Grimr had not removed his hand. Now he pressed eagerly upwards, tightening his fingers. “We’re grown; not children anymore. Not vulnerable. Not – victims.”
Thoddun stared at him. “Which is why I refuse. I told you I’d give you my body if I believed it would resurrect your wolf. I never said I’d enjoy it. Now you’ll remove your hand. Or I shall remove it entirely.”
Grimr slunk back, hands loose clasped in his lap. He muttered, “You said we were linked. Perhaps I’m your dark side, the left to your right. Now even my touch disgusts you.”
Thoddun waited for a long time before replying. The silence was complete except for his own slow breathing, and Grimr’s much faster. The room was cold and both of them breathed small chilled vapour, little wisps of pale into the deepening darkness.
Finally Thoddun said, “Come here then, little cub,” and held out his arms.
With a long sigh, Grimr looked up, and smiled. He crawled forwards again and curled himself into the hard warmth of his brother’s embrace. He slid his arm around Thoddun’s back, his fingers hooked tight into his long golden hair, caressing the little hollow in the back of his neck, the other hand creeping up under the folds of Thoddun’s tunic and into the waistband of his britches. Then Grimr nestled his head beneath Thoddun’s chin. “This is how we slept,” he murmured, “every night for all those long months in the den. After father had gone.”
“Close your eyes child,” Thoddun whispered to his ear. “Be at peace now.”
Grimr smiled shyly, the curve of his lips softening, hidden against Thoddun’s chest. “You’ll be mine again, my love?”
Thoddun pressed his palm on Grimr’s brow, smoothing the furrows and the soft wolf stubble. Grimr reached up, gently kissing his brother’s fingers. “I’ll give you what you need, little brother,” Thoddun whispered.
Grimr snuggled closer. “I’ll be good, then, my dear, I swear. I know how to give pain, but I know how to give pleasure too.”
Thoddun’s whisper grew softer, like the breeze of his breath. “I don’t mind the pain, little cub. This time, I think, it will have to be the pain.” He felt Grimr’s heartbeat quicken, starting to race beneath his arm. He moved his elbow, lowering his hand, so that his fingers touched against his own belt.
Grimr nodded, sighing. “I never guessed. I thought you wouldn’t. Just tell me when you’re ready, my love.”
“I’m ready, little one,” Thoddun said. He brought the knife blade from inside his belt and with the same movement and no pause, slashed sideways across Grimr’s throat, fast and strong and deep.
Grimr’s throat gaped, filling with blood. Blood covered the cold steel, down Thoddun’s fingers and across his hand to his wrist. Grimr was still smiling. He had no breath for words but sound seeped from the black opening in his neck. “That’s right,” he whispered. “Thank you, my love.”
As they sat there together, Thoddun lay Grimr’s head, cold and sticky, on his lap, and gazed at it for a long time. Finally he lifted it, very gently, and set it down beside him on the ground. He flicked away the little damp curls from the wolf’s nostrils, and the smell moved like tendrils, a faint stench as of something recently dead, and of something else long ago decayed.
Thoddun stood, stretching his back. His hands and the front of his tunic were wet with blood but he made no attempt to wipe it away. He stood a moment looking down at his brother’s body. “Sleep safe now, my dear,” he said. “And return at last to the wolf pack.”
He left the room and locked it behind him.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
He was not interrupted as he walked back slowly to his own chamber. Skarga had been talking to the remaining women of her town who had decided to stay where they were now so entirely appreciated. She had come back as the night drew cold, and Thoddun had come to her soon after. He stood looking down at her, holding her a little away from him. She caught her breath. “So much blood. Are you hurt?”
He shook his head. “It’s not my blood, little cub. And I won’t come to you, of all people, with the smell of his blood on me.” He strode across to the waterfall, unbuckling his belt, shrugging off his tunic, tossing the ruined silk down into the precipice. Then he leaned out and washed quickly, sluicing the freezing water over his head and shoulders. The long crimson ribbons of blood sloughed off in watery curls, disappearing into the rushing silver. The little scratches beside his neck had stopped bleeding. Skarga could see he wasn’t hurt.
She whispered, “Him?”
Thoddun removed his britches and completed washing. In the small candle light he was glossy and smooth and quite naked. Then he took Skarga into his arms so her clothes were soaked and limp, and kissed her.
They woke, bathed in moonlight through the water curtains. The moon was shapeless within a diffused and pearlised aura spreading across the chamber’s floor, always moving, pooling, and rippled. Thoddun slipped his fingers through Skarga’s hair, combing it out onto the pillows. The curls were still damp from where he had come to her the night before. He leaned over and kissed her ear. “I want to marry you,” he said.
She wriggled around to face him and said, “I thought you didn’t care about things like that,”
“I don’t. Not about witnesses, sacrifices and status gifts, with relatives arguing over the bride price and the inheritance of lands. I mean something else.”
She frowned, thinking. “But we already -”
“Not that either,” he laughed. “Something quite different.”
“I didn’t know the transanima had – rituals. They don’t even have – women.”
He pulled her a little closer. “No, the transanima have no transactional agreements. They mate, then either stay together – or do not. But there are other forms of confirmation.”
She said, “Well, I can do a lot of things these days but I still can’t read your thoughts. So you’ll have to tell me.”
“I might not. Perhaps I won’t explain until afterwards.” He leaned back, smiling down at the top of her head and the rise of her moon tipped breasts. “You know, I had an absurd idea – a disgust – about Grimr. I thought perhaps, if he died, he might enter me, as another channel. That if I killed him, he would return as part of me, as perhaps he always had been, even though we were born separate. Our youth together made for – absurd – illusions. Now I’m free of them.”
She gazed up at him, searching for his thoughts. “Are you happy now then? There’s peace. The whole community is so settled. It’s spring and there’s daylight and sunshine. There’s Knut. He’s so happy. So am I.”
“Yes, I’m interested in all that.” The whites of his eyes were luminous milk in the moonlight. “And it’ll grow – the happiness – progress – the community. And us. Later, when summer breaks up the sea ice and brings slush and melt water and turns the bright skies to fog, then I’ll take you travelling south. I’m a creature of the seasons, my love, and a wandering traveller by nature. And you, who spent all your years in one little town bordered by crags, will you trust me to lead you safely through this big dangerous world?”
“Can you think I might say no?” She clung to him, warming her legs between the heat of his own. “You know perfectly well how much I trust you.”
“Yes, because you want to. Though you know I’ve used you for my own ends, over and over.” He leaned down and kissed her hard, the heat of his breath forced into her mouth. “My breath brought you back to life,” he said. “I’ve given you a transanima pulse. But long before that there was something, a link, an awareness. Your mind always opened so wide, so easily to me. I’ve often wondered about that.”
Skarga smiled. “Does it matter?”
His fingers traced the curves of her breasts, circling the nipples so they hardened, pressing upwards. “But the bear is a creature with the greatest curiosity, and so is man. I like to understand everything if I can, and knowing what you already have can help me enrich it, for both of us.”
“Because I was so completely empty before I met you?”
Thoddun laughed and kissed her eyes. “A charming thought, but no. I think it started with Egil. You didn’t have parents to love. Egil was the first person you ever cared for who loved you too. And he was transanima. Then there was Grimr.” She turned away but he held her close. “The transanima have an old belief. They believe a latent power can be fulfilled and an inert or wounded channel can be brought to life in mystical ways. They utilised the old beliefs; the fertilising of the seasons, the rites of spring, bringing new growth to the land. Rain from the skies brought the renewal of barren ground and sap to buried seed. Man’s rain seeds a woman’s belly into bud.”
The moon had risen high in the skies beyond the castle and the arc of its light had moved behind the waterfall, as if listening. Skarga whispered, “There’s stories of Odin -”
“Yes. The old beliefs started with the Aesir, the first name for the Werepeople way back when the transanima ruled the northern snows. But like all knowledge, it was lost in shadows over time. The females started to die out. That made mating more desperate and desirable, and loving became confused with copulation.” Skarga felt his heartbeat beside her mouth, and kissed it, slipping her hands around his bare chest. As he spoke, the vibration of his breathing sang to her. She felt herself floating as though carried by the chant. “My father believed the old tales,” Thoddun continued softly, “and it seems my brother came to believe them too. But they were wrong. It’s loving that forges minds and fulfils potential, not fucking. No one else ever loved you, so you were unchanelled and open and bare. Then Egil loved you, the first and only through the years of your puberty. Then Grimr, who stole your virginity. You believed in his hatred, but he loved you truly, in the only way he knew. And I do. I love you as my first and only love. And we are all transanima. As the rain has the power to waken the earth, so we absorbed and woke you with the power of our kind.”
She sighed, cuddling tight. “But I can’t do any of the things you do. You make me dream, but I have no channel.”
“I shall become your channel,” said Thoddun, “through the marriage of the sea eagle, which mates for life.”
She sat up, eyes sparkling. “To fly?”
“The transanima believe in duality,” Thoddun smiled. “We carry a magnitude of life, and multiple natures. I thought that Grimr and I were one in a sense, which troubled me. We were born together and were bound very tight as cubs. He was always my dark reflection, my wounded echo. I carry three channels, while his only inner life was dead from birth. He thought I could give him a share of mine, while I thought he might become another of my own. But he does not inhabit me, and never did. You do.”
Skarga was startled. “But not -”
“No. It doesn’t diminish you, though perhaps it enlarges me. I want to inhabit you too. There’s a way of doing that.”
“We do that all the time,” she sniffed. “You, inhabiting me, which is just another way of saying it.”
“Something else,” he said softly. “Which does not involve sex at all. It is a promise. The greatest promise I can ever make.”
He placed his hand flat against her back as he did when he encouraged the Shift, or the pretence of it. Then he began to sing. The chanting was deeper and faster than she expected. She felt dizzy, as if falling. Always before he had talked her slowly from one stage to another, gradually leading her from the slow breathing of a woman into the faster energy of the channel. This time it was instantaneous. A sudden burst of overwhelming ecstasy, an explosion of sensations, an astonishing awakening of each particle of her body infused her. But it was not the same body. She stretched her wings, joyfully confident in the sensuality of each fluttering feather. She blinked golden eyes into a bright blue sky.
The wind gusted through the sunbeams. She looked up. The other bird soared above her in the open freedom of the wild and beautiful world. He called; the high screech of the sea eagle. She followed him into the upper dazzle.
As she flew up to reach him, he turned, diving down to her with such speed that the wind was outmatched. His wings were clamped to his sides like dark shields, his great beak as the arrow. Instinctively she turned over to her back, presenting her talons.
He hurtled through the air, catching her with such force that she spun, interlocking her claws to his. Spinning and wheeling, each outstretched from the other, they tumbled and rolled. Like the helter-skelter turn of some massive wheel rumbling down a mountainside, ever faster, ever wilder, they plummeted through the air. The ground became huge as they crashed towards it. Then with less than a wingspan between her and the vast stretch of snows lying flat beneath, he tightened his grip and flung her upwards.
She soared first with the impetus of his spin, and now separated, with her own. She spread her wings wider, using the power of the wind to carry her up again. He was with her. He followed her, calling, challenging and imperious. Tossing back his head and stretching out his neck, his eyes locked on hers as his claws had when controlling her flight. She twisted, gazing down, and called back, the same notes, daring his challenge.
Instantly he was above her, a great dark shadow hiding the sun from her eyes. He swept down onto her. She turned in supplication and again he clamped her talons tight within his. Over and over he imprisoned her claw to claw, forcing her down in a hundred plunging loops before hurling her upwards again, to dance once more.
For a few wing beats, she coasted, catching her breath. She felt her lungs batter inside her breast. She skimmed the tree tops, searching for the rise of the warm thermals. Then her mate came again. She heard him calling. She looked round. He stretched out one talon, ripping at her leg, but curled safe around her claws and closed fast.
He flew her over the sea. They cruised so low that the wave tips grazed their flight feathers and she tickled her toes in the spray. When he dived, she followed him under the water. She saw fish like big pink shadows with round terrified eyes. Her mate took one and rose with it, cascading from the water in showers of silver, a dazzle of refracted reflections and foam. She followed him.
From high in the bright frosty blue, she saw the tail slap of a whale far out towards the horizon, she saw the sunlight turning the water gold and she saw the huge bergs, white and blue mountains with their fizz and pop of crackling melt and the smell of salt.
He took her to the turrets of their castle where he landed, and she came to rest beside him. He fed her, tearing the fish into moist strips, with the delicious tangy scent of pleasure. He rubbed his beak against her cheek, bowing to her, preening her feathers, pecking deep to the soft down, smoothing each quill into its perfect comb. His eyes were huge, gold and black, unblinking. He ducked his head below her wings, nibbling at the water droplets that still crested her feathers like little cold jewels. He crooned, bobbing and stretching out his neck, and she answered him gently, accepting his invitation. Then he spread both wings, calling so loudly that it pierced her heart, and he flew straight up, so high that her eyes blinked and she could not see him. He hovered for a moment beyond her sight, so his shadow lay across her in a small shiver of cold. She saw him again as he plunged downwards, and she flew up at once to meet him.
His drop was so violent, dragging her with him, that she thought they would be crushed. But when the snowy ground was so close that she smelled the crystal crunch, he swooped her up again, propelling her into huge wild circles, claw clamped to claw, hurtling her round and round, beak over talons, thundering through the air.
When at last he brought her to rest and furled his wings, he bent to her again, and her heart beat was so fast she thought herself still spinning, and leaned against him. Then she felt his voice humming like fire in her mind.
“And that is it, then my love. For this is how the eagles pledge and marry, and so we are married, as I have chosen you, and you have accepted me. The eagles proclaim their union for life and it is only death that could force me from you now. And it will be a long, long time before that. That is my promise.”
CHAPTERTWENTY NINE
>
She gave birth to twins in the snow den he had built for her, warm enclosed in the tunnels that led from the ice castle. It was late winter and the snow was thick, but in the den it was warm and the twins suckled, tucked tight to her and to each other. The male bear stayed with them, creamy fur stretched huge, silky soft, as if incubating his offspring within his nest. He licked life into his children, and gave the heat of his breath to his mate, and he protected them from hunger, and cold, and the many dangers of a threatening world.
Skarga had given birth alone, but now her two little boys were nourished not only by her own milk, but by the adoring attention of their father.
The male bear was not usually known for prolonged attention to his family, but this was no usual bear. He had married as the sea eagle and mated as the orca beneath the ocean’s depths, and he was eager to discover and nurture the secret channels of his sons.
The End
The Change
a short side story for
The Stars and a Wind
Trilogy
By
Barbara Gaskell Denvil
INTRODUCTION
Well, you doesn’t know me, not till now. And I doesn’t read and I doesn’t write. So you might reckon there ain’t no point in carrying on.
I don’t blame no one if they stops now. But I ain’t stopping. I got someone to write for me, so this be my story and I hopes you keep reading. The fellow as is writing for me, well he don’t speak as I do. So I reckon he’ll make the words better than I tell them. But tis my story and that be what counts.
I ain’t no handsome fellow. They calls me a giant, and I learned to live with that. When I were a little lad, I weren’t little. I were as big as my Pa and when he beat me, I could’ve beat him back. But I didn’t. I sat and let it happen. It didn’t hurt much. My hide ain’t no thin pink filmy stuff, it be tough leather. So you gotta hit hard or I don’t feel nuffing.
Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy Page 86