Olivia (137 page)

But how normal could this hunt be, when she could see the lives around her, even here in this body, all the pale sparks of animal life crawling and flying and dreaming and dying?  She didn’t even need to go to them; at her thought, just a thought, they came to her, submitting to her will like the goats and the elk and the bears that the Great Spirit had sent during their exodus from Hollow Mountain.  The truly scary thing was, she didn’t need to use her power for this.  She had absorbed enough of the Great Spirit’s essence for it to become natural, as much as breathing. 

So she took two of the small wood ducks that sat at her feet and, her will satisfied, the others fled in squawking animal distress.  Fire was beyond her—she hoped it was still beyond her—and so she cleaned her kills and waited for Kodjunn.

The Great Spirit did not at first understand the need.  She watched him take stock of his host, and then, with an expression that was half endearing concern and half infuriating impatience, he ignited the ground and took himself away to let Kodjunn eat.

The ducks cooked.  Kodjunn limped to a tree, cut one of the dangling vines, and drank from it, wincing at the bitterness of the juice.  He stretched his wings, winced again, and found himself another vine.

“How are you holding out?” Olivia asked, knowing it was a foolish question.

He was kind enough not to make fun of her, even with a glance.  “Well.  I thought of what you said.”

“What did I say?” Olivia asked, surprised.

“That you thought you should be honored to be a part of all this.  I wondered on that last night, in my dreams, on waking.”

“Wondered if you were?”

“Wondered
why
I was,” Kodjunn corrected, smiling.  “I already knew I felt honored.  Was it blind of me, that was the question.  After all of this, all that I have been a part of, is it foolish of me to feel honor when I am taken by the Great Spirit, when I am used in this small role, to carry Olivia to the renewal of my kind?”

Her name in his mouth was soft, reverent as a blessing.  She smiled, but her belly was hard and cold.  “You make me ashamed,” she said.  “It should be an honor, I know it should be.  It’s my own son I’m saving, isn’t it?  But…”

Kodjunn returned to the fire and hunkered to turn the ducks, seeming untroubled by her uncomfortable lapse into silence.  “It’s all right,” he said.  “I understand.”

“You know, I doubt that.”

“Did you never imagine yourself as part of some great quest in your youth?  I know I did.”

“Of course,” she admitted.  Ridiculous fantasies that they were, filled with knights and wizardry in her pre-teens, handsome rebels and post-apocalyptic dangers after that, and ultimately the very banal daydreams of moderate wealth, charm, and maybe a motorcycle.

“This can’t be the part you thought you’d play,” Kodjunn continued.  “Or how you thought you’d play it.”

“Well, no.  But then, I didn’t even know what sex was until I was twelve.”

That clearly surprised him, but with an effort, he shook it off.  “I mean to say, in my own youth, the adventures I dreamed of taking were a hero’s.  There were demons to face and vanquish, dangers to survive, enemies to combat—”  He shrugged, dipping his horns in a gullan blush.  “Females to woo and mate with.  You know.  Things to do.  If not terrifically imaginative, at least they were dreams of action.”

“I get you.”

“Your dreams must have been the same,” he went on, his attention taken by spitting duck fat.  “Or better.  Your reality is so fierce, I can only guess what your fancies were like.”

Olivia made a non-committal sort of sound, watching him.  She was beginning to see what he was trying to say, but she couldn’t really agree.  She’d never been the hero, even of her own childish adventures.  She really was the go-along sort.

In the mountain, she’d somehow become a hero.  God alone knew how that had happened, but she had.  She’d been a leader, a champion, even a warrior on occasion.  She hadn’t always liked it, but she had gotten used to it.  And now, she was taking that power and all she had learned to do with it…was to be a concubine to the most insufferably chauvinistic being she could ever imagine.  Sure, she was breaking curses and saving lives, but she was doing it all on her back.  She didn’t feel honored at all, she felt disappointed, and disappointment made her feel selfish and small.

It was a great thing, wasn’t it?  It was a great thing and she was going along to get it done, fearful and sad…and disappointed.  The gullan who spoke her name with such reverence deserved better out of their hero.

“I like feeling sorry for myself, I guess,” she said.

He laughed, opening a duck.  “Don’t we all.”

“What will you tell them when you go back?” Olivia asked, and immediately felt her face heating up.  “I mean, I’m aware that we’re not exactly at the end of it all yet, but…we’re sure not that far from it, and…and I might forget to ask again.  What will you tell them?” she asked again, knowing she was pleading with him, but not sure what she was pleading for.  “When you paint me tall and all the rest of that.  What are you going to say?”

“About this?”  Kodjunn looked around at the jungle, chewing thoughtfully.  “What is there to say about this?  These are lands the tribe will never know.  And honestly, if there were dangers and demons every step of the way, I’d never tell them.  Our dangers don’t need to be any more real than paint on a wall.  One picture is enough for this journey, one picture to show them the darkness through which you came for the sakes of those who stole you cruelly away from your life and fit you into theirs.  What will I say about you?”  He met her eyes again, gazing levelly and without awe back at her.  “I will say that you were Olivia, that you were your own self throughout.  That you were courageous and you were good.  And…And being good can be so much harder that just being brave.  Let them love you for your courage.  I love your goodness best.”

She had no answer for that.

Kodjunn returned it, then pulled a face and said, “Yes, I hear you, Great Spirit.  I’m hurrying.”

“
You might hurry better without speech
.”

“I might,” Kodjunn sighed.  He bent over his second duck, grumbling, “Hurry and hurry when it is me, but all day long is not enough for you to be in my bones.  Great goat.  It would serve you right if I took cramp and fell right out of the damned sky.”

4

The River, the Great Spirit called it, and Olivia had heard the capital R every time.  Now she saw it and understood why.  River was too small a word for what lay in their path.  She still didn’t know where they were, but this river was surely on someone’s map.  The Mississippi, maybe.  The Parana.  The Amazon.  Names were superfluous.  It was the River, and Bahgree had come with it to meet them.

She didn’t know if she could see it because of the Great Spirit’s power in her, or if Bahgree just wanted to be seen, but there she was—a colorless, shapeless
thing
tumbling through the currant below them, as playful and as vicious as an otter.  When she came to the surface, she made faces and sometimes laughed, the sound watery and horrible to hear.  When Kodjunn, following the serpentine curves of the River, came too close, she made snatching claws out of towering jets of water.  When the Great Spirit came to fill the gulla’s body, she made full breasts and a glistening sex, undulating in grotesque lust as she cackled, and these were the worst times, because no matter how fiercely the god spat his answering curses, Olivia could always feel Kodjunn’s possessed body responding to her.

“Go around,” Olivia said as Kodjunn banked away from yet another wave of grasping arms.  “Leave her alone.  Just go around.”

“
There is no ‘around’
!” the Great Spirit snarled, glaring down.  “
No path that will not take us days and days out of our way.  It must be here!  It must be now
!”

Kodjunn approached the River.  Again, he was driven back.  The damn thing looked miles across when Bahgree swam inside it; they’d be over her and helpless for a whole minute, maybe two.  Which didn’t sound like very long until one saw those hands reaching up, fifty feet high, a hundred.  More.

“
Look to the moon
!” the Great Spirit warned.  “
As it grows, so grows Urga’s power!  She will not give us days to find safe passage!  Nor does this forest span out forever!  And when we come to the end of it, there do we find your people, human!  Shall they be easier to cross than this bodiless witch below us
?”

Bahgree gibbered and writhed and beckoned.

Olivia shuddered.

“
Up
,” the Great Spirit commanded.

They had crossed a hundred lakes and streams on this journey, but this was the first time Olivia was afraid.  This River had power even without the lunatic spirit riding it.  She held on tight to Kodjunn’s neck as the Great Spirit urged him higher.  Distance alone couldn’t save them of course, but there was no point in making it easy for Bahgree to take them.  So they flew up, high up over the shrieking, breathing jungle, all of them looking down, trying to see the hand of Bahgree before she struck.  They were looking down, God alone knew how high, where the air was thin and cold, but the River was still wide and Bahgree’s face still danced over it.  They were looking down.

Olivia had no idea what caused her to look up.  It was as incomprehensible as looking away from the man aiming a gun at you, only to see a plane crashing down on top of you instead.  There was no reason, no warning.  She just turned her head, looking away from Bahgree’s mad, hungry dance, and up over Kodjunn’s shoulder, in time to see Urga dive out of the silver slice of the moon, her legs lengthening into lances of bone, her wings shining like the face of the River below them, and her eyes…ah God, her eyes…

There wasn’t time to scream.  Urga slammed into them without impact, without weight.  She kept her oath; Olivia felt only that silvery tingle as the goddess drifted intangibly through her, and then she was out and turning, hovering impassively in space to watch them.  Her legs were drawing back up into their original shape, but they were different…black…black in the moonlight.

Kodjunn coughed.  Olivia’s belly was hot and that heat was spreading.  She looked up as the Great Spirit looked down, his golden eyes round with shock.

“
I bleed
,” he said, his brows puckering.  “
This body bleeds
.”

Kodjunn’s arms were loosening.  The Great Spirit didn’t seem to notice.  He looked at Urga, floating impassively with them through the sky.  “
Betrayer
!” he bellowed.

The River was below them, opening wider and wider, like Kodjunn’s arms.

“
I will see them all dead
,” said Urga in her moon-distant voice, “
before I give you to another
.”

“
I curse the day I dreamt you into life
!” the Great Spirit roared, and let go of Olivia to cut his claws at his mate, but she remained serenely out of reach.

“
Then curse me.  Only me
.”  Urga caught the back of Olivia’s shirt (she never touched her skin, though, not so much as a finger), tugging her free of Kodjunn’s failing grip.  “
Only me
,” she insisted, dropping Olivia behind her, but of course, they were already falling, falling together toward the River’s grasping hands.

The Great Spirit slashed Urga open, but the wounds bled only white light and closed again.  Urga glided up against him, enduring blows and lethal claws without resistance, wrapping her legs tenderly around Kodjunn’s hips.  She spread her wings and their descent turned to swooping flight, just the two of them.  Kodjunn roared, the River rose up, Olivia screamed, and the world broke apart.

5

Water bashed into her from behind, then closed her inside its monstrous fist, yanking her down.  She could still see them for a second—Urga like a second moon with her wings full around her, motionless; Kodjunn in tatters, battering at her as he was borne away—and then the water was too thick, blacking out her eyes and numbing her ears.  She could feel Bahgree’s eager fingers at her mouth, trying to pry open her locked jaws, to be the thing she breathed in when her aching lungs ran out of air.

Olivia visualized the golden armor that had saved her once from Urga, pushed it out with a bubbling cry, and heard Bahgree scream in frustration.  The River churned, a storm of black water on every side.  Which way was up?  Olivia darted out of her body to orient herself and Bahgree snapped into sharp focus right before her.  Before she could move, the River Woman was on her, shrieking as she wrapped her soggy claws around Olivia’s neck—again with the neck—and tried to shove her head into Olivia’s mouth when she screamed.

Olivia bit, grappling with the twisting, keening wraith that rode her out through the aether.  The River boiled around them both, alive with Bahgree’s rage, and somewhere in there, Olivia could see the faint golden flicker that was her own body being carried away.

Don’t fight, the Great Spirit had said, but she didn’t have time to sit around and let him save her, if he was even coming at all, and not, well, cumming somewhere else.  She had no illusions; the Great Spirit was who he was.  Olivia yanked her legs up and locked them around the waist of the thing struggling with her, holding her fast. 
This is not my body
, she thought, letting go of Bahgree’s wrists. 
This is my spirit, not my flesh.  She can’t choke me here
.

The pressure at her neck subsided, not all at once, but slowly, like she was turning down the volume on the radio.  Bahgree’s face rippled in surprise and something else, something furious and lost and fearful.  She tried to get away then, but Olivia had her and now Olivia let her know it.

She punched her fist into Bahgree’s face—
It isn’t flesh.  It’s only water
—and grabbed onto her there, on the inside.  Bahgree shrieked, jittering wildly on the end of Olivia’s wrist as she drew back her other arm and drove it into Bahgree’s chest.