by R. Lee Smith
The gullan staying with her offered some relief. They would rub her back and legs, wipe her down with damp cloths, and try to keep her engaged with light-hearted stories of what was going on elsewhere in the mountain, but Olivia found it increasingly difficult to respond to them. She floated in a sea of numbing weariness, with nothing to do but wait to go into labor, and yet, when it finally happened, it still managed to come as a surprise.
Of course, she’d been having pains all morning—horrible, watery ones that seemed to wrap around her entire abdomen—but she hadn’t thought of them as contractions, because they didn’t last very long and they were awfully irregular. And Somurg had dropped heavily into her pelvic girdle a week ago (“That’ll make it easier for you to catch your breath, huh?” said Tina, as Olivia’s bladder was flattened under Somurg’s enormous head), so she knew she was coming to the end of it. All the same, her first thought when she felt the warm gush of waters flood out between her thighs was that she’d gone and wet the bed for the first time since she’d turned six.
“Crugunn!” she groaned, trying to heave herself up and out of the pit. “I hate to do this to you, but I’ve made a mess.”
Crugunn, heating water at the hearth for yet another massage and sponge-bath, came at once to help her stand, then bent and scooped up the soiled bedding, taking a deep and astoundingly cheerful sniff prior to taking it away.
And then she stopped.
Sniffed again.
Crugunn gave the bedding an unaimed toss towards the wall and took Olivia firmly by the arm before she could finish staggering over to the nearest bench. “Lie down,” she said, still cheerfully. “Your time has come. Thurga, find Tina!”
“It has?” Olivia said, feeling stupid as yet another cramp took her in its fist and squeezed. She let Crugunn put her back to bed, her own hands pressed over the bulge at her belly, unable to believe it was really happening. She didn’t feel any different. “But…I thought there would be some sort of warning…”
“Like your water breaking?” Tina asked, striding into the room with a polka-dotted backpack full of her medical things in one hand and a flashlight in the other. Horumn followed her. “This is how it’s going to be,” Tina began as the ancient gulla lowered herself with an arthritic grunt to her knees in Olivia’s pit. “Horumn’s going to handle the actual delivery while I try to keep things clean and organized and learn something. Crugunn, your job is to stand right there and make sure no one comes in or out unless I ask for something. Thurga, you get to do my running around if I need something, got it?”
“Yes, healer!”
“Yes, healer!”
“Yes, Tina,” Horumn grumbled. Her hands on Olivia’s body were strong and gentle, guiding cushions and furs into place behind her to help her sit up, supporting her hips as brand new sheets—fresh from their plastic packaging—were slid underneath her, and moving with confidence and unerring skill to massage the worst of the pain away when the contraction finally eased. “Are you well, Urgarna?”
“Well?” Olivia echoed, suddenly on the verge of panic and tears. “I’ve never done this before, how would I know if I’m well? I’m not ready for this.”
“Bah, you whining humans,” Horumn sneered, and shone Tina’s flashlight between her open thighs. “Twelve times I’ve gone to the birthing bench and I think you are well, eh? So. Try to rest. You have all day yet.”
Rumm stuck her head in the cavern and said, “Vorgullum is at the entry. He says he will come to see his mate.”
“No,” Horumn said. “He will not.”
Rumm went away. Horumn helped Olivia roll onto her side and began to rub her back and legs as Tina pinched Olivia’s wrist between her fingers and studied her watch. Rumm returned.
“Vorgullum is at the entry,” she said again, sounding amused. “He says there is no iron door in this mountain and he will see his mate.”
“He will not,” Horumn said, still calm. “Take a double handful of women and block the tunnel.”
“He is a large male,” Rumm said, looking dubious.
“Then arm yourselves,” said Tina, still watching her wrist. “Find Tobi. That should hold him off.”
Rumm nodded reluctantly and withdrew.
Horumn hushed Olivia as she began moaning Vorgullum’s name miserably. “We must do this thing, Good Mother, we must. If, Great Spirit let it not be so, you or the baby were to die this night, would you wish your mate to remember you screaming and bleeding in his arms?”
Olivia shuddered and tried to twist away from the awful image.
Horumn patted her and wiped her face. “It is because you care for him that you must not allow him to come near. Now put it from your mind, Olivia Urgarna. Focus your thoughts on your child. Send him thoughts of welcome to this world.”
Olivia looked at her watch whenever one of the early, watery contractions ebbed through her. For the next two hours, they came closer together, but still at irregular intervals. Then they started coming five minutes apart, and getting stronger. At seven in the evening, Olivia was crying out with pain every three minutes, and Horumn was rubbing her belly and shoulders constantly.
“All righty!” Tina gave her thighs a slap and stood up. “I think it’s showtime. Ladies, let’s get her to the birthing bench.”
Olivia felt strong hands on either side of her lifting her off her bed and setting her on her feet. She walked through a thick fog to the bench and was lifted into it. Her legs came apart and were fit in the supports. There was a cushion at her back, warm cloths wiping the sweat and tears from her face. She was aware of all these things in the most detached way; the pain had all of her.
“She is ready,” she heard Horumn say. “You must be strong, Good Mother. The pain will increase.”
For a while, Olivia was all right. The labor was more intense, the contractions longer, but she thought she was coping with it rather well. Thurga came to rub her shoulders and her soft, leathery hands felt good. Her deep, soothing voice sang in her ear and gave her something besides pain to dwell on, and that was good, too.
But hours went by and the pain just kept coming, and no matter how hard Olivia pushed, nothing seemed to be happening. Pain, God, pain swallowing her up like a python swallowing a goat—first crushing and then consuming her. At one particularly vicious spasm, Olivia screamed for two full minutes, insensible. As the pain finally eased and her voice faded in the air, she realized she could hear Vorgullum howling for her, far back in the caverns.
“Control yourself, damn you!” Horumn snapped. “The more you fight, the longer this will last. The first child is always difficult. You must gather your strength, remain calm.”
And that was almost reassuring. Almost…if not for the fact that she could also hear Tina and her matter-of-fact mutters: “This is taking way too long. Thurga, you better get the knives ready.”
“Behold me, mortal.”
She turned her head and saw a faintly glowing figure in the corner of the crowded cave. “Urga!” she cried.
The light coalesced into Urga’s now familiar form, swollen thick with her own child. “It is time.” she said, and came gliding across the floor. She paused when she reached the pit, a faint frown touching at her face. “What are you doing?”
Olivia’s answer was another rusty shriek as her entire lower body tried to rip itself inside-out.
Urga’s lips curved in the very smallest of smiles, but her eyes remained cold and dead as distant stars. “Foolish woman. Did I not say you were to have the birthing of my son? How could you think to bear him without me?”
“Then help me! Please! Help me!” Olivia screamed, only dimly aware of what startled and disturbed effect her cries had upon the others in the room.
“Help you? Not for all the pleas in the world would I help you this time, daughter of Bahgree. I answer only my mate’s command.” Urga floated forward, passing right through Horumn as she knelt between Olivia’s bent legs, then turned and fell back into Olivia’s body.
&nb
sp; Cold. Olivia gasped, clawing mindlessly backwards as gullan hands restrained her, unknowingly holding her for their goddess to consume. Urga was the moon inside her, a terrible tidal force aligning all of Olivia’s human body to her own ruthless will. She could still hear Horumn speaking to her excitedly, but Horumn had ceased to matter. Her head turned at Urga’s direction; she studied the frame of the birthing bench around her with alien, incurious eyes.
Foolishness. Mortal trimmings for an act she had been first in all the world to perform. Scorning the padded hand-grips at her sides, Urga cupped Olivia’s stomach, bent forward, and bore down.
Horumn cried out, not with horror, but with happiness. “Blanket!” she shouted, and a dozen gullan rushed to obey.
Urga worked swiftly and in silence, ignoring the rushing gullan around her, the insignificant cries and coaching. The human at her back alone distracted her; she felt as thorns each pinch of the human’s hand at her wrist, heard every word as River’s water splashing over bones, but did not allow it to divert her from her purpose. She kept pushing, feeling the pressure ease with every contraction until it slid suddenly out and she saw the baby in Horumn’s hands.
Covered with mucous and short, slimy fur, the child was coffee-colored, with thick flaps of furry skin surrounding a fat, wrinkled body. Its undeveloped wings folded over its back, sealed to the body with a thin, whitish membrane. Two dull nubs of bone marked the base of what would one day be a span of imposing horns. And between them, running from the crown of its head all the way down its spine to just above its bottom, was a narrow silvery stripe that would someday be a dead-ringer for the one Kodjunn had.
Horumn stuck her finger in its mouth, swabbed out an amazing amount of gummy mucous, then flipped it onto its belly and smacked it once on the back. The baby drew in a gasping, offended breath, and released it in a hoarse cry.
Somurg.
Urga stood up, her lean body rising easily out of Olivia’s, and looked down at the infant raging in Horumn’s hands. There was no sign of motherly affection or remorse about her as she turned away. Her purpose was to deliver new life and her purpose had been completed. The child, inevitable result of that purpose, was no longer of any consequence. “I am done with you, daughter of Bahgree,” she said, already beginning to fade. “Await the will of my mate.”
Then she was gone, reality snapping back into three dimensions around her. Horumn wept steadily as she toweled the baby off and she was not alone; every gullan in the room sobbed freely. There was pain again, and smells and sounds and every caustic sense vying at once for her attention, but there was also Somurg—Somurg, her son.
Olivia put out her arms and soon he filled them. She brought him in close and he turned his face into her breast, howling over and over in his scratchy, brand-new voice until he heard her saying his name. Then he stopped crying and just lay there, hitching in baby breaths and beating at her now and then with twitching fists.
“Is he healthy?” Olivia asked shakily.
She meant to ask Tina, but Tina was only frowning at her, so she turned her anxious eyes on Horumn instead. Horumn nodded, too overcome to speak.
“I want my mate,” she said, and it was not a request.
Crugunn got up and stumbled into the tunnel. A very short time later Vorgullum raced into the cavern and came to Olivia’s side. He reached for her, but it was a cursory touch; Vorgullum had lived thinking only of healthy children since before their abduction, and now, at last, he saw one.
“Oh,” he said quietly.
“Do you want to hold him?” she asked, offering the baby up to him.
But he shook his head and prodded Somurg tentatively with one blunt claw instead. The baby gave the invader a punch, then grabbed the finger and looked cross. The tiny hand could not even close around Vorgullum’s finger, and yet he was trapped.
“Our son, Somurg,” Olivia said. “We are a family, Vorgullum.”
“Family,” he whispered, and just kept staring.
“Not a mark anywhere,” Horumn exclaimed. “No mottles, no sign of weakness or deformity. His wings are solid and firmly bound. His bones are strong, and see there! Oh, great tovorak, behold his crest!”
Vorgullum moved his uncaught hand to brush lightly at the wet spikes of silver crowning the baby’s head. “Yes. His crest.” He glanced at Horumn and it must have been a meaningful glance because the other gullan quickly gathered themselves up and left them. Only then did he turn his gaze on her, his eyes strangely subdued. “The moon is full,” he told her. “Tonight, Urga brings another son of the Great Spirit to this world to be born. I think it is our own.”
Olivia felt her arms tightening around her baby and forced them to relax.
“And that should be a good thing,” he went on, looking back into Somurg’s scrunched and unhappy face. “It has always been a good thing before. The children of the Full-Moon become tovorak, become sigruum, become legend. I should be honored.”
Olivia found herself fussing with the blanket, hating the heavy silence that lay between them.
“I will try to feel blessed,” Vorgullum said at last. “I will try to believe that it is my son at the center of all these signs and omens. Not you.”
“Not me,” she agreed, and smiled at him, wishing she believed it, too.
9
Three days later, Vorgullum presented his son before the entire tribe as Olivia stood beside him. Somurg slept through most of it, waking only when his father lifted him high over the assembly, at which point he let out a lusty bellow and was handed promptly back to Olivia for quieting.
She leaned herself against the wall and tucked Somurg inside her robe, smiling faintly as he attached himself to a breast and fumbled around until he managed to get some milk. “I thought this was supposed to be instinctive,” she said chidingly, and he thumped her on the chest with one balled fist as though to say, ‘Less talk, more milk.’
“Don’t you want to sit down?” Amy asked from beside her.
“I would love to sit down,” Olivia replied. “And if I ever manage it, I’m going to have the bench bronzed.”
Sarah J. burst out laughing. She wiped her eyes, sniggering, and only then noticed that everyone was looking at her. “Sorry,” she said, grinning. “But I know exactly what you mean.”
“You’ve had a baby before?” Amy asked, somewhat surprised.
Sarah J. shook her head, peering at what there was to see of Somurg. “My sister. She was a just a kid, still in school, vanishing goy boyfriend, the whole song and dance. My parents…” She shrugged. “She had to give it up, and she hated them for it, but honestly, it was the right thing to do. God, that’s a cute kid. Like a cross between a baby and a puppy.”
Olivia beamed. She supposed it wasn’t exactly the sort of compliment that ought to go to a new mother’s head, but she couldn’t help herself.
“I’m in no hurry, though,” Sarah J. added, straightening up. “As soon as Doru finds out you’ve got a bun in the oven, he takes your spear away. I’m only just getting good with it.”
One of the female gullan hovering nearby edged a little closer. “You actually hunt?” she asked, in the tones of one who has heard it before and still can’t believe it.
“Yup.” Sarah J. put her shoulders back with a great deal of pride. “Got a rabbit yesterday and helped Doru take down a deer the day before. With a spear. Eat your heart out, Ted Nugent.”
Far from looking impressed, the female’s expression was obviously one of mild revulsion. “But…Sung does not hunt for you?”
Sarah J. seemed nonplussed by this reaction. “Well, sure he does. And I hunt for him.”
“A mate should provide for you.” The female groped for something more to say and finally tossed her hornless head. “If he cared for you, he would see to it that you never needed to leave the mountain. That is his duty!”
Sarah J. was beginning to look a little annoyed. “No, his duty is to knock me up. In the meantime, we all need to eat, so he hunts and so do
I.”
“Hang on,” Amy interrupted, lifting one finger like a referee’s flag. “Are you saying a female never leaves the mountain? For any reason?”
“Not after we are mated!” the female said with a derisive flap of her folded wings. “If I had a strong hunter to bring me meat, why would I choose to spend my days scratching at the earth for roots and berries? And I note that your Kurlun does not allow you to hunt!”
“I would,” Kurlun said, and everyone jumped a little and watched him stride over to join them. “If I thought she wanted to. I’d carry her out of the mountain any night she asked me, just to see my Amy in the moonlight. If she wished to bear my child beneath the stars, I would take her out even then, and if I thought it could be done, I would have Sudjummar make her a pair of wings for her own. Now go on,” he said quietly, “and tell me I do not care for her. Tell me, Sorluu, that I do not provide for her.”
The female hunched, lowering her eyes to the floor, and said nothing.
“Hm.” Kurlun eyed her a moment longer, and then turned his back on her and bent to bump brows with Amy. “I would couple with you by starlight anytime you asked me,” he stage-whispered.
“When you couple with me,” she whispered back, grinning, “there are always stars. Stars and moons and suns.”
He nipped lightly at Amy’s lips and moved away. “And by the way,” he called, “Sarahjay is a damn fine hunter. This tribe is fortunate to have her spear, and Sung is a fool if he is not proud of her!”
“I am,” a gulla called and gave the rock beneath his feet a solid smack with the butt of his spear.
“So there,” Sarah J. said.