Olivia (136 page)

She had to laugh a little.  “I can’t believe you actually need me to point this out after all this time we’ve spent together, but people don’t do only the things that would make sense to you.”

He frowned, studying her through narrowed eyes. The silence lasted for a very long time, and if Kodjunn had anything he wanted to say, the Great Spirit would not relinquish control enough to let it be heard. She was beginning to think she’d insulted him and she’d better find a way to apologize when he said, “
This is true.  And yet I strangely find that I cannot regret this.  You are, after all, one of those things which I cannot anticipate
.”  He looked away, his brows drawing darkly together as he stared into the west.  “
And Bahgree is another.  Come, Olivia.  We have yet a few hours of darkness.  Let us not waste them in talk
.”

2

They went on.  Every minute there was darkness to hide them, they were moving.  When the sky began to grey up, they went to ground.  There was always someplace waiting to take them in—abandoned cabins, musty caves, close-knit groves of trees, once even an empty gulla-cave—and always game to be had.  The Great Spirit allowed them a little time to eat, but then expected Kodjunn to take himself away so that her real work could begin.

Any power she’d managed to pour into her reserves had been utterly depleted on the night of Urga’s attack.  She was starting over again, if not exactly from Square One, and she knew she was well behind where she needed to be if she was going to fight anyone at this unknown river they were destined to cross.  The Great Spirit worked at her for hours in sex entirely without pleasure, most often without even the little touches of affection he had been starting to adopt.  He would not let her use her power expect to heal whatever damage he did in the act; his cumming was a luxury he would not allow.  Sex was all that occupied him until night fell and their endless flight resumed.

The weather got warmer, marginally at first, and then with humid, breath-stealing intensity.  The trees were replaced by vast cattle-covered flatlands, and then by trees again—not the pines and firs and maples of the Northwest, but strange, boggy, vine-covered jungle trees.  She didn’t need to sleep, but she wished she could anyway.  There was no rest in the way she renewed herself, nothing to think about but what was coming.

She didn’t know where they were anymore.  Not on the Western coast, that was for sure.  Not in the U.S. maybe.  Kodjunn refused to fly close enough to humanity to see a road-sign or stumble on a newspaper, and when she asked the Great Spirit where they were going, he could only give her the most oblique descriptions:  The Pool Outside of Time, he would say, or the Birthing Place, or the Forgotten Waters.  Oh well.  She could hardly expect him to know the names humans gave their cities when he didn’t even know how to hold the spear he himself had conjured up.  She supposed it didn’t matter, really.  They’d be there soon enough, and names would be pretty pointless then. 

There was less and less talk the closer they came to their destination.  Kodjunn was rarely out of the Great Spirit’s grip and while he was there, his golden eyes were always fixed on the world below, searching for Bahgree in every river they passed over.  There were a lot of rivers.

While he covered the ground, Olivia watched the skies, where Urga’s moon grew sullenly fuller day by day.  Somewhere, she knew, the goddess was still furious, unforgiving, denied her monthly conception and festering with hate.  She had no friend up there anymore, if ever she’d had one at all.

She stopped counting the days and just watched the moon, marking their passage by Urga’s light and when she was not quite half-full, they stopped for the day on a muggy hillock under overgrown palms, and the Great Spirit said, “
Tomorrow
.”

She looked at him, her heart suddenly pounding and her breath too short.  “Are you sure?” she asked.

He gave her a look and she ducked away from it, staring out over the jungle and trying to see the ocean in the distance or smell it on the wind.  There was nothing.

“
Bahgree flows beneath our feet
,” the Great Spirit said.  “
Tomorrow, we must cross her River before we come to the shore where her energies are bound.  She will attack us.  She must.  It is the last opportunity she has before you become what she has been.  Prepare yourself.  The end is nigh upon us
.”

The end.  One more day.  Perhaps not even a whole day, but just a few hours.  Before midnight, this could all be over.  Before midnight, she could be changed.

She checked her watch, wanting to see how much time she had to be human, but then just sat, staring at the crystal face with its twelve diamond chips.  Vorgullum had stolen it for her, his first real gift.  It was the only thing she had to remind her of him, the only piece of that life she carried with her.  She had nothing else—nothing of Amy, of Somurg, or Doru or Bodual, of her own self.  Just this five-thousand dollar watch…and it had stopped.

“
Olivia
.”  The Great Spirit reached out Kodjunn’s hand to brush at her cheek.  “
Why do you cry
?”

“Am I crying?”  She wiped at her eyes and sure enough, they were wet.  “I guess…I’m sad.  I’m scared.  It’s easy to do things when you don’t have time to think about the consequences.  I just don’t know if I can sit here all day, knowing everything that’s going to end and not knowing what comes after.”

She expected him to give her that baffled frown he did so well, or perhaps attempt to comfort her with one of his outrageously inappropriate macho observations on inherent female weakness.  She tried to be ready for it, tried to preemptively quash any offense before he blithely passed it out.

He surprised her.  Sort of.

“
You do not always need to be strong.  Make your woman’s tears, Olivia.  We will go on when you are done
.”

Considering the source, that was positively awash with sensitivity.

And then he did something even more surprising:  He left them alone.

Kodjunn sagged, exhausted as he always was after the night’s flight, but he wasn’t quick to stagger away so that the Great Spirit could return.  Instead, groaning, he lowered himself to the ground and stretched out over the damp, coarse grass.

It was the last night and Olivia knew this moment of rest couldn’t last, but she let that go for now.  She let it go, pretended to believe that there was nothing coming and nothing else to do but lie down beside him and snuggle up under his outstretched wing.  She cried until she was done with crying.  He put his arm around her and the sun came up over both of them.

“I’m sorry, Olivia,” he said at last, rousing her out of her drowse.

“I thought you were sleeping.”  She wiped self-consciously at her dry eyes.  “Why are you sorry?  None of this is your fault…Like fault matters at this point,” she said with a sigh.  “Like it could be anyone’s fault.  It’s like asking whose fault the flu is or who was to blame for Pompeii.  I should be glad there’s an end to it at all.  At least, I should be honored that I’m part of it.”

“Should you?”

“I used to have this teacher in school,” Olivia said, lapsing in and out of English without being aware of it.  Kodjunn didn’t interrupt her; she was scarcely aware of him either.  She’d be saying this even if she was alone.  Some thoughts needed to be heard out loud, that was all.  “My sociology professor, he of the
Gilligan’s Island
craze.  No matter what he would be on about that day—race or sex or politics—when it came down to the end of it, he would always turn it back on us.  ‘No one person can every really stop these problems,’ he’d say.  ‘But would you, if you could?  Would you die if it meant ending the race wars or bringing peace to the Middle East?  Would you really step up if meant your suffering and your death would make things better?’”

Kodjunn listened, but didn’t answer.  She rolled over to check his eyes, but they were still black, still his.

“When it comes right down to it,” she said hesitantly, “I didn’t step up.  I was pushed into this.  Sure, I stayed after he gave me a choice, but that could be my own stubborn pride wanting to be in control.  I don’t want to be here, Kodjunn.  I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to me.”

“Will you go on?” he asked.

“Yes.”  She shivered, glancing against her will towards the moon.  “But I don’t think that means anything.  I’m the go-along sort.”

He laughed at her.

“It’s true.  My God, everything that you people think is so brave about me is due entirely to me just…going along.”

“Not everything.”  He put his hand on her belly and rubbed lightly.  “But even if it was…is not peace-making worthy of some regard?  Go along, you say, but you don’t go along in the direction we have always gone.  You go along to make things better, but I would be here no matter what he asked of me.  Not because I believed in the quest, but only because the Great Spirit appeared to me, because he gave a command and I could only obey.  I have given him my body.  I have given him my life. 
That
is going along, Olivia, and when it is done, I will return to the mountain.  I will go along with my leader’s will and take a second human female to be my mate and live in horror of me.  I will raise the children of my first…whose captivity surely worked to kill her.  But when I paint the story of this journey in our archives, I will make you radiant, Olivia.  I will make you tall.  I will tell every generation to follow us that you were the courage and the goodness that delivered us from our own shadows.  And perhaps we will go along in your path.  Perhaps we will be better.”

I thought such evil of this man once
, Olivia thought, laying her hand over his where it rested on her body.  It was so impossible to imagine how she could have ever seen a murderer or a demon in the face that looked down at her now with such love.

“I should go,” Kodjunn said, not moving.  “He needs to be with you.”

She rolled onto her side, cupping his cheek in her hand.  “I’d rather be with you once more.  Just once more.”

“I’ll have my time with you,” Kodjunn said, stroking at her hair.  “We’re nearly there, to the place I’ve been dreaming of.  I’ll have my time with you there and keep the memory with me for the rest of my days.  But he needs you now.”

He started to rise.  On impulse, Olivia caught her, pulled him back down, kissed him.  His body settled slowly atop her, relaxing over her, covering her with his warmth, his weight, his love.  But the kiss was all he gave her, his first kiss, and as clumsy as it was, she wanted it to go on forever.

It didn’t.  He slipped away, smiling, and then the wind of his wings hit her and she was alone, watching the pink sky turn blue.  Her last sunrise as a mortal.

Then the Great Spirit was there, surrounded by his own radiance and towering over her like, well, a god.  He turned his burning eyes down on her, then out at the rising sun.  He waited, not watching her, while she undressed.  It wasn’t like him; usually, he was on her the instant he arrived, making the most of every minute.  To have him staring down the horizon when she was naked at his feet unsettled her.

“
Tomorrow
,” he said again.  “
Are you prepared
?”

The Great Spirit did not rhetorical questions.  Olivia took stock of herself, pushing out of her body to examine the brightness of her power.  From here, she could see the glittering pinpoints of humanity all around her.  She could see Kodjunn in the distance, his colors fading as he slept.  She could see a dim rush deep underground: Bahgree, clinging as close as she could come.  She could see the living spark of every bird and beast surrounding them, and over it all, a faint golden haze that might have been the living soul of Earth itself.  From here, the whole world was a muscle that Olivia could flex, if she wanted to.

She dropped down into her body.  “I think so.”

“
There will be battle when we cross the River.  You must not engage her then.  You must be at your fullest when we come to the pool where her power is bound.  Let me combat the River Woman
.”  He paused, then glanced at her with the barest hint of a smile.  “
I know it is in your nature to fight.  I trust you will be able to restrain yourself
.”

“I’ll try.”

His eyes dipped, lingering on their slow travels down to her naked sex.  With a throaty rumble, he knelt and slipped his finger into her, which was as close as he ever came to foreplay without encouragement from her.  She didn’t mind this time.  It was far more familiar than his unnerving meditation had been and Olivia did not protest it, only spread her legs and watched his smile broaden as he tested her.

“
You are very strong
,” he said, catching her leg and moving it impersonally around him so that he could enter her.  “
I have chosen Bahgree’s successor well.  Fear nothing, Olivia.  You shall survive tomorrow’s ordeal and emerge a goddess.  My children shall be restored.  All will be well
.”

He concluded his words of comfort with a self-congratulatory ejaculation and settled atop her, thrumming to himself as he went about his work.  That was how it was for him:  simplicity and sex.

Olivia pushed out of her body to that place without time to wait for nightfall.  As an afterthought, she might her body put her arms around him.  Then she turned her spirit face to the sky, where she couldn’t have to watch either the Great Spirit’s empowering copulations or crazed Bahgree’s underground contortions.  She stared past the rising sun into the universe itself, and saw it all.

Tomorrow, he said.  But did one more day mean, really?  She had changed too much already to ever go back again.

3

Her day passed and her night began where the Great Spirit raised himself from her badly-used body and called her name, directing her down into flesh.  Then he was gone, presumably to wake Kodjunn and bring him back for the night’s flight.  Olivia healed her hurts and stood up.  She didn’t need to eat, but Kodjunn would, and anyway, it was difficult not to make some passing effort at a normal routine, to cling to that fantasy for just a little longer.