Olivia (39 page)

And males couldn’t smell it when a woman got pregnant, the way Murgull apparently could.  Pheromones.

Vorgullum pinched out the candle, casting them both into the black.  He came down into the pit to join her, his body warm and fur-soft against her back and his arm a welcome and familiar weight across her sore side.  “Olivia, my mate,” he murmured.  “May I ask you something?”

“Of course,” she said, expecting something Murgull-related, perhaps to know what she did during her hours alone with the tribe’s most feared and infamous gulla.

He surprised her.  “What is that thing you are wearing on your wrist?  Almost all of you have one of some color and shape.  What is it?”

“We call it a ‘watch’.  It measures time.”

He digested this for a while, then brought her out of a light drowse by saying, “What is the measure of time now?”

“I don’t know,” she said sleepily.  “Mine is broken.”

“Oh.”  He sounded disappointed.  “Why do you keep it, then?”

She shrugged as best she could, lying down.  “It reminds me of home.  It reminds me of a world that needs time to be measured.  It makes me happy.”

“Would it not make you happier if it worked?”

“Yes, it probably would, but since it does not, I have to be happy while it’s broken.”

His breath blew soft against the nape of her neck, steady and slow, lulling her easily back toward sleep.  And then:

“Olivia?”

“Mm?”

“I want you to be happy.”

“I know.”  She yawned, reaching back to pat comfortably at his thigh.  “I would be happy if I were sleeping now.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

She was aware of him lying awake even as she fell steadily towards oblivion, but now, at least, he wasn’t trying to talk to her.  Olivia passed into a deep, suffocating sleep and dreamed once more of the moon, never really certain whether she was watching it, or it watching her.  It disturbed her, enough that she was almost grateful to be jostled out of it for the second time by Vorgullum trying quietly to light a fire.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” she groaned, dragging part of a blanket over her head.

“I was asleep,” he replied, scraping away with that stupid flint and steel.  “Now it will be morning.  Late morning.”

She uncovered her eyes.  “Seriously?”

“You can sleep if you like, my mate, but I should be hunting with the others.  The forests are full of humans now, which means the game will be in pockets easy to find.”  He paused to blow fire gently up over the mossy log until it caught, then leaned back and looked at her devilishly.  “But dangerous.”

She sat up, playing along, although she was in no condition to seduce anyone at the moment.  “Oh, my mate, you brave and fearless hunter, to fly so boldly into the very claws of danger!”

“Antlers, I think you mean.”

“Whatever, as long as you come back to me in glory.  There is nothing I love so much as my mate hot with victory.”  And on that romantic note, she tossed back her covers and limped off to the bathroom.

“I really wish you would stop doing this to me just before I have to leave,” he called.  “You have no idea the things people are saying about me.”  He muttered for a moment, and then raised his voice to her again.  “What will you do when I become so distracted with thoughts of you that I’m mauled to death by a bear?”

She reappeared in the pit room door and draped herself against it provocatively.  “It would never happen.  My great and daring hunter would surely defeat anything so paltry as a bear and bring me a belt of its teeth and claws.  ‘This is the work of mighty Vorgullum,’ I will say.  ‘How much more savage is my mate than this lowly beast!’”

He paused in the act of gathering up his loincloth, his head cocked on side to study her with a singularly thoughtful eye, and was about to reply when a male’s booming, laughing voice reached them, shouted up from the mainway.

“Vorgullum, does she have you chained to that damned pit?”

He jumped, flustered and snarled a wordless reply, then hurriedly donned his loincloth and ran out.  She heard him cursing and landing quite a few muffled blows between the ribald laughter of his fellows.

“Enough of that, are we going hunting or not?  Where is my spear?”

“I believe Olivia had it last, ask her!”

“Yes, use your mighty spear, Vorgullum!  You can scare the deer to death!”

Their voices receded into the distance, leaving Olivia laughing under her breath as she dressed.  Climbing spikes in hand, she dropped down the chute and entered the mainway.  Although a bath (and the opportunity to clean and dress her pit-wounds) was high in her priorities, the reality of the Deep Drop was still a daunting one, and she made her way first to the commons, where the hunters were gathered to give Vorgullum a hard time before heading out, and where she also saw three gullan females and several humans sitting in a circle.

Curious, Olivia started for them.  As she drew near, she saw they were arranged around a huge tin tub, which appeared to be filled with narrow strips of bark soaking in water.  The smell was quite pleasant, woodsy and strong, and made her think oddly of the pet supplies aisle at the Shop-A-Lot she frequented.  Or used to frequent.

“Mind your pull!” one of the gullan warned, reaching across two others to call a flustered Ellen’s attention to something in her lap.  “You are too loose.  Tightly, tightly!”

“I don’t want to break it,” Ellen protested, but Olivia could see her tugging at the spray of bark strips in her hands.

“If it breaks, it breaks,” the gulla shrugged.  “Best to break it by learning the right way than to make all a basket in the wrong way.” She glanced around, saw Olivia, and started.  “Oh, it’s you!”

“Hello again, Thurga.”

All the women looked up, but their hands were too busy to wave.  “We missed you yesterday,” Tina remarked.

“I was busy,” Olivia replied.  She figured she could just leave out what she was busy doing.  “What are you working on?”

“Not working,” one of the gulla replied smartly.  “Horumn has been chewing nettles all night and all day, so here we are, pretending to work and keeping out of her reach.”

“I see.  May I join you?”

The women stopped what they were doing long enough to expand the circle to accommodate her, and Olivia sat down.

“Everyone knows you,” Thurga announced, gesturing at the rest of them in turn.  “But this is Rumm and Crugunn, and these are Ellen, Karen, Carla, Tina, Tobi, Anita, and Victoria.”  She stumbled only a little over the human names and grinned hugely when she finished.

“We’ve all met,” Victoria said in an icy tone.  She gave her young basket a particularly vicious twist.

“Not all of us.  So you’re Tobi!” Olivia exclaimed.

Tobi, a lean little thing with spiky tufts of platinum hair streaked with nightclub colors and growing in as dark as Olivia’s own, looked up from her own clumsy basket.  “Um, yeah?”

“I’ve met your Doru.  Sort of.”

“Yeah?”  Tobi looked tickled.  “Nice guy, ain’t he?”

“I liked him,” Olivia agreed, thinking of the disembodied voice’s soothing growl that night in the tunnels when she’d lost Vorgullum, and of the gentle strength in his massive hand.

“Lemme tell you, fucking him’s a real hoot.”  Her voice deepened into a slow exaggeration of a male gulla’s rich baritone, funnier to hear in English, “‘Lie down with me, my Tobi.  Tonight, I am for you.’  Which sounds really sweet until he pulls out that fucking cannon and aims it you!”  She gave Tina beside her a friendly nudge to the ribs, giggling.  “Not that I’m what you call shy about heavy artillery, but damn!”

The gullan were studying her curiously, plainly wondering what on earth she was saying to make the other humans laugh.

“He’s like, extremely glad to have me around.  And Jesus, well, you met him, he’s big as a fucking house.  I can’t even touch my hands around his chest, he’s that fucking big.”  Tobi came to the end of one strip of bark and started weaving in another.  “He thinks he’s crushing me.  I swear to God, he’ll be humpin’ away and suddenly he’ll stop and go—”  Her voice deepened again.  “‘Are you still breathing?’”  She shook her head, grinning.  “Other than that, he’s really cool.  I’d never fucked a guy before.  He can be pretty intense.”

The gullan apparently decided the humans were never going to revert to gullanese without a subtle reminder.  “Did your mate meet with the other hunters?” Thurga asked slyly.

“Eventually,” Olivia replied straight-faced.  “They had to beat me back with a stick, but they did manage to pull him away, the six of them.”

“Such a handsome, handsome male,” Rumm sighed.  “When I see him in the baths, I could just cry, thinking of that fine body wasted on a human.”

“Believe me, sisters, no part of him is ever wasted.”

“His loincloth,” murmured Thurga, and giggled.

“Evil little frog,” Crugunn said, shaking her head.  “How I wish things were not as they are.”

“You’re not the only one,” Karen muttered.

“So!” Crugunn began brightly.  “You are Murgull’s apprentice.”

Thurga offered Olivia one of her shy smiles, but Rumm looked alarmed.

“That’s true,” Olivia said.  “I can’t begin to say how surprised I was.”

“She does tend to trap one into doing things,” Crugunn agreed.  “But if you ask me, she should have taken an apprentice years ago.  And all respect to you, Olivia, but I don’t know how I feel about having a human for a healer.”

“You know,” Tina began slowly, in English.  “I’ve got a bachelor’s degree and four years medical school, the last two with a residency in the ER.  I think I’m a bit more qualified to hang a shingle down here than a…?”

“Receptionist,” Olivia supplied, unoffended.  “And I think you’re right.  After lunch, we’ll go see Murgull together, and you can tell her yourself.”

Tina worked at her basket in silence for a while, then shook her head.  “No,” she said, and huffed out a dry laugh.  “I honestly believe I’d rather let a glorified phone jockey work me over than go tell old Murgull anything at all.”

“What was that?” Thurga asked when she was certain the conversation was concluded.  The humans stumbled over a rough translation, which left them all more confused than when they started, and Thurga nodded wisely.

“Bolga,” Rumm said bluntly, and they all looked at her.  Rumm looked around crossly. “Well, I want to talk about it.  No one says anything except how horrible it is that the poor idiot should be bred.  Of course, we all think that’s terrible,” she added, including the other gullan in her statement.  “But it was no unforgivable crime until the male that rutted with her refused to name himself.”

“Why should he?” Karen asked.  “Bolga isn’t going to say anything, so why should he hang himself?”

“It’s nice to know that being a dickhead is a universal attitude,” Tina added in English.

“Don’t you speak batty?” Anita asked her.

Tina shook her head.  “I’m working on it.  I understand it okay, but I just can’t make my damn mouth obey me.”

Tobi snickered and gave Tina a friendly sock to the arm.  “I had the same trouble,” she said.  “So Doru came up with this great plan where every day I spoke nothing but bat, he’d go into town and get me some real food.  Supermarket food, right? The very first time I got a Ho-Ho and a beer, I started getting my growl down, you’re fucking-A.”

“Now that,” Tina said, grinning, “is a real good idea.  But Gullnar would never go for it.  His idea of encouraging words are, ‘What the hell’s wrong with you
now
?’”

“I think I’d crawl naked to hell on a road of jagged glass for a cup of coffee,” Karen remarked.

“Chocolate,” Ellen said dreamily.

“Pizza.  Sausage and mushroom, extra cheese, thick crust, piping hot, with a side order of buffalo wings,” Anita sighed.

“Anything from McDonalds,” Carla put in.  “I personally hate McDonalds, and I’ve only eaten there ten times in my entire life, but I’ve been fantasizing about them lately.  You know, the fantasy where you go in and the place is empty except for a giant burger, and you roll around naked on the sesame seed bun and paint your body with special sauce?”

“What do you mean, ‘fantasy’?” Tobi asked, and they all laughed.

“Me?” Olivia said, sitting down.  “I’d like to eat my way through a Chinese restaurant.  Start with the egg roll and work up to Moo Goo Gai Pan.  Just suck it down.”

“Why Chinese?” Anita asked, screwing up her face in revulsion.

“Because an hour later, you’re hungry, and you can do it all again.”

“Is that all you miss?” Thurga asked curiously.  “Food?”

“Hell, no!”  Karen gave her basket a particularly vicious twist.  “I miss my fucking bed!  A real mattress, with sheets and blankets instead of sheepskins and old tents.  Waking up every night with zipper tracks all over my face…”  She trailed off, muttering.

The gullan couldn’t understand all of this, but they understood enough to nod and murmur wisely.  “Miss your bed,” Crugunn mused.  “Miss the mate that warmed it with you, yes?”

Karen rolled her eyes.  “Believe me, the last thing I miss is sex.”

“Sometimes I do,” said Ellen after a moment.  “At least, I miss hairless chests and foreplay.  But after the string of mistakes I have made up there, I have to admit, my guy down here really doesn’t seem so bad, you know, once you get to know him.  He is kind of a dickhead sometimes, but only sometimes, which is actually something of an improvement for me.”

“Dick…head,” Rumm repeated in awkward English.

“A derogatory term,” Olivia supplied helpfully.  “It means, someone with his brains in his loincloth.”

The gullan “aaah”d in unison, each with the same expression of pensive enlightenment.  Olivia got the feeling that by the end of the day, a new word would be penciled in to the gullan dictionary, if there was one.

“Remind me to thank you for adding vulgarity to our splendid new lives,
dear
Olivia,” Victoria muttered.

“Oh dry up, darling,” Ellen returned.

“Already has,” Carla murmured and smirked at Victoria’s glare.

Thurga cleared her throat casually.  “Ellen, may I ask you a question, from one woman to another?”

“Yes, of course.”  Ellen put down the basket she was mutilating and gave the other her full attention.  “What is it?”