Olivia (128 page)

Then he leapt away from her, stumbling in exhaustion over his own feet and falling on his back.

Olivia cried out a warning, already reaching for him, her face contorting in expectation of the dry snap of his wing-bones, but he had flattened them as he fell and now only lay sprawled and naked, panting, his eyes shut against her.  She knelt over him, feeling a terrible sinking pity for him.  Her hands worried at themselves.  She said, “Are you okay?”

He gulped, shuddered, and shook his head. 

“Talk to me,” she pleaded.

“I’m not okay,” he said dutifully.

She crawled a little closer and lay her hand upon his stomach, feeling the jump of muscle below her touch.  “I’m okay,” she offered.

His features clenched once in self-loathing, although he did not open his eyes.  “How can you be?” he demanded, almost wailing.  “How can you be, when I…I…”

“You didn’t do anything,” she said.  “It was him, and it’s sort of what he has to do.”

He pried his eyes open and looked at her, as though wanting very much to disbelieve her.  What he saw in her eyes brought him slowly up, although he edged further from her and fumbled for his loincloth, discarded by the Great Spirit some time before, as though he feared he might fly at her again in lust if he stayed near her.

“It’s all right, Kodjunn,” she said a final time. 
And you’d better get used to it,
she thought,
because I have a feeling you’re going to spend an awful lot of time in that position
.

He relaxed only after he was covered, and then only enough to crouch a short distance from her and stare at her in the light of dawn.  “I missed you,” he said at last, awkwardly. 

“I missed you, too.”

“It was awful.  Worse than before.”  He looked away at the ground, frowning.  “Because, I think, we knew what to expect.  We knew exactly what they would do, how miserable they would be.”

There.  The fact of the kidnappings, lying between them like a dead animal.  Olivia hated herself for it, but she asked him anyway.

“How many did you…did you take?”

“Each of us took one.  Forty-four, in total.  I don’t know how many will survive.  They told me Sarabee died on the birthing bench…and Victoria is almost in the shadow of the earth as it is.  As for these new humans, who knows?  There may be some who…who might die, some who might be barren.”

“Is that enough?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is that enough?” she asked again, harshly.

Silence.  “No,” he said.  And rubbed wearily at his face.  “No.”

“How long will Vorgullum wait before he goes for more?” she asked.

“I don’t know.  Not until these are settled and sparking.  Perhaps even long enough to see Somurg fledged.  But…But he means to continue taking them until every male in the mountain, old, young, or even crippled, has a mate.”

Olivia stared at him, numbly.  “Another forty humans?” she asked.

“At least.”  He bent his head still lower, dropping his eyes again.  “And he wants males for our females.  The tribe is not decided in this.”

“Now you’re growing a conscience?  Now?”

He was quiet for a short while.  “Males…gullan males…tend to be more aggressive than the females…more dangerous.  We think it is the same, perhaps, for humans.  We don’t dare to take them when they are of breeding age, only to be forced to kill them.”

“So you won’t,” she stated.  When he didn’t answer, she reached out and shook his arm.  “You won’t!”

“Vorgullum is considering his options,” Kodjunn said.  “He thinks either to take grown humans and hobble them…or perhaps…if they are still young, they can be raised as tribe…”

Olivia had an awful vision of Vorgullum wandering through the maternity ward of a hospital, scooping up infants from the nursery and passing them into waiting gullan hands.  She recoiled from Kodjunn, appalled.

“Olivia,” he whispered, his face furrowed with pain.  “There are more than twenty females of breeding age.  How can we waste them?”

Olivia twisted away and said something incoherent into the wind.

He fell miserably quiet, closed his eyes.   After a year or two, he opened them again.  “I took one,” he said tonelessly.  “I took a human from the hive.  I suppose, if she is still unmated when I return, that I should claim her.”

“Oh Kodjunn.”  Spoken without anger, only with a numb dismay.  Olivia crawled forward and wrapped her arms around his thigh, and rested her head on his knees.  After a long time, his hand fell warmly over her back and lay there, heavy with comfort.

“I stood over her a long time before I took her,” he said.  “There were three females in the den, a mother and her young, I think.  Lorchumn took one of the young, and I took the other.  We left the mother.  We took none, this time, with gray in her hair.  I don’t know how old she is, the human I took.  Old enough for a woman’s shape, at any rate.  She and her sister clung to each other for days, sobbing.  I felt profane.”

“Is Lorchumn all right?”

Kodjunn’s hand on her back moved in a slow circle.  “I knew you would say that,” he said.  “Lorchumn was kind to them.  He told them his name, which seemed to help.  And he told them about his first mate.  He was beginning to make a bond with the one, with both of them really.  They are nearly a single mind; in their fear, they are never parted from each other.  Now that they are settled in Dark Mountain, perhaps they will rest easier.”

“What if they don’t?”

“Then Lorchumn will take two mates, I think.  I don’t need a mate badly enough to divide them, and I think Lorchumn can help any other male to feel the same way.”

“But then what about you?”

“If Vorgullum would allow it, I would not take another.  He won’t,” he said bleakly, “but I have made two young ones for him, and if they live, perhaps I can avoid a mate for a few years.”

“I’m sorry, Kodjunn,” she said after a short pause.  “I know this is hard for you, too.”

“It is worse for me,” he insisted, and looked away from her.  “Forgive me, Olivia, I don’t mean to belittle your suffering, but at least, for you, it is over.  I have allowed my first mate to work unspeakable evils, I have helped to destroy the lives of forty-four new humans, and I am taking you away.  And after this journey is done, I’ll have to return to face all those who will surely curse me for your loss.  I curse myself.”

Before she could think of an answer to that, he stretched out over the ground and curled on his side to sleep. 

3

Olivia woke again to Kodjunn’s sleepily urgent caresses and knew that the Great Spirit was once again in control of the body.  They fumbled with each other’s clothes, had sex until night fell, and climbed once more into the sky.

Travel was exhausting for all three of them.  The Great Spirit was in constant internal struggle to keep from consuming Kodjunn’s body and soul with the fire of his presence.  Olivia was having difficulty convincing him that rest periods should be used for resting, and that even if she was having sex on her back, it wasn’t particularly restful.  Kodjunn was being used worst of all—straining his wings to keep aloft for hours at a time, exhausted by the Great Spirit’s relentless use of Olivia’s body, and undergoing constant physical agony every moment the Great Spirit inhabited him.

“How long will it be until we get where we’re going?” Olivia asked, speaking loudly to be heard above the wind of their passage.

“
Many days
,” the Great Spirit replied.

“Many years, if he keeps stopping to make sex with you,” Kodjunn added crossly.

“
I explained this to both of you
,” the Great Spirit said.  “
Olivia will have to battle Bahgree’s spirit, then absorb and translate the essence of the Water-Woman’s power.  She must…how did you think of it?  Build up a charge
.”  He spoke the unfamiliar phrase using staccato English.

“Would you even know if she was charged enough?” Kodjunn demanded and the god complacently replied, “
There is no ‘charged enough
’
.”

Olivia sighed.

Kodjunn bared his teeth and it wasn’t a smile.  “Well, you’d better start thinking of a different way to charge, because I can’t keep making all these stops.  You chose a mortal body, Great Spirit, with mortal wings that are rapidly losing their strength.”

Trying to ward off an argument before it became inevitable, Olivia ground her hips playfully against him.  “Well, who says we have to land?”

Kodjunn banked sharply and beat his wings hard to regain altitude, while the Great Spirit caught her mouth in a kiss and tried to edge her travel-breeches down.

Olivia screamed and plastered herself to his body.  “You’re going to drop me!”

“I’m not either!” Kodjunn shouted, but he wrapped his arms completely around her to be sure.

“I’m sorry,” she said, when she was certain she wasn’t about to plummet to the ground.  “That was a stupid joke and I knew better than to do it.”

“What are you doing here?” Kodjunn exploded furiously.  His hands tightened on Olivia, although he was not addressing her.  “I understand that you must empower her, but why are you here
now
?  You may not be able to see her anymore, but you can always find me!  Don’t you know how exhausting it is to carry you?  Leave me alone while I’m flying, at least!”

“
I am safeguarding my interests
,” the Great Spirit said coldly.  “
And I am doing it as gently as possible.  Doubt you that it is far easier for me to simply blast your mind free of thought, your body free of life, and use you as an empty vehicle to carriage myself and my Olivia to our shared destination?
”

‘My Olivia.’

For one irrational instant, Olivia was certain she was going to bite him.  All that prevented her was the thought of dropping six hundred feet into the jagged line of deadwood below.  When she was in control again, she softly said, “Kodjunn, put us down.”

Kodjunn’s temper put in a rare appearance.  “What in hell for, woman?” he bellowed, now enraged at both of them.

“We can’t go on until we settle this.  Put us down.”

“You want to settle,” Kodjunn snarled, banking roughly towards a clearing.  “He wants to rut with you like an animal, and I just want to go back to sleep!  Rats bite both your eyes, I am through with both of you!”  He dropped her from a height of six feet and soared off without slowing down.

Olivia landed clumsily—her hip on a jutting stone, her left leg in slick mud, and her head on a half-hidden ant’s nest.  She jumped up, pulling her foot free of the sucking mud, but lost the shoe and stumbled away, slapping dazed insects from her hair.

The Great Spirit appeared as soon as Kodjunn was gone from sight, blazing with the force of his rage.  “
Speak whatever words you will, Olivia, but I mean to have that mortal humbled and I will tolerate none of your indignation.  It is not for the host to object at the burden he carries, nor to question my work and will
.”

She tore what she hoped was the last ant away, along with several hairs, and limped across to a sloping hillock that seemed dry.  “My indignation,” she echoed, and made herself smile at him.  “My little mortal fits of pique.”

His expression was at once tense and watchful.  He did not move from his place, did not alter his position.

She sat down, favoring her throbbing hip, and stretched out her muddied leg.  “You’re right to call it that,” she said.  “Being offended…It’s something of a luxury, isn’t it?”

The Great Spirit folded his arms and scowled at her, waiting.

“I used to think I was being harassed when one of my co-workers asked me the color of my underwear, and now I don’t even remember the last time I wore underwear.  You don’t care about any of this, do you?” she asked.

“
Should I
?”

“I guess not.  I swore an oath, so I belong to you.  Kodjunn swore an oath, so you can use him, too.  Neither of us have a right to complain about the way that you do it.”

“
And yet you do
.”

“I do,” she agreed.  “But I understand something that Kodjunn hasn’t quite realized yet.  It could be a lot worse.”

“
Indeed it could
.”

“I’m pretty sure I could hurt you if I tried,” Olivia mused, and looked thoughtfully away when the god bared his fangs at her.  “Unfortunately, I’m also sure, very sure, that you could kill me if you tried.  May I ask you something?”

He glared at her for a long time, but at last nodded stiffly.

“Did you ever think of asking one of the other humans that Vorgullum took?  You said you were watching, you must have seen your options.  I know what you said about my heart and all that,” she added with a dismissive wave.  “But I also know that I didn’t make it easy for you, so why didn’t you ask someone else?  Why didn’t you ask, oh, Amy?  She’d do this, I’m sure of it.  She’s smart and she’s brave.  She loves Kurlun and her daughter…hell, she was the first person to ever say that we captives had an obligation to help our captors breed with us because of your biological imperative to prevent extinction.”

The Great Spirit frowned, but anger was not the only emotion burning in his eyes now.  Uncertainty had joined it, uncertainty and shame.

Olivia studied him in his tight-mouthed silence and finally said, gently, “It’s because she didn’t have someone like Murgull you could show her being tortured, isn’t it?”

He did not answer.

“And as willing as Amy might have been to hop up and save your children, you’d rather have a person that you could hurt, if you had to.  Well, that’s all right,” she said, and stood up to square off against him.  “That’s just fine.  I’m glad you understand the concept of manipulation because I intend to use it against you.”

“
Do you indeed
?” he snarled, advancing on her.

“Why else would I bother to help you cum?  Why, when it’s more work, more risk and a lot more painful for me!  Why?  Because I wanted to give you something you could only get from me, something you’d want so much that you’d want to make me happy.  I want you to think about that: You had to dangle a suffering soul in front of me to get what I got out of you for a good fuck.”