Olivia (15 page)

It was kind of a stupid question.  Olivia picked at the edge of her sleeping bag/tunic and wished she could think of a better one.  “I know how that all sounded,” she said at last.  “I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed, too.  But no one’s going to kill us.”

The blonde pulled up her knees and wrapped her arms around them, drawing herself into an even smaller and more miserable-looking huddle.  “You know, I don’t know what it was like for you guys, but I’m actually a great big nothing.  The week before this all happened, I lost my fry-dipping job and my purse on the same day.  By the time I got home, someone had cleaned out my bank account and maxed all my credit cards.  I was already behind on the rent and I had nowhere else to go!  I was out every day looking for work and the only offers I got was fifty bucks for a blowjob.”  She uttered a high, angry laugh.  “I actually had to think about it before I told him to fuck off, you know?  When I got kidnapped out of that, I was glad!  I mean, I’m aware that I was, like, plastered at the time, but still!”

“Is she all right?” called the gulla in his own language.  “I don’t speak her words.  Tell me what she’s saying!”

“She thinks you’re angry with her,” Olivia improvised.

“Angry?  I’ve never been angry with her, never!  Tell her not to be afraid of me!” he cried, both arms outstretched and pleading.  “She’s my mate!”

Olivia touched the blonde’s knee.  “He’s worried about you.”

“I know.”  The blonde looked at him and swiped at her cheeks.  “Look at him,” she said dully, staring at the gulla staring anxiously back at her.  “He’s been nothing but nice to me.  When I got here and I was, you know, sick…he took care of me.  I could like him, you know?  If that makes me a traitor or whatever, I don’t care!  It’s like you said, if this is it, I don’t want to live the rest of my life just
hating
someone!”  And then she started crying again, not as hard as before, but hard enough to bring the distressed gulla several steps forward and back again in an anxious dance.  “I’m trying, okay?  I’m trying to figure all this out, I’m trying to fit in, but I can’t have
babies
!”

“It won’t be so bad as that,” Olivia said in what she hoped was a soothing manner.  “Tina’s wrong.  No one’s going to kill us.  Look at him!  Look how worried he is!”  She tried to gesture back at the male, but the blonde shook her head furiously and pulled Olivia closer.

“I can’t get pregnant,” she insisted.  “I don’t mean I don’t want to or anything, I mean I can’t!  I…I…oh God, I had an abortion!  And not, you know, not by a real doctor. I’m all messed up now.”  She pulled away, looking wetly into Olivia’s stunned eyes.  “What will he do when he realizes I’m no good to him?”  She started crying harder, but Olivia could not think of a single comforting thing to say.

“What did she say?” called the gulla.  “Why is she still crying?  Did she hurt herself when she fell?”

“Listen to me, you’ve got to get a hold of yourself,” Olivia hissed.  “What’s your name?  Talk to me.”

“Beth, Bethie.”  The blonde sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve.  “Elizabeth Berpins.”

“Pull yourself together, he’s getting nervous.  I told him you were tired out from all the excitement, but if you keep having hysterics, he’s going to think you hurt yourself.”  Olivia ripped a strip of canvas off a tattered tent to blow her nose into. “Or that one of the others hit you or something,” she added.  “You don’t want to get them in trouble, do you?”

That silenced the blonde.  She held the canvas in trembling hands, her face streaked with tears.

“Clean yourself up,” Olivia commanded.  “Smile at him.”

Beth wiped her face and blew her nose, then peered around Olivia’s shoulders and offered the gulla a watery, quivering smile.

“Is she all right now?” he asked, obviously relieved.  “Does she know I won’t harm her?”

“Did you understand any of that?” Olivia asked.

“No.”  The blonde sat up, wringing her rough handkerchief in her hands.  “Sometimes I can kind of figure him out if he talks slow and points at things, but not much.”  She uttered a shaky laugh.  “I took Spanish for three years, and I can’t even order a taco!  God, I’m so useless!”  She began to fold under again, but Olivia gave her a quick, furtive pinch and Beth straightened up.

“First of all,” Olivia said, “not even they know if it’s possible for us to have kids together.  Secondly, even if it is possible, no one knows if the whole…hybrid vigor thing is actually going to work.  Finally, who’s going to know if it’s you or him having the problem?  Pull yourself together, no one’s in any immediate danger.”

Beth sniffed, thought about it, and relaxed a little.  It wasn’t much, but it was encouraging.  “I guess I don’t have to tell him right away,” she said hesitantly.

“You may not have to tell him at all.”  Olivia gave her a pat on the arm.  “But for God’s sake, they’re not going to kill us!”

“Are you sure?”

Was she sure?  Olivia thought about it and decided that she was.  For a dumb reason, maybe, but it still felt true.  “My…”  It didn’t feel right calling him her captor when she was trying to reassure someone.  “My guy says they won’t hurt us.  I believe him.”

“That’s what he says.”  Beth looked toward the gulla pacing at the foot of the pit.  “And I believe him, too.”  She sniffed some more, wiped her eyes.

“Will she let me over there?” he asked timidly.

Olivia relayed the question and Beth nodded and held out her arms.  He crept cautiously to her and took her up as gently as a child.  She sniffled and clung to him, and he patted her back and folded his wings around her as though walling her off from the big, bad world.

Olivia sat and watched, feeling uneasy and a little lonely. For Beth, the problem was over, but for Olivia, the questions remained. 

8

Olivia’s captor came, as promised, later.  Unfortunately, he apparently meant much later.  Olivia passed the day with Beth in the cramped quarters she shared with her gullan guardian trying not to look either impatient or bored, but no one came for her.  She had to share their loaf of hard bread at meal times, share the crude toilet facilities (which amounted to a bucket half-filled with ashes), and eventually, share their sleeping pit, too thinly padded with musty goat-skins and canvas tents to be comfortable.

It wasn’t comfortable for any of them, really.  Very aware of Olivia’s presence, he was careful not to remove his loincloth, although she could imagine how awkward it must be to sleep in.  He and Beth snuggled up together in the warmest sleeping bag, as far from Olivia as possible without physically pushing her out of the pit, while she tried to find a way to fall asleep without the gentle weight and warmth of a gullan wing draped over her.

In the dark of that unrestful night, she finally got up, tripped loudly over a camping cooler, stubbed her toe on a stone bench, and then walked directly into a wall trying to find the bathroom that wasn’t even there.  Her muffled yelp of pain and subsequent curses were relatively restrained, but before the end, light flared in the darkness as Beth’s captor thumbed a Zippo and held it up to peer at her.  Light should have helped, but instead, the sudden reassertion of reality over where she thought she was disorientated her even further; she backed up into the same stupid cooler and fell flailing into the pit.

Beth slept right through it.

“Are you all right?” the gulla asked drowsily, already beginning to slump back into the pit, although he made an effort at holding the lighter higher.

“I keep forgetting where I am.  Can you light a candle for me?  And leave it lit?  Just in case?”

He grunted and rolled over, reaching to hook a taper from its setting on a nearby bench, and Beth murmured and groped for him.  Her little hand found his thigh and clenched on it, very much as a child will do when seeking Teddy in her sleep.  The gulla gave her a pat as he lit the candle, then flicked the Zippo shut and settled himself against his human once more.  “Better?” he mumbled, braiding his limbs through Beth’s with a complete lack of self-consciousness.

“Much.  Thank you.” 

She waited uncomfortably as long as she could stand to, then picked up the bucket and moved it to the wall for what little privacy that allotted her.  She thought he was sleeping when she returned, but as she crawled back under her goat-skin, he roused himself to ask, “Are you cold?”

Honesty warred with tact.  Tact won.

“No, I’m fine,” she said, and tried to wrap herself a little more snugly in her goat and part of a nylon tent.

He grunted again, then pried his eyes open and peered at her.  “You are different from my Beth,” he said, sounding somewhat more awake.  “Is she younger than you?”

“I think she is, yes.”

“She’s so small,” he observed.  “And not strong.  I’ve been trying to teach her how to speak, but she isn’t learning.”  He studied Beth in silence for a short while, then looked back up at Olivia.  “Will her hair grow dark like yours when she’s grown?” he asked.

“No.  Humans look different.  That’s how we tell each other apart.”

His head tipped.  “But you all sound different.  You all smell different.”

“Humans don’t hear as well as you gullan, and we have trouble with smells.”

He grunted, dropping his head back into the bedding and nuzzling Beth’s neck until she rolled over and threw an arm around him.  “I did wonder,” he muttered.  “You have such little noses.  How young…”  He yawned, rubbed at his snout, and then apparently forgot the rest of the question and simply went back to sleep.

After many cramped, cold, envious minutes, Olivia finally joined him.

9

She woke again to the sound of gullan voices.  She opened her eyes and found herself alone in the pit with Beth, who was still sleeping soundly.  Olivia turned her head and saw her captor seated on a bench with a lantern on the floor between his feet.  Across from him, lacking another bench, Beth’s captor crouched, elbows on knees and wings slightly fanned for balance. 

“It sounded that way, but what do I know?  I don’t speak human,” Beth’s male was saying.  “I know that she was worried about something, but I don’t know what.  Your Olivia said it was because she thought I would be angry with her, but I think she was lying.”

Olivia’s captor made a non-committal sound in the back of his throat.

“She was obviously trying to calm Beth down about something, though.  I just wish I knew what.  She’s been scared like that before, but I thought that storm had blown by.”

“Pregnant women can be nervous without cause.”

“That isn’t it,” Beth’s captor said.  “Murgull came by only yesterday.  She says women have a scent when they spark.  Beth doesn’t have it.”

“A scent,” murmured Olivia’s captor, amused.

“I don’t know any of that woman stuff,” the other grumbled.  “If old Murgull told me sparking women shed their wings and feathered nests with them, I would have to believe her.  Old Murgull says males can’t smell mother-scent anyway.  She says season-musk is all we can smell.”

“Murgull may be right,” Olivia’s captor said, but he was no longer smiling.  “When my Olivia came into her season, I took her like a rutting goat.  I thought I would have the wit at least to explain to her, but Great Spirit!  Her scent struck me like a spear.  Like ten spears!  We thrashed all day and night and then some, but her blood came all the same.”

Olivia was aghast.  She had no idea that he could smell her period.  And she had thought she was being so clever, washing out the bloody rags in secret every morning, so careful not to leave a mark around the chambers.  And he knew!  The whole time, he knew!

“Discouraging,” the other gulla was saying.

“Worse than that.  I think perhaps she didn’t know she was in season.”

Beth’s mate tipped his head to regard Olivia’s captor with a dubious eye.  “How is that even possible?”

“I don’t pretend to know.  But she didn’t seem to know what was happening and I…I was not kind.”  He shook his horns and grunted. 

“My Beth hasn’t gone into season yet.”  He glanced worriedly back at the pit.  “If she doesn’t know she’s having one, how am I going to explain to her?  We couple,” he added, giving the base of his horns a self-conscious rub.  “She knows about that, but—”

“It is not the same,” Olivia’s captor agreed grimly.  “Most of the others have had a season by now.  It hasn’t gone well for any of them.  That scent…If you think it will be like the scent of our women, prepare yourself for a shock.”

“I don’t want to hurt her.  Maybe I should send her to the tunnels for her first—”

“No.”  Olivia’s captor reached out and grasped the other’s shoulder in a reassuring, if preoccupied, grip.  “Think of healthy young,” he said.

Still frowning nervously in Beth’s direction, the other male gave his wings a nervous flutter.  “Old Murgull says it might not happen right away no matter what we do.  She says when a woman feels threatened, it can make her belly hard, so she can’t catch sparks.  However, I remind you of what I know of females and feathering nests,” he added with a trace of irony.

“That would make sense,” mused Olivia’s captor.  “Then, if the threat is a drought or famine, they could not bear a child they couldn’t feed.  Hm.” 

“So maybe I should take my Beth to the tunnels,” the other persisted.  “Just until she understands.”

“No.”

“But if it won’t work anyway—”

“We don’t know that.  If there’s even the slightest chance she could spark…”  Olivia’s captor set his shoulders stiffly, staring down the other gulla with a hard look that Olivia knew only too well.  “You will keep her with you for her season.”

“I don’t want to hurt her,
vorgullum
!”

“You’ll do what you have to do,” he said.

“
Vorgullum
!”

“You will do,” he said, very softly, “what you have to do.”

Vorgullum.  That wasn’t just another unfamiliar gullan word.  That was his name!  Olivia’s heart gave an extra-hard lurch before resuming its steady beat.  His name.  She knew his name!  He was Vorgullum!

She must have made a sound, because the voices were instantly silent, listening.  She feigned sleep, lying as still as she could.  Vorgullum.