She was wrapped so tightly to him that she heard his heartbeat louder than her own. His arm held her immovable, and his fingers played a little in the damp curls of her hair, at the nape of her neck and across her forehead. He paused briefly, as if reflecting carefully, before his fingers idly retraced their wandering. “I do not delve your mind for the memories of what my brother told you and did to you,” Thoddun said. “But I know his needs and his practises. Because of my parent’s needs and practises, I left my home and repudiated my birthright as the eldest son. And knowing what it made them, the temptations of the Shift disgusted me. With the confusion of the uninitiated, I believed it was their double natures which also caused the cruelty and pain. Before I knew my power to Shift, I took to the sea. The sea is in my blood. I am the sea bear, the sea eagle and the orca, and it was while I was at sea that I discovered my whole self.”
“Did you never go back to your family?”
“Yes I went back,” said Thoddun, “once I knew I was too strong to be hurt again. I went back to kill my father and rescue Grimr. But although suckled at the same teats, we were never alike. There’s often rivalry between cubs, and with Grimr there was a bitter resentment. He believed I’d left him to deal with our father alone. He was right. I had. But until later, I never knew he could not Shift.”
“You said he was only human,” Skarga murmured.
His fingers travelled aimless, tracing the contours of her face, curling back again around the soft curve of her cheek. “I said he was singular. Not human. He has the wolf tight packed within and cannot complete the Shift. It is the tragedy of some of my people. I do not know why his nature failed to open. I imagine he inherited the obstruction from our father, who carried the flightless eagle. But perhaps in some way Grimr’s suffering blocked the Change. That, at least, is what he chooses to believe.”
Skarga shivered. “So he doesn’t change, but he’s a wolf all the same. He only looks like a man.”
“So do I,” said Thoddun into the echoes. “To you I look like a man but I am not one.” He sighed, clasping her tightly, and continued. “I took the bear from my mother and from my father, the eagle, though my eagle flies free. I do not carry the forest wolf’s Shift as my father did. I channel the wolf of the sea. All my dreams took me there, flying, swimming or running, so I knew, always, that the sea called me. Grimr would not admit where his dreams led him but I guessed.”
“They were your mother’s tunnels and halls under the mountains, weren’t they? Where I fell in. Did they travel all the way, as far as Grimr’s longhouse? Are there ice caves there? Is that where you were born?”
“Indeed, yes,” he said. “You put your feet through the roof of my cradle. I do not go there anymore as a rule, but of course I knew where Grimr held you. When Egil asked me, I brought some of our people south and set up residence. But just as I know Grimr and can often foretell what he will do, so does he know me. He also knows each turn of the tunnels. Instead of coming below ground and following me as I had hoped, he destroyed our father’s diggings. He chose the simple solution and meant to kill us all.”
From the melody of his voice a bleak century of miseries and long hatreds seemed to creep up the rock face, slipping into the damp trickles where the heat evaporated the veneer of ice, oozing down again into shadow. Skarga slipped the comfort, if any was needed, of her own arm tight around him. She said quietly, “My brothers bullied me as a child. They’re violent and brutal but they’re ordinary men. They have no special excuse. It’s different for you.”
Thoddun looked down at her with gentle amusement. “Are you feeling pity for me, child?”
For a moment, she had. “Perhaps. But in a way, I think you’re the happiest person I’ve ever met.”
“Then Grimr is the saddest,” he answered. “I need no excuse. I am three times predator and can relieve my needs when I wish. Except of course when I have a small female to protect, too tempting to a hungry sea bear which smells weakness and fear and longs to hunt the ice floes.”
Skarga peeped up at him. “You’re teasing. It was the bear who protected me when the other bear came. You didn’t attack me. You saved me.”
“Lucky indeed,” Thoddun grinned. “Even though my hunt had to be abandoned and I was hungry. You can have no idea, little one, what a temptation you were then and just how difficult it was to deny.”
Skarga snuggled down, unthreatened. “So does it hurt,” she whispered, “when you want to change, but you can’t?”
Thoddun shifted a little as if momentarily uncomfortable and leaned back more heavily against the rock wall. Now less gentle, his fingers curled across Skarga’s neck, keeping her tight to his breast. “The Shift is a strange thing to explain to one who feels no need of it,” he said. “It is the satisfaction of a deeply intimate hunger far greater than the simple hunger for food. Man suffers many desires, some needier than others, but the desire to Shift is overwhelming. But it is individual – and above all – personal. Some of us have weaker control, and we may all Change spontaneously in our sleep. Here, in the realm of the sea bear, I feel his presence most strongly, and refusing him his full place within me is constantly painful. He calls. When I yearn to Shift and the pain of denial becomes a fire, I find a way, sooner or later, and keep him docile. When no other duty hinders me, I Shift often and at will. It is the same with the orca at sea, and the eagle in the mountains and the cliffs. But the man, eventually, will always reassert.”
His nipple had risen hard as a button just beside her mouth. She said, “You go away before you change, as if you don’t want me to see you. But I’m not frightened anymore. I saw you when you attacked the other bear. And I woke once and you’d changed. I wasn’t frightened. But when I said something in the morning, you were angry.”
His fingers brushed her forehead, almost a caress. “It is something we learn to keep from humans,” he said softly. “We feel shamed. You’re ashamed to be seen when you piss. To me that’s absurd. Each feels the intrusion into their privacy of another who will surely fail to understand, and the lust of the Shift is intensely private. The werepeople learn to mistrust humanity, and we are vulnerable as we Shift. In that moment I’m more beast than man. Though in truth it’s my man’s body that clothes me most often, and it’s a man’s mind that controls all my thoughts.”
“So when you are – something else,” she whispered, “you still know who you are. And have the same thoughts. I could talk to you, and you’d know me?”
“Of course.” He laughed. “Otherwise you’d be in serious danger indeed. I speak as though I am bear, I am orca. But remember what I told you before, because in truth, I am never these things. I carry the impulse of their being, and a stranger would see me when I Shift, as you have, and believe that is what I am. But I am always simply transanima. It is not better of course, merely different. Perhaps I should also remind you again that I am never truly man. Not human man. It is this, more than any other, which is essential for you to understand in my company. Remembering the difference could save your life one day. Or mine.”
She looked up, startled. “You keep warning me of something. But I don’t believe it. And I do believe you trust me now. You even said once you’d got fond of me.”
He ruffled her hair. “You’re a sweet little kitten, really,” he said gently. “But you’d be wise to remember my warnings, for all that. They’re meant to be kindly, not threatening. Just remember, child, if you ever need to defend yourself, you must do so.”
Skarga buried her nose in his tunic, which disguised the sniff. “Defend myself against you? I won’t ever need to and even if I did, I couldn’t do it. You know I’m not strong enough. You can have me for supper. I don’t really care.”
He pulled her back onto his lap, cushioning her, arms closing safe. “I shall eat you indeed if you keep blowing your nose on my shirt.”
“You see!” she said, voice muffled amongst his woollens. “You’re a much nicer man than any of the men I’m used to. Perhaps th
e humans aren’t the good ones. Perhaps I prefer the werepeople.”
“Now that,” he laughed, “has always been my own opinion, but not that of many, I assure you. Certainly the predator kills without compunction, while they say man has a conscience. I have no such thing.”
“None of the men I know have a conscience either. I think it’s mighty rare.”
Thoddun tucked his arm lower, her shoulder cradled beneath his elbow, his fingers leaving her hair and finding the open neck of her shift. “The prerogative only of women perhaps?”
“Then what about Grimr?” she wondered. “He certainly has no conscience.”
“Nor is he human,” Thoddun reminded her. “He is transanima and channels the wolf, even though he cannot complete the Change. I’ve called him singular, but in truth he is not. The wolf remains, but sublimated. As the man struggles to prove himself human, so the wolf chews deeper. I’ve met others like Grimr, but not many. As rare, perhaps, as a man with a conscience.”
Skarga said, “Do you know he hates anything he calls unclean? He dresses so grand. That’s it, isn’t it? Proving himself human. So much anger about grooming.”
Thoddun was silent a while before speaking. “He fears and hates the wolf that whines, never released,” he said eventually. “But his face is still the wolf’s face.”
“And more than anything else, he loves to hunt.”
“But so, my pet, do I,” Thoddun said at once. “And very soon, that is what I shall be doing. The wind calls.” She could hear it, a low howl echoing from the distant mouth of the cave, seeping in at ground level, fluttering across the surface of the iced lake. “You resent me knowing your thoughts,” he went on, “so now, a little, I’ve opened mine to you. I’ve read some things in your mind that you’d sooner I didn’t know. Now you know some of those things about me that no one else does, except Grimr himself. I’ve told you what I wanted, and perhaps too much, though I don’t regret it. But being trapped too long inside this stale air doesn’t suit me at all. You’ll be safe with the dogs.”
She was immediately disappointed, and stifled it. “Yes, I’m alright. Thank you – for trusting me.”
He had begun to move her from his lap, settling her again beside him with her back to the rock, though his fingers remained for a moment inside her collar just above the rise of her breasts, caressing idly. Then, very suddenly, he leaned her backwards and his head bent over her and he kissed her full on the mouth.
His eyes were open, and before she closed hers she saw the sudden glitter of blue brilliance. For a moment it was all she could see, and all she could hear was the hammering of her pulse, and all she could feel was the burning pressure of his mouth on hers as he opened her lips and his breath went into her.
Then he had gone and she sat in astonishment with a fury of a heartbeat, wondering how it had happened and how she could feel the way she did. His eyes seemed too brilliant for any man, but they belonged to no other creature she could imagine. The eagle’s eye was golden, the bear’s was black, and she did not know if the sea wolves had a colour to their eyes at all. But it was the vivid blue reflection of the sea that she swam into as she laid down and tried, quite unsuccessfully, to sleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
Eventually she slept, just a little, but had been long awake before Thoddun returned. The dogs were shifting restlessly, trotting hopefully to the cave entrance, settling again, then up once more, and pacing.
Her body ached but her head troubled her more and the thing in her head which concerned her the most, and returned to her thoughts again and again, was what Thoddun had done before leaving, and how she had felt when he did it. She had even dreamed of it. He had ignited her just as easily as he created fire from damp earth. Skarga felt, with ashamed amusement, that she was little more than damp earth herself.
She had never wanted what was so often gossiped and giggled about. Few women bothered to prize their virginity, being too transient a thing to value and too troublesome to hang onto. Men gave it little importance, though given in marriage a young woman’s innocence might increase her bargaining weight and on the slave block it might increase her price. But no lustful boy had ever dared tumble Skarga in the grain fields, or pull her behind the goat shed. Although a chieftain’s daughter, she remained unkissed, her cursed reputation increasing local suspicion. Skarga had always hated them all. She had disliked being touched even before Grimr had abused her with his experiments in pain. But this was something else again. She had certainly never expected a kiss to affect her so profoundly, nor was she sure she approved of her own reaction.
Surprise, of course, was part of it. From their first meeting, Thoddun had seemed to despise her, and called her a nuisance. She had acknowledged her nuisance value, and although his annoyance had increased her own annoyance, in part she had understood and accepted the inevitable.
Then slowly, almost reluctantly, he had changed and spoken of fondness. Yet the kiss was not one of casual or passing affection. And Skarga’s reaction had not been casual either.
When Thoddun strode back at last, he was dipped in frosting. The dogs bounded around him and he caught their neck ruffs and stroked them, talking softly. Skarga looked up at him. “You must be tired. You must be cold. Even you.”
He came at once and sat beside her, moving close. “Cold, yes, a little,” he said. “The blizzard’s still wild. Have I been gone long?”
The dogs were leaving, hurrying out to hunt again in the big freeze. “It felt like ages,” said Skarga.
“Trapped into inactivity,” he said, “time will always travel slower in the darkness.”
She reached tentatively and felt his hand. He had not worn his driving gloves and his fingers felt iced. She smiled. “So even the great bear can feel the cold.”
He leaned closer. “Warm me then,” he commanded.
She blinked and swallowed hard. “I could try and build up the fire,” she said, and thought her voice sounded very small.
He laughed at her, two fingers beneath her chin bringing her gaze back to him. “Silly weanling,” he said fondly. “I won’t take advantage of you. But I’ll see to the fire myself.” And he kneeled beside it, blowing until the flames burst up and outwards. The renewed life tingled in her toes and reflected brilliance across the slick damp walls.
“Will we stay here then?” she asked. “If the storm’s still bad?”
“Only until the dogs get back,” he said. “I’ve arranged a few things. We’re expected.”
He had spoken of three days’ travel, but with the endless winter dark it was impossible to know when one day ended and another began. Now She was startled again. “You’ve been – home? Are we so close?”
He nodded. “It’s not so far. I intended getting you there before now, but decided the weather might kill you off before my people could frighten you to death instead. As soon as the wind drops I’ll call the dogs. In the meantime, there are a few more things I should warn you about.”
“I’m not frightened anymore,” she said stolidly. “Not of anything. Or almost anything.”
He laughed at once. “You know a fair bit about me now and hopefully you know I tell the truth. On the other hand,” he said, “I don’t believe a word you’re saying. And if you’re not frightened of a damn thing anymore, well, you should be.”
“So what ought I to be so scared of in your halls? You? The others? You’re certainly strange but you’re not entirely crazy. So I know you haven’t been protecting me all this time just to have me for dinner.”
He was tight beside her again, lounging back, one arm around her shoulders. His bearskin, which she had been using as a blanket, now partially covered them both. “We’re an unruly race,” he said suddenly. “Our hearts belong to a hundred different creatures and we each carry the habits and desires of those we channel. The man is always partially bear – the bear partially eagle. Some of us have been hunted and degraded by humans, so hate them. There are a few with such a bitter hatred that they wil
l be unable to accept your presence at all. That may seem unjustified, but they have suffered torture and that justifies a great deal. Others are simply hunters by nature, so can be dangerous. Few of us are what you might call – civilised. Living only amongst ourselves gives the freedom to be what we are, whatever that entails. Many will resent an intruder into that freedom.”
“So no one else will want me there,” she said in a small voice.
“Resentment carries many strings,” he answered gently. “Some will resent you because you’re human. Others will welcome you simply because you are small and female and vulnerable. You will not be killed because I will not allow it. But you may be threatened. Does this frighten you?”
She didn’t know. “But you’ll be there. And Egil.”
“You must forbid Egil to act the hero,” Thoddun said. “He’s still learning his own abilities and needs new friends and allies among us. He must not be included in the general resentments, nor be forced back into humanity’s expectations.”
Skarga stiffened. “You think I’ll be a corrupting influence?”
“Yes, little one, precisely that,” he laughed. “I believe you’ve already corrupted me entirely. But it’s not Egil I’m principally concerned about. In my own halls I am leader. I am a Fourfold, a three time Changer, which gives me great strength, and many of those you’ll meet were first adopted and taught by me. I am the accepted king. There are those who love me and those who simply respect me, but I am never disregarded. However we are not men, to blindly follow and obey. I make few demands. We cherish freedom, who have known none in the world of men, and no longer ask permission to be what we are. Within my realm we exist unconditionally and are utterly liberated. My people are free to leave, to come, to act on their own desires. They Change frequently as they wish, and openly.” He paused, looking into her eyes a moment before pulling her back towards him. “I’m not taking you to a place where you’ll be much welcomed, child,” he said. “And although you will be safe, you will not always feel it.”
Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy Page 35