by R. Lee Smith
“I can speak only for myself.”
One corner of her mouth went up. “Well, you’re the only one here, so I guess I’ll have to be content with that.”
“Compassion,” he said, without the slightest hesitation. “I had never known it before I knew you.”
She thought about that.
“There is a healing way about you. I don’t mean in your potions or the magic things old Murgull—” He hooked absently at the air. “—taught you. There is a healing in your very soul. No, you aren’t always gentle. I’ve seen you match the tovorak roar for roar and never show a flinch, but I’ve seen you put your arms around him, even him, who stole you from your world.” He paused then, and she could feel him struggling not to apologize for mentioning Vorgullum, no matter how obliquely.
The apology would be a hundred times more painful. She put her hand on his arm before he could say anything, making herself smile for him.
“And just so,” he said, and breathed a sigh. “There is not a one of us who would not tremble to feel this touch and know that you saw all the evil of his heart…and could forgive it. For that touch, even for only its memory, we will let our females hunt with spears, sever a mate-bond, fight a challenger, and someday even fly again. We will allow those who cannot hunt to have mates and raise children. We will remember you, and perhaps one day we will learn there can be magic even in mercy.”
“How very comforting.”
He thrummed, low in his throat, and let his hand caress her bare flesh where he found it. “You don’t mean that,” he said serenely. “Never mind. I find it comforting.”
There was a silence between them, a long and easy one, in which they lay and looked at one another while the rain beat on the roof.
“Kodjunn?”
“Yes, Olivia?”
“You are fully prepared to lie there all day and never ask me to couple with you, aren’t you?”
He rolled onto his back and howled with laughter. When the storm eased, he said, still smiling at the ceiling, “Why yes, Olivia. I am.”
“You can, if you want to.”
“No. You have endured too much, too recently.”
He lay there, looking at the ceiling, not speaking.
Olivia listened to him breathe as the rain pattered above them.
“It’s just that he’s always with me,” Kodjunn said suddenly. “And there’s no pleasure in that for either one of us. And you are here, and I remember… how fine and kind you are…how you took me in your arms while you lay in blood and pain…and loved me.”
Olivia waited, but that seemed to be all.
And then, much later, as if there had been no pause at all, he added, “And he isn’t with me now. And I want to savor that, savor you, now that I have you all to myself.”
“Kodjunn?”
He sighed. “Yes, Olivia.”
“You’re still not going to ask me, are you?”
“No, Olivia.”
She rolled her eyes slightly, safe in the knowledge that he was not looking at her. “Well, then you leave me no alternative. I’ll have to ask you.”
He turned his head and arched a brow at her doubtfully. “I refuse to take advantage of your good nature,” he said.
“Only females have the right to refuse,” she countered primly.
He opened his mouth, looked first startled, then thoughtful, then closed his mouth and smiled at her again. “So it is,” he agreed, and reached for her.
8
Afterward, enfolded in his arms, Olivia stared out through the gaping holes in the roof of the shack and watched the sun set.
“I’m sorry,” Kodjunn said, “if you weren’t ready. I know what those humans…that is…It just seemed to me that I might never have another chance to be with you, without him.”
She made a sleepy sound of agreement. It would have been easy to use her power on him, to replenish herself with his energies during his lovemaking, and a terrible part of her had wanted to. The feeling of emptiness and weakness about her was a bad thing to lie down with in the dark, especially with Kodjunn there beside her, his desire resonating with whatever hungry spark the Great Spirit had kindled within her, but…but she might never have another chance to be with him this way either. She didn’t want to spend it feeding off him, leeching away his lifeforce while he thought he was making love with her.
Kodjunn glanced uncomfortably out the nearest gaping slat. “It’s dark enough, I think, for us to travel, but I’d rather not.” He turned back to look down on her, drumming his fingers against his belt, a habit he’d unconsciously adopted from the Great Spirit. “It’s the night of Urga’s season,” he added. “By one cause or another, when he returns, he will want you.”
Something in his voice caused her to blink and look more closely at him. “It bothers you, doesn’t it?”
He scowled, but not at her. “If he were a mortal gulla who abused you in this fashion, he would be castrated and killed for it.”
“But he isn’t mortal,” she said after a tactful pause to let him cool. “And this really is the only way he knows to give me power.”
“The only way he’s interested in knowing, you mean. But he made you promise to submit, just as I swore to accept the pains of carrying him. I know, I know…He released us. That clears him of our right to blame him,” he said blackly. “Not of the evil itself.” He got up and stalked out into the rain.
After a moment, for want of something to do, Olivia rose and joined him.
They stood together on the lee of the shack, side by side, staring down at the lights of the town and listening to the distant music of some summertime small-town fair. The air carried the scents of that lost lifetime—exhaust fumes, barbeque grills, and freshly cut grass.
“I suppose I can’t stand here and curse him for something he can’t help,” he said after a while. “And it doesn’t even make me feel much better. The fact is…damn it, he is the Great Spirit! And out of all the tribe, out of all the gullan on all this world, he chose me to carry him. He’s a dickhead most of the time,” he muttered. “But that can still overwhelm me.”
She stroked at the base of his horns. “Me, too.”
“And because…I don’t think there is another way to save our race…and I don’t trust any other human in the whole world to face Bahgree but you. But I hate him for it, anyway.”
“Do you think he’s evil?” she asked at last, not expecting that he would know immediately what she was talking about.
His answer came without even a heartbeat of pause. “No,” he said, bitterly. “He isn’t even aware that his actions are wrong. You could sit and explain them for years and years, and still he wouldn’t understand. He can feel a little uncomfortable with his methods, but only because you keep bringing it up. When you lie beneath us and he has you, he has no remorse.” Kodjunn cut his eyes away from hers and frowned into empty space. “And I have no remorse.”
“Neither do I, you know. For the most part. Especially since he’s condescended to work on his technique.” She studied him from the corner of her eye and finally leaned over to give him a little nudge with her elbow. “That was the only good thing about the times when he was in you. You were good.”
Kodjunn grunted stoically, sat there, and finally sighed and gave her a little smile. “If you only knew what that cost me.”
“I can imagine.”
“He is such a rutting goat. I know he knows ways to please you, he just doesn’t want to be bothered. But he still wants you to do things for him.”
“I guess the same could be said of lots of people,” Olivia admitted. “And not only men.”
“Stupid people, maybe,” Kodjunn muttered. “Coupling should be about two people. It should be a braided thing. Ask Kurlun sometime, he would tell you there’s no shame in taking instruction if it makes the pleasure greater. Even Vorgullum bent his neck to learn—” Kodjunn broke off with a hard flinch and stared at her in horror. “Oh, forgive me, Olivia, I didn’t think!”
Olivia was still smiling, but it was more a thing of grief frozen into place on her face. “I know,” she said. “It’s okay. It’s taking me a while to come to terms with it, too. I’m always finding myself thinking things like, I’ll have to tell Doru this, or I should get those herbs for Tina. It hasn’t sunk in yet. I’m literally days away from losing my mortality, and it still hasn’t sunk in that yours is the last friend’s face I’ll ever see.”
Kodjunn bent to put his arms around her and wrapped out the world with his wings. He was soft and warm and smelled only faintly of the blood of the humans from the previous night.
“Kodjunn?” she said in a muffled voice.
“Yes?”
“Can we go back inside? I feel weird being naked in the rain.”
He drew back to arm’s length and stared at her. “You feel better being naked in an abandoned human den?”
“Oddly enough, yes I do.”
He smiled, and stepped back, gesturing expansively with one arm. “If I dared to leave you, I would go to the hive below and find coverings for you. But of course, the instant that I left your side would be the instant he returned to me, and I think he would be so furious that he would burn my soul away.”
She wanted to tell him that the Great Spirit wouldn’t do anything of the sort but wasn’t sure it would be the truth.
9
They killed time, neither one of them commenting on the hours that slipped away or the uncertainty they both felt. It stopped raining. The owl flew off to do the business of owls. Neither of them slept. They talked about silly things, things that didn’t matter—the misadventure of her goat-hunt, his apprenticeship to the old sigruum—just to keep the silence at bay. They talked because they knew it wouldn’t last forever, and as bad as they knew it would be when it ended, they did their best to savor what little peace they had.
Kodjunn was in the process of telling what should have been a very funny story about a luckless gulla on a quest to find the legendary brown bat of happiness when the Great Spirit returned. He came in violence, roaring through Kodjunn’s jaws as his wings unfurled and sliced through the air like razors.
The ferocity of this possession surprised a scream out of Olivia. Kodjunn’s gold-rimmed eyes turned on her at once, blazing. He was lucid enough when he commanded, in a voice of thunder and fire, for Kodjunn to withdraw at once. Then he was gone, and Kodjunn stumbled back, his hands to his head. He looked at her once, the whites of his eyes showing in an expression of pain and pity, and then fled without speaking, leaping into the air from the front porch of the dilapidated shack.
The urge to run was hot on Olivia’s mind, but she didn’t dare. Neither did she waste time with feelings of outrage or anger. She summoned up her courage and lay down, removing herself from her body and filling it already with what little healing power she could find within herself.
No sooner had Kodjunn’s silhouette in the sky faded to a pinpoint than the Great Spirit reappeared, his body distorted by rising waves of power and fury. He fell on her without even seeming to see her, and took her with screams of rage, ripping through her pitiful defenses as easily as if they had not been there at all.
She fought him without thinking. He conquered without noticing. Though every movement wracked agony through the core of her soul and psyche, she refused to surrender to the bliss of oblivion. Instead, she reached out with her distant mind, and made her puppet arms enfold him.
Tenderness did what her struggles had not; he turned on her at once, sinking his fangs into her body, savaging her like an animal. Olivia tried to calm her mind and steel her will, then dropped back into her body and embraced him. The pain was immediate and overpowered any other sensation, even that of his weight as he slammed her brutally into the ground. She grit her teeth against it, fighting for self-control, and began to move around him.
She could not afford to be cautious or timid, not with this bloodlust on him. She fought him like an enemy, inflicting pleasure rather than pain, but with the same frantic energy, until his relentless assault on her body began to ease. Then she flew from her battered husk to the very limits of her power and worked her body from beyond, not leading him to climax so much as driving him, as if he were a blind animal she led by bashing him with clubs. When she had him trapped, she prolonged his release only long enough to be sure the backwash of his tremendous power could not kill her.
He convulsed hugely, snarling as he came. Then he crashed atop her, his claws dug to the quick in her bruised flesh, and let his ragged breath pant against her neck. Olivia waited, hovering out of mortal range, then came gingerly back into her body.
Agony. She closed her eyes against it, not trusting herself to move or speak. Nothing had ever hurt so much. He’d bitten her, clawed her, struck her, battered her. He’d spent his hate inside her together with his seed.
And now, in the first few seconds of clarity, he knew it. He spoke her name in a desperate, shuddering moan and threw himself to one side.
She couldn’t quite manage to turn towards him. She focused her power on knitting some of the damage he’d done, but the pain stole her concentration. Her wounds healed slowly. The hurt remained.
Olivia sat up slowly. The Great Spirit was huddled a short distance away, his brow pressed against the ground and his eyes squeezed shut.
She crawled towards him. He cringed at her touch, but did not pull away, even when she put her arms around him and drew him into her arms. She stroked his head and whispered meaningless words of comfort.
Time passed. The night was fading when he turned, pressing his face into her shoulder, and whispered, “Why? You never did me wrong.”
“I was who was there,” she replied calmly.
He shuddered in her arms. “I cannot be so cruel. I cannot believe that of myself.” Behind his denial, a cry of hopelessness and despair.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“I hurt you,” he said.
“It’s all right,” she said. It wasn’t all right, but she could cope. I’ve always been very good at coping, she thought wearily. “Tell me.”
“She came to me as she always does, just as though she had not intended to destroy you. She held out her arms to me and I refused her.” He took two quick breaths, almost as though he were about to break down into sobs. “It is difficult for me to refuse. It is even harder for her to be refused. She has existed from the beginning in a constant cycle, to get herself with child, grow fat, give birth, grow thin, and come to me again. Tonight, I broke that cycle, as I have done only twice before in all the ages in my memory.”
He uncurled himself from her embrace and gathered her instead into his. “When she realized that I meant to withhold myself from her, she grew furious with me. I commanded her never again to touch you. She refused, and she came closer and closer to me, coaxing me to lie with her a little while. Finally, I struck her. There was fierce battle. I forced her vow, but she is bound by it. You are safe, Olivia Blake. From her, at least.”
“You beat her?”
“She has no physical body to be injured. That I strike at her at all is a far greater pain than any blow against her body. Greater still than that is my rejection, my forceful severance of her endless cycle. There will be an emptiness inside her until her next season comes, and that is worse than any wound I could inflict.” He was silent a long while, then closed his eyes and quietly added, “But that is not true, is it? For, lacking the ability to do her harm, I visited that hatred upon you, who never did me ill.”
“Is Kodjunn hurt?”
That brought a little light into his eyes. “I…I do not know. I was not careful in his body. Will you wait for me?” he asked, drawing away from her.
When she nodded, he disappeared. Olivia lay back on the dry earth and gingerly probed her injuries. He had gouged out furrows along her hips and thighs, but the bite had been the worst of them; even now, it throbbed blackly beneath the smooth cover of her healed skin. She was afraid to look deeper than
that, afraid to see damage she couldn’t possibly repair without submitting to him again. And she’d have to, she knew.
The Great Spirit appeared again, looking at once ashamed and relieved. “He is bruised, but well,” he said, and stopped, looking down at her.
“I just need to rest a while,” she said, sitting up again.
He knelt by her side and placed his hand over hers. “Olivia,” he said, troubled. “Why do you not flee from me? You know I cannot promise not to hurt you again.”
“I’m not fleeing anywhere.” She managed a tiny smile. “I haven’t done all this just to quit. I’m going to keep my promise. I’m going to save my son.” She pulled him close and kissed him. “And I’m going to lie here with you until your own pain ends.”
He traced the line of her cheek without touching her, pure torment in his eyes. “Why? After all I’ve done to cause you suffering, why would you still show me kindness?”
It was a good question. She thought of Kodjunn and shrugged.
“It is your nature to desire?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I guess it’s mine to forgive.”
CHAPTER THREE
THE RIVER
1
Olivia’s first realization that she had fallen asleep came as she woke up, still snuggled close to the fuel-less fire the Great Spirit had provided, her naked limbs pressed tight to her body in a vain effort to maintain warmth. Disorientated, she rolled slowly onto her stomach and saw Kodjunn sleeping by the doorway, his chin resting on his folded arms and his wings splayed slightly to either side of him. At his feet was a bulging backpack with that undersea hero, Mr. Squarepants, saluting the world.
By the thin, hazy stripes of light that lay in ripples across Kodjunn’s body, it was late afternoon in the outside world, which meant she had not only slept, she had been asleep some ten hours or more. This was mildly astonishing to her. She could remember lying beside this fire, her fingers running through the thick pelt of the Great Spirit as he moved inside her; watching their two shapes entwining with spirit eyes and using the power that came from him in waves to paint health back into her aching body. That much she could remember. She could even remember the god withdrawing at last, combing through her hair with his claws before he rose and winked out like a candleflame. She had continued to lie by the fire, letting thin strands of her power soothe away the last of the damage as she waited for Kodjunn’s return. She hadn’t expected it to take long. She certainly hadn’t expected to fall asleep.