by R. Lee Smith
“Olivia.” The Great Spirit reached out Kodjunn’s hand to brush at her cheek. “Why do you cry?”
“Am I crying?” She wiped at her eyes and sure enough, they were wet. “I guess…I’m sad. I’m scared. It’s easy to do things when you don’t have time to think about the consequences. I just don’t know if I can sit here all day, knowing everything that’s going to end and not knowing what comes after.”
She expected him to give her that baffled frown he did so well, or perhaps attempt to comfort her with one of his outrageously inappropriate macho observations on inherent female weakness. She tried to be ready for it, tried to preemptively quash any offense before he blithely passed it out.
He surprised her. Sort of.
“You do not always need to be strong. Make your woman’s tears, Olivia. We will go on when you are done.”
Considering the source, that was positively awash with sensitivity.
And then he did something even more surprising: He left them alone.
Kodjunn sagged, exhausted as he always was after the night’s flight, but he wasn’t quick to stagger away so that the Great Spirit could return. Instead, groaning, he lowered himself to the ground and stretched out over the damp, coarse grass.
It was the last night and Olivia knew this moment of rest couldn’t last, but she let that go for now. She let it go, pretended to believe that there was nothing coming and nothing else to do but lie down beside him and snuggle up under his outstretched wing. She cried until she was done with crying. He put his arm around her and the sun came up over both of them.
“I’m sorry, Olivia,” he said at last, rousing her out of her drowse.
“I thought you were sleeping.” She wiped self-consciously at her dry eyes. “Why are you sorry? None of this is your fault…Like fault matters at this point,” she said with a sigh. “Like it could be anyone’s fault. It’s like asking whose fault the flu is or who was to blame for Pompeii. I should be glad there’s an end to it at all. At least, I should be honored that I’m part of it.”
“Should you?”
“I used to have this teacher in school,” Olivia said, lapsing in and out of English without being aware of it. Kodjunn didn’t interrupt her; she was scarcely aware of him either. She’d be saying this even if she was alone. Some thoughts needed to be heard out loud, that was all. “My sociology professor, he of the Gilligan’s Island craze. No matter what he would be on about that day—race or sex or politics—when it came down to the end of it, he would always turn it back on us. ‘No one person can every really stop these problems,’ he’d say. ‘But would you, if you could? Would you die if it meant ending the race wars or bringing peace to the Middle East? Would you really step up if meant your suffering and your death would make things better?’”
Kodjunn listened, but didn’t answer. She rolled over to check his eyes, but they were still black, still his.
“When it comes right down to it,” she said hesitantly, “I didn’t step up. I was pushed into this. Sure, I stayed after he gave me a choice, but that could be my own stubborn pride wanting to be in control. I don’t want to be here, Kodjunn. I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to me.”
“Will you go on?” he asked.
“Yes.” She shivered, glancing against her will towards the moon. “But I don’t think that means anything. I’m the go-along sort.”
He laughed at her.
“It’s true. My God, everything that you people think is so brave about me is due entirely to me just…going along.”
“Not everything.” He put his hand on her belly and rubbed lightly. “But even if it was…is not peace-making worthy of some regard? Go along, you say, but you don’t go along in the direction we have always gone. You go along to make things better, but I would be here no matter what he asked of me. Not because I believed in the quest, but only because the Great Spirit appeared to me, because he gave a command and I could only obey. I have given him my body. I have given him my life. That is going along, Olivia, and when it is done, I will return to the mountain. I will go along with my leader’s will and take a second human female to be my mate and live in horror of me. I will raise the children of my first…whose captivity surely worked to kill her. But when I paint the story of this journey in our archives, I will make you radiant, Olivia. I will make you tall. I will tell every generation to follow us that you were the courage and the goodness that delivered us from our own shadows. And perhaps we will go along in your path. Perhaps we will be better.”
I thought such evil of this man once, Olivia thought, laying her hand over his where it rested on her body. It was so impossible to imagine how she could have ever seen a murderer or a demon in the face that looked down at her now with such love.
“I should go,” Kodjunn said, not moving. “He needs to be with you.”
She rolled onto her side, cupping his cheek in her hand. “I’d rather be with you once more. Just once more.”
“I’ll have my time with you,” Kodjunn said, stroking at her hair. “We’re nearly there, to the place I’ve been dreaming of. I’ll have my time with you there and keep the memory with me for the rest of my days. But he needs you now.”
He started to rise. On impulse, Olivia caught her, pulled him back down, kissed him. His body settled slowly atop her, relaxing over her, covering her with his warmth, his weight, his love. But the kiss was all he gave her, his first kiss, and as clumsy as it was, she wanted it to go on forever.
It didn’t. He slipped away, smiling, and then the wind of his wings hit her and she was alone, watching the pink sky turn blue. Her last sunrise as a mortal.
Then the Great Spirit was there, surrounded by his own radiance and towering over her like, well, a god. He turned his burning eyes down on her, then out at the rising sun. He waited, not watching her, while she undressed. It wasn’t like him; usually, he was on her the instant he arrived, making the most of every minute. To have him staring down the horizon when she was naked at his feet unsettled her.
“Tomorrow,” he said again. “Are you prepared?”
The Great Spirit did not rhetorical questions. Olivia took stock of herself, pushing out of her body to examine the brightness of her power. From here, she could see the glittering pinpoints of humanity all around her. She could see Kodjunn in the distance, his colors fading as he slept. She could see a dim rush deep underground: Bahgree, clinging as close as she could come. She could see the living spark of every bird and beast surrounding them, and over it all, a faint golden haze that might have been the living soul of Earth itself. From here, the whole world was a muscle that Olivia could flex, if she wanted to.
She dropped down into her body. “I think so.”
“There will be battle when we cross the River. You must not engage her then. You must be at your fullest when we come to the pool where her power is bound. Let me combat the River Woman.” He paused, then glanced at her with the barest hint of a smile. “I know it is in your nature to fight. I trust you will be able to restrain yourself.”
“I’ll try.”
His eyes dipped, lingering on their slow travels down to her naked sex. With a throaty rumble, he knelt and slipped his finger into her, which was as close as he ever came to foreplay without encouragement from her. She didn’t mind this time. It was far more familiar than his unnerving meditation had been and Olivia did not protest it, only spread her legs and watched his smile broaden as he tested her.
“You are very strong,” he said, catching her leg and moving it impersonally around him so that he could enter her. “I have chosen Bahgree’s successor well. Fear nothing, Olivia. You shall survive tomorrow’s ordeal and emerge a goddess. My children shall be restored. All will be well.”
He concluded his words of comfort with a self-congratulatory ejaculation and settled atop her, thrumming to himself as he went about his work. That was how it was for him: simplicity and sex.
Olivia pushed out of her body to that place without time to wait for nigh
tfall. As an afterthought, she might her body put her arms around him. Then she turned her spirit face to the sky, where she couldn’t have to watch either the Great Spirit’s empowering copulations or crazed Bahgree’s underground contortions. She stared past the rising sun into the universe itself, and saw it all.
Tomorrow, he said. But did one more day mean, really? She had changed too much already to ever go back again.
3
Her day passed and her night began where the Great Spirit raised himself from her badly-used body and called her name, directing her down into flesh. Then he was gone, presumably to wake Kodjunn and bring him back for the night’s flight. Olivia healed her hurts and stood up. She didn’t need to eat, but Kodjunn would, and anyway, it was difficult not to make some passing effort at a normal routine, to cling to that fantasy for just a little longer.
But how normal could this hunt be, when she could see the lives around her, even here in this body, all the pale sparks of animal life crawling and flying and dreaming and dying? She didn’t even need to go to them; at her thought, just a thought, they came to her, submitting to her will like the goats and the elk and the bears that the Great Spirit had sent during their exodus from Hollow Mountain. The truly scary thing was, she didn’t need to use her power for this. She had absorbed enough of the Great Spirit’s essence for it to become natural, as much as breathing.
So she took two of the small wood ducks that sat at her feet and, her will satisfied, the others fled in squawking animal distress. Fire was beyond her—she hoped it was still beyond her—and so she cleaned her kills and waited for Kodjunn.
The Great Spirit did not at first understand the need. She watched him take stock of his host, and then, with an expression that was half endearing concern and half infuriating impatience, he ignited the ground and took himself away to let Kodjunn eat.
The ducks cooked. Kodjunn limped to a tree, cut one of the dangling vines, and drank from it, wincing at the bitterness of the juice. He stretched his wings, winced again, and found himself another vine.
“How are you holding out?” Olivia asked, knowing it was a foolish question.
He was kind enough not to make fun of her, even with a glance. “Well. I thought of what you said.”
“What did I say?” Olivia asked, surprised.
“That you thought you should be honored to be a part of all this. I wondered on that last night, in my dreams, on waking.”
“Wondered if you were?”
“Wondered why I was,” Kodjunn corrected, smiling. “I already knew I felt honored. Was it blind of me, that was the question. After all of this, all that I have been a part of, is it foolish of me to feel honor when I am taken by the Great Spirit, when I am used in this small role, to carry Olivia to the renewal of my kind?”
Her name in his mouth was soft, reverent as a blessing. She smiled, but her belly was hard and cold. “You make me ashamed,” she said. “It should be an honor, I know it should be. It’s my own son I’m saving, isn’t it? But…”
Kodjunn returned to the fire and hunkered to turn the ducks, seeming untroubled by her uncomfortable lapse into silence. “It’s all right,” he said. “I understand.”
“You know, I doubt that.”
“Did you never imagine yourself as part of some great quest in your youth? I know I did.”
“Of course,” she admitted. Ridiculous fantasies that they were, filled with knights and wizardry in her pre-teens, handsome rebels and post-apocalyptic dangers after that, and ultimately the very banal daydreams of moderate wealth, charm, and maybe a motorcycle.
“This can’t be the part you thought you’d play,” Kodjunn continued. “Or how you thought you’d play it.”
“Well, no. But then, I didn’t even know what sex was until I was twelve.”
That clearly surprised him, but with an effort, he shook it off. “I mean to say, in my own youth, the adventures I dreamed of taking were a hero’s. There were demons to face and vanquish, dangers to survive, enemies to combat—” He shrugged, dipping his horns in a gullan blush. “Females to woo and mate with. You know. Things to do. If not terrifically imaginative, at least they were dreams of action.”
“I get you.”
“Your dreams must have been the same,” he went on, his attention taken by spitting duck fat. “Or better. Your reality is so fierce, I can only guess what your fancies were like.”
Olivia made a non-committal sort of sound, watching him. She was beginning to see what he was trying to say, but she couldn’t really agree. She’d never been the hero, even of her own childish adventures. She really was the go-along sort.
In the mountain, she’d somehow become a hero. God alone knew how that had happened, but she had. She’d been a leader, a champion, even a warrior on occasion. She hadn’t always liked it, but she had gotten used to it. And now, she was taking that power and all she had learned to do with it…was to be a concubine to the most insufferably chauvinistic being she could ever imagine. Sure, she was breaking curses and saving lives, but she was doing it all on her back. She didn’t feel honored at all, she felt disappointed, and disappointment made her feel selfish and small.
It was a great thing, wasn’t it? It was a great thing and she was going along to get it done, fearful and sad…and disappointed. The gullan who spoke her name with such reverence deserved better out of their hero.
“I like feeling sorry for myself, I guess,” she said.
He laughed, opening a duck. “Don’t we all.”
“What will you tell them when you go back?” Olivia asked, and immediately felt her face heating up. “I mean, I’m aware that we’re not exactly at the end of it all yet, but…we’re sure not that far from it, and…and I might forget to ask again. What will you tell them?” she asked again, knowing she was pleading with him, but not sure what she was pleading for. “When you paint me tall and all the rest of that. What are you going to say?”
“About this?” Kodjunn looked around at the jungle, chewing thoughtfully. “What is there to say about this? These are lands the tribe will never know. And honestly, if there were dangers and demons every step of the way, I’d never tell them. Our dangers don’t need to be any more real than paint on a wall. One picture is enough for this journey, one picture to show them the darkness through which you came for the sakes of those who stole you cruelly away from your life and fit you into theirs. What will I say about you?” He met her eyes again, gazing levelly and without awe back at her. “I will say that you were Olivia, that you were your own self throughout. That you were courageous and you were good. And…And being good can be so much harder that just being brave. Let them love you for your courage. I love your goodness best.”
She had no answer for that.
Kodjunn returned it, then pulled a face and said, “Yes, I hear you, Great Spirit. I’m hurrying.”
“You might hurry better without speech.”
“I might,” Kodjunn sighed. He bent over his second duck, grumbling, “Hurry and hurry when it is me, but all day long is not enough for you to be in my bones. Great goat. It would serve you right if I took cramp and fell right out of the damned sky.”
4
The River, the Great Spirit called it, and Olivia had heard the capital R every time. Now she saw it and understood why. River was too small a word for what lay in their path. She still didn’t know where they were, but this river was surely on someone’s map. The Mississippi, maybe. The Parana. The Amazon. Names were superfluous. It was the River, and Bahgree had come with it to meet them.
She didn’t know if she could see it because of the Great Spirit’s power in her, or if Bahgree just wanted to be seen, but there she was—a colorless, shapeless thing tumbling through the currant below them, as playful and as vicious as an otter. When she came to the surface, she made faces and sometimes laughed, the sound watery and horrible to hear. When Kodjunn, following the serpentine curves of the River, came too close, she made snatching claws out of towering jets of water.
When the Great Spirit came to fill the gulla’s body, she made full breasts and a glistening sex, undulating in grotesque lust as she cackled, and these were the worst times, because no matter how fiercely the god spat his answering curses, Olivia could always feel Kodjunn’s possessed body responding to her.
“Go around,” Olivia said as Kodjunn banked away from yet another wave of grasping arms. “Leave her alone. Just go around.”
“There is no ‘around’!” the Great Spirit snarled, glaring down. “No path that will not take us days and days out of our way. It must be here! It must be now!”
Kodjunn approached the River. Again, he was driven back. The damn thing looked miles across when Bahgree swam inside it; they’d be over her and helpless for a whole minute, maybe two. Which didn’t sound like very long until one saw those hands reaching up, fifty feet high, a hundred. More.
“Look to the moon!” the Great Spirit warned. “As it grows, so grows Urga’s power! She will not give us days to find safe passage! Nor does this forest span out forever! And when we come to the end of it, there do we find your people, human! Shall they be easier to cross than this bodiless witch below us?”
Bahgree gibbered and writhed and beckoned.
Olivia shuddered.
“Up,” the Great Spirit commanded.
They had crossed a hundred lakes and streams on this journey, but this was the first time Olivia was afraid. This River had power even without the lunatic spirit riding it. She held on tight to Kodjunn’s neck as the Great Spirit urged him higher. Distance alone couldn’t save them of course, but there was no point in making it easy for Bahgree to take them. So they flew up, high up over the shrieking, breathing jungle, all of them looking down, trying to see the hand of Bahgree before she struck. They were looking down, God alone knew how high, where the air was thin and cold, but the River was still wide and Bahgree’s face still danced over it. They were looking down.