippers against in Murgull’s dark mountain. So put out your hand to me, eh? Go on. Speak my name. Spit your curse at me, human, and let us begin.”
Maria lowered her arm, but not before Olivia—and hopefully everyone else—saw her hand tremble. “I wouldn’t waste my time,” she mumbled, but she said it in English. She edged back, found her grinding stone, and got back down on the floor, flushed and tight-lipped.
“And you, you lazy maggot,” Murgull continued, crooking her claws at Olivia. “Did I tell you to rest? You come with old Murgull now. Time to see things, know things. Make things, maybe, for little frogs to drink.” She threw back her ruined head and groaned laughter, not even glancing at the other humans, then limped from the cave.
Olivia ran after her. The last thing she heard as she followed Murgull’s rapidly receding form into the tunnel was Amy’s wry, “Here’s a little free advice for you, Mojo. Never piss off a real witch.”
Murgull caught Olivia’s arm just outside and leaned on her a little as she trotted along. She was still chuckling off and on, just this side of under her breath. “Mojo old Murgull,” she kept saying, her tone one of faint wonder.
Olivia frowned at her with as much disapproval as she dared to show. “Yeah, okay, she deserved that, but you scared a lot of other people, too.”
Murgull flapped her good wing, and Olivia couldn’t tell without seeing her face whether the old gulla were dismissive, apologetic, or merely pleased by the idea. She rather expected the latter.
“You have your iron claws, do you?” Murgull asked, prodding rudely at the pouch belting Olivia’s waist and giving a satisfied grunt when she heard the metal spikes clank. “Make ready, little sister. You have climbing to do here.”
“I do?” But then she could see it. Daylight.
It lay in silverish smudges over the uneven wall at the end of this tunnel, so different from the pools of yellow light that glowed out of the regularly-spaced lanterns that lit their way. Daylight. Real light. Not the mirror-shine that lit the larger caverns, but the dim, twilight haze of pure sunlight after it had fallen who knew how far into the close confines of Hollow Mountain. Immediately afterwards, she felt the cool breeze of the cave’s own living breath upon her face, air so crisp and fresh that it made her smell her own unwashed body and that of the gulla beside her with cruel clarity. And then she saw two gullan females climbing side-by-side down the wall, each laden with baskets and backpacks tied to their bodies, and realized that if the mountain had a back door, she was looking at it.
And she was about to go through it.
Her heart leapt—foolishly, perhaps, since Outside did not mean Freedom, and certainly would never mean Home again—and just as quickly subsided as she glimpsed something else at the end of this tunnel, something scarcely hinted at by silver threads of light: Another iron door.
It stood wide open to allow the easy passage of gullan to and from the shaft, but as Olivia neared, she could see the solid black shape of the lockplate, and again, it was on the inside. Her steps slowed. She waited for the two females to hurry away with their burdens, and then reached out to touch the cold iron bars of the door. She looked at Murgull, who looked mildly back at her, and said, “I don’t remember one of these at the other shaft.”
“And why should there be, eh?” Murgull gave the door a good rattle in its hinges, then cackled and continued on. “The leader who came in the age of the wasted ones forbade the taking of mates, but young were born, ha, and the Waste spread. So the leader who came after, he who stood tallest before your mate, he forbade the act itself, save by his direction. And when the first young came
in defiance of his will, he set these barriers around us. Did you think they were meant to keep humans from stumbling upon our home? Ha! They are shut against those who hunt their prey beneath the ground and not above it.”
“Still?”
“Oh yes. And if your mate knew how often this door was allowed to stand open, he would have words to say. Ha! Words to bellow! But what does he expect? The Eldest holds the only key, and even young legs would have difficulty running so far and so often as to admit each woman who goes about her honest labor. Stand aside.”
Olivia stupidly turned around instead, and was struck by the swinging weight of an empty basket as the two gullan females came running back. One of them panted an apology of sorts over her shoulder and they both leapt up on the wall and climbed swiftly out of sight.
“He is young, your mate,” Murgull said musingly, helping Olivia right herself. “And things have not been done as they should be for many long years. He does well, I think, as well as any stag-headed man can do, but he cannot think of everything. He does not think that even if these doors are always shut, still these iron bars are yet set wide enough apart to allow a stiff cock to pass, even if the man who grows it cannot! Ha! Old Murgull knows of no less than ten gullan walking now who were sparked through a locked door!” She cackled, but her laughter was short-lived, and faded into a grim expression. “Yet this was not the way of it with Bolga, eh?”
“Did she take the key?” Olivia asked.
“Bah! That one! She does not have the sense to steal! I doubt she could use a key if you put one in her hand! No.” They had reached the end of the tunnel now, but rather than start climbing, Murgull merely stopped and turned to face her. “No, Horumn surely left the inward door unlocked at night, and if your mate knew that, there would be a new hand around that key before the next sun rose.”
“Maybe there should be.”
“Oh yes?” Murgull glanced at her, smiling thinly. “I will not tell you to keep these words secret from him. You stand tallest beside your mate. You must decide how best to advise him. But this I tell you also, if Horumn is not Eldest, she is nothing. Too old to work, poor Horumn. Too slow upon that twisted foot. She eats now for all the doors she has locked in her long life. Will you see her starved for the one door she left open?”
“I don’t understand you,” Olivia said, beginning to think she did.
“Hunters have the meat of all their kills, and give it to whatever mouths they will, but even when there is no meat, a hunter holds claim to a share of whatever food we women make, and their claim comes first, eh? For if our hunters starve, there will never be meat again! A hunter’s mate, as all you humans are so fortunate to be, holds a second claim, for it is through you that new life may come. There are claims of food for our sigruum, our metal-maker, for old Murgull and her healing magic, and for all those men who our leader proclaims worthy for their labors scratching rock out of useless tunnels we do not need. Only after do we women share out the little crumbs that are left.”
“That isn’t fair!”
Murgull’s open hand smacked up against her ear, and Olivia supposed she knew it was coming. She rubbed at the sting of it, but she was thinking of the women’s commons, of the frenzy and the roar of all that work, and for what? In her mind, she saw that room after the fires were out and day was done. As Horumn locked them in for another night, a wide ring of imaginary women sat and broke up the few loaves that were left, just a few mouthfuls of tough, sour bread before sleep and the inevitable hour when they had to heave themselves up and do it again.
“It isn’t fair,” she said again, and took her hand away so Murgull had a clear shot at her ear.
The old gulla grunted and did not swing. She aimed her good eye upwards, shuffled aside for the two gullan women climbing down, and said, “This is life, little sister. Do you truly need old Murgull to tell you that bad things happen to those who do not deserve it? Eh? You, standing here with scent of gulla pressed into your hairless hide?”
“This means we shouldn’t even try to make things better?”
“What is not broken does not need mending.”
“It sounds plenty broken to me,” Olivia said, thinking of the bowl of scraps Horumn had given her for the one called Logarr. “It sounds like the men get everything and the rest of you, the ones who made it all, get to argue over burnt crusts and bones.”
“Bah.” Murgull waved her hand airily. “Bellies are not so empty that we must gnaw bones, little sister. Thin stew, yes, and too many bitter leaves for those who must live behind the iron door, but no worse than that.”
“But I saw…”
She stopped there, because after all she hadn’t seen Logarr actually eat anything she’d brought him. And for that matter, Horumn hadn’t said the stuff was food. She had no idea to what other use such leavings could be put, but then again, there were a lot of things she didn’t know.
“Saw what, eh?” Murgull pressed.
“Horumn gave me something for Logarr,” she began. “I guess I just assumed it was a share of…Is he the sigruum?” she asked, thinking suddenly that the stuff might be used for magic or paints or something.
Murgull’s entire face screwed itself up into an expression of profound disgust, rendering her already gruesome features into a shocking caricature of itself. “It is by your mate’s mercy that one lives at all,” she said, then turned aside and spat. “He is no dream-talker. He is not even tribe. And a curse on Horumn’s lazy hide for sending you to meet with him!” She started walking again, muttering sourly under her breath.
She knew she’d ought to let it go at that. She knew it.
“What did he do?” she asked.
“No one knows,” Murgull answered ominously. “But all can see how it marked him.”
They walked in tense silence, and finally Murgull heaved out an angry breath and said, “There is a tradition—tradition, ha! A story, now! A myth, a dream!—that allows for one of our young ones, upon the spear’s edge of adulthood, to go upon a sacred Journey. Alone, without weapons or tools, they go into the human’s world, under the human’s sun, from full moon until full moon. It is very dangerous,” she said, rubbing at her scars. “But those who return are set above all others and permitted one request of the leader’s granting. Gone are the days when such rewards had meaning for men,” she added, and spat. “But still they make the attempt now and then, particularly when some new leader comes and they wish to prove themselves to him. So it was with Logarr.”
“I don’t understand. All he did was go on a journey?”
“All? No, not all. Full moon came fat in Urga’s sky, and Logarr did not return. Many days and nights passed. So, it happens.” Another rasp of her palm over her scars. “A second moon. A third. A sixth, a tenth! His death was sung, his belongings portioned. And more than a year after his Journey began, he returned with his eyes full of water and his tongue turned to stone. Your mate brought him in, gave him welcome, gave him even his request as if it were well-earned, and what did he ask? Eh?” Murgull gave the folds of her neck a particularly violent twist. “‘Never ask me to speak of it,’ he says, and that, for all these years, has been his only word.”
“That makes him less than tribe?”.
Murgull shrugged. “Silence and secrets are a part of it. His own will is the larger part. He hunts for himself, shares no spoils, gives no token of honor to his leader, but takes, oh yes, takes his hunter’s share when his belly is empty, takes the hides made by tribeswomen, takes a new spear from the metal-maker when his own is worn. If this were the tribe of the old leader, he would be cast out. Ha! If it were the time of the leader before him, he would be killed! There is no place among us for selfishness, but your mate has made him welcome.”
Olivia, who did not think a bowl of day-old mountain greens was an overwhelming show of welcome, did not reply.
“Do not pity him, little sister,” Murgull warned.
“Pity is cheap, as a wise woman once said.”
&nb
sp; “Ha! Clever frog, but I choose which of my words are wise and when.” She reached the wall of the shaft climbing up into the light, but stopped to poke at Olivia. “You will hear me now, little sister. All this tribe will bend its neck to you, and show you empty hands in respect, and stand aside when you pass by, yes. But Logarr is not tribe. His ways stand outside the laws of your mate. He is dangerous, and you will not speak to him again.”
“I hope you’re not expecting me to go along with that,” Olivia said, trying to sound amused and not as annoyed as she really felt. “I’m not going to shun him just because you tell me to!”
“Ha! You raise your voice to me! Even me!” Murgull leered at her in good humor, then turned away and started climbing. “You are too much like your stag-headed mate, to think you can change the world with roaring, roaring. Follow, little sister. Our time is too short to remake the whole world today! Leave something for your tomorrow!”
Olivia scowled and pulled out her claws, watching Murgull climb with envious eyes. She didn’t want another argument today, but anything that put off the struggle up this shaft was a good thing. The fresh air and light of morning might be waiting at the top, but it still looked like a hell of a climb. Not as much as the shaft at the other end of the mountain, maybe, not even as much as the Deep Drop, but still a mighty effort for her and her iron spikes.
Olivia cinched the last buckle tight and found the first well-traveled clawhold. It was much deeper than those set in Vorgullum’s entry chute, which meant that she could clutch the wall with her fingers as well. This made it a more secure grip, but also a more tiring one for the muscles of her forearm. The last time she’d attempted anything like this, she’d made it all of ten feet. That was just about high enough to guarantee a broken bone if she fell.