by R. Lee Smith
“I don’t know,” Tina said at last, in a soft, utterly defeated voice. “I’d like to try talking to her—”
“Good luck on that,” Sarah B. remarked. And when Olivia looked at her, she sighed and said, “No one talks to Mojo anymore except her most loyal subjects. And they sure don’t talk about what she says. It’s bad with her. You really have no idea.”
No, she didn’t. She didn’t have any idea at all. Looking around at all of them was suddenly like looking at a group of strangers. Why had they kept all this secret for so long?
And why hadn’t Olivia made it her business to check on Maria all this time? She knew that Mojo Woman stuff was dangerous. Guilt sank down into her stomach; Sudjummar had called her a true leader, but she’d pretty much picked the few people she’d felt like leading and let all the others go, hadn’t she?
Amy looked around into the ring of pale faces and put her hands on her hips. “Okay, then, break it up. We’re done for today. If anyone gets any ideas, any ideas at all…” She shook her head in frustration and flapped her hands at them dismissively.
Olivia lingered until she was alone with Amy, Tina and Tobi and asked, “Do you really think Mojo Woman could drum up a revolt? Honestly?”
Amy scowled. “I do, actually, and what’s worse, I think her little fan club knows it. They’re scared, but they’ll do it, make no mistake. The price of one of her pieces of meat is a name in a jar full of honey. They don’t want to serve her. Hell, I don’t even think they want to feed her, but she’s got them convinced she’s got their souls, and when Mojo ain’t happy, it’s okie-dokie artichokie time.”
“I thought it was funny back when she told us about blowing out Grunn’s candle,” Tina said in a low voice. “This is so far from funny right now I could be sick. And have you seen her lately? Has anyone actually seen her? Because I haven’t, not for at least two months now. Sarah B. has a pretty good line on things from Burgelbun, who’s actually losing his fur he’s so scared of her. And if Burgelbun can be believed, Mojo Woman looks like a bag of mud, and her hair is always cold and wet. Burgelbun says Mojo vomits water when she talks. What the hell does that mean? What is she doing up there?”
“He really thinks she’s got his soul?”
“Have you ever heard of bone-pointers?” Amy answered, shoving back her bangs with a quick, angry movement. “Aborigine shamans who punish criminals by pointing a bone at them and commanding them to die. They always do, not because there’s anything wrong, but because they believe in the shaman’s power so fiercely that they believe themselves to death.”
“This tribe believes things very strongly,” Tina agreed. “They have spirits, they have magic, and they believe Mojo can do the things she says she can. And who’s to say different? There’s no other shaman here to rival her power.”
“Well, Kodjunn,” Amy said dismissively. “But he’s not pushing it and he’s wise not to. If he can’t control Cheyenne, who would believe he could take on Mojo Woman? I tell you what, if Mojo ever decides to start a war around here, all she really has to do is take out Kodjunn. Once she becomes the sole supplier of spirits around here…” She bared her teeth, gulla-style, and shook her head. “And Tina’s right. This is as far from funny as you can get.”
6
Amy’s words about bone-pointers had been floating around in the back of Olivia’s head all night when the hunters returned and inadvertently brought things to a head. They brought with them no food, no stolen goods, no camping gear. Doru had a backpack half-filled with nuts and pinecones, which he threw with a snarl at the nearest female’s feet. And then Burgelbun appeared, carrying the carcass of a deer that looked like it had been hit by a car.
For a long time, he stood in the doorway of the common cave, staring across the room at his mate. Sarah B. sat as if carved by stone, watching him with a look that showed she did not expect and would not ask him to feed her. Burgelbun turned slowly and took a shuddering step towards the private tunnels, towards Mojo Woman.
The vague idea of Aborigines and shamans suddenly crystallized into a plan, and Olivia called his name.
Burgelbun halted and turned back with a look of heart-rending hope.
Vorgullum put his hand on her shoulder.
Olivia ignored him. “Your mate can tend to that,” she said firmly.
His eyes rolled towards the tunnels. “I promised this to Mojo Woman.”
“She has more than she needs right now. Your mate and your child need meat.”
“Olivia, my mate,” Vorgullum said. “This is not for you to say.”
“He is a hunter for this tribe,” she said loudly.
“He is a hunter who has promised his kills to another,” Vorgullum corrected, although he could not quite keep the disgust from his voice. He took a moment to conquer it, then added, “As Lorchumn once promised his to you.”
She ignored the censure of his tone and kept her eyes on Burgelbun. “You are a hunter for this tribe,” she told him. “We depend on you. Your mate depends on you.”
Burgelbun looked past her again to Sarah B., who waited without expression for his decision. He shivered, dropped his voice to a mere hiss of breath. “She has my soul!”
Vorgullum looked up.
“Well then.” Olivia stood up, shrugging off Vorgullum’s restraining hand. “I’ll just have to go and get it back for you.”
Burgelbun threw down the carcass and sank to the floor beside it, rubbing over and over at the base of his horns with shaking hands.
Slowly, Vorgullum rose and took two steps towards his hunter, then swung around and frowned at Olivia. “What goes on here?” he demanded.
“Nothing that you need concern yourself with. It’s simply time to have some chat with Mojo Woman.” She set off down the tunnel without looking to see if she were followed.
It had occurred to her while Burgelbun had been agonizing in the doorway that Tina was right when she said all Mojo needed was another shaman in the tribe to take her down a notch. After all, it wasn’t as if Maria really had anyone’s soul in a jar of honey, and it wasn’t as if Olivia was going to drop dead just because she spit through her fist and said Die. Olivia didn’t have to do anything, really, except rob Maria of the appearance of power, and Olivia already knew that most of the tribe believed Kodjunn when he’d claimed the Great Spirit had entered her.
She didn’t like to think about that, because it always brought up the timid question of just how Kodjunn had known her surname, but Olivia didn’t have to think about that part today. Today, she was just the woman with the Great Spirit’s blessing. And Mojo Woman was in for a fight.
Outside the chute leading upward to Mojo Woman’s chambers, Olivia squared her shoulders and called out a challenge. “Grunn! Come down, Grunn! Come out of the embrace of that tainted being!”
A murmur rippled out from behind her, and she knew with some satisfaction that she had attracted a considerable crowd. From somewhere among them, she heard Amy murmur, “Smart,” and Tina grunt agreement.
“Grunn!” she called. “The Great Spirit has given me his protection and I extend it to you! Come down to me!”
From within, a deep voice began to speak only to have the shrill scream of a human cut through it in pure rage. “Get away from my room, cochina! Grunn, you stay right where you are!”
“Silence, demon!” Olivia shouted, really getting into the part. “Release your hold on that human!”
A low current of angry agreement ran through the crowd at her back. Vorgullum, trying very hard to sound reasonable, just beneath it: “Would someone tell me what is going on?”
Mojo Woman unleashed a maelstrom of shrieking and Olivia almost jumped back in alarm. For a moment, just a moment, it sounded as if the cry came from more than one throat—a chorus of hatred like a wind, not the play-acting of a slightly power-crazed human.
Conscious of her audience, beginning to feel uneasy, Olivia squared her shoulders and stepped forward. “You will not trick me, demon! I am Oliv
ia and you have no power over me!”
And then there was a mighty crack like thunder inside her mind and Olivia felt blistering heat and pain pound through her body, roaring out through her throat in a voice that was not entirely her own: “Mine is the blood of darkness and mine are the bones of the mountain and mine is the fire of all creation and I call you out, demon!”
Gone, with the same suddenness of its arrival. She woofed forward, nearly falling with the force of its leave-taking. Olivia could hear a profound silence behind her, as though every breath were being held.
There was the sound of a struggle and then Grunn dropped out of the chute. He clambered wildly past Olivia and fell against the wall, shaking and silent. Slate-thin, his fur mottled and torn along his back and sides, he stared at nothing with eyes that showed more white than black. No one reached out to him, and in the next moment, Vorgullum was bowling his way through the crowd with eyes of fire.
“What is this?” he was shouting. “What has been happening in my mountain? You, answer!”
“It’s all right, Grunn,” Olivia said gently. Grunn’s eyes darted to her, focused, darted away. “It’s almost over. Your mate is possessed of an evil spirit, and I intend to chase it out.”
“What shit are you smoking?” someone called from Grunn’s lair, but it was not Mojo Woman; it couldn’t be. There was more than one voice, and they no longer spoke in perfect tandem. “I am not possessed, you puta!” Maria screamed, as the other voice, terrible and inhuman, blew in and out of the words, trying to keep pace.
Olivia felt herself start forward. It was the very last thing in the world she wanted to do, but she couldn’t stop herself, and at her first step, the thing in Grunn’s lair erupted into a screaming, retching, laughing fury that cut across her ears like knives. “Come and have me, then!” it finished, no longer even pretending to be human. “I’ll drink the blood from your beating heart!”
Vorgullum grabbed her arm. “I forbid it. Spear!” he bellowed.
“She means it,” Grunn shuddered. “She will kill you.”
“I am not for that one to kill,” Olivia heard that other voice inside her say, and if thunder could be gentle, that was how it was. She unhooked Vorgullum’s hand from her arm and pushed him back into the wall as if he weighed nothing at all. She drew her spikes from her belt and started up.
Olivia had no idea, really, what happened next. She remembered coming out of the chute, and then her arm went straight into the air at the same time Mojo Woman swung the heavy iron fire poker, and somehow she deflected the blow that should have caved her skull in. Her claws twisted, hooking the poker from Mojo Woman’s grip and throwing it aside with a clatter. Olivia sprang from the chute and faced the thing that Maria had become.
The woman who had once laughed about trapping Grunn’s soul in a candle was still there, struggling within a swollen mass of flesh that leaked water in thousands of tiny rivulets. Her wiry black hair clung wetly to her bloated head; the ends writhed like headless snakes. The eyes that should have been brown were frosted over now with white, but they could still see her and they narrowed with hate.
Mojo Woman opened a mouth that unlocked like the hinge of a door and dropped halfway across her chest. A torrent of clear, cold water gushed from the gaping hole in Mojo Woman’s face and poured out over the floor.
Olivia stepped back from the spreading pool, feeling herself seized with a supernatural calm. “No,” said the other voice inside her.
Mojo Woman thrashed and vomited again—gallons of water, masses of it, enough to fill a bathtub, enough to fill two or three.
Olivia’s hand went up, pressed down on the slick, freezing curve of flesh that was Mojo Woman’s brow. “No,” she said again. “This was not the agreement. Release her.”
Steam hissed out from beneath her palm and nightmarish shrieking filled the room. Mojo Woman’s body began first to pucker, then to convulse. She twisted, spewing violent jets of freezing water in every direction.
A hand, bluish-white and ghostly, thrust itself sluggishly from Mojo Woman’s mouth.
Olivia heard herself scream, but that other voice spoke on with fearless resolve. “Out, creature. You have no claim on this one. Release her.”
The hand grew an arm, then the slick curve of a woman’s head crowned, filling the gulf of Mojo Woman’s gaping maw, reluctantly birthed in a freezing gush of water. The head twisted, opening eyes like mirrors, baleful and beaten. She clutched turgidly at Olivia’s arm, but the ghastly hand burst apart when it struck her skin and then the whole emerging body collapsed and splashed out over the floor.
Mojo Woman slowly folded over, her jaw sliding back into place, the great flood of water slowing to a stream, then to a trickle, and then gone.
Olivia blinked and realized she was standing in a massive puddle of water that appeared to be dissolving into the solid rock. Maria lay at her feet, her wasted body sprawled and skeletal, water leaking out its last drops from her open mouth.
“Olivia?” That was Vorgullum, sounding subdued and fearful.
“I’m here,” she answered faintly. “I’m fine. Just a moment.” She looked around, as if to orient herself, then walked towards the source of light and into the pit room. There were perhaps a dozen jars lined up along the wall beside the sleeping pit, each one filled with honey and holding a single strip of bark upon which had been written a different name. Olivia picked one up and opened it, sniffed cautiously at the interior. Just honey. Just bark. Just the cruel theatrics of a delusional mind.
Olivia pulled the strips of bark out one by one, and put the sticky things in her belt pouch to be burnt later. She returned to the entry and knelt down beside the prone human.
Cold. Still.
Dead, and dead for weeks.
Olivia shuddered and stepped away. She stood shaking over the corpse and did not think.
7
“No, seriously,” Amy said for the fifth time. “What happened?”
Olivia sighed and covered her face with both hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know and believe it or not, I don’t care anymore. All I know is I went up there thinking I would screw around with Maria’s head and maybe get the tribe to see what a total fraud she was and the next thing I know, something…horrible happened and she was dead.”
They were sitting in the commons of the women’s tunnels, where Olivia had been ever since leaving Grunn’s lair. It was the only way she could have any peace. By this time, the story of Mojo Woman had been told and retold so often that if everyone who claimed to have been there at the time really had been, there wouldn’t have been any room for Olivia herself.
Amy watched as Olivia rubbed her face free of worry and went back to work scraping the coarse hair from an elk’s hide. Slowly, reluctantly, she said, “Listen, not to sound like a total psychopath here, but is there any chance that little Somurg really might be the son of the Great Spirit?”
Olivia slammed her own scraper down on the ground hard enough to knock chips off it. “Am I mistaken,” she said tightly, “or did you just call me the Virgin Mary?”
“Hey, if it walks, talks, and quacks like a duck, chances are it’s a damn duck!” Amy shot back.
“Well, it’s bullshit! Kodjunn got the idea from me and I made it up!” Olivia grabbed her scraping tool and attacked the hide again.
“Got what idea? What are you talking about?”
Olivia shot a series of swift, angry glances around the cavern to make sure they could not be overheard and lowered her voice. “When I got…hurt a while ago. Do you remember?”
Amy nodded impatiently.
“Cheyenne did it. Cut up my feet and covered me with some of Murgull’s love-musk and left me in the tunnels for Kodjunn to find so he wouldn’t come back and find her gone.”
“Okay, we all knew she was a bitch and you were covering for her, keep talking.”
“Well, it’s a good potion; it did what it was made for. Kodjunn was ready to throw himself on his sword and tell Vorgull
um, and I knew how that would end, so I told him I had a dream and Urga told me the Great Spirit possessed him so it really wasn’t his fault…and anyway it was total bullshit!”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Did you have a dream?”
The scraper jigged in her hand and sliced into the delicate webbing between her thumb and finger. Olivia cursed and sucked at the blood, glaring at Amy. “No, of course not,” she said around her hand. “It told you, it was spur-of-the-moment crap. I just didn’t want to get him castrated or Cheyenne killed!”
“Hey, I’m an enlightened American atheist,” Amy said defensively. “I majored in mathematics, for crying out loud! But the rules have changed, honey-bunny, and it seems to me that it’s at least plausible that some great cosmic force is working through you, because something sure as shit was working in Mojo Woman! So let’s play along for a second. Maybe nobody had to possess Kodjunn, and maybe you did spin that whopper out of whole cloth, but what if, by telling him what you told him, you actually caught the Big Guy’s ear? So maybe he didn’t know you from Big Bird before, but now you’ve piqued his interest. Since he’s already been called the Divine Daddy by Kodjunn in front of the whole tribe, now he’s for damn sure got to be certain little Somurg is born. And for that, he’s going to need to keep an eye on Mommy.”
“That,” Olivia said darkly, “is a whole lot of maybes.”
Amy tapped her finger thoughtfully against her bicep. “Here’s one more for you. Maybe you should be asking the Great Spirit for game.”
“Hey, let’s not play with this, okay?” Olivia said, more sharply than she’d intended.
“I’m not playing,” Amy countered. “That’s a legitimate request. Or hadn’t you noticed that we’re all slowly starving to death?”
“We’ve got Mojo’s storerooms now,” Olivia countered.
“It won’t last, Olivia. Being a mathematics major means you never stop seeing the numbers, and I’m telling you, we’re going to run out.”