Cloven Hooves

by Megan Lindholm

  I am terrified the first time I find him there. I pick him up despite his squirming and bring him back inside. I give him bowls and cups and spoons to play with instead. Then I go back to the lip of the cave, to see if there is any way I can barricade it, make it safer. Instead, I find myself looking out over the valley.

  Snow still lies heavy down there, but the day is slightly above freezing. The glacier icicles that overhang the cave glisten as they drip steadily. The rock under my feet is wet with more than the slow run of sulfur water. Farther down the mountains, it is spring already, and the river of ice that grips this mountainside is once more beginning its slow running. The snow on the valley, once so smooth, has sunken spots in it at the bases of the trees and bushes, where the darker bark has gathered the paltry warmth of the sun and is melting it. Spring. Back on the farm, the fields will be tilled smooth and furrowed. The lawn will need its first cutting. I wonder if Tom has filed for divorce yet, if it will be done in Washington or Alaska. I wonder if the land up in Alaska and the cabin on it belong to me, or if he has followed his lawyer’s advice and sold it while I’m not around to contest it. I wonder why I care about any of that.

  I hear the clatter of small hooves on the rock behind me and turn to find Avery has ventured out again. I reach to gather him up, but he skips nimbly away. Before I can reach again, he trots over to the cliff’s edge, casually leans out and looks over. My heart is in my mouth. The rock there is wet with runoff over a winter’s layer of smoothed ice. I cannot imagine a more slippery surface. “Avery,” I call softly. He turns to look at me calmly but makes no move to come back. I crouch down to be on his level. “Lovey, come here,” I say, opening my arms to him. He gives me a baby smile, then looks back out over the cliff again. I am starting to shiver, and not from cold. “Avery,” I call again, and this time when he looks at me, I open my shirt. At the sight of my breasts, his little tail begins flicking happily. He clatters over to me, and is shocked when I snatch him up in my arms and carry him back into the cave. Once there, I release my squirming burden, and sit on the floor to allow him to nurse. We are still there when Pan comes in.

  “We’ve got to do something about the cliff,” I blurt out as soon as he steps inside. “Avery went right out by the edge today. Scared me to death.”

  “That bold already?” Pan asks consideringly. He sets down the grouse he has brought in, looks at his son appraisingly. “I think it’s okay,” he judges. “He’s about the right age to start exploring. Maybe tomorrow I’ll take him with me.”

  I stare at him incredulously, and then take a new look at the child who stands and leans against me. It suddenly strikes me how physically mature he is. If someone had presented me with this creature a year ago, I would have guessed his human age at almost a year. It is not his size, but his muscular development and coordination. “Are you sure he’ll be safe?” I ask anxiously.

  It is Pan’s turn to look incredulous. “He’ll be with me, won’t he?” he asks rhetorically, and then adds, in an undertone, “It is time he started to spend more time with me, anyway.”

  “And less with me?” I ask, swiftly hurt.

  “Evelyn.” He pauses, gestures helplessly. “I must teach him, must show him the ways, so he can survive. I am taking nothing from you. I am only giving to him what he must have.”

  I nod slowly. But it takes a direct act of my will for me to set the hurt aside.

  That night there is further indication of his rapid growth, when Pan offers him a meaty drumstick from the grouse. Avery accepts it eagerly, and works his gums against the tough meat and bone with a vigor that suggests teeth on the way. After a few minutes of gumming, he discards it in frustration, and comes to lean against me and casually help himself to chunks of softer food from my bowl. The simple sight of him eating solid food elicits an unexpected pang from me. He is no longer solely dependent on me for nourishment. Already my satyr child is growing away from me.

  He has always slept between us since he was born. During the first days of his life, I saw him as a link between Pan and me. That night, when we all lie down together, I suddenly feel him as a barrier.

  Pan has touched me often since Avery was born, with love and affection and tenderness. He strokes my hair, caresses my shoulder in passing, puts his arms around me and holds me gently while he talks to me. But of his merry lust, there has been no sign. It has been several months at least since the child was born. Of this I am certain, though I have long since abandoned any attempt to keep track of days or months. Surely, it is safe now to “resume a normal marital activity pattern” as the doctor so genteelly put it after Teddy was born. After I have suckled the child to sleep, I lie awake, looking at Pan over his son’s head. Firelight plays over his features, touching him brown and gold. He seems to be deeply and comfortably asleep. But I want him suddenly, not out of any physical lust, but simply to reaffirm that other bond between us, the one that is between us two alone and is independent of this child I have borne him.

  So I slip my arm clear of the sleeping Avery, and softly say, “Pan?”

  He does not move. I reach past the baby to tousle the curls of his head. His eyes open, instantly animal alert. I say nothing, but only look into his face. After a moment he lifts one eyebrow, almost in surprise. Then he slips quietly from his side of our bed. He takes the fur spread from the bed, being careful not to disturb Avery. I climb over the baby carefully, and make sure the blankets are close around him before following Pan deeper into the cave, back near the pool where the rising warmth of the water is greater and the shadows deeper.

  He has already spread the fur coverlet on the stones there. I come to him, stepping into his arms. For a moment I feel inexplicably awkward, as if he is a stranger. I lift my mouth to be kissed, hoping it will dispel the sudden shyness I feel. He kisses me, as gently and warmly and deeply as ever. My strangeness starts to melt away and I feel the stirrings of arousal. I run my hands up and down his back, over the familiar ridges and planes of his musculature, and think how good it is to be able to once more stand this close to him with no intervening belly, how good to be able to make love freely and vigorously, unimpeded by pregnancy.

  His kiss becomes warmer as he draws me against him, and I feel the jut of his penis against my belly. But I am also aware, too aware, of the hairiness of his legs against mine, of the track of his fingers down my belly, of his other hand in the small of my back, pressing me close. It’s all good, and right, and the warmth is building inside me, but something is missing, something is wrong. “What’s wrong?” I ask him softly when his mouth leaves mine. For an instant, he stands very still, as if listening. Then he folds me closer in his arms, holds me as if he wants to draw me into his very body.

  “Don’t worry,” he says huskily. “It will be all right. I’ll make sure it’s all right. Always. Just trust me. Let me touch you.”

  And I do. His hands move slowly and carefully in intricate patterns, as if he is tattooing my body with his love. His mouth is warm and wet, his tongue sly and knowing. When he gently pushes me down to the furs and mounts me, I am panting with the frenzy of my arousal, I strain him against me and try to drown my knowledge in the sheer sexual sensation of him. But he is unrelenting in his expertise. He plays me as if I were his pipes, sounding note after note of touch upon my body, until I would swear that his lovemaking is something I can hear, that our bodies are moving only to the music he creates from our flesh. He satisfies me and leaves me limp with the totality of my satisfaction.

  But I am not fooled.

  When all is quiet between us and our bodies have cooled enough that we are once more lying close together, I make so bold as to ask him. “What happened?”

  “We had a child,” he says. His voice is factual in the darkness, not hard. Perhaps I am only imagining the pang of loss in it. “We fulfilled our purpose.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say, and try to keep the tremble out of my voice.

  “After the fruit is fertilized, the flower and
the nectar are no longer necessary. The tree drops them.”

  In the darkness his grip on my shoulders tightens briefly, as if to ease his words. My head has been resting on his shoulder. Now I nestle my face into the angle of his throat and chin. I kiss his neck. I smell only sweat, taste only salt. He smells good, clean, an honest sweat, but the spiciness of his musk, the wonderful sweetness of his skin, is gone. The lure is no longer needed, and his body has discarded it. He seems to sense my conclusion. “Is it so bad, my love?”

  I don’t answer his question, but ask, “When will it come back? How long does it take?”

  He sighs. “It doesn’t come back. That part is done between us. Now we must love as your kind do, staging our arousals, planning our touches, thinking of our conclusions. It is a different kind of mating, that which humans do. But I think we shall still be good together. Don’t you?”

  “Why doesn’t it come back?” I feel cold as I ask it. I can sense I am on the trail of something, I am getting close, I am tugging on the door of what he would just as soon keep hidden. But I have to know. His silence seems longer than darkness.

  “Because that sweetness is only once,” he says finally. “That headiness is for the making of the child. Not all human females would welcome the touch of a beastman like myself. There has to be, for them, a persuasion, a compulsion.”

  “Rape by overpowering sensuality,” I say into the dark.

  “For some, it might happen that way,” he admits unwillingly. “For some women, that is the only way they would come into the arms of a faun, lured by bodily scents and cues, intellect drowning in instincts. But not you, my love. Never you. Had I been as scentless as stone, as shy in my lovemaking as a young human, still you would have come to me. We were always your decision. You came into my woods, my love, not I into your garden.”

  Stillness wraps us both. He is right. Even without the sweet scent of him, I would have come to him. I would have borne his child.

  “But why?” I have to ask. “Why does it have to go away?”

  “Because it is a lure for the making of a child,” he replies patiently. “And that can only happen once between us.”

  “Not necessarily. I’m young still, I’m fertile. This wasn’t easy, Pan, but it didn’t kill me. A year or so, and then …”

  “Never again.” Soft finality.

  “But why?”

  “Your body would not be tricked so easily again, is what I suspect. I don’t really know. I only know my seed will never take root in you again. It’s something about our bodies, about the way my kind uses your kind. A biological thing.”

  I am quiet a long time, thinking. “Like an Rh factor?” I ask finally. “Where the first child may be born okay, but succeeding ones …”

  “I don’t know. It may be something like that. Perhaps an immunity of some sort. All I know is that your body will not be fooled again into nurturing my seed. And my body will not waste energy attempting to lure yours.”

  His voice is so calm, so matter-of-fact. I think of what has been lost to us and feel newly expelled from Eden. Sex with him had been so easy. I had never been too tired, never not wanted him when he wanted me. I had never wondered if I would reach orgasm, never wondered if he would finish too soon for me, never wondered if he touched me a certain way for his own pleasure or for mine. Never wondered if he was imagining another in my place. Never wondered if he was holding back, waiting like a gentleman for me to finish first. In his wonderful scents, we had mated as simply as animals, free of the courtesies and questions of human matings. Until this moment, I had never realized how much I resented the uncertainty of sex with Tom. He had always made me aware of the mechanics of arousal, always asking me, “Do you like this?” “Do you mind if I do this?” I don’t want clever skills and tricky maneuvering of bodies. I want it back the way we had it before, when I never thought about it at all. It had all been perfect, choreographed by nature and chemistry. I feel cheated for it to be gone.

  “That’s all it was, then,” I ask him, trying to sound as calm as he has. “Biology? Pheromones? Chemistry? Instinctive courtship behavior?”

  “You know better,” he rebukes me.

  I am quiet for a minute. I do know better. But I want an excuse to argue and cry. If he were Tom, I think, we would have a fight now. This would turn into an argument, and old hurts would get dragged into it, and we’d both drop off to sleep wounded, and store the pain as ammunition for another day.

  But it’s not Tom. And if I have learned nothing else from the goatman, I have learned this. I can let a quarrel go, let it die unborn. Because I know he’s right, that there is more to us than biological urges and lures. I will miss the biological magic, the simplicity it brought to our love. But I know he is as regretful about it as I am. And because I know I can simply say to him, “It makes me want to weep.”

  “Weep, then,” he tells me, very gently. “I won’t love you any less for it.”

  His words take away the need for tears. Instead, I suddenly want to be back in our bed now, with his baby.

  Click.

  “It’s the way he smells to me, isn’t it?” I ask of the darkness. “That’s what makes me love him so.”

  His chuckle is rich and sweet as chocolate. “I thought it was only me. Is he affecting you that way, too?”

  I cannot share his humor. “Then I’m being manipulated by his scent as well?”

  In the darkness he rolls to face me. “Do you remember that first day, with Teddy by the stream? I stood over him and looked down on him and thought, this is what it is that keeps her away from me. Not the man, but this child. And in that moment, I could have wished him harm. I know you sensed it, the territorial urge of males, kill the intruder’s young and take his females. Except for the warm scent that rose from him. The scent of a young thing, an innocent thing, a thing to be protected. The young manipulate us all, my love. Why else do you think there are dogs that raise kittens, pigs that suckle kittens, even wolves that take on human infants? But it isn’t his scent that makes you love him. I could roll him in offal, and still you’d hold him. You loved him before he was even born.” He pauses. “Now let’s both get back to him, for like you, I feel an anxiety when I am away from him too long.”

  And so we go back, to ease in on either side of Avery. Immediately he wakes up and wants to nurse again. I persuade him to do it lying down. I am drowsing off while he is still tugging at my breast. Sleepily curious, I lean my head down, sniff the top of his curly head at the base of his horn nubs, where his scent should be strongest. He smells of milk and warmth and babyness. The same smell that Teddy had. I cuddle him closer and drop off to sleep.

  The next morning, I watch with some trepidation as Pan readies himself and the child to leave. I want to wrap something about his naked baby shoulders, but Pan looks at me in consternation when I mention it. “How will his body ever learn to warm itself in colder weather if you bundle him up?” he asks me. I have no answer for that. “Besides,” he adds as he finishes putting an edge on his knife, “you’d better spend the time getting yourself ready if you’re going with us.”

  It is my turn to be shocked. I wonder why I had assumed I had to stay here while they went. In moments I am pulling on jeans that actually snap, albeit a bit snugly, around my middle. I put several pairs of socks on before pulling on my worn sneakers, and put an extra pair in my pocket. I know I will be cold and wet before we return, but the lure of the outside world, so long denied, makes that worry trivial.

  I negotiate our rocky cliff porch with amazing ease. The nightmare of my first crossing has haunted me for months. As I follow Pan, who has his small son perched on one of his shoulders, I have little difficulty with the path. His hooves have kept a path clear through the wet ice that coats most of the drop-off and I stay to this. It was the immensity of my pregnancy, I realize, that made this so difficult to cross. I want to laugh aloud in the suddenness of my freedom.

  We reach the flank of the mountain and Pan swings
Avery down. He gives him time to touch and sniff the snow, and then we start off. Avery follows him, stepping along confidently. Pan’s daily passage has packed a path through the snow, and we all walk in relative ease. Only occasionally does spring betray us, when Pan or I will suddenly break through the crust and find ourselves knee- or hip-deep in snow. We wallow out and continue.

  The farther down the mountain we go, the more plentiful the signs of spring. Even the untracked snow has a soggy, packed feel to it. Sap is running in some of the trees, I can scent it. Tips of willow branches have gone red with it, while the infrequent paper birch has a pinkish flush to its bark. But the most obvious sign is the bundled needles of new growth that tip almost every evergreen branch. I pinch off one, brush the brownish sheath from it, and chew on it as we walk. Sour and pine mix in my mouth.

  We walk his trap line. We visit six widely spaced snares, and Pan picks up two hares for his trouble. I notice that at each stop he is taking up his snares and coiling them and putting them into the game sack he carries. There is a curious finality to his actions. Avery is worn out long before we reach the sixth snare. I end up carrying him, marveling at how long his dangling goat legs have become. He dozes off, baby face snugged against my neck, breath warm there.

  The sixth snare is set on bared green moss. Nearby the snow has melted to reveal the green-hearted fronds of a fern. The snow this far down the mountain lies in banks and tongues, interrupted by islands and peninsulas of wet earth. Pan pushes a frosting of crystallized snow from a fallen tree trunk to make a place for me to sit. I no sooner settle than Avery awakens and wants to nurse. But even as he suckles, his attention wavers. He pulls free of me and ignores the milk dribbling in a stream from my nipple. The greenery fascinates him. After a few moments of staring, he goes back to nursing, but his eyes continue to wander. It is not long before he stops suckling and moves out of my encircling arm. Pan settles beside me on the log and we watch Avery explore the fern fronds and mossy patches. Avery takes an experimental mouthful of fern, then spits it out before either of us can say anything. The moss comes in for minute examination, and then the bark of the tree trunk we are sitting on. He pulls loose a handful, then looks under it intently.