by R. Lee Smith
Twenty feet. She started to get on her hands and knees, but lost her nerve and kept crawling.
Forty feet. There was a subtle rise to the ground, and the trees were more densely scattered. The campsite was well behind her now; she could see the backs of two of the humans, but no more than that. It had to be enough. She pulled herself into a crouching position, her ears aching to hear them, then made herself run a little ways. She stopped, listened, and then ran again. She could still hear them, but she couldn’t see any part of them or their camp.
Breathing a tiny sigh, she opened up her feet and ate the distance between her and the clearing.
It was the same! Here was the dented ant’s nest! Here was the sloping hill where she’d sat and talked with the Great Spirit. Here was the muddy ground of the slow-flowing river she’d nearly fallen in! She slid down the slope and stood in the damp grass, searching the sky anxiously. If they were looking for her, they would have to see her here.
She hunkered down on a knobby thrust of grass to wait.
5
She was dozing when she first heard the noise. It sounded stealthy, but not too stealthy, and her first thought had been of snakes.
At once alert, Olivia hunted through the grass without moving, but saw nothing. She glanced up at the darkening sky, then over in the direction of the campsite. She had removed herself to the driest section of grass, dimly mindful of leeches, but had seen no sign of wildlife. Doubtless, the raucous noise of the humans was keeping the forest animals at a generous distance; all too often throughout the day, they’d fallen back on firearms for entertainment.
The sound came again, from behind.
Olivia spun around, backing up on her hands and knees, but still saw nothing. Sound carries, right? she thought, on the verge of panic. If I were to scream, maybe Kodjunn could get here before the humans.
Irrational, improbable. Nevertheless, extremely tempting.
From the corner of her eye, she saw movement in the grass as something streaked towards her, but when she whipped her head around, it stopped. She backed further away, keeping her eyes pinned to that spot. Another rustle from the right. Then from straight ahead. Olivia bounded backward. Her feet splashed into the running water.
“Jesus, that’s cold,” Olivia hissed, as icy water enclosed her ankles.
But the words were stunned from her mind when the water became hands and she was yanked back and into the river.
Her scream became a cascade of bubbles. Her body went instantly numb. Hands seized her arms, legs, hips, throat, breasts, thighs, hair. The rushing water became distorted laughter. The cold became biting teeth and scratching claws. And then there was a face.
Drained of power, Olivia was helpless to do anything but drown. She could not hear the things Bahgree said, but the hatred and insanity in that evil face did not need translating. The face swam closer, gibbering, gleeful.
Olivia’s feet glanced off the bottom of the river. She immediately got her legs beneath her body and kicked up as hard as she could. She broke the surface, seized two handfuls of grass and tried to scramble out of the water.
She became the rope in a vicious tug-of-war between the Water-Woman, and her own grip on the grass. She could hear a thick tearing sound as dozens of tiny roots tore free, but she was still holding on. She kicked furiously, screaming out curses even as she fought to pull herself free.
Something impossible—an arm, meant to be a woman’s, but awkward and ugly—formed itself of brackish water and grabbed her by the hair. One swift hard yank brought tears of pain to her eyes, but then the arm splashed apart. The resistance in the water vanished. Olivia kicked free of the river and clambered onto the bank.
She took rapid stock of herself. She was freezing and shivering. Her travel-breeches had been torn away, as had most of her shirt. She was still wearing her left travel-shoe. Her skin was bluish and pimpled with gooseflesh. Otherwise, she was all right.
“Hey,” someone called. “You ain’t never gonna believe what was making the ruckus!”
The river babbled out an ugly snigger.
Olivia started to scream out Kodjunn’s name.
6
They let her scream, and why not? They were out in the middle of nowhere. Six men fanned out in case she decided to run, but she was backed up against the water, and there was nowhere else to run. They closed in on her, and then one of them had her by the arm and she was yanked roughly to her feet.
“What are you standing her up for, you idjit?”
“It’s too wet out here,” her captor said simply.
“Which one of us do you think she’s calling ‘cousin’?” another remarked, stumbling drunkenly alongside her as she was pulled back towards the campsite.
That halted the man who held on to her. “Got a boyfriend?” he asked her. “Where’s your cousin?”
She screamed for Kodjunn.
“She ain’t saying cousin, you stupid fucker, she’s saying cajun.”
“Missy, you want to shut up a second so we can talk to you?”
She screamed again.
The one that had hold of her punched her in the side of the head.
Her teeth snapped together, narrowly missing her tongue. She stared at him, silent.
“Who’s it you’re shouting for, cajun or cousin?” her captor asked.
“Maybe it’s an Injun word for help.”
“She don’t look Injun.”
“Well, she ain’t getting any help either, so who the fuck cares?”
Olivia screamed for Kodjunn again.
Her captor, apparently deciding that her Indian heritage was a moot point, continued pulling her back to the campsite. He was not long in reaching it. There were two pickup trucks and a rusted camper parked there. He hauled her over to the camper and opened the door. Shoving her inside, he turned pompously to the others and said, “Wait your fucking turn, you goddamn savages. Ain’t you got any manners?”
Olivia managed a last scream before he slammed the door. Then she ran, but there was nowhere to go except to the back of the cramped vehicle, which was where he wanted her anyway. He pushed her down on the filthy bed when she tried to scramble past him, already fumbling with the fly of his jeans. He didn’t have to undress her; Bahgree had done most of that for him and all that was left was one shoe and the hanging shreds of her shirt.
Here I thought nothing new could possibly happen to me, Olivia thought, and shocked herself with a laugh. I’ve never been gang-raped, so I guess I was wrong. In a few hours, I am going to be one well-raped woman.
Her captor gave a cry of triumph as he finally managed to get his jeans down around his ankles. He seized her knees and she put both feet on his fat stomach and pushed. He went over with a crash and she tried to run over him, but there was just too much junk in her way. He caught her by the leg, pulled her down, and even got her on the ground. However, the same lack of space that kept her a prisoner also kept him from having room enough to spread her legs wide enough to allow his massive bulk between them.
“Aw fuck,” he snarled. “Gimme a hand, here.”
She slapped him.
He looked comically shocked for an instant before punching her in the stomach. When she doubled up with a croak, he clambered to his knees and pulled her backwards to the bed.
Someone shouted outside.
“Fucking…get over…stupid bitch,” her captor finished, finally heaving her struggling body back onto the bed.
Two gunshots.
He hadn’t responded to the cries of his confederates—they’d been doing drunken whooping all afternoon—but he responded to the gunfire. “Shut up,” he said to her irritably, and listened.
Something heavy slammed against the side of the camper. Someone yanked at the door, pleading to be let in, and then Olivia felt the whole vehicle rock as whoever was out there was wrenched away, along with the doorknob. A high scream ended abruptly in a thick, ripping sound. A heavy body hit the ground outside. The head hit the camper.
Olivia’s captor stood up slowly. His jeans were still around his ankles. The half-erection he’d worked himself up towards was now trying to hide beneath his bulging stomach. “Jesus,” he breathed, turning waxy pale right before her eyes. “Is that your cousin?”
Olivia kicked him in the ass with both feet, knocking him on his face in the narrow aisle. She cupped her mouth and screamed for Kodjunn.
A gullan roar blasted out an answer. There were no other voices. There was no one left to scream.
The man on the floor was trying to pull his jeans up, raving tearfully about how he hadn’t touched the woman, hadn’t intended to the touch the woman, was actually protecting the woman from the evil fuckers outside, and here she was, safe and sound, just leave him alone, okay?
Kodjunn’s claws punched through the thin door of the camper and pulled it off as easily as wings off a fly. The gulla pushed his head and shoulders in through the little doorway and fixed his eyes on the human on the floor. The Great Spirit was in those eyes.
Olivia uttered another scream, a wordless cry of primal relief.
Kodjunn’s head snapped up towards her. He saw where she was, how she looked.
Then he was gone from the doorway.
The human and Olivia stared at the empty place with identical expressions of shock, but only for an instant.
That was when the body of the camper was vaporized. Smokeless flame of unearthly temperature turned the brittle steel and plastic casing into a little fall of ash to be dispersed by the gentle summer breeze, leaving the camper’s base, furnishings, and garbage completely intact.
Kodjunn leapt up onto the foundation of the camper, smashed through the blackened toothpick that had once been part of the wall’s frame and threw the grimy oven end over end into the trees. The man scrambled back, banged into the bed, then heaved himself out into space, less like a man jumping than like a man attempting to fly. Kodjunn’s arm swept out and snagged him, his claws sinking into the human’s spinal cord as though it were the handle of a suitcase, and yanked him back.
Olivia closed her eyes and kept them closed until the screaming stopped. It didn’t take long, realistically, but it took long enough.
After a moment of uncertain silence, she felt the base of the camper tip with the weight of the gulla. “Olivia?” He touched her shoulder, stood her up. He probed at the worst of her cuts and bruises; his hands were too hot to be Kodjunn’s alone. She kept her eyes shut.
“I gave them too quick a death,” the Great Spirit said.
“It wasn’t them,” she managed to say. “They only just caught me. Urga!”
“What of her?”
“She turned into a monster, she was going to kill me. She chased me and I got lost and then I found this place and was going to wait for you, but Bahgree grabbed me. I made so much noise getting away from her that these men found me. That’s when I screamed for you.”
Kodjunn tried to say something and the Great Spirit interrupted: “Ol—Enough talk! Fly!” He lifted Olivia into his arms, and then jumped into the air and took them away from the carnage.
Olivia opened her eyes only when the blast of Kodjunn’s beating wings filled her ears and even then, she didn’t look down. “You saved me,” she said.
“There should not have been a need.” The Great Spirit set Kodjunn’s jaw grimly. “Urga will answer for the peril she placed you in. She will answer for the evils she caused to befall you.”
Olivia felt herself start to beg him not to confront Urga, that Urga would kill her if he did. But she realized then that Urga would kill her even if he didn’t. Urga was the enemy now, just as much as Bahgree.
7
They flew until Kodjunn’s wings could no longer carry them both, and they went on foot through the forest, just the two of them. The Great Spirit had left much earlier, either to face Urga or to work himself up towards the confrontation. That he meant to do so on the night Urga came into season weighed heavily on Olivia’s mind. Although she did not doubt he would remain furious, Olivia suspected that night might find him in the arms of his mate.
So deeply immersed in these unsettling thoughts, Olivia did not notice when the forest began to thin out until she was poised on a ridge overlooking a sleepy little community not unlike the one she’d been taken from.
Kodjunn, his eyes on his feet, walked into her shoulder. He staggered back, steadied himself with her help, then looked out and saw the town. A fleeting expression of abject astonishment gave way to disgust. “Oh piss in my mouth!” he snapped, or at least, that was what Olivia heard him say.
“We’d better not try to go around,” Olivia offered. “Better to find a place to rest until it gets dark.”
“I’m not resting this close to a hive,” he said, and right on cue, it started raining.
They looked up in surprise at the low clouds that had stolen over them unnoticed. Well, not entirely unnoticed. It wouldn’t have been near as easy a hike if they’d been making it under the summer sun, and Olivia had idly thought several times during that long day how nice it was that it was finally cooling off. After so long surrounded by cold rock, it didn’t take much heat to make her uncomfortable. And she was a Northwesterner by birth. Summers were supposed to be cool and overcast. And rainy.
Kodjunn closed his eyes, letting rain stream over him while his hands drew up slowly into fists. Then he sighed and shook it off. “We’ll rest,” he grumbled, kicking a stone over the ridge like a petulant child. “Come. We’ll keep at the edge of the forest and look for a safe place to sleep.”
Taking her arm, he turned and marched back into the forest, Kodjunn casting black stares down at the rooftops anytime he could see them through the trees. He kept her close, his arm around her shoulders and one wing unfolded to shield her from sight as they walked. She didn’t fight it; after everything that had happened, she felt like clinging herself.
“There!” he said suddenly, pulling her hard against him.
She followed his pointing claw and saw an old cinderblock shack up ahead, half-hidden in a nest of cedars. It looked harmless enough to Olivia, but Kodjunn’s hackles were up.
“Get down,” he growled, pushing her to the ground. “And stay low.”
She obeyed, but it was clear to see that the shack had been long abandoned. Kodjunn was harder to convince, but once he’d peered in through the boarded windows, he was confident enough to smash open the door and beckon to her. Within, the floor had disintegrated into flat, hard earth, but the walls and the roof seemed sound. Enough light made it in through what remained of the windows for them to see that there were neither rats nor snakes, only a white-faced owl watching them disinterestedly from its perch on the shack’s only shelf.
“At least it’s shelter,” Kodjunn said, leaning outside to give the town one last mistrustful glance. “All right?”
“More than all right,” Olivia said, basking in the dry air like a cat in sunlight. “It’s wonderful!”
“Well,” he countered, looking doubtful, “I wouldn’t go that far. I’d rather have a nice cave myself, but I think this is the best we can hope for in this land.” He shook the rain off, annoying the owl, who stalked to the far end of its shelf and glared at them over its back. “And it’s going to get cold. I’ll be all right once I dry, but without the Great Spirit to provide us with benches, I’m afraid you’re going to feel the chill.”
“Benches?” she echoed, one eyebrow raised.
“Fire,” he said quickly, and struck himself in the head, the universal gesture for stupidity.
Olivia took a moment to reflect that if the Great Spirit were here, they could have a nice time explaining Freudian slips. Since he was not, Olivia let the matter drop, and found a good place to stretch out for sleep.
Kodjunn paced the perimeter of the shack three times before coming to stand over her while she drowsed. “Are you tired?” he asked at last.
“Aren’t you?”
He left her to pace around some more. She dozed
as slats of shadow moved across the dirt floor and the rain drummed down, and eventually he came back to her. She could feel him standing over her, could feel the press of his stare and the weight of his thoughts, and she wanted to tell him it was all right now, that she was safe, that she wasn’t hurt, but she didn’t want to wake up enough to do it. At last he lay down beside her, and that was all right. There was serenity in the silence, security in the feel of Kodjunn’s arm across her waist. It had been a bad night and a bad day, but both were over now.
Kodjunn combed through her hair with his fingers, exposing her shoulder and kissing it. His other hand brushed over the curve of her hip, pausing to gently squeeze her thigh. “Olivia?” he whispered, the word strained across a hopeful thrumm.
Benches, she thought tiredly. She pretended to be asleep.
Kodjunn touched his mouth to her shoulder again, this time to bite her delicately. He slid his hand beneath her shirt, brushing at her nipple with the tip of one careful claw. “Olivia,” he breathed again.
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask why in God’s name he would want sex now after all the times he had used her, but before she could work up the acid she had a sudden, vivid vision of how his eyes would look if she did. She turned into his touch and looked at him.
“I thought that I might lose you,” he said.
She said nothing.
He drew her closer, until she felt the heat of his lean body pressed full against hers. His hand slipped around her waist and cinched, possessively. “Someday soon, I must lose you.” His voice was thoughtful, slightly surprised, as if he had not considered this eventuality. “How terrible it is, to care for another,” he mused. “I wonder if our ancestors experienced these things, in those ancient days when they were free to love where they would.”
She rolled all the way towards him. They were close enough to see only the eyes of the other, to breathe the same air. “Can I ask you something, honestly?”
“Yes.”
“What is it about me, really? I’ve had a long time to think about it and I’m completely baffled by what you people see in me.”