by R. Lee Smith
“It is,” he replied. “As I can neither hear nor see you unless you stand before my eyes. Apart from the dangers of the River, there are other threats in the wild places of the world, still perilous to your mortal body. Besides which, when you have done with hunting for the night, I mean to couple with you for many hours.”
Of course.
Olivia looked at the spear again, then shrugged and led him off in search of game. Doru’s training hadn’t advanced quite to the stage of recognizing game-trails, but it had rained fairly recently and she could see, here and there where the grass had thinned, the soft indentations of hoof-prints in the soil. So deer had been here at some point, even if she had no idea just when. The Great Spirit was content to follow along behind her, watching avidly as she searched the ground, but the closest she came to deer were a few more tracks and a pile of a pellets. In frustration, she flew out from her body and at once saw the uncountable lights of animal life all around her. She followed some of them to a warren of rabbits, and spent the next forty minutes trying to scare them out long enough to kill one.
It didn’t work well, and her performance suffered severely by the presence of the Great Spirit, standing off to one side with his arms folded and his massive horn-crested head tipped thoughtfully to one side as he watched her. At last, in desperation, Olivia flung out a bolt of power, which had the fortunate effect of stunning three bunnies long enough for her to rush up and bash them on their furry heads with the flat of her spear.
“Is that how it is used?” the Great Spirit asked, surprised.
“Yes,” she snapped, scooping up the corpses.
“Well done!” he said, nodding his admiration. “I always presumed it a throwing weapon, or perhaps a stabbing—”
“Well, you’ve never used one, have you?”
“No,” he admitted. “I never would have thought to use it properly.”
“How did you know I could hunt anyway?”
“You burn at the fore of Doru’s mind,” he replied, taking the rabbits from her. “He knows that you hunt and so I do also.”
“Doru hunts,” she countered. “Why don’t you know how to use a spear?”
“Thoughts of you interest me,” he said. “Hunting does not. I require no food. Why should I bother myself with the taking of it?”
“Of the three of us,” she returned, careful to keep her voice neutral, “you are providing the least amount of service on this journey.”
He opened his mouth to offer some arrogant contradiction, but closed it again, frowning. “You are, perhaps, correct in that. Very well, I submit to your will. Show me how to prepare meat for food. That shall be my function, apart from mating with you.”
Olivia removed them from the game trail to a reasonably flat clearing. “First,” she said, “we need a fire.”
“Easily done,” he said, holding up one hand. Flames burst in a funnel from the ground before him, and died back to sullen embers.
“Can you keep it from spreading?” she asked uncertainly.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you being insulting?”
“No, I’m being nervous about setting the whole west coast on fire.”
“Ah. Then I answer you: Fire is my element, the sum and substance of my immortal being. I can scorch the earth entire, if I wish it, and I could contain these paltry flames even if I had set them in a field of dry straw.”
“Can you make me a knife?” she asked.
“Indeed.” He took the spear from her and it shifted at once into a sword.
“A smaller one?”
The sword shrank minutely.
“Smaller than that.”
The Great Spirit cast the weapon away into mist and said, “Visualize, if you will.”
Olivia closed her eyes and imagined a skinning knife. She felt the heat of the god’s claw tap against her brow and then his mind drifted over hers with searing heat.
“You call this a knife?” he asked, openly scornful.
“Could you skin this rabbit with a bayonet?” she countered.
There followed a quiet moment of reflection. “I very much doubt it.” He formed the correct blade and handed it to her. He listened attentively as she instructed him in the skinning and cleaning of the meat, and then had him lower the flames into coals for cooking. With supper spitting pleasantly on a stick, she leaned back on her hands and took a deep, soothing breath of summer air.
“And now we shall mate.”
She opened her eyes and saw him, crouched low on the opposite side of the fire, his gold eyes burning as he watched her.
“I will be gentle,” the Great Spirit said. “I will try.”
Olivia edged a little further from the fire. “Come here,” she said, trying to sound willing and not merely resigned.
He rose at once, walking through the flames, and knelt beside her, his hands sliding hot and eager over her skin as he freed her from her travel-stained clothing. He lifted her, bearing her weight easily on his arms as he bent his head to trace his tongue like fire from her breasts to her sex. Once settled there, he wrapped one arm around her hips and pulled her tight against him, thrumming with satisfaction and desire in equal measure.
Olivia rubbed her heels slowly against his shoulders, ran her hands up and down the serrated ridges of his upper-most horns, and closed her eyes against the sky. He was trying, she couldn’t deny him that. And he had a considerable raw talent, amplified by the fact that he did not require air. He breathed fire into her womb and drank the oils of her release when she came; he felt her rock against his mouth and matched her with thrusts of his tongue until she cried out with pleasure; he cradled her with ageless strength and patience, explored her with a child-like fascination at her responses, and fed her pleasure with passion until she lost her grip on his horns and fell back.
He lowered her gently to the ground, moving over her to fill her vision, and split her with pleasure and pain as he penetrated, oiling his invasion with the heat of his cum. His arms slipped beneath her back and he lowered himself full atop her, the rhythm of his pumping hips shoving her along the ground even as his weight pinned her in place; it seemed that he could not be close enough to her, could not feel her solidly enough against him. His mouth moved, lapping steadily at the join of her neck and shoulders, drinking her sweat and thrumming low delight as he moved in her.
Enough, she thought, languid in his arms. She slipped up and out of her body. The rabbits are going to burn.
“You can hunt new ones,” he replied, but lifted his head to show her hovering spirit a smile.
He’d made a joke. She almost couldn’t believe it, and he must have sensed her astonishment because he laughed before he bent again to lick the sweat from her throat.
Olivia floated further back until the sharp lines of the real world bled out. Freed from the distraction of sensation, began to shape his climax. As far from her physical self as she was, she could not mark the passage of time, but above her, she could see the crescent moon circling the sky, glaring down at them as they coupled.
It was time to bring this to an end. She stoked the furnace of swirling power he had placed inside her, channeling it in precise patterns around and through him and playing off his own frenzied energies. Always, a part of her was waiting, searching his aura for the subtle signs of his nearing climax. When he began to utter a small, tortured sound in sync with the thrust of his hips, she knew he was close. She spun out a thread of her own power and caught him.
Pleasure, she ordered, stabbing at the faint light of him far below. The music of his roaring release brought a smile to her spirit lips. Pleasure pleasure pleasure.
He blazed; the swell of his light exploded towards her, and then died back as her own body absorbed it in a purple bruise of pain. She flicked a measure of healing at her puppet, studied the Great Spirit, and decided she’d struck the limit of what her fragile body could contain. It was time to give him true release.
Gently, she thought at him. I’m here, I�
��m here. Don’t forget me.
His knuckles cracked as he forced them to release her. He let out a scream as he slammed his claws down into the hard earth to the side of her head and hooked them there, half-rising off her for a final thrust.
Olivia brought them together with a galvanizing explosion, sparking his release and then streaking like a comet across the darkness of the coldest corner of her mind. She succeeded once again in outrunning the lethal fallout as his aura burst in an eruption of sexual energy.
Olivia waited in the farthest corner of her mind, watching as from a great distance as the husk of her physical body convulsed with the force of the Great Spirit’s orgasmic release. Although there was no real sense of the elapse of time, she knew it had to be several minutes before she deemed it safe to return to the realm of sensation.
She moved back to fill her body. As always, she was struck at once by the weight of sheer exhaustion, coupled with a weary sense of accomplishment. Her whole body ached with use, and the being lying spent atop her was damn heavy, but for now, she luxuriated in the brittle warmth of triumph.
The echoes of his primal screams were still rolling through the valley, but his mouth was gentle against her shoulder as he bit and licked at her. When he sensed her return, he freed one hand from the ground, then the other. He sat up, pulling her with him, and devoured her mouth with hungry gratitude.
“Are you injured?” he asked at length.
“I’ll heal.” She patted his shoulder. “You were very gentle, for you.”
He did not respond to the simple compliment as he had been wont to do, and she opened her eyes to see him watching her with an expression that was dark and deeply unsettled.
She searched his face, frowning. “What’s the matter?”
“It begins to bother me,” he said slowly, “that you concern yourself with showing me praise. It never has before. Indeed, I have never before noticed the venerations of my followers unless they were denied me. But you… why do you praise me?”
It’s harmless and it makes you happy, she thought, but didn’t say. She studied his faintly apprehensive frown and tried to sort out an honest answer.
“I don’t worship you,” she said at last. “But I can understand that you are making a tremendous effort to indulge my little whims and I appreciate it. I’m not telling you anything I wouldn’t say to any other lover who made the same effort to please me.”
She thought this would assuage him. If anything, he grew even more perturbed as he lifted her and sat her at arm’s length on the ground. “I feared that you would say that,” he muttered.
Mystified, she only stared at him as he took to his feet and began to pace around the clearing.
“When I decided on you to bear Bahgree’s essence,” he said at last, “you were to be as Urga is, immortal and subservient, a concubine to stay at my side for all eternity. Olivia, you must be made immortal, but you will not be my servant and you will not be my concubine.”
“No?” She knew better than to be hopeful, but she was surprised.
He shook his head slowly, still gazing into the fire. “You could never be a mere concubine. You are not Urga, some cast-off shred of my own consciousness. You are complete within yourself. When you become my mate…surely you shall complete me as well. Even now, what one of us lacks, the other provides. Our bodies, our natures, our very souls, if I can be said to have one. It is the first great joke I have ever known, that in forcing to you into my service, I have made you my equal. And now…now I see that an eternity with you at my side will not change only you. It will change me.”
He finally turned around, meeting her eyes with what actually seemed to be difficulty. His voice, when he spoke again, was curt and strained by emotions he did not seem to know how to handle. “In our short time together, you have made me disturbingly aware of many things new to me. One of these is the concept of unfairness. Another is regret. I have never felt such things, never in all the naked time of my consciousness. Never, until now. I am…sorry for what I have done.
“It is in my nature that my memory be eternal,” he continued after a short, agonized pause. “My thoughts are immortal as I am, always with me, inviolate and indelible. I have always reveled in my memories. My existence has always been one of continuous glory. But when I think on that moment when I forced your oath on the pain of another, I am ashamed.”
Olivia was afraid to move for fear of breaking this moment. She didn’t even want to breathe. She wanted him to say those words again, not to gloat, but just to be sure he’d really said them.
The Great Spirit reached down and helped her to her feet. He clasped her hand with both of his, gazing into her wide eyes with grim determination. “And so I release you from your oath, Olivia Blake,” he said. “I was wrong to force my will upon you. I will free my son from his oath, and let him take you home. To your mountain, or to your apartment and your human world, if you wish. I will…I will speak to Bahgree. Perhaps there is another way. I only know that I cannot force you to go on. It…would be wrong.”
It was the one thing she had never dreamed he would say, the one option she could not imagine she would ever be given. Thoughts of home, of parents. Houses with plaster walls and carpeted floors, electric lights, hot and cold running water, telephones, and remote controls, with people that looked like her and spoke her language. Home.
She gazed at him, dizzy with relief and joy.
“No,” she said.
“I am in earnest,” he insisted. “I release you, and release the soul I used to coerce you.”
“No,” she said again. “Having the freedom now to choose my path, I freely choose to help you.”
He looked at her, thinking, then released her hands and stepped back. “I will tell Kodjunn. If he returns to the mountain, we will walk together to the sea.”
She smiled at him, and he returned the smile with a little effort, and then vanished.
Olivia uttered a little laugh. She looked down at her naked foot. Mud still squelched thickly between her toes, gluing pine needles and other organic debris to her skin in itchy clumps, but it was beautiful mud. Olivia looked up into the sky, drinking in the sight of dazzling stars and a crescent moon with giddy delight. “I’m a free woman!” she shouted.
The moon vanished.
“You are a dead woman,” said Urga.
CHAPTER TWO
URGA
1
Urga hovered before her, her lean body rigid with fury, and her eyes blazing with vengeful fire. Now, at last, Olivia saw emotion in the goddess, and the sight of Urga’s hate filled her with terror.
“My mate tells me a woman must be found to cure his people. She must be of human born, and he must lie with her and get her with his power. I must be content!” Urga spat, floating steadily towards her. “I must stand over him each night that he spends his seed inside you! I must give my son to come through you!”
Olivia tried to run.
Urga caught her by the neck and pulled her easily off the ground, still moving forward. She could feel her kicking feet brush at the ground now and then, but the ground was not as important in that moment as Urga’s hands—either the one around her throat, or the other, growing claws like icicles in the air before her face. “I was content,” Urga said, watching her struggle. “But I will not stand aside while he talks to you of challenges and choices and the taking of mates! I am his mate! I have been his mate since time began! I would see every newborn gulla suffer and die before I stand aside for you!”
Urga’s body was as light as air. There was no pressure around Olivia’s throat, but all the same, she was choking to death. Her hands fumbled out, scrabbling in the empty air for a weapon and touching only the moonlight-cool space that was Urga.
“Tell me, mortal,” the goddess whispered. “Do you see death coming for you? Is it cold?”
As an act of desperation, Olivia thrust both hands into Urga’s ghostly chest and blasted her with power.
She could not
have hoped for better results if she’d struck the woman with a battering ram.
Urga’s chest seemed to shatter; sprays of mist erupted out around Olivia’s arms while the goddess herself hurtled backwards, leaving a contrail of light in the air like blood. She flew, as limp in the air as a rag doll, and when she came to the first inevitable tree, she did not pass through. Instead, she cracked up hard against its trunk, impaling herself through the neck, chest, and thigh with scorched, dead branches.
Olivia dropped, but couldn’t keep her footing. She hit the ground hard and struggled to get up again before the counterattack that was surely coming, but the simple act of breathing was like swallowing rocks and the swimming of her vision made it impossible to find her balance. She could only watch, croaking for help, as Urga reached back and pushed herself off the tree. One of the branches broke off. She pulled herself off the others, sliding weightlessly into space and floating there.
“Human filth,” she said. “That hurt me.” Urga snatched the broken branch, yanked it out of her body and threw it to the ground. There were no wounds, no blood. If she was truly injured, there was no physical sign.
Urga crouched in mid-air and sprang again.
Olivia managed to twist around and get her weight on one leg before Urga smashed into her back. Her face struck the ground; she choked on dirt and tasted pine.
Urga’s hands were changing, growing larger and rougher even as they gripped her shoulders. Through her own hoarse cries, Olivia realized she could actually hear the creaking groan of unnatural growth as the goddess altered herself. Funny. She hadn’t remembered until that moment all the gullan stories in which Urga changed her shape—as if the ever-changing moon she’d seen her whole life wasn’t proof enough. Then the moment snapped, and Olivia flailed mindlessly for freedom. Her arms and legs passed through her opponent’s body like smoke, but Urga’s hands were all too real as they pressed her to the earth.
“Beg me now, daughter of Bahgree,” Urga said above her. Her legs were caught on both sides by what felt like hooks and wrenched widely apart. “Beg for a swift death and perhaps I shall grant it.”