by R. Lee Smith
Olivia raised Cheyenne’s shirt, exposing a hard yet substantial stomach. “You’re pretty big for four months,” she remarked.
“Is it some sort of infection?”
“Just lie back. I’ll have a look.” Olivia retreated to the washroom to wash her hands. When she returned, Cheyenne was on her back on the bench, legs apart, holding her stomach in both hands and staring at the ceiling in a detached, brooding fashion. “Try to relax,” she said.
“Do I look hysterical to you? Jesus Christ. Just do it.”
Olivia began by placing both hands on Cheyenne’s belly and moving the uterus back and forth gently as she tried to locate the baby. When she found a head, she cupped it and felt gingerly inside.
“Christ, it’s like the conception all over again,” Cheyenne muttered. “Why you’d want to fuck that thing I’ll never know.”
“Did you forget you doused me in Murgull’s potion?” Olivia snapped. “Can you please be quiet and let me concentrate?”
“You got what you deserved. I asked you for help and you gave me that fuck-happy piss instead. I’m glad he raped you. I hope it hurt.”
“Kodjunn is manifestly incapable of raping anybody, and no one is impressed with your bullshit anymore, so shut up.” Olivia stood up, walked to Cheyenne’s left side and started again. She found the head in the same place, cupped it gently, and again probed from within. “Does this hurt?”
“No, but your hands are fucking freezing.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Olivia…Olivia, seriously, what is wrong with you?” Not hostile, but spoken with what seemed like genuine frustration and confusion. “If you were watching on the news about some chick who got kidnapped, would you be saying she wasn’t raped just because she quit screaming? Do you call putting chains on her getting her in the mood? I mean, where are you coming from?”
“You know, I could ask you the same thing. What do you think you’re going to accomplish by being this nasty all the time? It’s not going to help you escape, and it’s sure not endearing you to anyone.”
“I don’t get that, either. It’s like all of you have rocks in your fucking heads! We were kidnapped! We are being held against our will! We are being impregnated by fucking monsters!”
“Listen,” she said tightly. “There are a lot of other women here besides you and me. Most of them are trying to make the best of things with gullan who really don’t like them all that much, so just what do you think will happen if you give those gullan a reason to distrust us? They’re not going to hand us a bunch of lovely parting gifts and show us the damn door!”
“No, they’re going to throw us off a fucking cliff!” Cheyenne shot back. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Olivia?” Bodual’s voice, concerned.
“I’m fine,” she called. To Cheyenne, she added, “Just be quiet.” She placed both hands on Cheyenne’s belly and this time, instead of rocking the baby, she tried to turn it. When she had succeeded in moving the lump to one side, she reached again between Cheyenne’s thighs and used two fingers to probe, all the while staring intently at Cheyenne’s belly.
She felt the pressure on her fingers relax. Simultaneously, Cheyenne’s skin bulged slightly. “The hell?” she muttered, frowning.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Cheyenne said, eyeing the ripple of flesh dubiously.
Olivia felt her mouth drop open.
“So what is it? Is it some sort of infection? It is, isn’t it? Would you say something, you dumb bitch?! I swear to God if you don’t—”
“I think you’re having twins,” she said.
“—tell me what the problem is, I’m going to…what?” Cheyenne blinked rapidly, then pushed herself into a sitting position. “What did you say?”
“Two babies, Cheyenne. Twins.”
Cheyenne gaped at her, and then looked down and gaped at her own hard stomach. “You’re joking! You’re not joking? Twins? Really? I mean, that’s actually kind of scary, but it’s—” She let out a loud whoop of relief and shouted, “I’m having twins! Jesus! I thought I was dying!”
“Olivia!” Bodual bellowed, and she heard him bound up the shaft and come for her, no doubt with his spear at the ready. When he saw Cheyenne laughing and Olivia calmly cleaning her hands, he shouldered his weapon, but kept his wings fanned and his horns lowered. “Watch yourself, beast.”
Olivia ignored him for now, tapping Cheyenne on the shoulder. “I recommend that you rest as much as possible, and really start watching what you eat. When spring gets here, you’re going to choke down a lot of greens and they’re all bitter as hell, so you better get used to the idea now.”
“Fine, whatever,” Cheyenne said dismissively. “Send me all the salad you want, I’m eating for three!”
“I will,” Olivia replied, smiling in spite of herself. “Do you want to tell Kodjunn or shall I?”
“Why? Oh, yeah, sure, whatever. If you think he’ll be interested.” Her expression tightened suddenly and she turned a black look on Olivia. “But you want to make damn sure he knows that I conceived them, I’m carrying them, and they belong to me!”
Cheyenne’s English may have been beyond Bodual’s understanding, but the combination of her look, tone, and pointing finger proved too much for him. He lunged forward without warning to seize Olivia and push her behind him. “Are you threatening my leader’s mate?” he growled.
“Hey, when I threaten her, you’ll know.” But she backed down, snatching up her breeches and retreating to the end of the bench to put them on. “Get the fuck out of here, would you? I’m naked.”
Bodual kept his grip on Olivia and kept his gaze on Cheyenne as he backed out of the cave. He nudged her towards the access chute and she went, rolling her eyes a little but permitting him to defend her. A moment later he joined her in the tunnel, still growling deep in his chest.
“Should never have brought her,” he was muttering. He tipped a distinctly indulgent glance at Olivia, and added, “We tolerate her for your sake, and for the child she carries, but she’s dangerous.”
“To quote Horumn, she is far enough along that she is hobbled.”
Unknowingly echoing her own response, Bodual snorted. “Hobbled? Ha!” Bodual shook his head, casting a mistrustful glare over his shoulder at the chute. “Not that one. And I tell you, I’m not afraid of the Beast herself, but I hate to think what she wants with that baby.”
Olivia looked back at him uneasily. “What do you mean by that?”
“Oh Olivia,” he said, and shook his head. “Do you really think she gave in to Kodjunn for any other reason? You and I both know he’d have never forced himself on her and never mind how many seasons she had.”
“She didn’t have much of a choice, Bodual.”
“If you say so.”
“If she’d kept refusing Kodjunn, Vorgullum would have given her to a new mate. Someone who didn’t have Kodjunn’s patience.”
“Maybe.” Bodual shrugged, eyeing the open hole of the chimney. “I can think of a few gullan mean enough to want her, sure enough. But you saw her just now, Olivia. She’s too damned happy about sparking. Think. Think of the sorts of things it must take to make that Beast happy.”
That sounded altogether too much like he had a point.
“Speaking of babies,” Olivia said, deliberately changing the subject. “What is it called when a woman carries more than one?”
“In what?” Bodual asked.
“In her belly, of course.”
“More?” He could not have looked more shocked than if Olivia had claimed Cheyenne was carrying a litter of kittens. “How many more?”
“She’s going to have two of them,” Olivia explained.
“At the same time?”
“No, about two moons apart. Yes, of course at the same time, you stag-head,” she said, exasperated. “It happens sometimes with humans.”
“Not to gullan.” He stopped himself and furrowed his brow. “At least, not to real gullan. Sometimes it happens
in stories, but only when one of them grows up to be a great leader and the other is evil. Horumn might know if there’s a word for it, but I don’t. Ho!” he said suddenly, raising one hand.
Olivia turned to see an old gulla coming down the tunnel toward them, spear in one hand, bucket in the other. “I thought you might want to be there,” this fellow said to Bodual, not without a certain sympathetic tone.
“Already?”
“So it would seem.”
“Ah, hell.” Bodual winced and gave Olivia a pointed look. “If you want to know why ‘Poor Doru,’ you’d better come with me now.”
She really should go find Kodjunn and give him the news about Cheyenne and the coming twins…
She followed Bodual to the commons.
It seemed quite a lot of people were in on whatever was happening tonight. Nearly all of the hunters were here with their human mates, although there was very little of the sort of chatter that usually accompanied a gathering. No one laughed or told stories, no one’s kill roasted on the fire; the air itself seemed charged with foreboding and every eye was on Vorgullum.
He stood in a close ring with Doru, Tobi and Tina, his arms folded and face set in an expression of equally mingled amusement, confusion, and concern. The four of them conferred for quite a long time, mostly the two gullan, but at the end of it, Vorgullum nodded and said something to Doru that caused Tobi to start bouncing on the balls of her feet. Vorgullum addressed Tina briefly, flicked his claws to point past her to the crowd of idling gullan and humans, and then turned and ascended the center rock.
Olivia left Bodual’s side and came all the way into the commons to get a good view, wondering what on earth was going on.
“Doru,” Vorgullum called. “Come before the tribe.”
Doru, with Tobi tight at his side, approached the rock, and then turned.
Olivia felt her stomach clench. Tobi was so excited, she seemed to be on the edge of spontaneous combustion, but Doru, although smiling broadly, looked like he had taken the butt of a spear to his gut.
Doru said, “This human is Tobi, bound to me this past year as mate. She is young, strong and clever…and she loves another. I would be severed from our bond, to free her for her true mate.”
Well, this was a surprise. Olivia scanned the crowd again, trying to guess which gulla was about to come forward and claim giddily-bouncing Tobi.
“Gullnar,” Vorgullum called. “Come before the tribe.”
Astonished, Olivia could only stare as Tina’s mate, with his human also at his side, came forward and faced the crowd. For a male about to claim the human that presumably loved him, he looked singularly unhappy, almost angry.
In a low voice, not meeting anyone’s eyes, Gullnar stated, “This is Tina.” He was quiet for a long time, and then growled in the back of his throat and added, “There is no child. I would be severed.”
Olivia’s first glimmer of understanding occurred only after Vorgullum fanned out his wings and said, “Doru, Gullnar, stand away. Tobi, will you have this female for your mate?”
“I do!” cried Tobi, leaping wildly into the air.
Vorgullum started to laugh, caught himself and fixed her with a stern eye. “Tobi, will you provide for this female? Will you starve to feed her in times of famine? Will you take her children and raise them to be tribe?”
“You bet!” She was bouncing again, smacking her fists together.
“Tina, will you refuse this…Tobi?” he finished, starting to smile again.
“I didn’t come this far to back off now,” Tina replied, grinning.
Tobi flung herself into Tina’s open arms. They kissed, not a polite bridal peck at all, but a passionate mashing of mouths that left Olivia somewhat agape.
The gathered gullan exchanged a few glances and small shrugs, then unleashed a stone-shaking roar of celebration while the humans looked, by and large, utterly dumbfounded. Gullnar stood there, plainly furious, and when it became clear that no one was coming over to commiserate with him, he stalked off without a word. By comparison, Doru waited patiently for Tobi to release her new mate, then enfolded her in his arms and wrapped his wings close around them both.
“Be happy, be well,” Olivia heard him say. “But let me be…at least a little sorry.”
“Thanks, Doru! You’re the best!” Tobi clapped him hard on the back and ran back to hug Tina again.
Doru took a deep breath, looked down at his empty hands, took another, then threw back his horns and shouted, “Bring on the thumperjuice! I have bedding and warm furs to feather that nest in your new lair!”
“Jesus Christ,” Olivia heard someone whisper at her shoulder. She glanced around and saw Amy’s dark eyes fixed on Doru with stunned pity.
“Did you know?” Olivia whispered back.
“About Tina and Tobi? Heck, yeah. I knew that back at High Hill. Did I know they were going to do this? No. Look at him. My God, how can he stand there laughing?”
Tina saw them watching and came over, clearly embarrassed to some small degree but still grinning. “I can’t believe it. I just got married!”
“Congratulations,” Olivia said, and smiled. “I think you could use Tobi to drill through the wall.”
Tina turned to watch Tobi bouncing on her toes while gesticulating wildly to a group of gullan. She laughed. “I know, she’s been doing that ever since I agreed to go through with it. We’ve been talking about it for a while, since before the move, even. Neither of us has gotten pregnant, and that was the really thorny bit.”
“What, you mean it would have been easier to split up if you were?” Amy cocked her head. “Just when logic would dictate you needed a mate the most. What kind of sense does that make?”
“Tobi hunts,” Tina said with a shrug. “And I heal. We’re both entitled to a full hunter’s share of the game anyway. Being provided for wasn’t the issue. Babies were. See, the same-sex thing is actually no big deal down here—call it the inevitable coping mechanism of making procreation punishable by death—but whether we’re gay or not, we still have to make babies for Vorgullum. But it’s been all this time and neither of us has sparked, you know?” She gave the room behind her another glance, this time in Doru’s direction as he passed cans of Bud Lite around to Tobi’s well-wishers. Her smile was gone. “Then one day, I was over visiting and Tobi looks up and asks him outright how hard it would be to get a divorce. Poor guy, it had to rock him. He sat there and he said, ‘Have I hurt you, my Tobi?’ No. He said, ‘Where will you go?’ She thumbs back at me and says, ‘Meet my lover.’ He looked at me, he looked at her, he looked at me, and then, I swear to God, he makes this ghastly smile and he shakes my hand.”
Tina was silent for a little while, watching Doru and Tobi together. She said, “So he got up and started gathering Tobi’s stuff and he took it down to this cave we’ve been using to, you know, meet in. And he cleaned up the wall and got paint from Kodjunn and taught Tobi how to make the mate-welcome markings for good luck. And then he went with me to Gullnar and told him the good news, told him like it was good news, and the whole time Gullnar is looking like he wanted to haul off and punch me in the face. But there’s Doru, who is simply enormous, and he’s got that massive paw on my shoulder and he’s doing this hearty impression of someone who’s very happy for me so Gullnar let me get my stuff and go.”
Amy whistled, low and sorrowful. “I didn’t realize,” she said.
“Nobody realized. Well, he may have told Bodual, but he might not have because poor Bud’s been having troubles of his own.” Tina shrugged, beginning to smile again as she watched Tobi start up the disc player and lead Thurga out into the center of the room. “The two of them are probably going to get pounding drunk tonight. Still…” She trailed off, her expression at once rueful and wistful. “I have always wanted something like this, to get up in front of everyone and get married and have a big party. Ironically, I never could have done it if I hadn’t been hauled off in the night by a bunch of bat-men. So I guess I ought t
o pay my dues and join the don’t-wanna-go-back club.”
“Membership is pretty informal,” Olivia said. “Meetings every second Tuesday.”
“Bring a dessert,” added Amy.
11
Olivia left the party when the thumperjuice started flowing freely enough to start a wave of gullan voices raised in tribute to Ricky Martin, and departed for the lower fathoms of the mountain, still in search of Kodjunn. Since he hadn’t been either at home or in the commons, she knew she’d find him in the archives, and sure enough, she could see the yellow glow of candlelight spilling out of the spiral at a hundred paces. When she drew even nearer, she could hear Kodjunn humming to himself.
“Sigruum,” she called, stopping a polite distance away. “Are you busy?”
He appeared in the tunnel mouth almost before she finished speaking, and beckoned her in, looking distracted, but pleased to see her. “What brings you here?” he asked, lighting a few more candles for her benefit.
“Which do you want first? Tribe news or Cheyenne news?”
His face shadowed briefly at her name, then climbed resolutely back into good humor. “Tribe news,” he said.
“Tobi and Tina just got mated.”
“They’re already mated, I thought.” He started and looked at her. “Oh, you mean to each other. Poor Doru. How’s he taking it?”
“When I left, he was passing out presents and drinking heavily. Why is it that no one ever says ‘Poor Gullnar?’ He lost his mate, too.”
“Gullnar…” Kodjunn waved one hand through the air and headed back into the spiral. “Understand, Olivia, this was Gullnar’s chance to have a mate the way it was supposed to be done. He’s old enough to remember that, a little. When Vorgullum selected him as one of those who would take a human, he was eager to have one. He’s not really a bad man and he wanted to be a good mate, but he wanted to be a good gullan mate and I think there must be a difference.”