Olivia (11 page)

He hadn’t checked the doorway in quite a while.

Olivia laughed again, reaching back to catch the lip of the pool for leverage so that she could pump her hips at him a little harder.  It raised her up some, water falling like a black veil away from her breasts, leaving them naked and shiny in the open air, her nipples swelling in the cold, beads of water shaking free at every bounce, and there he was, gazing raptly right past them at her face, only her face, mesmerized.

She started to cum, not in a bright burst of friction, but in a rising wave, like the tide coming in against the shore.  She could feel it starting, feel it cresting, and then it crashed down, driving her under and bearing her up again, propelling her before it until she hit whatever beach there was and it could wash over her for good and all and then recede.  She sagged; he caught her, and he must have cum with her unnoticed in the heat and the wave because she could feel him softening even as he leaned back against the side of the pool, wide-eyed and breathing hard.

He looked at her for a second or two as she found her feet, then showed his teeth in a shocking grin and said, “I can’t believe we did that in a
bath
!”

She laughed at him.  “You started it.”

He snapped one wing in a shrug and rubbed his face, still grinning, then leapt from the pool in a spray of water.  He shook himself off, beating his wings so fiercely that the two nearest candles went out.  “Stay here, Olivia,” he said good-naturedly, and went into a connecting chamber.

She climbed out of the bath and waited, dipping her legs in the water, leaning back on her hands and humming under her breath.  She could hear him moving around close by and it wasn’t long before he came back to her, dressed in a fresh loincloth and carrying new clothes for her.

‘Clothes’ was perhaps too generous.  Someone had cut apart a blanket and sewn it together as a skirt, and made a quilted tunic of a sort out of an old sleeping bag.  They looked ridiculous, but she knew they must have taken a great deal of time and work on someone’s part.  And really, they were quite soft and comfortable, besides being warm, so she managed to thank him without sounded too sarcastic.

While she dressed, he gathered up their old clothes and gave them the kind of offhand toss toward the other chamber that spoke of a man who never had to wash his own laundry.  He came back to her, gave the hot spring a final smirking glance, and then led Olivia to a nearby bench.  He sat her down before him, brought out a carved wooden comb, and began to brush out her hair.

“A hot bath, new clothes, and my mate tending to me,” she murmured, dozing in his lap while he coaxed the tangles from her hair in long, even strokes.  “Ask me now if I am happy.”

“Are you happy?” he asked seriously.

“I am killed with happiness.”  It was a play of words.  The sounds for ‘killed’ and those for sexual climax were very similar.

He laughed and paused to squeeze her shoulders affectionately.  “My clever Olivia,” he said.  “My clever, beautiful Olivia!  You will see them snap their teeth at me in envy.  I will feast upon their praise.”  He stood her up and had a long look at her.  “They will see the woman who is my mate.”

It was impossible not to feel at least a little flattered when he said it like that, with such vehemence and pride.  She flushed and smiled and posed for him until he took her arm and took her back down the corridor.

She had to be carried up the wall of the chasm he had flown through, then led back through the maze until they came again to the mirror-lit Commons.  They were no longer alone here; in the quiet, she could make out the deep, rumbling voice of one of his kind, although she could not make his words. 

Olivia’s captor put her down, patted her arm, and nudged her ahead of him.  It wasn’t as big as the cavern he’d had to fly down to get to the baths, but it was plenty big enough, with passageways leading in and out from all directions.  Stone benches and tables made a number of slightly more intimate spaces out of a cave roughly the size of her high school gymnasium, and there were three or four fireplaces large enough to lie down scattered around, although none of them were lit at the moment.  Cardboard boxes, wooden crates, and a couple plastic coolers occupied the shadows at one end of the room, an impressive amount of fire-fuel had been stacked at the other, while in the center, a large, flat-topped rock rose imperially over everything.  There were two people here, one a creature like her captor, the other a human woman sitting silently on a bench.

Olivia’s captor called to them.  The winged creature looked around at once, but the woman took no notice.  She wore a ragged nightgown and clutched a saucepan in both hands.  She continued to sit and stare at the wall without expression, even when Olivia offered her a tentative smile.  She was faintly familiar.  And then Olivia realized this was the same hysterical woman who had been grabbing on her that night in the parking lot, the one who had tried to run. 

“This is my Olivia,” her captor said.

The other creature looked Olivia over with a bleak and disinterested eye.  “She seems lively enough,” he said at last.

“Thank you,” she said, not knowing whether to be amused or annoyed.

The other creature actually jumped back, one hand rising up to smack against his chest just like she’d sprouted a second hand in front of him and sang
My Mammy
in two-part harmony.  “She speaks!”

Olivia’s captor puffed up, but made a modest waving gesture.  “She learns because she is clever.  My Olivia is a civilized creature.”

The other sighed and glanced back at his woman.  “This one does not speak, not her own tongue much less ours.”

Olivia’s captor growled thoughtfully and moved some of the woman’s hair so that he could better see her face.  The woman did not respond.  “Perhaps when she sees the others of her kind—”

“You think she sees?”  The other creature uttered a breath of singularly bitter laughter and dropped down onto the bench beside his woman.  “She stares, she rocks herself, she spills out her own wastes and sits in it.  She eats when I feed her, walks where I lead her, stands when I clean her.  Nothing else.  Nothing more.”  He started at her morosely as she stared straight ahead, then dropped his head into his hands and rubbed at his brow.  “She talked that first night…well, screamed some words at me anyway…but nothing since.  Just this.  What am I supposed to do with
this
?”

“Be patient,” Olivia’s captor said quietly.

“Easy for you to say.  Yours isn’t pissing in the pit every night.  Yours—”  The other creature glanced up to give Olivia a sour look, and then straightened up with a start, his eyes going past her in a dark and almost fearful way.  “Look there,” he murmured, barely audible.  “Look who comes.”

Olivia’s captor looked, flinched, and actually stepped back.

Olivia turned and what she saw pulled all the questions she had so hopelessly buried flooding right back to the surface.

It was another creature, but not like the others.  This one was female.

5

The female was, at first glance, much like the males.  She had the same general build, and the same broad and vaguely snout-like facial construction, but stood a little shorter and was padded in the kind of soft fat that comes naturally with age and inactivity.  She wore a loincloth, the same as the males, and a kind of deep-pocketed sling across one shoulder.  It wasn’t empty and whatever she carried in it pulled it down to hang nearly at her hips, but she left her breasts bare on either side of the strap.  The breasts themselves were mere suggestions, flat and sagging beneath a mottled, graying pelt.  She had no horns, but this did not soften the features of her terrible face.

And it was terrible.  One eye poached white and bulging from its scarred socket, the other black as jet and cruelly narrowed.  Scars made a death’s head rictus of her left half and pulled her mouth into a jagged sneer.  The flesh of her neck on that side was loose and grey as elephant hide.  Her wings were tattered along the edges, and only one folded up properly; the other hung half-open, withered and ruined.

The female strode up to them in a loping bear-like gait and stopped, breathing hard.  She glared first at the sitting, vacantly-staring woman, then at Olivia.  Her voice was too deep to allow her to cackle, but her low, mocking laughter would have done any storybook witch a great credit. 

“So,” she said contemptuously, poking at Olivia’s chest, her arm, her stomach.  “Is this what you call hope?  Slimy white creature, a maggot with legs!  How can anything so ugly live?”

“You live!” Olivia snapped, slapping the female’s blunt finger away.

Her captor swiftly threw a hand around her mouth and pulled her against him, his wings snapping out and curling around as if to shield her.  The other male leaned back and just stared at her, all the dark emotion he’d been indulging mere seconds ago wiped utterly clean by shock.

The female staggered back a step, open-mouthed, but recovered quickly.  She gave Olivia’s captor a withering glare and he unwillingly folded his wings and lowered his arm.  “I see even a maggot can speak a civilized tongue,” she said, turning that same glare on Olivia.  “Though not in a civilized way.”

“I follow your lead,” Olivia countered, wishing furiously she knew even one swear.

“Do you, maggot?  Perhaps I should lead your wingless, bald body right off the Deep Drop!”

“Do it!  I could land on you and bounce all the way back to the top!” Olivia snapped, giving her own flat belly a slap to make her clumsy point absolutely clear.

She heard her captor gasp and saw the other male actually clap both hands over his snouted mouth, but the ugly old hag in front of her merely rocked back a little and looked thoughtful.

Too late, she remembered she was supposed to be the good slave here, the one who was supposed to be convincing all the others to behave.  She ducked her eyes, flushed and disoriented, unable to bring herself to dredge up the apology she knew she’d better make.

Her captor made it for her, clutching both her shoulders and saying, “It is her first day among people,” in what was damned near a stammer.  “She is nervous.”

The female’s pensive gaze turned suddenly, scornfully back on Olivia’s captor.  “
You
are nervous, whelp.  Get back.  Go!”  She threw a heavy smack to the side of his head and he let go with a yelp. “Go, you frog-hunter!  You maggot-maker!  This is no—”  Here she snarled out some unknown words.  “—to please you!  You go!”

And he went, by God.  Head ducked, shame-faced and anxious, he and the other male backed up fast and watched from a distance as the old female turned back to Olivia.  Her head cocked so that she could run her good eye up and down Olivia’s body, and if her expression wasn’t exactly approving, at least she kept her poking finger to herself.

“So,” the female mused, rubbing at the loose folds of her neck.  “Ugly, you are, but you may yet be as clever a thing as this one claims you are.  Shall we find out together, you and I?”

This did not sound good.  Olivia sent several nervous glances towards her captor, but he was no help at all.

“Oh ho, now you look to him for lead, do you?  Ha!  Nothing lives in Hollow Mountain that does not cower at old Murgull’s command!  You will learn to cower too, if you are truly clever.”

“I am not afraid of you!” Olivia snapped, and immediately wished she’d kept her damned mouth shut.

“Such a brave little frog you are, eh?  Old Murgull has ways of making brave little frogs wish they had never croaked aloud.”  The female uttered another booming peal of monstrous laughter, and took Olivia by the wrist. 

Instinct dug her heels in for her, for all the good that did.  One yank of the old witch’s hand and she was flying forward, one arm pinwheeling for balance as she stumbled in the creature’s wake.

“Come with me, repugnant one,” Murgull said, cheerfully dragging Olivia towards one of the outward tunnels.  “We will have some talk between us, eh?  Woman-talk, you and I.”

Olivia looked back in time to see her captor take a step after them, but only one.  He looked distressed and helpless, unwilling or unable to intervene.  With a final tug, Olivia was pulled away and into blackness.

“Woman-talk,” the ugly creature muttered.  “Too little of that for you, I think.  No talk of woman ways from that one, ha!  No talk to female people or even female slugs like you.”  She grunted her resonant cackle.  “But come with old Murgull and I will tell you the things your stag-headed mate does not, I think, dare to speak yet.  Move your naked feet!”

“I can’t see,” stammered Olivia, thinking helplessly of her flashlight, sitting next to the empty-eyed woman on the bench.

“Nor can I, little frog.  In my youth, I could track a bat through a moonless night, but no more, no more.  Time makes humans of us all, they say.  Ha!  But I know this place and all places.  I know the rock and where it lies.  Come with me, lift up your puny feet and run.  What, would I hurl you to your death now?  I have other things to do, I would not waste my time with killing little slugs like you.  By my rotting tooth, what a piece of sludge you are!” she finished merrily.

Olivia made out faint light ahead, enough to pick out shadows on the floor that hid rough ridges and stubs to trip her up.  She went faster, amazed the old crone could keep up with her.

“There you are, faster now.  Even ugly frogs can hop!  If you were as quick as you are clever, you would not be in these caverns to be abused by an ugly old bat like Murgull.”

Murgull, thought Olivia, rolling the word around in her head.  It was the first name she’d heard.  Old Murgull, yet.  Old Murgull, before whom all the mountain cowered.

“Here!  Let me look at you,” Murgull grunted, pulling Olivia to a hard stop before a narrow doorway at the end of the tunnel, one opening into a wide cavern lit by more mirrors, and sealed away by a door of iron bars.  The light that streamed through this medieval barrier wasn’t much, but it was enough to see old Murgull’s good eye narrow as she paced around her.  “Poor little frog.  Captured and caged, as Murgull was.  In her youth, ah.”  She rubbed absently at the scars that warped the right side of her face, then peered down at Olivia.  “You are still ugly,” she said thoughtfully, “but not so much as first I thought.  Strange.  I know enough to see you are a female,” she added, poking Olivia in the chest through her new padded tunic.  “Have you—” she began and added a few questioning words Olivia did not know.