Olivia (123 page)

He dismissed that with a cut of one hand, turning back to look on Cheyenne.  “There have been no good births for twenty-eight years,” he said.  “This cruel life has lent us strange talents.”

Olivia slipped around his wing and pressed up against his side.  He put his arm around her mechanically.  She did not look at the body, but she let him brood on it in silence.

Finally, “Olivia, I feel…awful.”

She waited.

“I believed I could sacrifice two lives just to be rid of one more.  That was wrong and I always knew it was wrong, deep down.  But…I think maybe I was wrong to want to kill this woman in the first place.  I have forgotten…even she has been precious to someone.  Olivia, what have we done?  What are we still doing?  How many more will we bring back and
ruin
?”  He started to speak again, then slowly folded up, ground his fists against his face and began to sob.

Olivia ran her hands over his head, rubbed the base of his horns where the skin was thinnest, stroked the thick pelt of his shoulders. 
Soft as otter
, she thought again, as she did her best to comfort him.

His arms came up and wrapped like iron around her waist.  He pressed his face into her hip, his tears bleeding slow heat over her clothing.  “I want to ready her for burial,” he said. “Teach me what to do.”

“Will it make you feel any better?”

He shuddered.  “Something has to.”

Olivia used charcoal from the hearth to draw examples of the mystic-seeming spirals and symbols she had used once when painting Judith.  She did not try to invent meanings for them and Doru did not ask.  He studied them in silence, asking only where they should go upon Cheyenne’s body, and then began the terrible task of washing away the blood.  Olivia hovered near him for a moment, but he was deep in his own world, and so she crossed the room and knelt beside Thugg as Yawa finished stitching the deep gash in his thigh.  When Yawa retreated, Olivia was there to bandage him.  Thugg closed his eyes and looked supremely unhappy. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked finally.

Thugg sighed and looked over at Wurlgunn where he lay panting on the floor by the fire.  “I want to die,” he said.  “I can’t believe I was so stupid.  I killed the Beast.  I may still have killed Wurlgunn.  I nearly killed you.  Those babies are drawn moons too early and it is
all
…my fault.” 

Olivia waited, fitting the final bandage tight and pinning it in place.  She slackened Doru’s belt and threaded it back through the buckle.  Thugg was silent as she poured out a basin of water and returned to him, beginning to wash the blood from the fur of his thigh.

“I came to see—” he began, and trailed off.  He was quiet for several minutes.  The only sounds were that of water pattering over Cheyenne’s flesh, of the coarse cloth grooming through Thugg’s pelt, of Wurlgunn’s thick breaths.  “I came to see…a female.  Didn’t matter who, as long as it wasn’t Chugg.  Horumn met me at the tunnels, told me Furluu and Golgun were off fawning over the new babies and Victoria and Carla were occupied.  They don’t have a good waiting place here, so she told me I could wait in the women’s commons.”

Thugg shrugged awkwardly, looked back over his shoulder at Wurlgunn.  “I sat there for a while, but in the end, I decided it wasn’t worth waiting around for.  I figured I could go out, maybe hunt a goat, come back and try again.  I thought…”  He shook his head, grunted something that might have been laughter.  “I thought, ‘I bet it’s been a while since the Beast had any meat.’  Mothers need meat in their last moons even more than milk, they say.”

He lapsed into silence again, now staring bleakly at the pit where Doru’s broad body mostly blocked the sight of the corpse from view.  “She was lying there.  She wasn’t moving.  Her eyes were open, but I could have sworn…I almost turned around and left.  I don’t know why I didn’t.  I felt…sorry for her.  I asked Yawa if I could try and feed her.  Yawa said I could.”

“I was grateful,” Yawa broke in.  She was hovering at the doorway, looking almost as miserable as Thugg.  “I hadn’t had any chance at all to feed myself since yesterday.  I told him to beware her, but I didn’t think she’d even know he was there.  She hasn’t said a word in days and days.  I thought her mind was gone.” Yawa covered her face briefly, then put her hands out as though in supplication.  “I left them alone.”

“She didn’t do anything at first,” Thugg continued.  “I kept myself at arm’s length, chewed each bite for her.  She ate after a while.  Eventually, she looked at me.”  He was shaking his head slowly, unaware of it, in mute denial of his own words.  “She asked me who I was.  I told her.  She asked me what I was doing there.  I told her…I don’t know why.  She told me she’d…do something for me, if I wanted.  I can’t believe I was so stupid.”

“She can be convincing,” Olivia found herself saying.

“I took off my belt and my coverings.  I knew I had the knife.  I put them beside the pit.  I thought it was far enough out of her reach.  But she managed to get closer without me noticing…that is, while we were shifting to…it doesn’t matter.  I didn’t know what she meant to do.  I pretty much did what she told me.  She put me right where she wanted me.  I…I actually closed my eyes.”  Disbelief momentarily colored the emotionless recital.  His hand moved to scratch restlessly at his thigh. 

“I didn’t know she had the knife until she stabbed me with it.  Even then, I couldn’t understand where she got it.  I started shouting, I think.  I have no idea where Wurlgunn came from.  I don’t think he knew she had the knife, either.  He jumped in the pit and fell back so suddenly, I thought…I don’t know, maybe he tripped or she pushed him, or something.  He was choking, that’s what I thought.  I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him.  Then Tina and the others came in and Yawa ran off screaming.  I am so sorry.”

Olivia put her red-stained cloth back in the basin and patted his shoulder.  “You can go, if you want to.  Find someone to stay with you, someone who can change your bandages and feed you tea.  Water, too, but as much tea as you can get.  Keep off your leg for at least ten days, or you’ll tear the stitches.”

Thugg sighed and clawed up the wall until he was standing, balanced on one leg.  He looked around hopelessly, and one of the older females detached herself from the doorway and slipped beneath his arm.  They hobbled out, and Olivia crept over to peer down at Wurlgunn.

“What does it look like?” Doru asked quietly.  He was not watching her; his full attention appeared directed at the task of cleaning the body. 

Olivia knelt and carefully peeled back one edge of the compress.  The wound was a ghastly thing, but even she could see that it was not as bad as it might easily have been.  It was only four inches long, but deep and ugly, and if it had been even an inch wider, it might have struck the jugular.  Tina’s stitches were thick and uneven, but would hold for the moment.

“Olivia?  Tell me.”  Doru’s voice betrayed only a slight undercurrent of strain.  She had no doubt that his hands on the corpse would be steady, even as the set of his body betrayed his fantastic tension.

“It could be worse.”

Wurlgunn’s eyes fluttered and opened.  He brought her into focus with obvious effort, and then tried on a shaky smile.  “Olivia,” he croaked.  “Thank the Great Spirit.  Now I will be well.”

“That’s very flattering,” she said gently.  “But I’m not going to do anything.”  She pressed the gauze back in place and took his hand, encouraged when he squeezed.  “Do you know what happened?”

“Vaguely.”  He closed his eyes to collect his thoughts, as though the sense of sight were too great a distraction for recall.  “Anita,” he said at last.  “She makes pictures with string.  She’s good at it.  I thought if I had some string, it would make her happy.  I was talking to…Crugunn, I think.  I heard shouting, came running.  Thugg was on the ground.  I didn’t see the blood.”

“You didn’t see the knife?”

He laughed, a dry rustle like autumn leaves, his eyes still shut.  “Yes, oddly enough.  I did see the knife.  It just…didn’t stop me.  How stupid is that?”  He worked his eyes open and smiled at her.  “Any other day, I would have tripped over my damn feet and fallen over until my brain caught up, but no.  I jumped right in the pit.  I remember thinking, ‘Wait, knives can cut’, and then there was heat.  No pain, just heat.  I couldn’t breathe.  I fell backwards.  I remember wondering if I was going to break my wings and what would happen to my Beth if I couldn’t hunt for her.”  His voice cracked to dust on the last word and he closed his eyes again.

Olivia watched him rest for a little while, then backed away and let one of the hovering gullan take her place and try to feed him sips of tea.  That proved too painful to watch; she returned to Doru.

He had moved the soaked bedding to a pile beside the pit and arranged Cheyenne on the leather cover.  She looked very little and white, the scars and calluses built by the mountain standing out in stark relief against her sun-starved body.  Doru had combed through her hair with his claws and arranged it in a braid over her shoulder, just as she’d done once for Judith.  Her legs were together, her arms folded in a posture of sleep above the ruined recess of her lower body, which he had tried to stitch together.  Her face, white with death, was still twisted with fury and pain and the eyes would not remain closed.

“Is it all right?” he asked.

She nodded.  She didn’t trust herself to speak.  Her heart was a sick well of sorrow and shame and evil relief that the worst had happened and now things could get better.

“I need something to wrap her in, when I’ve painted her.”  Doru put his hands on his thighs and gazed at the body meditatively.  “I mean to stay with her.  Is there anyone else who will make the grave?”

“I’ll find someone,” she promised.  She laid her hand on his shoulder and he reached up absently to cover her hand with his own. 

“We even called her a beast,” he muttered and shook his horns.  “Is this what you felt when you…slipped on your spikes?”

“Something very similar, I think.”

He released her and crouched lower.  “You had the power somehow to heal the babies.”

She waited.

He turned and looked back at her from the very corner of one eye.  “Did you have the power to kill her?”

“Probably.”

He studied her in silence for a long time, and then looked back into Cheyenne’s still furious face.  “If you had been stronger, if you’d had more people here to draw from…I think you would have tried to heal her.”

She said nothing.

“You don’t understand how incomprehensible this is to us…to all of us.  This thing you call compassion.”  He frowned down at the corpse, running his claws over the leather pit cover as though wishing to cut it, cut anything.  “We’ve indulged it, because you are Vorgullum’s mate.  We believed it made you weak.  I believed that.”

She wanted to touch him again, but something in the tight posture of his body warned her from the attempt.  She could only stand and be silent as he searched the mirror of Cheyenne’s staring eyes.

At last his head bent.  “Go on, Olivia.  Bring me paint for her funereal markings and bindings to cover her with.  And then leave us alone.  If there is such a thing as a soul, hers may still be close.  I have much to apologize for.”

5

Olivia did not exactly ask anyone to prepare a grave for Cheyenne, but she stopped the first male she saw hovering without the women’s tunnels and told him she wanted two gullan to start digging.  He obeyed without hesitation, and Olivia went back to find something she could use as a shroud.

Olivia came only as far as the doorway of the death room.  She passed the paints and a sleeping bag in to Rumm and withdrew to the women’s commons.  She had not been seated long when she realized that Yawa was crouching submissively a short distance away and that Tina was standing beside her.  She lifted her head, folded her hands in her lap, and waited for one or the other to speak.

“Do you want to be alone?” Tina asked. 

Olivia thought about it.  She shivered.  “No.”

Tina and Yawa exchanged a glance.  Tina came and sat beside Olivia on the bench.  Yawa came forward on all fours, and crouched low again when she reached Olivia’s knee. 

“What…What do you think about the babies?” Olivia asked.

Tina hesitated.  “They’re breathing, for now.  Honey, I’m not going to lie.  Even in a hospital, this would be bad.  The boy’s chances are better.  The girl is smaller…more severely scarred…it doesn’t look good for either one of them, but for right now, they’re holding their own.  Can I ask you something?”

Olivia nodded, studying the shadows cast by her feet on the floor.

“How long have you been able to do this stuff?”

“A while.”

When no greater answer was forthcoming, Tina frowned.  “How are you able to do it at all?  I mean, have you
always
been able to do this?”

Olivia contemplated her toes in silence.  After several long seconds had passed, she turned her head and looked Tina wearily in the eye.  “Seriously, you want to know?”

Tina’s brows furrowed slightly.  She nodded, visibly steeling herself.

“I’m fucking the Great Spirit.”

Yawa drew back.

“Is that all?”  Tina hadn’t so much as batted an eye.

“That’s the gist of it.”

“Oh.”  Tina rubbed at the back of her neck. 

“Why?”

“I was kinda hoping this was something I could learn.  I don’t suppose…?”

“No.  The Spirit is willing, as they say, but your flesh is weak.”  Olivia thought about it.  “And Urga would kill you.”

Yawa made a grumble of agreement, still staring at her.

They sat together in silence.  The fire hummed and ate the coals.

Tina said, “Are you going to be okay?”

“I couldn’t do more.  I gave everything I had.  That’s all there was.  I probably could have killed every person in that whole cave, but I couldn’t fix them any better than I did, and it took three other—”  Olivia sat up straight.  “Did I hurt someone?  I did, didn’t I?”

“Bodual passed out, but he’s okay now.  I didn’t see who the other two were, but they walked out by themselves, so I guess they’re all right.  A little shaky, but all right.”  Tina put her hand on Olivia’s knee and squeezed.  “And the babies are alive now.  Every hour, their chances get better.  We’ll be taking it day by day for a long time, but if we can get them to eat and keep them warm, they might have a chance.”