Olivia (57 page)

She nodded, keeping a tight rein on her frustration, knowing he’d make his point eventually.

“Cheyenne does nothing,” Vorgullum said with venom.  “But that is Kodjunn’s problem.  He provides for her; we do not.  Mojo Woman—”  Vorgullum whipped his head aside and spat.  “—does worse than nothing.  Mojo Woman breeds fear and uncertainty among the weak-minded and there are more of those among us than I would like, but again, she is Grunn’s mate and he speaks for her for some
goddamn
reason I cannot fathom.”  The human curse rolled off his tongue without him seeming to realize it.  “Victoria did nothing, and Thugg, having more sense than Grunn and less patience than Kodjunn, refused to tolerate it.  It has been now five moons since the arrival of humans in Hollow Mountain; do you deny she had every opportunity to put aside her anger and make herself tribe?”

“You say that like it’s easy!” she accused.  “You say that like all she had to do was wake up one night and say, ‘You know, I think I’m okay with this now!  Time to be tribe!’”

His face darkened with real anger and she shut her mouth with an effort.  “Karen,” he growled, “despises Bodual.  Still, she works.  Not well and not often, but she works.  Sarabee has never spoken one word of our language, but she works.  Carla has locked herself in the women’s tunnels rather than attend a hunters’ feast with Sutung, but she works.  I don’t care if Victoria ever rises from her pit and showers down stars and feathers of joy, but she
eats
our food and she
wears
our coverings and she will give
something
back!”

“That’s cruel!”

“That is life!  There are eighty males in this mountain; fifteen of them now have mates and of that number, only six have mates with whom they have some friendship.  There are damned few barren females, and all but four are older than Kurlun!  Yawa has made a point of working in other ways, and that leaves three females,
three
, to be mate to the entire tribe!  It was not so bad before you came, because all males bore the same burden.  But now, it’s different, and all the old frustrations are coming back to the surface and
I will not have death bred in this mountain
!” he finished at a shout. 

When she flinched back he lowered his voice, but his chest was heaving and his eyes showed the whites with rage.  “Now there are four females, and yes, one of them is human, and that will help.  Do you think they came to her in fours and fives and use her like…”  He groped for an analogy and found none.  “They don’t.  They bring her food and that is all.  If she doesn’t want to take their food, she has only to get her own, or earn her own with honest labor.  She
chooses
to couple with males for the things they give her.”

“Of course she chooses that!” Olivia exploded.  “She can’t hunt!  She can’t climb out to pick her own berries!  What else can she do?  Would you have her die of hunger just to have something safe to fuck?”

“Yes!” he roared back.

They stared at each other, both breathing hard.

“All right,” she said at last, shaking with anger.  “All right.  Okay.”

He straightened, opening his wings and lowering his horns in a deepening posture of aggression.  “Go,” he ordered.  “Now.  Go and have some chat with her.  When you return…”  He narrowed his eyes to slits and showed the very tips of his sharp teeth.  “When you return, I will hear your words again.”

Olivia turned on her heel and stalked from the room.

She found her way down to the women’s tunnels in total blackness, her hands clenched tight around her climbing spikes, although she had no need of them.  They made her feel bitterly better.  She met no one, and soon stood before the iron door that locked the tunnels away from the mountain.

She called for Horumn and when the gulla’s misshapen and snarling face appeared, Olivia said, “I want to see Victoria.”

Horumn let her in and led her to a small chamber, little more than an alcove at the end of a long and twisted tunnel.  There was a single candle burning here, a single bench.  It smelled of smoky tallow and sex.  It had no other furnishings, no other purpose. 

“Oh.”

Olivia turned at the sound of the unfamiliar voice, and at first, even when she saw Victoria, she didn’t recognize her.  The older woman’s rich black hair had gone gray in broad streaks and hung listlessly to her shoulders; clean and well-brushed, but dull and lifeless all the same.  Victoria’s face looked haggard; her eyes were huge and dark but only vaguely unhappy.

“Horumn didn’t say it was you,” Victoria said after a moment.  “She just said…someone…”  She lifted and dropped her hand, then stood there and waited.

“Vorgullum wanted me to see you.”

“Oh.”  A long silence followed, not awkward or bitter, only empty.  “How long have I been here?  Do you know?”

“About a month.”

“Are you…still…”  Victoria trailed off, looked around questioningly, then looked up again.  “Still pregnant?”

“Yes.  Are you…getting enough to eat?”

“They feed me.  The ones that come here.  It was just…easier.” 

“How…How often—”  She could think of no way to end the question.

“I don’t know.  It was every day at first, but not…not so much anymore.  But they feed me a little, just in case.  And they give me things.  I have some furs now and…some…things.”

Olivia’s stomach knotted.  “Are they drugging you?” she asked.

Victoria blinked slowly, owlishly.  “It helps.”

“Do you want me to get you out of here?”  She could not believe she was asking this, but was stunned when Victoria shook her head.

“No.  This is…best.  I don’t have to do anything.  I don’t have to…talk to them or…sit with them.  I don’t have to look at them if I don’t want to.  I just…It’s not so bad.  Horumn gives me something for the pain, you know, the…the pain.  I just lie there and they feed me.”

Victoria lowered herself onto a bench and studied her hands for a long time.  “I was…at High Hill apartments,” she said suddenly, with difficulty.  She reached up to wipe at her staring eyes, but they were dry.  “Do you remember?  I had a house in the Palisades, but I was…at High Hill that night.”

“I’m sorry,” Olivia whispered, but Victoria shook her head.

“It was my…revenge.  My husband has an apartment in Bridgeport where he goes when he wants to…take a secretary home.  I rented the apartment at High Hill to go…slumming in.  I wanted him to find out.  And when he did, he didn’t care.  I got mad and I spent the whole day there, trying to find someone…to come and sleep with me.  No one came.  No one came.  But they came.  That’s who came.”

“I could get you out of here,” Olivia said again, feeling her eyes well up with tears.  “I’d feed you.  I’d find a way.”

Victoria shook her head, very slowly, very deliberately.  “I’m okay.  I’m fine.  I don’t want to have to look at them.  I can just stay in my room all day if I want to.  Vorung brings me magazines, but I don’t have to look at him.  Murgull gives me the drink and I just…think of other things.  I don’t have to really be here.  I don’t have to be anywhere.  I’m okay, Olivia.  I’m okay.”

Horumn’s ugly face poked around the corner.  “Rummanal is here,” she grunted.  “Do you want to see him?”

“I can always say no, you know,” Victoria explained, still in that disconnected, toneless voice.  “They told me that.  I can always say no.  It’s all right.  This is so much better.  I’m fine.”  Without taking her eyes off Olivia, she added, “I can see Rummanal.  Olivia is leaving.”

Olivia’s feet carried her forward past Victoria, who continued to stand in the mouth of the tunnel, facing the empty room.  Past Horumn, who watched her go with strangely soft and knowing eyes.  Past the gulla who stood in the waiting place beyond the door with a bundle of something meaty in one hand.

Back to Vorgullum, who stood before the fire and did not look up when she came into the room and dropped onto a bench.

“As you would have me do, Olivia,” he said.  He sounded depressed.

“She says she doesn’t want to go.”  Olivia let her climbing spikes fall to the floor in a clatter of iron.  “You broke her!” she cried out.

“I know.”  He watched the fire lap lazily over the logs.  “Do you despise me for it?”

She opened her mouth without any idea of what she was going to say, and heard, “No.”

He exhaled a knot of tension; still he did not look at her.  “Are we still friends?” he asked, and his voice cracked slightly on the last word.

Olivia hunted inside herself in anguish, realized with both dismay and relief that they were, and said so in a strengthless whisper.

She sat and he stood, and neither one looked at the other or spoke another word until dawn.

5

Olivia rolled over in the pit and rubbed up against a hard rock.  “Muh?” she said muzzily, fumbling around in the bedding.  She couldn’t find anything, rolled back, and promptly landed on the rock again.  “The hell?”

Vorgullum growled.

“What have you got in the pit?” she mumbled, probing down through the layers of bedding.

“A squeaking mouse,” he growled.  “Who should know better than to wake a sleeping gulla.”

“There’s a rock in the bed.”

“Where?”  He lifted his head and tracked her hand, glaring with sleep.  “Olivia,” he said, watching her rake through the jumble of sleeping bags.  “Olivia, my wise Olivia, you are hunting your own belly.”

“What?”  She peered at him, then rolled onto her back and peered down at her stomach, still flat, to her own eyes at least.  “No I’m not!”

“Is the rock still there when you lie on your back?”

Olivia wriggled experimentally.  “No.”

He grunted, dropped his head back onto his arm.

Olivia rolled over cautiously, felt the hard lump immediately press back into her belly.  “Vorgullum,” she said, a note of alarm sounding in her voice.

He growled again.

“Vorgullum, I’m having a baby.”

“Imagine that.”

She lay there, eyes wide, one hand pressed to the lump, which in turn pressed into her stomach.  Then she flung back the covers and started to get up.

Vorgullum ground out a heart-felt groan.  “What are you doing now?”

“Nothing.  I have to walk around or something.  I just realized I’m pregnant.”

He absorbed that while she dressed, then sat up and really looked at her.  “You’re frightened,” he said, frowning.  “Olivia, come here.”

She started to pace away, came back, and let her draw him down against his broad, hot chest.  She combed her fingers lightly through his pelt. 
Soft as otter
, she thought. 
My baby will have fur like that.  What if he doesn’t
?

“Doesn’t what?” Vorgullum murmured against her hair.

She jerked hard in his arms, which tightened firmly around her.  She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud, was reluctant to repeat her fears.

“What if he does not what?” Vorgullum said again, patiently.

“What if he doesn’t have fur?” she whispered.  “What if…he doesn’t have horns or…wings…or whatever.”

He stroked her hair and hummed.  “You have no fur and no wings and you are tribe.  You are my Olivia and you are beautiful in my eyes.  My son will be fine, whether he has my horns or your white frog-skin.”  He laughed.  “Truth, Olivia, I no longer care what the child looks like as long as his body is fit and his mind is strong.  If he has no wings, what matter?  He can hunt on the ground.”

“It matters,” she insisted.  “And what if…what if he’s even worse than…”  She shuddered against him.

“What if he’s perfect?  Think how foolish you’ll feel.”  He rubbed her back and released her, smiling crookedly into her eyes.  “Kurlun says his Amy is having these same fears.  She insists she will not give birth at all if it intends to come with horns.  She will carry it until it is grown.”  He shook his head at the absurdity of humans.  “Someone should warn Burgelbun.”

Because Sarah B. was now pregnant as well, according to Murgull.  The third to conceive, and not even two whole months after Amy.  It was as if Olivia had opened some sort of metaphysical door.  Who knew?  Maybe by the time little Somurg was born, all the humans would be pregnant.

And if the birth went horribly wrong, they would all know what was coming when their own time came due.

God, why was she
thinking
like that?

Olivia chewed her lip as he settled back in the pit, then stood up and started to dress.

He muffled an exasperated bellow against a fold of her sleeping bag.  “Great Spirit, woman!  It’s the middle of the night!  Come back to my pit!”

“I have to do something,” she insisted.  “I’m not just going to lie there and worry about this.”

“No,” he grumbled, already sprawling out over her side of the bed.  “You’re going to pace yourself into exhaustion worrying about it, and then sleep all day.  Again.”  He started muttering, but degenerated gradually into snores.

Olivia climbed down the chute and started down the mainway towards the women’s tunnels.  If Murgull was awake, as she often was even at these early hours, she would occupy her mind with a few lessons in gullan medicine.  If not, well, the walk there and back would still do her good. 

But as she passed the commons, she was puzzled to see faint glimmers of light, and hear muted human voices.  When curiosity drew her in, she saw a loose knot of perhaps ten humans, apparently led by Amy and Tina, engaged in very heated, very serious debate.

“What’s going on?” she whispered, joining them.

The three women nearest her jumped up with startled little screeches and Tobi actually leaped back and drew a knife before she saw who it was.

“Fucking
Christ
!” Tobi gasped.  “Don’t you ever sneak up on—what are you doing here?” she demanded.  “This is a secret meeting, and you weren’t invited!”

Stung, Olivia backed up a pace, only to have Tina reach out and smack Tobi on the side of the head.

“What’s the matter with you?  Come on in, Olivia.”

Olivia did, still hurt, unable to keep from noticing the distinct aura of distrust with which the others were viewing her.  “What’s going on?” she asked again, hesitantly.