Olivia (88 page)

They walked in silence through the tunnels to the forge.

“Have you seen my…have you seen Tobi?” he asked eventually.

“She drops in on Tina once in a while, but we haven’t really spoken.”

“Ah.  It’s the same with us.  I see her nearly every night—one of my best hunters, in fact—but we don’t talk much.  She seems happy, doesn’t she?”

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out.”

“So am I.”

She could hear the ringing of Sudjummar’s hammer striking on metal long before she arrived at the forge.  Keeping pace with Doru, she had no time to brace herself; she walked in and there he was, his back to the door, one hand holding the work in place while the other rose and fell with the hammer, beating it into form.  The muscles in his back clenched and coiled, his crippled wings fanned steadily, and steam poured endlessly around his powerful body. 

Funny.  She’d expected to feel dread at this moment, planned for it,
wanted
it.  But her first thought when she saw him was what a good looking man he really was.  It disturbed her.

“Ho there, metal-maker.  I bring your mate.”  Doru set his armload of packs on the ground and stretched.  “And you ought to know that both Thugg and Vorung are interested in making your acquaintance.”

“Let them come.”  Sudjummar lay the hammer down and held up the crude metal for inspection.  It was a spear-head, or it was going to be, as soon as it was hardened and an edge put on it.

“Is it customary for them to move so fast?” she asked, feeling a little out of her element.

Both males exchanged amused glances.  Sudjummar said, “Not customary, but not unexpected.  You aren’t just any female, after all.  Bad enough that half the tribe thinks of you as Olivia Urgarna, but the other half thinks of you as Olivia Issugul.” 
Olivia in Ecstasy
.

“And of course, there are those few ambitious males that think of you as Olivia Who-Will-Make-Me-Tall-If-I-Have-Her,” Doru added.  “Vorgullum does not intend to return for some time.  There may be some resistance to the idea of a
tovorak
who can’t hunt.” 

Sudjummar snorted.  “Some.  You’re hilarious, Doru.”

“It’s called tact.  I didn’t think you’d recognize it.”

“So let them come,” Sudjummar repeated.  “It should be a good lesson for those who believe crippled means vulnerable.”  He dropped the spear-head into a vat of water and was briefly curtained by steam.  When the air cleared, he set the unfinished metal back on his anvil and dried his pelt with a handy towel.  “In the meantime, understand if I start ordering you around, chief hunter.”

“Do it.  Every chance you get.  I plan to be absolutely obnoxious with obedience.”  Doru glanced at Olivia, a frown darkening his eyes.  He turned to go, but paused and rested his heavy hand on Olivia’s shoulder.  “I hope for your sake you’re every bit as brave as Vorgullum thinks you are,” he said.  “You’re about to see a very ugly part of our lives.”  He squeezed gently, then departed.

Sudjummar and Olivia were left to stare at each other.

“Let me show you to the sleeping room,” he said unnecessarily, backing away from her.  “I have a place for your son to sleep, and I got some wrappings and things from the Eldest.  I didn’t know what toys he likes, and frankly, it’s been so long since I have seen a baby-toy that I wouldn’t know what to give him, so I borrowed some from Amy.  The pit is big enough for both of us, I think, and I made certain there was enough bedding for us to share.  Vorgullum told me you liked books, so I got some from the
sigruum
before he…”  He stopped, blinked twice, and looked down at his feet.  “I’m chattering, aren’t I?”

“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.