by R. Lee Smith
Now Olivia sat up, running her hand over the smooth skin that had, only a few hours before, sported the ruined scars of the god’s savage bite. There was nothing now, not even a faint twinge of pain or slight dimple. Pleased, Olivia leaned over to check her hip for any sign of the gouges from the god’s claws.
At the soft sounds of her movement, Kodjunn raised his head and frowned at her ponderously. Before she could tell him to go back to sleep, he blinked and stared around the dark corners of the shack, then shoved himself onto his knees and shook himself fully awake. “I didn’t mean to do that,” he said apologetically. He seized the splintered frame of the open doorway and heaved himself to his feet and spent a few moments working through a series of sinew-creaking stretches. “But you looked so peaceful sleeping there, I just thought I’d watch you for a while,” he explained, yawning.
“I can’t believe I fell asleep,” she admitted. “Usually it wakes me up. Being with him, I mean. Well, not necessarily just being with him, but—”
Kodjunn glanced at her with the gold eyes of the god, his host’s mouth quirking in an expression of deep, quiet amusement. “Not necessarily?” he echoed, and then faded back and let Kodjunn laugh.
“Since I just appear to be digging myself in deeper, let’s change the subject,” she suggested, and Kodjunn took the straps of the backpack and carried it to her.
“I stole these while I was…waiting,” he explained, unzipping it. “I had to guess at the fit. I hope they aren’t too uncomfortable.”
“I wore a mountain goat’s pelt with a neck-hole cut in it once, I think I’ll be okay,” she said, accepting the rolled bundles of clothing as he handed them to her. A pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and a package of three pairs of socks.
She put all three pairs on, which might make her feet too hot in a few hours, but which would almost certainly be an improvement over going half-barefoot though the rocky woodland. The jeans were two sizes too big and about five inches too long, but when she looked up from rolling the hems Kodjunn was holding out a very serviceable designer belt with its two hundred dollar price tag still attached. “Not bad,” she said, executing a few deep knee bends to try and work some of the new-denim stiffness out before shaking out her t-shirt and locating the way in. “You’ve got a pretty good eye for… human…sizes,” she finished faintly, staring at the shirt.
“What’s the matter?” Kodjunn asked, alarmed. He looked intently from her shocked face to the writing scrawled stylishly across the front of the glittery pink midi-shirt.
Goddess, it said.
“Nothing,” Olivia said slowly. “Nothing, really.” She tugged it over her head and pulled it down as far as it would go. She took a quick self-appraisal—loose jeans and tight shirt, her belly button winking slyly over the waist of her hippie-belt, her hair falling unbrushed down her back…if it wasn’t for her sock-swollen feet, she’d consider herself at the height of fashion. “Thanks, Kodjunn.”
He didn’t look at all convinced, but he let the matter drop and returned to the contents of the backpack. “I thought you might be hungry when…I thought you might be hungry,” he amended simply, and handed her the pack.
He had provided three oranges, a small carton of apple juice, two triangular stacks of grocery-style turkey sandwiches, and a plastic package containing four enormous M&M cookies. She was about to make a wry observation on the subject of just how much he thought she could eat at one sitting when her stomach snarled audibly so she settled for thanking him and taking the pack outside to eat.
She sat on the grass while he perched on a fallen gate post and they shared out the food. Periodically, the god would come forward, turning his molten eyes west in silent contemplation before retreating again. Kodjunn did not seem to be aware of these lapses in his conversation and Olivia decided it was impolite to mention them.
With the last of her injuries healed, a long day’s sleep, and a full belly, Olivia felt worlds better than the previous day. As Kodjunn finished the last of the juice, she stood and stretched and shook out her hair, restlessly readying herself for the flight. “Are you ready?” she asked, and looked around to discover that she had inadvertently addressed the Great Spirit rather than the host he inhabited.
The god glanced back at her, arching one brow. “I am,” he said after a long pause to consider her. “But I am not at ease. I feel…something.”
Immediately, Olivia stilled herself and swept upwards and out of her body, far out to the very tether of her limitations, to scan the world around her with her spirit eyes. She had used most of her night’s charge in healing, and the things she saw were dim; she did not trust the perfectly benign flux and flow of life that spilled out endlessly below her.
Can you tell where it is? she thought uneasily.
“In general, yes,” she heard him say, his voice muted as if by tremendous distance. “But I suspect I know exactly from whence the danger comes, although I cannot see it. Some days hence, we must cross the River, and having crossed it, follow the path it wends to the sea.”
But we’ll be flying, won’t we?
“We will,” he agreed heavily. “And the fact would better fill me with calm were I not already well-versed in Bahgree’s treachery. She means to do something, and her intentions hover over us now as swollen and ominous as thunderheads.”
Olivia flexed the core of her power, testing it, and then dropped back and into her body. “You’ll just have to stay close then,” she said. “I don’t suppose there’s much she can do against you.”
“She is powerless against me, as immortals may be reckoned.” The god bared Kodjunn’s teeth. “But she surely desires to hurt me and she can hurt me best by hurting you. And now at last, she knows this. I will stay with you. I will stay until my host falls exhausted from the sky if I must, but I will stay. I do not dare to leave you. Not until we have crossed the River.”
“For once,” Kodjunn added, narrowing his own eyes darkly in the direction the god stared, “you won’t hear me complaining. But…”
When he only trailed off and was silent, Olivia saw the gold of the god seep back into Kodjunn’s eyes. “What is it you think you know?”
Kodjunn frowned, unable to address the god, and turned to address Olivia instead. “If Bahgree’s intentions are evil enough that you can sense them from here, then whatever she’s planning must use as much of her power as she can possibly have in her bodiless form.”
“Very likely so,” the god agreed.
“Can you fight her?” Kodjunn asked quietly. “So soon after Urga?”
Once more, the molten light of divinity spilled into Kodjunn’s eyes, but the god only looked down at Olivia without seeming to focus on her. Slowly, his brows knit together and he showed one of Kodjunn’s fangs in a scowl. “I will fight,” he said at last. “And I will win. There can be no other outcome.”
“You’ve never been this close to being defenseless before,” Kodjunn countered. “And don’t argue with me. You’re in me. I can feel it.”
There followed a lengthy pause during which Olivia mused on how incredible it was to watch a man have a complete schizophrenic argument with himself. Almost as amazing as seeing the Great Spirit interrupt Kodjunn in the middle of a word. For some reason, she didn’t think either of them would appreciate the observation. She folded her hands behind her back and watched them discuss the matter.
“What do you propose?” the god asked finally. He seemed angry and tense and almost embarrassed, as if the idea of being beaten in combat by the River Woman’s ghost were more humiliating than anything else.
“How long can we delay this meeting?” Kodjunn asked, and the god snarled and drummed his fingers on Kodjunn’s belt.
“I dare not delay!” he spat, and took a deep breath to calm himself before continuing. “And you are correct. I dare not travel on. Let me think.”
He withdrew completely from Kodjunn’s body and the two mortals, human and gulla, stared at each other for a moment in silence.
> “Did that look anywhere near as funny as I think it did?” Kodjunn asked, and Olivia burst out laughing.
The god blazed forward again, cutting off Kodjunn’s answering smile with a dark scowl. “West,” he rumbled. “West to the sea. And north from that point until we come to the place where the river pours into the birthing waters of the earth. It will delay our arrival at the ancient meeting place by a handful of nights, but at least we will not be stilled here, like cattle dumbly awaiting their own slaughter.” He seemed to become aware of Olivia for the first time in the conversation. “Why are you smiling?” he asked curiously.
“Doesn’t matter,” Kodjunn said as Olivia reached up to cover her smile before it could widen and prompt the Great Spirit to ask again. “Are you saying you’ll be returned to your full strength in that time?”
“No,” the god said. His frown fell back over him like a curtain as he brooded down on Olivia. “But in that time, I can perhaps empower Olivia. And she will fight.”
“What?” she said, startled, as Kodjunn said simultaneously, “You haven’t thought this through.”
The Great Spirit’s eyes blazed and he silenced both of them with one upraised hand. “I have,” he said. “And I see no other choice. I know what you fear, my son. You fear she will lose that battle and fall before the River in death. You greatly underestimate Olivia’s power. My fears are far more sinister—that we will come to the meeting place of old and when the times comes for Olivia to take Bahgree’s essence, she will be weakened from battle… and consumed.”
Olivia suddenly saw herself, her own jaw hanging down her chest, her eyes blazing with light and hatred, vomiting out gallons and gallons of icy water in an endless gush as she clawed her way through Dark Mountain over a tumbled heap of gullan bones.
The Great Spirit focused on her sharply, and she wondered if he had caught the thought. But he said, “I have tasted the edge of Olivia’s power, and if I can be overcome by them, the ragged shade that Bahgree has become will stand no chance at all. I believe that if we can cross the River, we might safely delay our travel a little while longer. Long enough, I think, to build in her another charge. Olivia,” he said now, “what think you?”
She wrapped her arms around herself and looked back at him unhappily. “I think you’re probably right.”
He seemed to wait for more and when there was no more, the very corner of his mouth quirked up in a faint smile. “I am waiting for you to tell me of its unfairness,” he said.
“Life isn’t fair,” she replied.
“You choose the strangest moments to come to wisdom.”
She curled the corner of her mouth back at him. “I’ll always keep you guessing, big guy,” she said.
The Great Spirit raised both eyebrows and looked, just for a moment, utterly and unaffectedly shocked. “Big—” he began and then his face underwent an expression of even greater surprise before settling into a wistful consideration. He took her hands, very gently, and simply held them, gazing at her with that strange, almost loving, look. “Indeed you may. For that alone, I would dare much to keep you.”
He cast one long, last look away over the treeline, and then receded from Kodjunn’s eyes.
Kodjunn shook his head with a rueful little smile and looked down at their hands, still joined.
“What?” she said at last, when Kodjunn didn’t move.
“I’m trying to picture that. Undying eternity in the arms of woman who can still surprise you. Not merely many years, but many thousands. I would have thought that the Great Spirit has seen everything by now. You can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to stand here in his shadow and feel him amazed by you. If I thought I could, I’d paint it on the wall.”
“Just imagine how amazed he’d be by Tobi,” she replied, and Kodjunn threw back his head and laughed.
“Who is Tobi?” the god asked cautiously, his eyes narrowing.
“Another human,” she told him. “She hunts, she swears, and she doesn’t like sex with males.”
“How is she different from you?” he asked and then leaned back, staring unfocused over her shoulder as he listened to something from Kodjunn. Very slowly, he arched one eyebrow. “Hm.” Less his usual judicial sound and more a growl. “Even I?” A brief silence ensued, during which his face went thunderous with aggressive disbelief. “She believes this only because she has never coupled with the right male,” he stated firmly, and this time Olivia burst out laughing, an act that won her a sharp look from the god’s molten gold eyes. “It is truth,” he insisted. “It must be so. What female of healthy body and mind would choose to remain virgin the full span of her life when…”
Olivia wiped her eyes and looked up in time to see Kodjunn’s face smooth out with the god’s shock, and erupted again in peals of laughter.
“With women?” he gasped. “With other women? Impossible! No woman would couple with another woman!” And staring at Olivia, baffled and outraged, he demanded, “To what purpose?”
She had to laugh a little. “I can’t believe you actually need me to point this out after all this time we’ve spent together, but people don’t do only the things that would make sense to you.”
He frowned, studying her through narrowed eyes. The silence lasted for a very long time, and if Kodjunn had anything he wanted to say, the Great Spirit would not relinquish control enough to let it be heard. She was beginning to think she’d insulted him and she’d better find a way to apologize when he said, “This is true. And yet I strangely find that I cannot regret this. You are, after all, one of those things which I cannot anticipate.” He looked away, his brows drawing darkly together as he stared into the west. “And Bahgree is another. Come, Olivia. We have yet a few hours of darkness. Let us not waste them in talk.”
2
They went on. Every minute there was darkness to hide them, they were moving. When the sky began to grey up, they went to ground. There was always someplace waiting to take them in—abandoned cabins, musty caves, close-knit groves of trees, once even an empty gulla-cave—and always game to be had. The Great Spirit allowed them a little time to eat, but then expected Kodjunn to take himself away so that her real work could begin.
Any power she’d managed to pour into her reserves had been utterly depleted on the night of Urga’s attack. She was starting over again, if not exactly from Square One, and she knew she was well behind where she needed to be if she was going to fight anyone at this unknown river they were destined to cross. The Great Spirit worked at her for hours in sex entirely without pleasure, most often without even the little touches of affection he had been starting to adopt. He would not let her use her power expect to heal whatever damage he did in the act; his cumming was a luxury he would not allow. Sex was all that occupied him until night fell and their endless flight resumed.
The weather got warmer, marginally at first, and then with humid, breath-stealing intensity. The trees were replaced by vast cattle-covered flatlands, and then by trees again—not the pines and firs and maples of the Northwest, but strange, boggy, vine-covered jungle trees. She didn’t need to sleep, but she wished she could anyway. There was no rest in the way she renewed herself, nothing to think about but what was coming.
She didn’t know where they were anymore. Not on the Western coast, that was for sure. Not in the U.S. maybe. Kodjunn refused to fly close enough to humanity to see a road-sign or stumble on a newspaper, and when she asked the Great Spirit where they were going, he could only give her the most oblique descriptions: The Pool Outside of Time, he would say, or the Birthing Place, or the Forgotten Waters. Oh well. She could hardly expect him to know the names humans gave their cities when he didn’t even know how to hold the spear he himself had conjured up. She supposed it didn’t matter, really. They’d be there soon enough, and names would be pretty pointless then.
There was less and less talk the closer they came to their destination. Kodjunn was rarely out of the Great Spirit’s grip and while he was there, his golden eyes were
always fixed on the world below, searching for Bahgree in every river they passed over. There were a lot of rivers.
While he covered the ground, Olivia watched the skies, where Urga’s moon grew sullenly fuller day by day. Somewhere, she knew, the goddess was still furious, unforgiving, denied her monthly conception and festering with hate. She had no friend up there anymore, if ever she’d had one at all.
She stopped counting the days and just watched the moon, marking their passage by Urga’s light and when she was not quite half-full, they stopped for the day on a muggy hillock under overgrown palms, and the Great Spirit said, “Tomorrow.”
She looked at him, her heart suddenly pounding and her breath too short. “Are you sure?” she asked.
He gave her a look and she ducked away from it, staring out over the jungle and trying to see the ocean in the distance or smell it on the wind. There was nothing.
“Bahgree flows beneath our feet,” the Great Spirit said. “Tomorrow, we must cross her River before we come to the shore where her energies are bound. She will attack us. She must. It is the last opportunity she has before you become what she has been. Prepare yourself. The end is nigh upon us.”
The end. One more day. Perhaps not even a whole day, but just a few hours. Before midnight, this could all be over. Before midnight, she could be changed.
She checked her watch, wanting to see how much time she had to be human, but then just sat, staring at the crystal face with its twelve diamond chips. Vorgullum had stolen it for her, his first real gift. It was the only thing she had to remind her of him, the only piece of that life she carried with her. She had nothing else—nothing of Amy, of Somurg, or Doru or Bodual, of her own self. Just this five-thousand dollar watch…and it had stopped.