by R. Lee Smith
“Yes,” she whispered. “It’s fine.”
His gaze seemed to pull back somehow, no longer staring at her eyes but into them. His nostrils flared once, as though he were trying to smell the truth. He withdrew his hands and stood, backing out of the pit and watching her. When she didn’t move, he grunted to himself and turned away to retrieve his scant clothing. He dressed quickly, his ears pricked at the caves beyond and his attention elsewhere as he knotted his loincloth expertly through its wide buckle and fastened the deep, pouch-like belt around his waist.
Olivia suspected she might still be a little stoned; she realized that she had just been staring at the process of donning a loincloth but had not even seen the nakedness it now concealed. Never mind, she thought. You’ll see it soon enough.
Her captor made a final adjustment to his coverings and directed a deep, rumbling grunt at her, then tipped his head back with an almost human expression of self-directed irritation. When he spoke again, it was in his guttural English. “Stay here,” he told her, and left.
Olivia climbed out of the pit and into her clothes. She felt painfully alert, as though sensations were screaming at her from every side. She listened so hard she fancied she could hear the blood rushing over her eardrums, and waited for the scream to be repeated. Last night, tucked naked beneath the creature’s broad black wing, she thought she knew the reason why she and the others had been captured. Now, straining for the echoes of that scream, she wondered if she had been very much mistaken—if they had, in fact, been intended as food.
Of course, one did not necessarily negate the other.
Olivia shuddered and scrambled into her clothing, then crawled under the table. She sat there as long as she could endure the cramped position, but succeeded only in freezing her butt numb on the stone ground. Gradually, she unlocked her limbs and finally crawled back into the pit long enough to fish out a sleeping bag. This she carried to ‘her’ alcove, where she curled herself up in warmth and opened her photo album.
There was dust on the binding; she hadn’t looked at this in years. It had been a present from her father on her sixteenth birthday, but she hadn’t added much. It bothered her now to know how easily she’d been able to dismiss those memories, just like she thought she’d always have them.
The first page had pictures of her mother and father when they were younger, their wedding picture, and a family photo from both sides, showing all the aunts and uncles and spouses. Her father’s neat printing named all the faces and dated each event. On the next few pages were mostly baby photos. She had no brothers and sisters; it seemed every milestone of childhood, however trivial or insignificant, had been captured here on film in a triumphant parade. There were pictures of her in Christmas ruffles of cranberry red and holiday gold. A baby Valentine on a heart-shaped satin pillow with a toy bow and arrows. A Halloween pumpkin, her chubby face surrounded with green leaves. First fishing trip. First Girl Scout recital. First attempt to ride a bicycle. Olivia with Dad at a school-sponsored picnic. Olivia with Mom at the county fair. Olivia as the Goddess Athena in the school play, holding up an olive branch that was actually a cunningly disguised twig culled from the apple tree in the backyard. Olivia the teenager, captured in a series of school photos and class pictures, birthdays and field trips. Then, Olivia’s only two contributions—high school graduation and college graduation—and that was it.
Olivia brushed at her eyes, but found them dry. The rest of the pages were empty, ready for her to fill. She knew she never would. She closed the book, drew up her knees and buried her face in her arms.
How long she sat like that, she didn’t know. Her body got used to it, stopped trying to focus in on funny sounds or stray thoughts, and just settled, not relaxed, but only numb. Numb was good enough for her. But it didn’t last forever. Eventually, she heard a scrape of toe-claws on stone, and in the next moment, her captor was there, coming around the side of the pit to peer at her uncertainly. He had a canvas backpack in one hand. It looked heavy.
“My name is Olivia,” she said.
That stopped him. He tipped his head back a little, running her words through his mind. “Olivia,” he said slowly, and again, “Olivia.” He murmured the sound over and over, drawing it out, committing it to memory. Her name in his mouth was a travesty, garbled and grumbled and strange. Then he raised one hand, placed it to his chest, opened his mouth…and said nothing. His gaze drifted back behind him. He stared into the darkness, his hand motionless over his heart, and finally looked back at her. He lowered his hand.
“Olivia,” she said again, patting herself a little desperately. “Now you, okay? Now you!”
He came to her, hunkered down beside her alcove, and caught her wrist, stilling her urgent motions. “Olivia,” he said, looking troubled.
“Now you,” she whispered, feeling the sting of tears in her eyes.
He released her, and then just crouched there and searched her eyes in that dark and troubled way. One minute. Two. At last, he sighed and opened up the backpack, drawing out a small, cloth-wrapped bundle. “It is for eating,” he explained, gesturing towards his own mouth.
She looked at it, then at him. She was hungry, but she had also been awake long enough to realize that her bladder was insistently full. All at once, she realized that she was never going to see another clean white-tiled bathroom with soap and a sink and toilet paper again.
She started crying.
The creature recoiled slightly, his strange, snouted face buckling into an expression of alarm, concern, and profound shame. He put the bundle of food on the bench in her alcove and started to leave her.
“I need to pee,” she said, sobbing.
He hesitated, looking back at her.
“I have to pee,” she repeated unhappily, heat crawling in her cheeks. She had always been a solitary person, and to speak aloud of such a private function was more humiliating than being naked with him in the pit. The pleasant numbness of the previous night had utterly abandoned her. She thought she would die of embarrassment if he insisted on watching her urinate.
He was still trying to translate, and apparently coming up short, and she was dangerously close to wetting herself, so she reached down and grabbed her crotch, writhing a bit in shame and desperation. “I need to pee!” she pleaded.
Recognition lit up in his eyes. He took her firmly by the arm and led her through a short maze of dark rooms and passageways until they came to a very small room, really nothing more than a wide place at the end of the tunnel, where water flowed out of the ceiling into a shallow channel, and away through a small hole in the floor. The creature pointed, then put the candle deliberately on the floor, and withdrew to give her privacy.
Olivia stood and stared in the direction he had gone, shivering. She couldn’t see anything, but then, the candle only gave out so much light. He could be back there somewhere, watching her. There were no walls to put between them, no curtain, not even a corner she could squeeze herself into. Just the tunnel, the water, and the hole.
She guessed it wasn’t so bad. It could be a lot worse. He could have just given her a bucket and made her use it right there in front of him in the sleeping room. The hole in the floor did smell strongly of dank cave minerals, but nothing worse, and that was certainly better than she could have hoped for, living in a cave. The water pouring out of the ceiling fell into a shallow, bowl-shaped impression half-way up the wall before it spilled over and dropped into the canal, so there actually was a sink of sorts, and even if there weren’t white tiles, there did appear to be soap. There was a waxy lump of something anyway, and it lathered up a little when she swished it through the water. It wasn’t so bad. It really wasn’t.
Olivia unzipped her slacks and bunched them out of the way, squatting and straddling the canal. For a moment, nothing happened, and then her bladder released with a sensation that was very nearly orgasm. Olivia uttered a shuddering sigh of relief, then cried a little more, did up her slacks again, and went to wash. The soap
stung at her eyes some, but did take away the oily feel of her face and the streaks of ash on her hands. She felt better when she picked up her candle and made her way back through the tunnel, and felt much better still when it opened up into a room and she saw her captor sitting on a bench, waiting for her.
They looked at each other for a long time.
“Thank you,” Olivia said at last, and tried to smile at him.
He looked away.
She held her candle, watched its light flicker with her breath, and concentrated on not bursting out into fresh tears.
He stood up, started to take her arm, then changed her mind and merely gestured for her to follow him. They went, not back to the sleeping room, but down another passage and to another room. The one with the chimney in it, she realized, seeing the impressive mosaic. The way out.
The creature pointed at the dark opening of the chimney. “No,” he said. “Olivia does not go there.”
She nodded to show she understood, took a small step back.
“This is my place to be,” he went on, frowning as he picked out his words. “All place…places…Olivia may go. All but this.” He pointed at the chimney again, his eyes narrowing as he watched her face.
“Okay.”
He frowned, but uncertainly rather than with severity. “Yes?”
“Yes.”
He leaned back, his wings shifting and refolding, then motioned at one of the benches and sat. He waited, his eyes on the tempting black of the chimney’s opening, until she had settled herself uneasily at his side, glanced once at her white knuckles where she gripped her candle, and then took it away and set it carefully on the floor. “Olivia,” he said solemnly, “you are…here.” He raised his hand and gestured at the enclosing rock, grunting out a few alien words before adding, “Mountain. Empty…inside mountain.” His hand dropped, rubbing at his jaw with what seemed frustration. He said the same grunting words, and then fell silent.
“Who are you?” she asked.
His frown grew on him slowly, like the trouble in his eyes. He did not answer.
“What do you want with me?”
He growled under his breath, saw her shiver back, and quieted again. After a moment, he said, “You will stay.” He let that sink in for a few seconds, then added, “We will keep you here. With us.” He looked towards the sleeping pit and his expression both tightened and darkened. Without looking at her, he said, “You are mine.”
She burst into those stupid tears again, and even though she tried not to say it, the words came spilling out: “Are you going to eat us?”
He had no trouble translating that. He stared at her, then looked down at his empty hands and flexed the claws. “No,” he said, very quietly.
She hitched in her breath, fighting back towards calm, and heard herself whimper, “Are you going to eat us? You’re not, are you?”
He sighed. “No, Olivia. Olivia is not for eating. The others are not for eating. You are…You are mine,” he said again, stressing each word, and shaping his face into an expression of uncomfortable resolve.
Sensing where the conversation was limping towards, Olivia summoned the courage to ask, “Aren’t there any women like you?”
She held her breath while he translated this.
“There are,” he said guardedly. It seemed that he wanted to say more about this, but at last, he shook his head and said, “I do not have the words.”
Olivia swallowed the dread that had been slowly creeping up on her ever since her capture, and asked, very calmly, “Am I going to die here?”
He answered quickly, as though to reassure her, “You will live here, Olivia.” He gauged her reaction, then added, “You will never leave.” He continued to study her face, concerned, but when she didn’t break out into hysterics, he seemed encouraged enough to continue. “I will teach you to speak. I will take you out from here. You will be my…my…” He patted once at his chest, then scowled at the candle, stymied. After a while, he dragged in a breath and said, “I am not…bad, Olivia.”
She nodded mutely. Her fears had not been allayed, but at least she had some foundation to build on. She would learn his language, and that was at least something to anchor to.
“Good. You stay, Olivia. I will come back, not soon. Please, do not leave this place.” He began to withdraw, then visibly braced himself and faced her again, his face tight with strain. “If you leave, I will find you. If I must find you, Olivia must be made to stay. I do not want this,” he said, staring intently into her eyes. “Olivia…does not want this.” With that, he stood and left her.
2
She cried.
3
After a while, Olivia came to the unpleasant conclusion that hearts don’t really break, homesickness and despair can’t kill you, and she was hungry. It wasn’t hard to find her way back to the sleeping room, to the bench where he’d left her breakfast. She had been vaguely expecting mushrooms or roots, so it was a surprise to see a heavy, round loaf of bread and an apple. The bread was a mix of different tastes and textures, none of them particularly good. Dense, bitter, and nearly too tough to chew, it came packed with unpleasant surprises: onions, herbs, nuts, seeds, and God knew what else. She ate it all, threw the apple core into the fire, and peeked inside the backpack to see if there was more. There wasn’t, but there was a plastic 2-liter pop bottle filled with an ominous, brownish liquid. The smell was at once earthy and herbal, but the taste was of sweet, cool tea and she drank almost half of it right away.
There was still no sign of the creature’s return, so the next thing she did, once she decided she had to do something, was take the bed apart. She put the tents in one pile, sleeping bags in another, and furs in a third, then sat in the center of the empty pit for a long time. The naked rock put her legs and her butt to painful sleep almost at once, but she didn’t try to move. She sat and stared into the glowing coals, running her fingers over the tool marks left in the pit when it had been hacked out of the rock. The reality of those scars had a calming effect on her, as much in its way as seeing the soap in the bathroom. Animals may use blankets—the gorillas at the zoo dragged some around, and a dog might fluff up his favorite pillow before he lay down—but they didn’t build beds, not like this. She put it back together with the tents on the bottom, the furs on ‘his’ side and the sleeping bags on ‘hers’.
She felt better, looking at that, just as though she thought he would see those boundaries and respect them.
Olivia stepped out of the pit and walked around the sleeping room slowly, really looking at it this time. It was amazing how much it looked like a real bedroom. Maybe it shouldn’t have been, but it was. He kept the stack of his spare loincloths and buckles just where she would have expected to find them—in a cardboard box under a bench close to the pit—and he’d incorporated pieces of human life into his primitive and alien one with surprising ease. A weathered flashlight had been tucked away in a box of unburned candles and lighters on the carved rock shelf above the fireplace. An ancient-looking leather boot, a tennis racket, and a rusted old hubcap had all been very deliberately arranged on separate shelves, apparently for decorative purposes alone. A handful of magazines and catalogues—Mountain Living, Fish and Field, L.L. Bean, that sort of thing—going back more than twenty years, occupied a corner of the sleeping room, many of them earmarked at pictures of humans to indicate a closer than casual study, and he’d made sure they were all in easy reach of her alcove. Her ‘place to be’.
Maybe he thought seeing them would comfort her.
The weird thing was…seeing them did.
Olivia picked up her candle and went hesitantly out to see the other rooms, reasoning that they were hers now, whether she liked it or not, and she’d ought to know her way around. It took longer than she ever would have imagined to memorize the layout of the creature’s lair; she’d never realized how completely she depended on windows and other landmarks to find her way around. None of the rooms opened directly on each other, and in the s
ickly light of the smoky candle, all the narrow passageways that connected them looked the same. She couldn’t exactly get lost in only four rooms and half a dozen tunnels, but she did manage to turn herself around once or twice.
Four rooms, the smallest of them the entry chamber with the chimney where Olivia had been forbidden to go. It seemed excessive for a monster’s lair. Perhaps it seemed so to him too, because he didn’t seem to know what to do with them all. One of them seemed to be nothing but storage—empty camping coolers pushed under stone benches, cardboard boxes and backpacks stacked on top, shelves and shelves and shelves cut into the walls holding only a few tins and jars stuffed with dried roots or leaves. His hunting tools were there as well: an Okuma rod and reel mounted on a wall between two wooden spears with very sharp metal points and an assortment of chipped-stone and modern steel knives.
But what she found herself returning to again and again were not his sparse furnishings, but the symbols which marked each room, either painted onto flattened patches of the wall, or pressed into rough mortar to make more of those abstract mosaics. They had no kind of symmetry or identifiable ethnicity; they were neither Aztec nor African nor Chinese nor any other kind of art. If the little human touches she encountered brought her towards calm, these symbols were the force that pushed her violently away. She could touch them and feel the paints flake up under her fingernails, she could even smell some of them (the blue paint was particularly pungent and unpleasant), but looking at them filled her with a sense of dread. They were everything the creatures were: monstrous and inexplicable.
So she sat in her alcove and cried and looked at her photo album. When she couldn’t do that anymore, she went to the entry room and cried where she could torture herself with the dark hole of the chimney at her feet, knowing she didn’t dare to crawl down. What would it bring, but only the first stumbling step into a subterranean labyrinth filled with monsters she would have to evade until her candle burned out and plunged her into blackness? There was no escape. She could remember last night well enough to recall that the only way in came with a seemingly endless climb down that sheer vertical shaft, and she could remember gym class well enough to know she couldn’t even do a damn chin-up, so no, there was no escape.
