Olivia (81 page)

“It will be light soon,” she remarked.

Vorgullum did not reply.

“You’re going to end up walking home if you’re not careful.”

“I trust you, my Olivia,” he said. 

It seemed an incongruous thing to say, and she must have showed some surprise on hearing it.  He glanced up, read her face, and offered her one of those rare, crooked smiles that made him look so much like Sudjummar.  “It never occurred to you to think that might be at issue, did it?”

“After all this time, I should hope not.”  Now it was her turn to frown.  “Is it at issue, Vorgullum?”

“What, that I release the mate I have once abducted back into the world under her human sun?”  He laughed a little, only a little.  “No,” he said, closing Somurg away from the cold with a pat.  “It would be a lie to say the thought sits easy with me, but I will let you go.”

“You keep saying that,” she observed, “but then you keep waiting for me to change my mind.”

“Hoping,” he said.  “Not waiting.  I think I told you once that optimism is one of my failings.  But I believe you when you say you will return to me.  I would grant no one else such freedom.  Well,” he said, looking thoughtful.  “Perhaps Amy…And I would allow Beth except that Wurlgunn would be certain to stay with her and open his hollow head falling off the first cliff he came to.”

“And Tobi?”

“Oh, Tobi.  Yes, I would permit Tobi.  She will always return to us.”  After a meditative pause, he added, “I think that if I carried Tobi to the human’s hive and set her down in the lair where we found her, she would get back to the mountain before me.”  He smiled again, but it didn’t last long.  He looked up at the lightening sky, then at Olivia, and finally sighed.

“I’ll be all right,” she told him.

“I know.  Follow the stream,” Vorgullum said, pointing into the thick of the forest.  “You will come to a great rock, and beside it, three trees close together with white bark.  One of them is marked, like this.” 

In the beam of Olivia’s flashlight, he knelt and drew half a circle rising from a wide V—Murgull’s soul in flight perhaps, or the sun shining between the mountains, or just one more gullan symbol whose meaning had been forgotten by all but the
sigruum
.  He straightened up, watching closely while she made a big deal out of studying the simple drawing.

“I have it,” she said.  “Should I come back here when I’m done?”

“No,” he said quickly.  “Stay in the trees.  I’ll come to you.”

“All right then.”  She raised her chin, offering her brow for a bump.

He didn’t give it to her.  Instead, he bent and kissed her, and no, it was never going to be like the kind of kisses she used to trade with the humans of her romantic life, but it was still a good one.  “Be safe,” he said when it was over.

“Safe as houses,” she promised.

He didn’t answer, didn’t ask for an explanation.  He only stepped back, opened his wings fully, and sprang into the pale grey sky.  She waved until he was gone from sight, just in case he looked back, but she didn’t think he did.  Then he was gone, and first touch of pink was sketching itself in around the clouds, so Olivia found the stream and started walking.

The grave was just where he said it was, less than an hour’s walk and easy to find.  She found none of the smooth-stalked bonewort plants she needed for the potion, but there were plenty of its bushy-stalked cousin, bitterwort.  She gathered as much as she could hold, as well as some wild godsmint and three gold sunleaf roots.  She felt no guilt at doing this first; of all people, Murgull would surely understand.

But the sun was high by the time her pack was filled, and the sight of it burning in the blue mountain sky after a year underground was overwhelming to Olivia’s senses.  She cleared the snow off a fallen log by the banks of the stream and just watched it for a time, nursing Somurg as an excuse for sitting there, but really only gazing into the vast, open sky.  It was in a kind of daze that she finally stood and raised Somurg high above her head.

The morning light impaled her, burned into and through her as she called his name out loud:  “Here is Somurg, who came from Murgull!  Olivia remembers you!” 

There was no answer, no sense of a thousand spirit eyes upon her or a thousand souls trembling in awe.  There was no sense of Murgull.  She stayed dead, and she stayed gone.

And what had she expected, really?  The ghostly echoes of a cracked voice calling her a silly frog?  That familiar, leathery palm smacking her a phantom blow to the side of her head?  Foolishness.  Murgull would be the first to say so.  And yet…how the sun burned down…

Defiance welled up inside her and Olivia lifted her baby again.  “Great Spirit!” she cried.  “Here is Somurg, our son!”

She was glaring right into the sun, and her eyes were welling up with involuntary tears, even as blurred images in pastel colors were burnt into her brain.  She imagined that the sun grew whiter; she imagined that it took a form.  She imagined dark hands pulled Somurg out of her arms and holding him.

She blinked rapidly, stumbling back and gaping at her empty hands.

“
He is wondrous
,” the Great Spirit said. 

6

She didn’t scream right away.  Screaming was the sort of thing a person did when she was sure of what had just happened, and Olivia wasn’t, really.  She kept staring into the piercing brilliance of the man-shaped light before her until it finally shifted and seemed to look back at her.

“
Foolish mortal,
” it said, sounding amused.
 
“
Were you never warned away from gazing at the sun
?”

Still, she stared at him, trying to wash away the after-images left like scars over her vision as she struggled to pierce his radiant glow.  She could see him only faintly, in dark glimpses between slicks of sliding color that left her with only the vaguest impression of an immense man-like figure.  Then that figure was reaching out, and she felt his hand draw over her face, his fingers pressing her eyes shut.

When she opened them again, the sun was back in the sky and she could see the Great Spirit standing before her, regarding her with a small smile.  He was taller even than Doru, the sharp lines of his sky-black body clearly defined beneath a thin, almost incidental pelt; he had no wings.  Three pairs of massive horns, serrated and sharp as knives, cut back from his brow and coarse hair grew in a stiff mane between them all the way down the curve of his spine.  He was naked, and the gleaming thrust of his inhuman erection stood rock-rigid and without embarrassment before him.

Olivia backed up, prevented from mindlessly bolting away into the woods only by the sight of her small son snugly contained in the god’s arms.

“
You seem surprised to see me
,” he mused. “
Why?  I told you we would meet again.  I said that I would appear in my true form, touch you with my own hands
.” 

“Why can’t you leave me alone?” she cried, and would have struck at him if he hadn’t been holding her son.

He gazed on her with golden eyes, immovable as the mountain.  “
I have influenced your life but little.  I did not direct my people to your human home, no more than did I enter the
sigruum’s
body, as you claimed.  I merely watched, and answered only when I was invoked
.”

She shuddered back, shaking her head in helpless denial.  “I didn’t mean to invoke you!” she managed at last.  “I don’t want you to be a part of my life!  I don’t want to ever feel the way I did when I killed Maria!”

“
And if not for my protection in that encounter, you would not have survived it.  Rather than revile me, perhaps you should offer thanks
.”  He considered Somurg, who was snuggling happily up against him.  “
Whether I have your blessing or no, you will give yourself to me.  I think you would not resist if you knew how many lives rest upon the outcome of your journey
.”

“Why me?” Olivia demanded.

“
Why indeed?  You invoked my name, did you not?  You claimed a visitation of my power
.”

She stared at him, dumbstruck, and finally shouted, “I
lied
!  For God’s sake,
I made it up
!”

“
I know.  Yet the lie intrigued me
,” he said, tickling at Somurg’s chin.  The baby promptly seized the god’s claw and chewed on it.  The Great Spirit smiled.  “
But think, woman.  Perhaps you meant deception when you called upon me to draw out the demon from your Mojo Woman, but was it a lie when you prayed to me for game?  Was it a lie when you begged healing aid for your young human’s womb?  Three blessings you have reaped from me, and so according to the ancient ways, I claimed you, even you, daughter of Bahgree, and sent Urga to birth her son by me, your Somurg
.”  He glanced up, his expression faintly chiding.  “
You should be honored
.”

“Well, I’m not!  And I’m not going anywhere with you! Can’t you pick someone else?”

“
I could
,” he said, rolling one mighty shoulder in a half-shrug.  “
Yet you interest me.  Why do you protest?  Vorgullum would never question the giving of yourself to me, even if I took you before his eyes
.”  His expression blazed briefly with undisguised desire, then subsided.  “
But I would spare you that, because it would displease you.  Nevertheless, I will have you
.”

She did hit him, Somurg or no; she hauled back her fist and drove it straight at his amused face, only to smack home in the center of his palm. 

He closed his fist around her, pinned her.  He was still smiling.  “
Do not mistake me.  Although I require no reason to demand your flesh, I do so only because there exists a great need.  There will be forces at work around and within you and you must learn to control them now or you will be consumed by the River
.”

“What river?  What are you talking about?  Just tell me what you want with me!” she burst out.  “Tell me what you’re doing here!”

His expression darkened thunderously as he looked out past her at the sweeping curve of the tree-drawn horizon.  When he looked back, it was to consider her hand trapped within his, and then to release her.  “
I am here to couple with you.
”

She stumbled back, slipped in the melting snow, and fell on her butt on Murgull’s grave.  This left her on the ground, looking up at his immense erection as the sun burned behind him, turning him to a faceless shadow.  “No!”

“
It is the only way I have to share my power.  And, although you will not believe me, it is also the only means you have of accepting it
.”  He hunkered down before her, holding on to Somurg, who was making happy sounds and twining his hands in the Great Spirit’s fur.  “
Olivia Blake, I chose you out of all humanity. You are not the first ever to falsely invoke my name, but you are the first ever to do so solely to comfort another.  You gave yourself to my son despite your pain, to ease his own.  You used my name only to spare him the wrath of your mate and, I think, to spare the life of his mate, who had done such harm to you both.  You battled Mojo Woman to save those in her thrall.  You asked for game to feed your tribe.  You asked healing for another, that she might fulfill her purpose and provide young for her mate.  In all ways, you have invoked me selflessly.  Such a heart is rare indeed, and so you are chosen to help me
.”

“You can’t possibly need my help,” she objected.  “You’re a god!”

He looked at her with an expression of distracted frustration, then reached out and touched one claw to the tip of her forehead.

Light exploded behind her eyes, and she experienced the queer sensation of having something alien move through her mind, picking through her thoughts and memories.

The Great Spirit withdrew his hand, smiling.  “
I am an archetype, an idealized concept of divinity, formed by the combined credulity of my devoted children
,” he announced.  He showed his sharp teeth, looking pleased with himself.  “
Yes, I am a god, but my powers are restricted by their expectations.  I possess failings in reflection of mortality.  I hurt, I hunger, I lust, I rage. And at times, I require help
.”

“My help,” she said angrily.

“
Yours and that of my son, Kodjunn, whose body I must at times possess in order to accompany you on your journey
.”

“You have your own body,” she said.  “Leave Kodjunn alone!”

“
I have no choice
,” he told her.  “
Mine is not the power of flight.  If I were to bear you instantly to the place where the River awaits our coming, you would die in the void between the worlds.  No.  One of my own must carry you, and I must inhabit that host
.”

“Then I’ll go on this journey alone,” she said, pleading with him.  “We’ll go on foot, and Kodjunn can stay behind.”

“
It disturbs you that I would use him in this manner
,” he realized, gazing at her with mild interest.  “
Very well.  I am moved to humor you, yet if I exclude Kodjunn from my plans, another must take his place.  Shall I allow you to select a male whose autonomy is less important to you
?”

“Why?” she cried.  “Why can’t I go alone?”

“
Olivia
,” he said.  “
You cannot make this journey unaccompanied, because you must be protected.  Bahgree will surely attempt to destroy you
.”

She couldn’t come up with an argument for that.  Not without a sinking sense of desperation, she seized on another.  “How long will I be gone?”

The Great Spirit merely shook his head, holding her eyes.