by R. Lee Smith
4
Olivia was with Murgull when she died, three weeks later. Murgull had been complaining of aches for some time, but no worse, really, than she ever did. And then, one morning she simply never got out of bed. Olivia waited in the women’s commons for her lessons until mid-day, then went to find her.
Murgull lay curled in her pit, breathing in hard, shallow pants.
“Murgull?” Olivia said, somewhat shrilly, and rushed to her.
“Oh,” Murgull grunted. “You. Look how big you are, like a boulder!” She started to reach for her, then gasped and fell back. “Too soon, always too soon. You go on alone…little sister.”
“No!” Olivia raced back to the mouth of the tunnel, shouting for help, for Horumn, for Tina, for anyone.
“Remember…your promise,” Murgull panted. One hand rose, groped clumsily at her chest, and fell again. “And if…If the child you bear is whole…you must show me…your little frog…your little Somurg. You must hold him high…where I am sleeping.”
“Don’t talk like that!” Olivia ran back past Murgull’s pit to fumble at potions and herbs. “What can I get? Murgull, what can I get for you?”
“A grave,” Murgull groaned, and died.
Olivia shook her, called her, and finally slapped her. Murgull’s last breath escaped in a ghastly rattling sigh, and then her rigid limbs slowly unlocked. The air seemed to chill, as though in the passage of a soul.
Olivia clutched her arm, her own blunt fingernails sunk in the thinning hair. Her lip quivered. “Murgull?” she said hesitantly.
There are things I need to do, a cold part of her thought.
But she couldn’t leave. It was tradition. Someone had to stay with the dead, and make it ready for burial.
Olivia rose woodenly, stumbled to the entry room, and called down the hall from the doorway. Murgull’s lair had been very close to the women’s commons. It wasn’t long before someone answered nervously, just outside.
“Murgull is dead,” Olivia said. “Murgull is dead, and I don’t know what to do.”
The sound of running feet was her only reply. She sank down onto a bench to wait. Minutes alone with the dead were hours, and finally Horumn came. The old gulla did not look at Olivia, only went to Murgull and gazed at her.
“So,” Horumn said softly. “So.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Olivia repeated, hearing the helpless voice of a lost child.
“You go, Olivia,” Horumn said. “I will do what needs doing. Tordurk is finding a grave for her.”
“I don’t want to leave her,” Olivia said, and then the tears came. She stumbled towards the entry chute, but Horumn caught her arm and embraced her awkwardly around the great swell of her belly.
“Hush, human,” Horumn murmured. “Old Murgull did not want to leave you, either. Wanted to see your little frog born. The Great Spirit had greater plans for her, and so she goes. Be happy, Olivia. A life of pain is over.” She patted Olivia’s back, and then held her back at arm’s length. “There are secret things I must do, alone with my cousin. You go, Olivia. Go, now.”
Olivia nodded, wiping at her wet eyes, and left them. She wrapped her arms around her baby-hard body and staggered down the passage, sobbing inconsolably.
After a while, someone, she couldn’t tell who, came and put an arm around her. She leaned into the warm body, and let herself be led away. She heard voices, and one embrace was exchanged for another—the strong, familiar arms of Vorgullum.
“What happened?” he asked. “What hurts? Great Spirit, is it the child?”
“Murgull,” she managed.
Vorgullum’s grip tightened. “Murgull is dead,” he said, and then said it again. And again.
“I was there,” she wept. “I saw her die. I felt her soul go past me. It was cold.”
He rocked her, silent. All around them, talk was beginning, and there was fear more than sorrow in their voices. Olivia cried herself empty, there in the commons, while the cavern filled with gullan. No one said much, but eyes were moving continuously towards Olivia and away.
Tordurk returned just before dawn. He was an older gulla, with patches of grey hair over his body and a twisted scar on his chest where he once claimed to have been stabbed by a drunken human in a brawl. Slumped with exertion and haggard by grief, the scar stood out on him like a bolt of lightning. He gazed at Olivia with hollow eyes for a moment before coming over.
“I knew her well in my youth,” he said. “I always meant to do great things in her name.” He spread his dirty hands, empty but for blisters, then lumbered off to meet with Horumn.
It was dusk again before the body could be moved. No one had left the common cave. If anyone slept, it was in fits and snatches caught against the wall. Some spoke of Murgull’s youth, some of her wisdom and way with medicines, but no one said her name. There was some laughter, some tears, but too few of either, Olivia thought. She herself seemed to float in a void without feeling, scarcely aware of Vorgullum’s presence beside her.
When Horumn and Tordurk appeared, bearing the wrapped body between them, Olivia rose and started forward.
Vorgullum stopped her.
When she swung toward him, her heart breaking and full of challenge, she saw his eyes, and knew she would not be allowed at the burial. She tried anyway.
Vorgullum listened patiently to all her rambling and half-coherent reasons why he had no right to make her stay, and then his hand on her shoulder tightened and eased her firmly back down and onto the bench. She began to weep. The other gullan in the commons gave them space, muttering uncomfortably amongst themselves, but Vorgullum only stood there, gripping her shoulder and waiting for her bitter tears to stop.
“I hate you for this,” she said before she could stop herself. “You know I’m not going to run away, you know I’m not, and you’re keeping me here anyway. I will never forgive you for this.”
She wasn’t being reasonable. In the back of her mind, she knew it. Everywhere else, she raged.
Vorgullum watched Murgull’s body carried away. Even after it was gone, he continued to wait, until Tordurk and Horumn had surely made their labored way out of the mountain. Only then did he release her.
“Some things I will not risk,” he said. “Not even for your love.”
He left her.
5
Olivia went to the women’s tunnels and sat for hours as gullan workers passed back and forth before her staring eyes, doing the last of their labors before they were allowed to fall into their crowded beds. They talked to each other, laughed with each other, just as if she weren’t there. And maybe she wasn’t. She felt locked in grief, drowned by it, and she wasn’t even sure it was all to do with Murgull. ‘We will never be one of them,’ Tina had said. They could try as hard as they liked, but they would always be prisoners.
Eventually, she was alone, with a single candle left burning as a token acknowledgment of her presence here, or perhaps it had been left for the old gulla female who sat across the women’s commons from her, guarding the tunnels from opportunistic males who might be tempted to take advantage of Horumn’s absence.
Vorgullum did not come to bring her home.
In the middle of that empty night, Horumn returned. Olivia could hear the wet slide of her foot and the striking of her staff as she made her tired way across the cave, and then she heard it stop.
Silence.
“So,” said Horumn, and started walking again. “Come with me.”
She went.
Horumn led her through the tunnels to wide room with a single, unoccupied pit at its center, one with three curved benches set around it in the shape of a horseshoe. The pit had been prepared for sleeping with many thick furs and sleeping bags. The benches kept a jug of water, a small stack of magazines, and a lantern within easy reach of the sleeper. Apart from a few backpacks, some extra furs, and a pile of antlers at the far end of the room, there were no other furnishings.
“Is this where you live?” Olivia asked.
“Ha!” Horumn dragged herself over to the lantern and lit it. “It is where you live, for now.”
“Vorgullum doesn’t want me back?”
“Eh?” Horumn peered at her over the flickering top of the lantern, then turned her head and spat. “You humans! You whining, milk-mouthed humans!”
“He wouldn’t let me see Murgull buried.”
Horumn hooked her hand through the air and glared at her. “The dead are still close,” she said. “Do not call her by name. She was cruel enough in life and death…death can change a soul.” She grunted, looking warily around the empty cave, then took the lantern to a hook on the wall and hung it up. “Of course he didn’t let you go, fool. The dead are hungry, the grave is cold, and your little son swims helpless below your heart. Ha! Your mate will let all you frogs run together when you stamp your foot, and abandon the home of his ancient fathers for your dreams, and pluck down the moon should you ask for it with tears on your naked face, but some things he will not risk. Nor should he.”
Olivia looked at the floor, the ceiling, the unpainted walls. “Where are we?” she asked at last.
“It is our birthing room. You will stay here until your hour comes. No more climbing up into a hunter’s lair. It is time for you to rest.”
“Oh.”
With the added light of the lantern, she could see that what she had at first taken for antlers was actually some sort of chair, lashed together from dozens of carved wooden struts and poles. Now that she was looking at it in the light of the room’s purpose, she could see how her legs were meant to go, propped up and wide apart on one of three sets of stirrups, or which of two armrests she might grip for leverage when she got ready to push. There was even a second, smaller bench, little more than a footstool, nearby for the midwife to rest while the labor dragged on. It was supposed to be Murgull sitting there. She supposed now it would be Horumn.
“How many births have you assisted in?” Olivia asked, running her fingertips over the curved back of the chair.
“Many.” Horumn shrugged, looking weary. “Twelve I had of my own. Nine are dead. Tordurk is my eldest, now.”
She looked at the gulla closely. “Tordurk…?”
“I fought with her over that,” Horumn admitted, seating herself heavily on one of the curved benches around the pit. “And when she refused to release him, I fought with him. Silly now, I suppose. Such a bitter battle, and it divided us, all three. I called her corpse-face, and she went weeping into the night. Tordurk came to me and called himself orphan. But she would not speak with him more, my words had done that much. He refused to take another mate, I berated him for wasting his good years with a barren woman. Stupid. Pointless. Not ten years later, all mates would be divided, all coupling forbidden.”
“I’m sorry.”
Horumn gazed into space for several seconds, then looked stonily over at Olivia. “I was her friend, you see? Her cousin. I was supposed to have all her secrets. But she was stubborn, refused to give me even the meaningless apology you throw about so eagerly. She took my son and seemed to think that I should ask her pardon for it. Ha. She chose to live alone rather than bend her neck to me. For years and years…until you came.
“How I hate you, Olivia,” Horumn said wearily. “You removed me forever from her heart.”
Olivia looked away, returned her distracted stare to the birthing chair. She could not bring herself to be angry now, but she knew she would be hearing those words for a long time to come.
“I am old,” Horumn muttered. “Too old. I never intended to live so long. Had always planned to die in spite, and make that old bat beg forgiveness from my fat, dead body. Even in death she is having the better of me.”
“You’re grieving,” Olivia said. “So am I.”
“And we are alone. The others—” She flapped a hand as though waving off a foul stench. “They will miss only her knowledge, her power. They will not miss her, because they did not know her. Even Tordurk did not know her, much as he thinks he did. You and I have seen her black, withered heart and until you have seen that, you have not truly seen her. But we are different, Olivia. You will grieve for her and go on. I will die of it, I think.”
“You don’t mean that, Horumn.”
“No? Ha.” She stared morosely at the birthing chair, then heaved herself upright and took up her walking stick. “But you stay here now, Olivia. Stay on your back and weep your tears. Weep for me, if you can. All my tears are gone.” She limped off down the tunnel, leaving Olivia alone.
6
She stayed in the birthing room for five days, stubbornly observing the gullan rites of mourning even when no one else did, and on the morning of the sixth day, when the hide flap that sealed away her room from the rest of the women’s tunnels shifted aside, it was not Thurga or Crugunn to see if she was ready for a bowl of rabbit stew of a jug of tea, but Vorgullum.
“I didn’t know men were allowed back here,” she said after that first silence grew too heavy to hold up.
He came inside and let the hide flap drop behind him. “They aren’t. And Horumn is not so obedient that she will give me more than a moment, so let me speak.”
“I don’t hate you,” Olivia blurted and covered her eyes. “I don’t. That was a horrible thing to say. You had your reasons and…and even if I didn’t agree with them, I should have respected you enough to obey you. I’m sorry.”
“Olivia—”
“You’ve given me a lot of freedom even when I know it meant breaking your traditions. I’m sure you’ve had to defend me more than once, and when the whole tribe was watching, when it really mattered, I yelled at you.”
“Would you let me speak?” he said, exasperated.
“Sorry. Go ahead.”
He stood there, rubbing at the base of his horns and glaring at her. “Well, now I don’t have anything left to say.”
“I could go apologize in front of everybody.”
“Everybody does not need to hear it,” said Vorgullum firmly, coming to kneel beside her in the pit. “It’s enough that I did. You are a good mate to me.” He hesitated, then brushed the backs of his knuckles along her cheek. “I’ve missed you.”
“I could come home with you,” she offered, but he was shaking his head by the second word.
“Your time is close and yours will be the first birth to this tribe in more than thirty years. You will stay here, my Olivia, under Horumn’s eye.”
Thirty years. Olivia looked up at him as he stroked her hair, and felt herself beginning to frown. Thirty years?
“Vorgullum, how old are you?” she asked curiously.
“Fifty-three years come summer,” he replied.
She forgot she was pregnant and tried to sit up fast. Pain at the sudden movement shot up her spine and wrapped her belly, so that she performed a kind of jerking curl instead. “What?” she hissed through clenched teeth.
He had stopped petting her and gripped her shoulders instead, well on his way to panic. “Are you hurt? Is it the baby?”
She managed to shake her head and say again, “How old are you?”
“Fifty-three,” he said again, perplexed.
“You told me you were young!” she accused. “I know you are. I’ve seen old gullan!”
“I am young,” he answered, looking baffled. Then a thought occurred to him and she could actually see it creeping in behind his eyes. He drew back, his brows drawing thunderously together, and said, “How old are you?”
“Twenty-five,” she answered.
He leapt back, leapt, as from the thrust of a spear or the lunging claws of a wildcat. “Great Spirit!” he gasped. “How old is Beth?”
“Nineteen, I think.”
The fur on his neck and shoulders spiked out in shock and horror. “Nineteen?” he thundered. “Nineteen years? Olivia, she’s a child! Wurlgunn is mating with a child! Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Nineteen isn’t a child! How old was Murgull?” she countered. “Two hundred? Three?”
“Three, or so near as to make no difference, but she was the oldest in all the world.” He hesitated. “How long do humans live?”
“Ninety years, sometimes.”
They stared at each other.
“I had imagined a whole life with you,” he said, stunned.
Olivia hadn’t consciously imagined much beyond the birth of their son, but now she realized that she, too, had pictured growing old together in some way, not growing old alone while he stayed frozen in time. “The others need to know this,” she said at last. “I doubt anyone has thought to ask their mate how long gullan live.”
“But we’ve all seen humans,” Vorgullum was saying, almost to himself. His eyes were huge, ringed with white. “We’ve seen the books, we’ve seen every kind of human in those books. They’re small when they’re young, and grey and wrinkled when they’re old. We just assumed…”
“How long is childhood? Will I die before my son is grown?” She felt a kind of cold dread at the thought, and was relieved when he shook his head.
“He’ll wean before his first year is done, and walk by his second. He should speak reasonably well before his third year begins, and learn how to keep himself clean before his fourth. His wing-skin will begin to split at some point between his eighth and tenth year, and he’ll be ready for his first flight perhaps as young as fourteen. Females enter their first season when they are as young as twenty-eight, but males can couple as early as their twenty-first year.”
So. She would live to see her child grow, maybe even to have a mate and child of his own.
Unexpectedly, she found herself thinking of Kodjunn’s vision, and the Great Spirit’s promise that he would come for her in his flesh and lead her out on some great journey. Where had her mate and child been in that revelation?
“I’m not going to think about this now,” she said slowly. “But the others must be told, and as soon as possible.” She drummed her fingers on her stomach, then said, “I’d better tell them myself. I need to see how the others are doing, anyway.”