Authors: R. Lee Smith
Bahgree shrieked at the first touch of Olivia’s mind, but she had insinuated herself too well; there was no wrenching free. Olivia watched her body pulse as the energy invading her was first subdued, then absorbed. The sound of screams penetrated even this high place, but they were of little importance. She concentrated on the light’s wild fluctuations below her, closing her mind to time, and worked it slowly into sync with itself, with her. It wasn’t easy—the levels of focus and control it required were immense, like playing a thousand games of chess at once while flexing each of her six hundred fifty muscles in precise order—but it finally began to happen, and once it began, there was no stopping it.
She was no one’s daughter now.
4
Olivia dropped back down into a limbless, wildly-morphing mass of water. The look of it disturbed her, so as soon as she was back inside, she pulled it all tight into the shape she remembered, vomiting out the excess as she squeezed it from herself, and giving it the look of flesh.
The world was still black, but now the blackness seemed cheaply false, no different from the way Elvis images jumped off black velvet. It was tasteless, but she didn’t have to live with it anymore.
Her new thoughts flexed, realigned. She stood upon the beach in a puddle of water atop an oddly rippled rock. The Great Spirit’s hand enveloped hers; she considered this, then turned away, allowing her arm to turn to water rather than deal with the unpleasantness of speech, of friction. Her arm reformed as she moved (not walking, but only moving, and leaving no trail behind) along the beach. She watched the waves roll in.
“
Olivia, it is time
.”
What was his voice but another wave? Olivia closed her eyes and looked beyond, shuffling through lives without interest. She could pull them to her, any one of them, from any distance. They were no different than the cells of her blood, tumbling together in her veins. They were made of water, as she was, and one drop becomes indistinguishable when it falls into the sea.
The beautiful, the dancing, the eternal sea.
“
Olivia, my children
!”
Children? She remembered now. The children, those brought forth from their two kinds, those this world could not welcome. The Great Spirit was waiting for her, waiting to hear her offer oaths so that he might take their bloodlines and weave them into this world’s tapestries, but why? Why, when it was as simple a thing as taking the waters of their lives and bringing their countless colors into sync with the sea? There! A thought and they were whole! A thought, and every child born—to human, to gulla, to both—belonged to her.
One of these was her own. She did not feel the urge to look in on him, but she did wonder why not, in a distracted sort of way.
The Great Spirit drew back, alarm burning out of him as bright as the sun as he watched her bind the bloodlines of every kind of people to the firmament of this world…without him. He raised his hand to touch her, but seemed to think better of it when she glanced his way. “
Olivia
,” he said again. “
You must take your place at my side
.”
Anger struck her, not her own, but burning at her from the side like a splash of cast-off—
water
—coffee. Olivia turned and gazed at Urga.
“
Declare yourself my mate
,” the Great Spirit urged. “
One last battle and the way is clear
.”
“
Battle
.” Olivia raised her hand and brought the sea up and around Urga as ice, trapping her mid-transformation, her jaws gaping as for a scream. Rage? Pain? Fear? It did not seem to matter enough to speculate upon. “
Why
?” she asked, examining the frozen form of the moon.
“
You cannot trust her to forego her vengeance! Her many faces are deceit. Olivia, you must challenge her! It is not enough for me to set her aside, you must confront her and end her spiteful curse
!”
Curse. That’s right, there had been a curse. Urga’s curse, that no gullan should come whole into this world unless it came through her.
But that was her right, wasn’t it?
Olivia opened her hands and looked down at the water pooling in her palms. Droplets fell from her fingertips. Onto a corpse, she saw. Not one of hers. She began to ignore it, then paused and looked down again. She knew this carcass, she knew she knew it, and she knew it had mattered once that it had died. Now it did not. Why?
“
There is no love in this form
,” Olivia said, frowning at her hands.
The Great Spirit hesitated, then said simply, “
No
.”
“
You did not tell me there would be no love
.”
“
It is eternity
,” he said. He glanced at Urga, frozen and forgotten. “
Olivia, there must be a challenge
.”
“
Must there
?”
“
You must break her to your will, or she to hers. It is eternity. There can be no unknowns
.”
Eternity. She knew now how long that was. She, who could count the drops that filled the oceans, looked ahead and saw every hour outside of Time, and she was cold.
Yes, but he’ll live
, she thought vaguely. This son of hers she had no interest to see, he would live. That was the price, wasn’t it? That was the bargain she had made.
She looked down, down past her dripping fingers to the still, slack, staring face of someone who had loved her only minutes ago. She looked away, across the gentle waves to the two figures sitting together in the sand, and beyond them, to the mountain filled with people she had given up her mortality for. She looked and saw, among the billions of flickering human lights, the two, still grieving, who had given her a mortal life to give up.
“
Olivia
!”
The power was hers to do with as she pleased, but there was no pleasure. The power was hers to do great things, but she had no interest to see them done. The power was hers to see her loved ones safe until the end of all their lives, but she loved no one.
Olivia brought Urga out of the ice. She came out hissing and staggering, fell to her knees, and stared up at Olivia in hateful silence, waiting.
Olivia said, “
I can see now, how to kill you
.”
Urga’s fingerless hands became hooks, became claws, became hands again.
“
And so I will win any combat between us. Because no matter the hurt you inflict on me, you cannot kill an immortal and I can. Pain is so temporary
.” Olivia knelt slowly beside the body on the beach, gazing at it. “
Death is forever
.”
Urga’s wings unfurled and folded flat.
“
You know that, of course. You’ve dealt death often enough against the mortal lives you’ve eliminated, the lives you’ve helped to make. This life
.” Olivia touched the corpse. It felt unpleasant, but she did not take its water away. This was important somehow.
Urga did not move or speak.
“
I will not fight you for the word ‘mate’. I will not fight for the privilege of being penetrated in your stead. But I will kill you, Urga, if you do not promise me now to take back your vengeance and never to cast a curse of death upon any living thing again
.”
“
My children are none of your concern
.”
“
I am not interested in fairness
,” Olivia said. She touched one of the mottled paint-signs on the corpse’s chest, traced it with her fingertips. “
Conceive as you have always conceived. Birth your young through gullan wombs. But allow even those you do not touch to bear their young without blight. Your age of vengeance is ended
.”
“
They are mine
.”
“
I take them from you. All of them. Those living, those yet unborn… those dead
.” Kodjunn. His name was Kodjunn. “
You have only to refuse me again and I will not press further. I will only kill you and take them anyway
.”
Urga considered.
Olivia took the wounds from Kodjunn’s body. She sensed that she could make it breathe if she chose, make its heart take up its rhythm, but she did not. Life was more than the workings of a body. Even in this state, she knew that.
“
Will you take my mate
?” Urga asked.
“
No
.”
The Great Spirit stepped back, his light flaring with emotion she could see, but not identify.
“
Then I give you my word it shall be as you command. My blessing remains with those I bring forth. My curse ends
.” Urga raised her wings and lifted herself into the sky. She hung there in the darkness, full and round and glowing with cold light, until the clouds passed over her. When they receded, the moon, and only the moon, remained.
The Great Spirit looked at Olivia. It was not in his nature to ask for favors, or even clarifications, only to give orders and see obedience. She knew already he would never give the one command he must wish most to make. He too had no comprehension of death. She supposed he must fear her, in some vague way that even he didn’t fully understand. The thought gave her no satisfaction; happiness was love.
“
I have all the power in the world
,” she told him. It was not a boast. “
I can do whatever I want with it
.”
He looked away.
“
I don’t want this
.”
“
So I see
.”
Olivia gazed down at the body. “
He said that he would paint me tall. He said that I would be Olivia throughout and I would be good. It should be important to me that this is true. It should be…and it isn’t
.”
“
So you will usurp me
,” the Great Spirit said. “
You will take the world and all its children for your own. Ha. There is no mouth that does not drink from your blood. You could have them all
.”
“
I could
,” she said thoughtfully, and looked out at them, all of them. “
But I won’t
.”
He frowned at her, took a single cautious step. “
No? Will you consent to be bound here then
?”
“
No
.” She faced him, not smiling. “
This is my power. I can do whatever I want with it. Even give it up
.”
The god’s mouth dropped open, soundless. He stared.
“
I’ll always keep you guessing, big guy
,” said Olivia, and let it all go.
It hurt, much more than taking it in had done. There was a moment when she wondered if she was about to die, but the moment eventually ended and she was still there. Insignificant, exhausted, filled with pain, but still there, and still, by God, Olivia Blake.
Kodjunn’s eyes were still open. She closed them. “I know this isn’t the ending you were expecting,” she said wearily. “I guess I don’t have the right to ask for favors anymore.”
“
You will have anything within my power. Anything
.”
“Take care of Kodjunn. Don’t just…wave your hand over him. I know you can, but…please. Find him a good place. Do it right.”
“
Yes
.” The Great Spirit bent and lifted the body into his arms. He looked down into the face that he had worn throughout this journey and his molten eyes dimmed. It was a long time before he looked at her again; something in him was changed, and it stayed changed. “
I thank you, human. I thank you…Olivia
.”
“I thank you, too,” she said. Why not? Thanks, like pity, was cheap, and she knew he’d want to hear it. She put her hand on Kodjunn’s chest and stood on her tiptoes to kiss the Great Spirit’s mouth. Then she turned around, stepped out of the puddle of now powerless and unremarkable water, and looked out over the water. The sun was coming up in the east.
She started walking home.
THE END
April 1994
November 2009
Also by R. LEE SMITH:
Heat
The Lords of Arcadia Series
:
The Care and Feeding of Griffins
The Wizard in the Woods
The Roads of Taryn MacTavish
The Army of Mab
The Scholomance
Cottonwood
Coming Soon!
Last Hour of Gann
Excerpt from The Scholomance
By R. Lee Smith
Mara came home on a Wednesday with a mild sunburn and a bank receipt for eighty-three thousand dollars stuffed indifferently in the front pocket of her jeans. The house looked empty from the street, but her mother was in, sitting in the front parlor with the lights off, working on her second bottle of wine. Mara was tired and inclined to let her, but when she walked in and dropped her bags at the foot of the stairs, her mother said, “Your little friend sent you a letter,” and everything changed.
Mara paused, one hand on the banister, and looked back. She wasn’t aware that she had any friends at the moment. “Who?”
Her mother didn’t look up. Just sat and stared at the wall and sipped her wine. She wasn’t thinking. She wasn’t even remembering things, although there were plenty of photographs on the wall where her blank eyes rested. Caroline Warner was empty tonight, and so much bigger than the space her skin enveloped.