Olivia

by R. Lee Smith

  At the end of a steeply sloping rise, the narrow passage opened into a cramped chamber, one roughly the same size as the kitchen back in her apartment, made even cozier by the addition of an enormous bubbling cauldron, two robed female gullan, Cheyenne, and now Olivia. The cauldron hung from an iron rod running wall to wall, and had a notched lip indicating it was meant to be poured where it stood and not carried away. The fire burning under it had burned to a low bed of deep red coals, and the heat trapped in this tiny space was positively infernal. A chimney of sorts had been fashioned from hammered sheets of what certainly appeared to be tin (patched in places with flattened soda cans, no less; most were charred beyond recognition, but she could clearly make out two 7-Ups and a grape Shasta), but its benefits were nominal; every surface came coated with its own thick layer of greasy soot.

  “Stirring helps,” the older of the two gullan was saying, even as she ran a thoughtful eye over Olivia. “There are always some lumps, of course, but the trick is to melt it all as evenly as possible. You may have to add more water to keep it from burning.”

  “How the hell am I going to know if it burns?” Cheyenne demanded, giving the contents of the cauldron half a turn with a bit of branch just as old and gnarled as the gulla instructing her. “Does it start to smell better?”

  “It smokes,” the old gulla answered. “And it will be ruined, which wastes time, fat, and my narrow patience. Are you lost?”

  “No, I…” Olivia gestured weakly towards the cauldron. “I came to help, if I can.”

  The old gulla waved her closer while the younger one (and only minutely younger at that) apparently decided that was one body too many for the sweltering cavern and departed, mumbling something as she went about checking on the other humans.

  “What is it?” Olivia asked, looking queasily down into the simmering, distorted depths of the malodorous cauldron.

  “Cattle fat. Some elk.” The old gulla eyed her as she took the branch from Cheyenne and gave it a stir, then said, “You are our leader’s mate?”

  “Yes. Olivia. And you are…?”

  “Borra.” She raised one hand in a perfunctory salute, then pointed down into the cauldron. “This will be ready to pour today. You will watch it closely, and when it has melted as much as it can, one of you will come to fetch me. What shall we make of it?” she concluded, looking at Olivia.

  Cheyenne’s stare scratched at her.

  “Um, what were you going to make before I came along?” Olivia asked.

  “Soap.” Borra shuffled her folded wings in a gullan shrug. “That would be most difficult, because we would have to prepare the ashes also. Candles. Tallow blocks for our stores, perhaps. That would be quicker and far easier to teach, but the others are more useful to know.”

  “Candles, I guess.”

  “Good. Takes all day, but occupies empty hands.” The old gulla gave Cheyenne a cool glance, then returned her gaze to Olivia. “I have work to do. You will stay together, so that one can come to fetch me while the other stirs.”

  “I promise,” she said, and on the other side of the cauldron, Cheyenne grunted some sort of agreement.

  Horumn raised her hand again and left them.

  “I thought she’d never leave,” Cheyenne remarked. “And to be honest, I was afraid you weren’t even going to find me. I’m sure they look for the most out-of-the-way places to stick me, precisely so I don’t get to talk to anyone.”

  “How did you get past your guard?” Olivia asked, stirring.

  “I didn’t. Short hands in the hunting parties lately. A good guard is tough to find. So for the next few days, I’m Horumn’s problem. Are you actually going to stand there all day and stir that shit?”

  “I don’t want it to burn,” Olivia said. “If you’ve got something to say, you’d better get on with it.”

  “I’m not asking you to commit murder, you know, I just need a little help.” Cheyenne moved around to check the empty tunnel, then came back, dropping her voice. “Horumn keeps the back door locked, and as far as I’ve been able to tell, she never takes off the key. That means the only possible way out of this mountain is through the front door, at night.”

  Olivia shook her head, dumbfounded. “You haven’t got a prayer!”

  Strangely, Cheyenne didn’t seem offended. “Most of these furballs still turn out the lights and go to sleep when the sun goes down, and the ones who don’t will be Doru’s night-hunting party, and they’ll leave. Either way, the tunnels will be empty. It’ll be a risk, especially if the hunters actually catch something and come home, but it’s my best shot.”

  “But your guard—”

  “Goes away when my male oppressor comes home at night,” Cheyenne finished calmly. “Not very smart of them, I agree, but those are his orders. If the guard stuck around, it might be a tough for him to fuck around, you see.”

  Olivia frowned. “I guess it would.”

  “He comes home a little before dark to check on me, and if I’m asleep when he does, I can pretty much guarantee that he’ll slip away to his girlfriend. I guess he got spooked after this thing with Bolga, because whoever he’s meeting with now, he’s meeting her in the depths.”

  “What, in the hot springs?”

  “No, further back. Where they used to keep the wasted ones, I guess. It’s a good place for a forbidden fling,” she added. “Everyone else thinks it’s haunted or something. He doesn’t exactly stick to a schedule, but he’s never been gone less than an hour or more than three hours. And that’s not enough time. I mean, I’m a strong woman, but I still have to climb out by hand.”

  Olivia drew back suspiciously and Cheyenne gave a hard, brittle laugh. “I’m not going to ask for your damn spikes. Although they would come in pretty handy, they’d also ruin your alibi. All I want you to do is delay my male oppressor for a few extra hours.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?” Olivia demanded.

  “I can’t help but notice that you carry a lot of weight with these furballs, especially since yesterday. Even my male oppressor grunted something about you after you went up to deal with the stiff. I’m sure he’s a little paranoid of what you might or might not know about him, but I don’t think he out-and-out suspects you anymore. So say you head down the Deep Drop the night I escape and kind of loiter around where he would have to walk over the top of you to get back up. Right outside the baths, say. He might allow himself to be distracted, especially if you come on a little strong about little old you and the big, scary ghosts down there.”

  “And you honestly think that would work?”

  Cheyenne shrugged. “Why wouldn’t it? He’s like every other guy. He loves to get his ego stroked. Getting a mental hand job by the infamous Olivia will probably be enough to make him forget about me, at least long enough to make it possible for me to get out of this damn mountain.”

  “And do what?” Olivia asked. “Bring back the cavalry? What is that really going to accomplish besides—”

  “Getting you all killed,” Cheyenne said irritably. “I wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep over seeing these furballs catch lead, but I’m not dumb enough to trust Uncle Sam with my welfare after he finds out I’ve been living with fucking subterranean bat-monsters. And I wouldn’t want to see any of you guys rescued from the furballs just to get locked up in a bunker for the rest of your lives, either,” she added after a short pause. It would have been perhaps unfair to say she said it as an afterthought. “I’m not going to tell anyone.”

  Olivia was already shaking her head.

  “Look, I’ve spent eight years volunteering at the women’s shelter downtown,” Cheyenne pressed. “I know all about the value of a new identity, and I’ve put a lot of stuff aside, just in case I should ever need to disappear. I’m betting it’ll work just as well when I need to reappear as someone else. Olivia, listen to me. You have my word, my word, that I will not tell anyone anything about this place, but I can’t live here. Maybe you can, maybe you all can, I don’t know. I’m not
going to judge you all for that, but I am in hell.”

  “I—”

  “He hits me. He chokes me while he’s screwing me. He sits on me and burns the soles of my feet with coals. When he can’t get it up, he puts things in me and fucks me that way. Does that sound like a life to you? What do you want me to do, just wait for him to kill me?” Cheyenne’s eyes narrowed while she watched Olivia gaze helplessly back at her. “You need to help me,” she said finally. “I can’t trust anyone else with this. You need to help me, and if you can’t do it, then tell me now, because I am not going on like this if there’s no hope at all.”

  If it was a suicide threat, it was an angrier one than Olivia had ever imagined. Might Cheyenne attempt to kill her gullan captor? That was a distinct possibility, and one that could cast suspicion over all the human women. She could think of a few others, like Victoria and Maria the Mojo Women, who might be in serious trouble if that happened.

  On the other hand, if Cheyenne didn’t make it out of the mountain, she might leak Olivia’s name, and that would destroy Olivia’s hard-won reputation. Hell, Cheyenne might do that whether or not Olivia agreed to help.

  But maybe if Cheyenne made the attempt and it failed, she would be forced to reassess her position here, and come to a kind of truce.

  On the other hand, there was a slim chance that Cheyenne might actually escape, or die trying, and either would probably suit Cheyenne fine.

  And if she did escape, she still had to get off the mountain before she died of exposure.

  But if she did…miracle of miracles, if she did, could Olivia really trust her to keep her word?

  Cheyenne heaved a sudden sigh and said, “All right, look. Judith’s timely leap into oblivion means that her lovin’ fuzzball has the next five days to howl at the moon or whatever these fuckers do when one of them dies, and my male oppressor is going to want to show his concern with all the other raping bastards, if only to keep up appearances. As soon as his routine goes back to normal, I’ll set down a day and let you know. Think about it until then. I can do this without your cooperation,” she added, somewhat ominously, “but I prefer not to. So what do you say, will you at least think about it?”

  Olivia chewed at her lip and looked down. The bear fat bubbled sullenly. She could see through it all the way to the bottom of the cauldron. “I think this is ready to pour.”

  Cheyenne crossed her arms, her knuckles white where they gripped her powerful biceps, and waited.

  “I’ll think about it,” Olivia said, doing her best to ignore that ugly, sinking sensation in her stomach. “And I will have some kind of answer for you in five days, I promise. But if it’s not the answer you want to hear, you have to promise not to keep after me, okay? I’m having a hard enough time making a life down here, I can’t be responsible for yours, too.”

  Cheyenne shrugged again and headed on out, presumably to find Borra. “Whatever you say. If you need to hear the magic words, then I promise. One way or the other, that’ll be an end to it.”

  Olivia waited to feel better and didn’t.

  12

  Olivia had gotten as far in the candling process as cutting a thin sliver of reed from one of the rushes Borra brought in to be wicks, she hadn’t even dipped it yet, when Murgull came in barking her name. She was dragged away by the scruff of her neck as women of both races stopped their work to gape at her, and she was not allowed to straighten up and stand on her own until they reached Murgull’s secret workroom. Once there, she was allowed to make apologies for ‘wasting’ her time doing ‘frivolous things’, and she made them for at least twenty minutes before Murgull finally condescended to accept them and put her to work.

  So it was that instead of a leisurely day spent dipping candles, Olivia found herself frantically trying to keep up with Murgull’s instructions, fumbling jars filled with dried herbs that looked nothing like their green growing counterparts, and getting her ears slapped silly every time she mispronounced something. And they couldn’t begin with something as simple as tea, oh no, Murgull made her start her alchemic career by brewing the aphrodisiac she’d given Cheyenne, the base of which was, predictably, urine. Not gullan urine, though, which would have been bad enough. Goat urine, taken during a she-goat’s season. (“How many animals did you try before you discovered she-goat?” Olivia had asked, wrinkling her nose, and got a smack upside the head.)

  Now Murgull uncapped the glass bottle Olivia had just finished with and gave it a judicial sniff. “Potent,” she said and grinned. “I hope you are well-rested, wingless sister. A drop of this placed so and so, and he will split you up the middle!”

  “I’m not testing it on myself.” Olivia took the bottle back and sniffed it, but could only detect a very vague musky scent, much diluted from the pungent piss she’d started with. “And it wouldn’t make any difference if I did. We’re mating like minks in the spring as it is.”

  “Wrong kind of mating,” Murgull said, watching Olivia cap the bottle. “But, come, let me show you where to wear the potion.”

  “Does it matter?” Olivia asked, and earned a dark glare from Murgull. “I mean,” she added hastily, “gullan have such a powerful sense of smell anyway, he’d know I was wearing it if I daubed it between my toes.”

  “I don’t know what way you couple,” Murgull returned curtly, “but he shouldn’t keep smelling this if it’s worn between your toes. And he needs to keep breathing it inside him to make it effective. Hard on him, oh yes, but he won’t complain.” She touched a blunt claw to the side of Olivia’s neck, just over the jugular vein. “Here,” she murmured, and touched her again on the other side of the neck. “And here. No more than a drop, eh? Cheyenne-skunk, she knows to be sparing with it?”

  “I guess so. At least, she hasn’t complained.”

  Murgull grunted and her gaze grew unfocused, perhaps thinking of Cheyenne’s mate, perhaps not. At last she stirred herself and took the bottle back, putting it indifferently among a dozen similar bottles on her cluttered shelves. “Now it is late, and he will be waiting for you. You’ve played the night away in Murgull’s company, little frog, but come back tomorrow and I will teach you the other potions you should know. One to make his seed strong. One to make your womb open and fertile. They are not so easy to learn as this, and more tricky to use, because you have to swallow them.” She pulled a horrible face. “Nasty, foul potions, but useful to know. And these you will test, eh? Until they do their work!” The old gulla’s face puckered with thought. “Old Murgull should like very much to see a baby frog spawned before she dies,” she said. “If she does not, you must find where Murgull is put in the ground, and show her your little frogling, yes?”

  “And I will name it Somurg, because it came from Murgull,” Olivia replied.

  That startled her, but only for a moment. “Fool,” Murgull snapped, and turned away, rubbing furtively at her good eye. “Spawn first, then name. Now get out. It’s late and Murgull’s bones ache. So much for Murgull to do, and she has to sit and fawn over Olivia-frog,” she grumbled, turning and stumping back into the lab. “No rest for old Murgull.”

  Olivia let herself out of the secret room and raced down the passage to her chambers. She passed two gullan in the tunnel, both of whom called to her saying Vorgullum was looking for her.

  She arrived somewhat out of breath at her chambers and climbed up the chute. “Are you here?” she called.

  “Where have you been?” he demanded, appearing in the doorway.

  “With Murgull, learning things,” she replied. “Is there food?”

  “Yes, the bread which I brought at mid-day, and the meat which I brought at dusk.” His anger had evaporated with the mention of Murgull’s name, but he still looked a little cross with her. “You could not leave her a little while tell me where you were?”

  “I couldn’t even leave to use the waterway, she made me pee in a bucket. I’m exhausted and my whole body aches with keeping still and learning things. You think it’s hard to listen to he
r complain once in a while, try sitting in front of her all night trying to do what she tells you to perfectly the first time.”

  There went the rest of his anger. Suddenly contrite, he stepped back and gestured to the bench, where a cold hunk of meat and three crumbly meal-cakes awaited her attention. “I’ve been meaning to tell you how proud I am that Murgull has chosen you to be her apprentice,” he said. “Already, the others are asking me when you will be ready to practice your arts.”

  “Not for a while, I’m afraid.” She sat down with a sigh of relief and pleasure and dug into the first of the cakes. They were heavy and greasy, but so much easier on her jaws than the usual tough bread that she devoured them with an audible groan of pleasure.

  “The others will be disappointed to hear they have to wait,” he remarked, seating himself on the opposite side of the pit to watch her eat.

  She snorted. “Oh yes, I can just hear them now. ‘Vorgullum, fetch Olivia. I have a lump in my loincloth and I need her to reduce the swelling.’”

  He made a coughing sound, and she glanced around, amused, to arch an eyebrow at him. “Am I wrong?”

  “Probably not,” he admitted.

  She downed a few mushrooms, took a long drink from the jug, and looked at him solemnly. “How is Lorchumn?”

  “Better, I think. At least he’s no longer cursing the heavens and threatening to piss on the Great Spirit.” Vorgullum made an oddly expressive gesture with the first two fingers of his left hand as he spoke this last, as though catching his words before they could reach the divine ear of the Great Spirit. “But he has been shaken down to his soul, and most of it is my fault, I think.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  He eyed her doubtfully, and then rolled his wings in a shrug. “There are twice the numbers of males as females in my tribe and none have mates, apart from those with humans, and that has been very recent as you know. There are a very few women who are barren, but if these were made available as mates, there would be no end of challenge for possession of them. So.” He crouched down and glared at the ground. “So I forbade the practice, as the leader before me did, and the leader before him. Lorchumn never had another mate before his Judith. It’s possible that he has never coupled with anyone else.”