Olivia
Page 47
“I—”
“You don’t want to play with it, I get that. But if what you just told me was the truth, the only way you stopped Mojo, or whatever she turned into, was with this extremely real Great Spirit’s help. And if what you told me was true, no one else could have stopped her. So if you had it to do all over again, would you do it the same way?”
Olivia opened and closed her mouth a few times, torn.
Amy threw up her hands in surrender. “Do what you’re going to do, Olivia. I’m not Cheyenne; I’m not going to cut you up if I don’t like your answers. All I’m saying is, if I had some power over the Great Spirit, I’d be using it to get us fed. Even the Virgin Mary had God pick her a cherry once.”
8
Much later, alone in her lair, Olivia sat in her alcove with her photo album on her lap and stared into the fire. It was late, but Vorgullum wasn’t back yet. She didn’t really expect him to be. He would be out all night, no doubt, trying to figure out exactly what had happened, who was involved, and how long people had known about it. She didn’t anticipate a happy gulla coming home to her at the end of it.
So when she first heard the soft sounds of claw-studded footsteps, she braced herself for unpleasantness, only to see Sudjummar, the tribe’s metal-maker, limp into the room. He raised a hand to her, then took a seat on the bench, facing her with the sleeping pit between them. “So,” he said.
“Is Vorgullum coming?” she asked uneasily.
“Eventually. He’s with Grunn now, and Grunn may need a lot of comforting before he’s safe to be left alone. He blames himself.” He tipped his head politely to one side. “Are you all right?”
She managed a laugh she did not in the least feel. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Spirits can be powerful allies,” Sudjummar agreed with a solemn nod. “They can also be easily distracted. You have been touched once, Olivia. I suggest you do not live believing you are forever in the Great Spirit’s eye.”
“How comforting. Amy wanted me to ask for game.”
Sudjummar shrugged, gullan-style. “You wouldn’t be the only one.”
“Yes, but I might be the only one suddenly borne out of the caverns on fiery clouds, hurling lightning bolts into the backs of giant, glowing elk.” She looked at him plaintively. “What I saw today was awful, but what happened afterwards was worse. The way they all looked at me…I don’t want to be worshipped, Sudjummar! It was wrong when Mojo Woman did it, and it would be just as wrong if it was me!”
He regarded her sympathetically. “I think I begin to understand the situation,” he said. “But if I may ask, why did you go up to confront Mojo Woman rather than send another of your humans?”
“They are not my humans!”
“Don’t change the subject, answer the question.”
Olivia sighed and threw up her hands. “How should I answer? Because it was my idea! Because if it was going to work, I couldn’t take the time to confer with someone else first! Because—and I want to make this absolutely clear—because I never thought Mojo Woman was really possessed!”
“All right.” He waited for her to meet his eyes again. “Now why did you really do it?”
She stared at him, and after a long and uncomfortable silence, whispered, “Because I knew people would believe me. No one would question whether or not I had the power because I am Olivia, the Great and Terrible.”
“Well, half the fun of infamy is living up to your own reputation.”
“But goddammit, the mother of the Great Spirit’s son is a little more notorious than I wanted to be!”
“First of all, the Great Spirit didn’t put that child in your belly, Vorgullum did. If the Great Spirit wants to take credit for it, that’s his problem, not yours. Second, no one asks for notoriety, it just comes and bites us in the ass, and that is why we call it notoriety and not popularity. Finally, as my wise old father used to say, in three thousand years, who’s going to give a damn?”
Olivia’s laughter caught her by surprise. She touched her smiling lips and sighed. “You have a way of putting things in perspective.”
“All the truly deformed gullan do,” he said. “If the tribe couldn’t come to us for wisdom, they might start wondering if a whole gulla would be a better metal-maker, or a healer, or a…or whatever it is that Murgull does.”
“Murgull does everything.”
“So I’ve heard,” he said with a smile. “My wise old father told me that as well.” He gave her shoulder a firm squeeze, then stood up. “I need to go. Vorgullum asked me to look in on you, but you seem to be doing all right.”
“Did he think I wouldn’t be?”
“Vorgullum has been plagued enough by unwanted notoriety to know that you would be here with your guts in knots. I hope I have untied at least some of them, but please be assured, he will help you with the rest.” He paused, then came a step closer to her. “Or did you think he would be angry with you?”
“Not with me, maybe, but with someone. Mojo Woman never could have gained so much power if we…if certain people hadn’t kept secrets from him.”
Sudjummar nodded and shrugged, this time human-style. “People will always keep secrets from the tovorak. He knows this. But Olivia, it was no human woman’s deception that made power in this place, it was a demon, and he knows that now as well. If you think he’s gone to cut Grunn’s wings and throw him off the mountain for harboring a demon, I think you do him an unfairness.”
She sighed, leaning back on the bench. “I’m glad to hear that. I would much prefer to be unfair than right about him.”
He regarded her for a long time with a curiously unreadable expression. “Do you love him?” he asked finally.
It caught her by surprise, and for a moment, her mouth only worked in silence. “I’m happy with him,” she said at last, flushed.
“But do you love him?”
“What has that got to do with anything?”
He looked away, nodding as if she had answered. In a way, she supposed she had.
“I accept him,” Olivia said. “I even like him. God help me, I like him a lot. No, I don’t love him.”
“My brother is a hard man to love.”
“Who is it you share?” she asked. “Your mother or your father?”
“Both.” He smiled at her. “It was the old leader’s effort to breed strong blood. He gave my mother to my father and ordered them to mate. They were loyal to him, even if they never found much affection for each other. And it turned out well enough. Vorgullum is certainly fit, and I manage to contribute, but there were no more children. My coming ended that.” He fanned his folded wings slightly, drawing attention to his deformity with his attempt to conceal it.
They were quiet together for a time.
“I know he likes me,” Olivia found herself saying. “And he listens to me and lets me argue with him, but…I don’t think he loves me, either.”
“You are tallest among your kind,” Sudjummar replied. “Your joining is far too important to allow something as trivial as love to influence it. It is enough that you respect one another.”
“Trivial,” she said, leaning slightly back.
His small smile faltered and he looked away. “A poor attempt at humor. Forgive me. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for you to decide to be happy with my brother when you must have had…” His claws flexed in the air. He turned slight back to her, although he kept his eyes averted. “Did you have a human mate, Olivia?”
“No,” she admitted. And sighed. “You don’t have to tear your wings over this, Sudjummar. I know what you were trying to say. We have this terrific human concept called politics…I’ve known for a long time that what Vorgullum and I have is mainly political. Thank you.”
Now he looked at her, his gaze disturbingly direct. “For?”
“Being with me when I was lonely.”
“Ah.” His face softened, turned at once wry and wistful. “My motives are not virtuous ones. Of course, I am loyal t
o my brother, but I like you, Olivia. More than I should. In fact, if you ever decide to ask the Great Spirit for game, you might mention that I am available for possession, should he ever want another son by you.”
She looked at him, startled, and he flipped her another of his dry smiles and quietly withdrew.
Olivia sat alone on her bench and watched the logs dry before the fire. She was surprised to be left alone for so long. No one had interrupted them for all the time they’d been talking, and no one was waiting for Sudjummar to leave before intruding on Olivia the Demon-Slayer.
She sent a sheepish glance heavenward. “Great Spirit?” she began, feeling foolish.
No flames, no sense of a divine ear stretching towards her.
“If you’re not too busy, would you mind terribly throwing a few elk our way? Thank you.”
The fire popped loudly.
Olivia arranged the wet logs a little closer, started to get up, and then fell heavily back onto the bench. Something…there!
Somurg was kicking.
Olivia put her hand gingerly over the small swell of her belly and the motion ceased. Still, it was real. She had really felt it, and it wasn’t her imagination. “My son,” she murmured, amazed.
“Our son,” a voice corrected gently, and she turned to greet Vorgullum.
The room was empty.
Despite her close proximity to the fire, Olivia felt a chill sweep through her and she was glad she hadn’t, even in jest, mentioned Sudjummar.
9
A small fraction of the large hunting party returned early the next night, carrying slabs of butchered elk between them and calling for all those with working wings to come and help carry the rest. The humans and those gullan unable to fly stayed behind to haul the carcasses down to the women’s tunnels, to be prepared for storage. There were hides for clothes and bedding, antlers and bone for tools, fat to render for soap and candles, and best of all, there was meat, enough to feed on for weeks, maybe months.
From seven in the evening to two in the morning, the entire tribe worked to prepare the seemingly endless supply of meat being carried in by hunters, until finally, Wurlgunn gave the iron door a rattle and happily announced that the remainder of the kill was being roasted in the commons for the hunters and their mates.
All in all, he told them happily, some thirty-eight bucks had been slain.
“You butchered a whole herd?” Beth asked, her blue eyes shining.
He shook his head, tucking an arm around her as they walked. “You should have seen the size of the herd. I thought the snows had melted into mud before I realized the ground was moving. Elk as far as the clearing reached. A hundred elk. Two hundred. They ran right into our spears. Even I killed one!”
Olivia followed them, listening with a mix of pleasure and dread. It wasn’t just me, she kept reminding herself. The whole tribe was praying for game. And the elk had to be somewhere. But all the reasoning in the world couldn’t stand against those two little words: Our son.
She shivered.
The commons were alive already with the smell of roasting game and the sounds of celebration. She could hear gullan shouts and laughter, hands clapping… she could hear…music?
Olivia broke into a jog, swung around the doorway and stared. The gullan had formed a large ring around the center of the cavern, where a smaller circle of humans were stomping and clapping and otherwise keeping time and there, in the center, was Tobi, doing a very successful pole-dance with a spear to the rhythmic strains of Ricky Martin singing ‘She Bangs’ in Spanish.
Olivia felt someone nudge her arm, turned and saw Doru. He was staring fixedly at Tobi, grinning in a puzzled way.
“What is she doing?” he asked.
“We call it dancing. Where did she get the radio?”
“The—? Oh, the black box? Liz took that from a human camp some time ago. She said it was broken. I guess she fixed it.” He watched the performance through the end of ‘She Bangs’ and the beginning of some other song she didn’t know. “Is that all it does? Make noise?”
“That’s all.”
“Humans are very strange.”
Olivia tended to agree, but looking around, she could see that while none of the gullan seemed to quite grasp the concept of dancing, quite a few of them were clapping along with the music. Her own shoulders were swaying, independent of her will. It was the first song she’d heard in ages. She was about to head on over and see if she could remember some of the moves when Kodjunn materialized at her side and motioned urgently for her to follow him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He hissed at her for silence and took her at a near-run down the mainway to his lair. Without looking to see if she followed, he flattened his wings and scrambled up the chimney.
Worried now, Olivia pulled out her claws and followed.
He caught her by the wrist before she was halfway up and pulled her bodily into the room. At once, she heard an angry noise from the sleeping room, and moved instinctively towards it, but Kodjunn put out a wing to block her and made her face him. “Tell me everything that happened between you and Mojo Woman,” he said tensely.
She was utterly derailed by this. “Haven’t you heard by now?”
“Cheyenne has been in season,” he explained. “I left my lair for the first time this evening. I saw Grunn. Then I heard that Mojo Woman was killed by demons? That you had something to do with pulling them out?” He searched her face while she struggled to find some way to tell him the truth and then he startled her by letting out an incredulous and strangely hurt laugh. “The most amazing thing to happen in this tribe for thousands of years and when it happens, where am I but fighting in the pit with my miserable mate? Unbelievable.”
“You wouldn’t have wanted to be there,” she heard herself say. “It was awful. It was like a nightmare.” And then the whole story poured out of her, from the point of Tobi’s midnight meeting until Maria lay dead at her feet in a puddle of melting water.
Kodjunn’s face was stone throughout, inscrutable.
“You don’t believe me?”
“Of course I believe you,” he said. “But I almost wish I didn’t.”
A particularly violent cry of muted rage distracted them both for a moment, and when they looked at each other again, sorrow had taken much of the intensity from his eyes. “Come see her, then,” he said with a sigh. “We have a little time before tonight’s feast is ready.”
She followed him silently into the sleeping room and looked at the screaming, struggling woman he kept chained to the wall. He’d taken out a lot of the slack. Cheyenne saw her and immediately went limp, as if keeping up the appearance of defiance were too much effort for Olivia’s expense, and turned to face the wall, her chest heaving as she fought to breathe around the gag.
Kodjunn crossed the room and deftly unfastened the hard leather strap that covered his mate’s mouth, and then silently offered her a dipperful of water from a pail beside the pit.
Cheyenne took it, her eyes glittering. She swallowed twice, but spit the third violently into his face.
Kodjunn sighed as a stream of abuse ripped rustily from Cheyenne’s throat, and wiped his face dry on the back of his hand. He hunkered there beside the pit, looking into his mate’s face with an expression of weary determination until she fell silent, panting, and then offered her another drink. When she bared her teeth at him, he shrugged and backed away.
“Sit down,” he said to Olivia, rummaging among a collection of containers in the corner.
Cheyenne whipped her head around to glare at Olivia. “What are you doing here?” she rasped.
“How is your leg?”
Cheyenne writhed into a sitting position by hauling on her chains. “What the fuck does it matter when I’m never allowed to fucking walk on it?”
Kodjunn replied to this by reaching out nonchalantly and unhooking the chains that bound her from the wall. Cheyenne pulled her feet beneath her immediately, glaring at him.
Cheyenne rubbed her hands roughly over red welts in the shape of shackles and pushed herself up the wall until she stood. “What do you want, a fucking medal?” she muttered.
Kodjunn sent Olivia a look that said Wait just as clearly as if he had spoken aloud.
Before he had even brought his eyes back to his mate, Cheyenne leapt for the door.
Olivia jumped up, but Kodjunn had bounded past her in a black blur and already had Cheyenne firmly by the arms.
The redhead began to scream, tossing her hair like stinging whips, kicking and flailing as Kodjunn pulled her resolutely and silently back to the pit and clamped the chains back on her body. It took less than a minute, and then she was gagged again, yowling her hate while ropes of drool soaked into the chapped edges of the leather thong.
Kodjunn sank back onto the bench and raked his claws through the thick fur between his horns. “Well,” he said after a deep sigh. “We all have troubles. I could be tempted to trade for yours.”
She giggled, a little appalled by herself.
He tossed her a smile. “But not that tempted. I know the stories of Bahgree. I fear them, and I fear for you, my friend.”
“I thought Bahgree was a…like a lust-demon or something. What would she be doing with Mojo Woman?”
“Water flows through any crack,” he answered with a shrug. “This Mojo Woman…I doubt she ever had any real power, but I think she might have stupidly invited power to share her body. If Bahgree heard, and Bahgree willed it, Bahgree could have had her.”
Olivia was shaking her head. “Look, even if I could make myself believe that all those old stories are true, Urga knocked the stuffing out of Bahgree. She’s supposed to be powerless now.”
“Powerless means different things to spirits than to mortals like you and I.” Kodjunn glanced at Cheyenne as he said this, and his eyes grew older. “Any creature formed from the substance of the Great Spirit can never be made entirely powerless. Bahgree is one of these, perhaps the most dangerous one. Especially to you.” His eyes came back, black and cold as space. “She knows you now.”