by R. Lee Smith
“A little,” she said with a smile.
“I wasn’t certain you’d come. I thought you might spend the day in Vorgullum’s lair, or in the women’s tunnels. I was embarrassed to come for you. If you really don’t want to—” He stopped again, then sighed and turned away.
She followed him to the back of the forge, and up the narrow entry chute to his private chambers. They were expansive, almost as large and many-roomed as her own, and his pit, if possible, was even bigger, and piled high with soft bedding. Next to the pit, he had placed a plastic cooler, padded with blankets, for Somurg.
“Vorgullum says you like that kind,” Sudjummar explained, motioning at the sleeping bags.
“Yes. Thank you.” Olivia lowered herself to sit on a thick bear’s pelt so that she could nurse a cranky Somurg. There was something very different about Sudjummar’s chambers that tugged at her mind, and after several minutes, she had it. There was not a single stone bench to be seen. Not in this room, and not in any of the rooms she had passed through. The only chairs were blockish outcroppings carved from the rock.
“Will you be all right if I leave you alone?” he asked, backing towards the door. “I should bathe.”
“Go ahead. This will take a while,” she added, gesturing at her furiously sucking son.
He hesitated in the doorway, then backed all the way out and was gone.
She had to wake Somurg several times to continue nursing, but at length he would not be roused, and so she brought him around just long enough to coax a burp out of him and then set him in the cooler. She gave him one of Amy’s borrowed toys, a set of plastic keys, and he whacked them angrily against the wall of his cradle and then threw them at his feet and went to sleep.
Olivia fetched up the packs Doru had brought and was amused to see that apparently he’d decided all she needed to be happy in her new pit was an extra sleeping bag, some of Somurg’s wrappings and her Rubik’s Cube, which she had finally solved and didn’t dare jumble up again.
She was putting the Rubik’s Cube on a natural shelf of jutting rock when she felt the power rising again. Lord, who is it now? she thought apprehensively, but turned to see Sudjummar watching her from the doorway. “That was a long bath,” she remarked.
“Had a lot to go over,” he replied, hitching at his loincloth suggestively, and looked only slightly more relaxed when she laughed. “Do you want something to eat?”
“Not particularly.”
That caused him to tense up again.
Olivia paused in the act of unpacking Somurg’s spare wrappings and considered him. “Why are you so nervous, Sudjummar?”
“I know that you don’t want to be here.” He took a deep breath, looked away from her, and said, “And I want you.”
The power pulsed hotter in silent confirmation. Crushing it took considerably more effort than she’d needed with either Thugg or Vorung, and all at once, she wondered why she was fighting. “Vorgullum expected me to couple with the mate he chose for me while he is gone.”
Sudjummar nodded slowly. “And it made you angry, didn’t it?”
Surprised, she huffed out a sharp laugh. “You’re the only gulla I’ve met who understands that!”
“Oh, I don’t understand it. I just saw your face when he chose me.” Sudjummar regarded her with cautious confusion. “Don’t…Don’t humans couple for pleasure alone?”
“Obviously, you’ve never met Carla.”
“I have,” he corrected. “And I have no idea why she does it, but it’s not for her pleasure.” He caught the question in her eyes. “No, I haven’t been with her,” he said. “I would never hurt a female in mating, not even if she wants me to. But tell me why you were angry. Vorgullum will be away a long time.”
She rolled her eyes. “And I need someone to provide for me, right. Believe it or not, humans are expected to be faithful to one another, whether or not babies can come of it,” she added crossly.
“Well, of course, so are gullan, but what happens when one mate leaves the other for a very long time?” Sudjummar pressed. “They can hardly be expected to remain celibate until they are reunited.”
“Yes, they can. Yes, they are.”
He looked positively astounded. “So, if the male goes away to hunt and is gone for, say, sixty days, the female doesn’t take another mate?” His disbelief only grew as she shook her head. “What about her safety? Who will keep her sheltered and fed? Who will feed her children?”
“She does.” At his thunderstruck expression, she added, “Sometimes, her mate will send her things during his absence so that he can still provide for her in some way, but she certainly doesn’t run out and get a new mate.”
“But surely she couples!”
“Not until her mate gets back.”
“For sixty days?! That can’t be healthy!”
“It works for us,” she replied simply. “And what about the female gullan here with no mates? Who provides for them? Who couples with them?”
“You have to understand that we are not living now the way we should be. There should never be so many unmated females living in the mountain.”
“You’re avoiding the question,” she observed, amused.
“Well, they take care of themselves,” he admitted. “They cultivate the foods that grow here, and they cut clothing from the hides we bring them. They’re helpful, so we all provide for them when things get hard. And of course, there are a few that use whatever other talents they have to earn an easier life.”
“Like Furluu and the other safe females,” she said.
He looked mildly irritated. “I was thinking of Horumn, actually. Or your teacher.”
“But in other words, what you are telling me is that you give them just enough to make do unless you have a pressing reason to give them a little more.”
Sudjummar shrugged. “I don’t do anything at all,” he said. “Aside from crafting the occasional tool, and I do that out of a sense of tribal duty more than anything else. You forget, they support me too.” He twitched his withered wing at her. “And you still haven’t told me why you were angry.”
“You are just not getting it, are you? When a man says he cares about you, he shouldn’t just throw you at a total stranger and expect you to like it! It makes you feel like…” There was no gullan word for whore. “Like you’re a tool he can pick up and put down whenever he wants to.”
“It shouldn’t,” Sudjummar said quietly. “It should make you feel loved, that he wants so much to see you provided for.”
“Everyone tells me I’ll be provided for anyway and I don’t need someone to protect me.”
“Which is how you ended up with a broken skull the other day, I suppose.”
“That is a different matter entirely.”
“Ah yes.”
“How would you feel if you knew you couldn’t walk down the damn hall without having complete strangers rubbing their loincloths at you?”
“Deliriously happy.”
She stared at him and burst out laughing.
“It’s been a while for me,” he said seriously. “Olivia, apart from that Great Spirit business, and the leadership business, and the healer business, and the Urgarna business—”
“Okay, I get the point.”
“—and the Issugul business, you would still be an attractive human female who has been proven fertile and who has more than half a wit in her head for a change.”
“Thank you, I think,” she said.
“If you were my mate, I would give up leadership of the tribe before I left you alone for even a day,” he said fiercely.
“And I’d leave you because I don’t like to be smothered,” she finished.
He stared at her, and then shook his head. “You humans are so strange. As fragile as you are, I’d think you’d welcome a strong protector.” He twitched his withered wing again and looked at it. “Even if it wasn’t me.”
“Don’t talk like that. I think you’re very handsome.”
He snorted. “For a cripple, you mean.”
“So your wings don’t work! Neither do mine!”
His second snort was more of a true laugh.
“You look just fine. And even if you didn’t, well my God, even Chugg gets tumbled now and then!”
“A sound argument,” he murmured, but his smile faded. He glanced back at his pit, and then at her again. “I’m tired. Can we sleep now?”
“All right.” She watched as he self-consciously lowered himself into the pit without removing his loincloth. He lay on his side, his back to her, but the spark of that power was still churning inside of her, wanting nothing but to drive out and bite into him. He lay there without touching her, without even looking at her, just wanting her. At last, she reached out—not with her power, but with her hand. “I’m sorry I made you so uncomfortable,” she said.
“I’m not. I’d just as soon we got it out the first day than have to wait for it. And as uncomfortable goes, it wasn’t that bad.”
They lay there.
“I hate myself for saying this,” he said suddenly. “Do you honestly think I’m handsome?”
The power tried to spark again. She crushed it.
“I do,” she replied. She hesitated, unsure if this was about to make things better or worse, then added, “You look an awful lot like Vorgullum, don’t you know that?”
“Only in the face.”
She had to laugh. “The face is what people look at!”
“Humans, maybe.”
More quiet.
Sudjummar heaved a short sigh and shifted around until he was facing her. “You don’t actually want to hear this boring old story, do you?”
“Do you want to tell it?” she asked.
He eyed her, seemingly more embarrassed than anything else, and finally said, “Simply put, it is this: A long time ago, I fell in love. In spite of the old leader’s law, I fell in love.”
Somurg made a sleepy whimper and they both looked around, but the sound was not repeated.
Sudjummar rolled onto his stomach and propped his head up on his folded arms, staring at the wall. “If I spoke her name, you’d know it, so I won’t,” he said. “Suffice to say, she’s very attractive and very intelligent, and very sheltered, in those days. She had never been out of the women’s tunnels. I only saw her because I could take tools as far as the cooking hearth. We could never be mates, but I hoped to impress her so that we might couple. That sounds so noble when I say it out loud like that,” he added and covered his eyes.
“Don’t cut your wings over it. We’ve all had our less than noble moments where sex was concerned.”
“Well, I had a distinct advantage, being a metal-maker. I brought her candle-bowls, and buckles for her loincloth, and pretty things to wear around her wrists and neck. We spent long days in secret, just talking. I let her be the one to guide me to the pit. It seemed important at the time,” he muttered, and for a long time after that, he was quiet.
“This is painful,” Olivia said at last. “I’m sorry. Please, stop.”
He sighed. “Olivia, bad stories are like good sex. Sometimes, you just have to finish, whether you really want to or not.
“She was new to love and so was I, but before long, we were both drunk with it. And like drunkards, we were clumsy. My brother—he wasn’t Vorgullum in those days—learned of the existence of this secret lover. He was ferociously angry with me, even after I assured him that she couldn’t catch my spark. And then one day, he stopped talking about it.
“Overnight, it seemed, my young lover cooled towards me. She stopped meeting with me and soon, I saw nothing of her at all. To say that I was devastated would be saying too little. So, in desperation, I hunted her like an animal, separated her scent from the others and tracked her to the secret lair she had taken. No easy task that, but my brother and I both have a keen sense of smell, keener than most. I waited until mid-night before going in to her, so that no one would see us together. I was so nervous about what I would do or say that I failed to notice she was not alone.
“My brother was sleeping soundly beside her. I stood and stared for a very long time, and then I left. As soon as I could, I confronted him. We fought. I demanded to know why he would take the one thing from me that was my own, when he had the whole tribe to choose from. He told me…ah Olivia, he told me she had sought him out. He told me she…wished to couple with a whole man.” He closed his eyes against the memory, and then shook his head briskly. “We may have the same face, but his is on a better body.”
“The opinion of one woman—” she began.
“It’s not one woman,” he said. “You remind me that even Chugg doesn’t lack for company, but you’ll forgive me for pointing out that there are far fewer females in this tribe than males. That means, among other things, that the females choose their partners, and they don’t choose me.” He made that small, hurt laugh again. “With the exception of your Carla, and that’s no rare privilege.
“But you, Olivia, you are a precious thing. The first time I saw you, I knew my brother would love you. And he does, you know, despite what you say about politics. It isn’t the same sort of love Kurlun has for Amy, but I believe it’s real. And the first time I spoke to you, I knew I would love you as well. Damn me. It’s a hard thing to be right all the time.”
“We all have our burdens,” she said, smiling in the darkness.
“Oh yes, in a way it’s a comfort to be disfigured. Imagine what life would be like for me if I were handsome as well as clever and wise and possessed of a spear that could thrust through walls. That is—” he stammered as she burst out laughing. “No, okay, I guess that’s exactly what that is.”
“Look on the bright side, you’d have all these great new tunnels.” She wiped her eyes, still grinning. “I like you. I don’t see the happy side of Vorgullum often.”
“We see it more than we used to,” he replied. “Do you know what the hell of it is?”
“What?”
“Because of you, I am beginning to like my brother.” Sudjummar ran his claws in restless circles over his hard stomach. “I’ve always blamed him for being different from me. And I’ve blamed him for years for all the stupid mistakes that children make, and held grudges only fools can carry. I wish that I were better than that, but there it is. And now, seeing the man that you are making of him, I realize that we’re both better than that, and I can put it aside a little more each day. I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself when it’s gone. Take up weaving, I suppose.”
“You think he’s a good person.”
“Don’t you?” Interested.
“For the most part.” She rolled onto her back and clasped her hands behind her head. “Not in the beginning, certainly. And there are times when I don’t like to think about the things he does, like the thing he’s doing now. But I can truthfully say that he’s always been very patient.”
Sudjummar was smiling crookedly at her. “That’s hilarious,” he said when she was through. “My brother has developed many merits since he grew tall, but I have never thought him patient. Strong, brave, worthy of devotion and respect, sure, but he has a temper on him that would make she-bear run.” His expression darkened suddenly. “And I’ll bear the full force of that anger if he returns to find his tribesmen squabbling over you like otters.”
He kept his thoughts to himself for several long minutes, until after she’d begun to doze off. In a low, considering voice, he said, “I’ll have to see to it that my shadow is full upon you as soon as possible. It may not be pleasant. Try not to panic.”
2
Olivia awoke to the sounds of her son giggling shrilly. She hunted for the source, rubbing focus into her eyes, and saw Sudjummar kneeling before the fire, giving Somurg a sloppy bath in a shallow basin. Somurg splashed with abandon, occasionally pausing to pound at Sudjummar’s arms and let out another squealing cry of pleasure.
“What are you doing?” Olivia asked, even though it was obvious.
&nbs
p; “Well, he’s such a messy eater, I thought this was the easiest way of cleaning him.” Sudjummar scooped up a palmful of water and rubbed it into Somurg’s downy pelt.
Fully awake, Olivia sat up and stared at him. “You fed him? What did you feed him?”
“Pulp,” Sudjummar said cheerfully. “Babies can eat anything an adult can eat, only it has to be softer. So I chewed it for him.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up to nurse him?”
“You were sleeping,” he replied, as though that explained everything.
When they were weaned, the Great Spirit had said. When they’d had their last swallow of mother’s milk and had to rely upon the world to sustain them, that was when the babies would start to die.
“If it happens again,” she said, working hard to keep her tone neutral and the dread from showing on her face, “wake me up. I know you gullan have a problem with interrupting the world of dreams or whatever, but I want to wake up to feed my son. Nothing is more important to me than that. All right?”
“As you like it.” Sudjummar lifted Somurg out of the basin and dried him off with a soft towel, then wrapped him snugly in changing rags. “And since you’re awake now, you need to get ready. I brought fresh clothing for you.”
Olivia started to get up, got a good look at the clothes he’d indicated, and dropped back into the pit again, staring. Sudjummar intended for her to wear a rabbit-fur skirt and a Maidenform bra.
Oh, you just never know where she’s going to turn up, Olivia thought, stunned. “Um,” she called. “You aren’t serious about this, are you?”
“I’m very serious. Please, Olivia.”
