CHAPTER SIXTY

The sun stands halfway to noon when Koda emerges from the showers. Her body feels clean and polished, despite the cold water. The errant children of Israel might have yearned for the fleshpots of Egypt in their wanderings—she was a sophomore in high school before one of the nuns explained that that meant stew pots, to Koda’s great disappointment—but Dakota Rivers would be happy with a hot shower. Not that cool water is a terrible hardship on the last day of July. She turns her face up to the warmth, swinging her still-wet braid over her shoulder to settle against her back. Kirsten, up and bathed earlier, is most likely to be wherever there is a late breakfast to be found, and Asi with her.

She sets off up the road to the stone circle, which seems to be both dining hall and meeting place. The cabins she passes stand empty, neatly made-up cots visible through the screen mesh, clothes poles hung meagerly with jeans and shirts and jackets. Several bear the crudely drawn images of large black birds, apparently intended to be ravens. Ravens on some, she corrects herself as she passes one with a saucer-faced raptor with eyes almost as big, owls on others. Both are sacred to warrior-goddesses, ravens to the Morrigan of Celtic legend, owls to Athena. There are no doves, which does not surprise her.

It doesn’t disappoint her, either. She and Kirsten and Morgan had sat up until well past midnight attempting to riddle out the puzzle of the murders. Item: droids kidnap women. Item: droids breed women, presumably with the purpose of producing babies. So far, understandable to a point. Dakota has lived in ranch country almost all her life. Most livestock eventually find their way into one of those fleshpots, even the breeders when their reproductive value is exhausted. Even horses, on many operations, ultimately wind up in an ALPO can. No puzzle there. It’s what comes next that is the problem.

Item: the droids kill and discard infants and toddlers. They are not, clearly, consuming long pig. Just as clearly they are not supplying anyone else’s depraved taste for the same.

Which leaves the burning question why.

A medical expert, a cyber expert, a legal expert should have been able to put together some hypothesis, but nothing they could postulate held water. The only thing that made sense was sheer terror. More than one human conqueror had pursued a strategy of killing enemy men, raping enemy women, slaughtering enemy children. But that doesn’t work, either. They’ve made no effort to set up a government. In fact, they seem content to let the rest of us be, at least for the time being.

Most of the rest of us, she amends. They still want Kirsten.

Koda shakes her head to clear it. Cold shower or not, she still craves caffeine. Onward. Strategizing can wait another half hour.

On her left, she passes the deserted stables and the picket line. Only half the horses range along it this morning, including the two left on the hillside with the patrol a day and a half ago. Some of the Amazai, then must be out beating the bounds, guarding their borders, replacing sisters who have returned. But patrols would not account for the near-emptiness of the camp.

As she tops the rise that leads to the circle, which, goddess willing, will lead to coffee, a wolf-whistle rings out, clear and loud. "Yo, babe!"

Ripe as the back bayous of Louisiana, the voice and the whistle belong to the unseen Amazai from the mountain patrol. She crouches now beside the firepit, carefully setting a spit onto a pair of freshly-cut greenwood uprights. Even in that position, it is clear that woman is taller than Koda by an inch or so, and wider, as Themunga would say, by half an axe-handle. Her tank top shows off biceps and deltoids bulging like melons under her deeply tanned skin, a fair proportion of which sports tattoos in blue and green and red. Peacock feathers, beautifully drawn, cover her upper arms, and her pale hair, worn in a straggling braid, does nothing to conceal their counterparts that sweep up the sides of her neck. Kirsten, seated on the stone Morgan had occupied the night of their arrival, quietly sips coffee, hiding a three-cornered smile behind her mug. At her feet, Asimov grins up at Koda. No help there.

"Good morning," Koda says equably. "I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced."

The woman gives a bark of laughter and straightens from her work. She extends a hand easily as big as Tacoma’s. "Dale. Dale fia d’LouAnn. Pleased t’meetcha."

"Dakota Rivers. Likewise. Is there any breakfast left?"

"There’s coffee and some fruit and bread back at the old main office. Nobody cooked this morning. Too much to do to get ready for tonight."

"Tonight?"

"Lughnasa."

"Loo--?"

"Lugnasa," Dale repeats. "Lammas. Harvest."

"Oh," says Koda, and to Kirsten, "Can I have some of your coffee? Please?"

Kirsten hands the cup to her, and she subsides onto the rock beside the smaller woman. The coffee is still hot, and she swallows gratefully. "Gods," she says. "It’ll be a terrible day when we finally run out of this stuff."

Dale only shrugs. "There’s still coffee trees in South America—droids’d have no reason to destroy ‘em. Whoever manages to go after it and bring some back’ll make a fortune in trade, eventually."

"Is that an Amazai project?" Kirsten asks quietly.

The big woman narrows her eyes. "Maybe. Eventually."

Which means that this band has allies, is territorially ambitious, or both. Koda lets the thought wash about in her brain for a moment, along with the caffeine. It also means that survivors are beginning to live with the idea that "normal" is irreparably different than the "normal" of nine months ago. She hands the mug back to Kirsten. "So where is everybody?"

"Some’s out hunting. Some’s down at the farm. Some’s over at the Lake."

"We’re invited," Kirsten says, draining the coffee.

They need to move on. They also need to make the beginning of an alliance with these women, just in case they survive. Koda nods. " Okay. Anything we can do to help?"

Dale grins at them sardonically. "Just about everything’s covered. If you want to do something, though, you can go pick some flowers."

"Pick—"

"Unless you want a harder job?"

"That’s okay," Kirsten says, standing up abruptly. "Flowers it is."

Koda gives her an outraged glance. But the pleading look in the green eyes forestalls speech. "Flowers it is," she repeats. "But coffee first."

Two hours later, Koda wades through Indian paintbrush grown knee-high, carefully cutting the blossoms and setting them into a bucket partly filled with water. Kirsten, invisible over a fold of the mountainside, is working a high meadow carpeted in purple gentians and deep-blue iris. Koda’s own pail is near full now, overflowing with blossoms in autumn colors: red, vermilion, orange-and-yellow, gold. In among them she has placed tall spikes of blue and pink lupine, the wolf-flower. The Lammas feast marks the changing of the year. With the harvest, the year turns from summer to autumn, even though the days remain hot and long. It is a time of partings, looking toward the fallow season of winter before rebirth in spring. So: wolf flower, in honor of Wa Uspewikakiyape; in honor of the goddess in her form of hunter and defender. In the clear blue above, a hawk circles, rust glinting off her tail where the sun strikes it. Wiyo has kept her distance from the human camp, but has not strayed far. As Koda watches, she seems to pause in mid-flight, her wings backing air. Then she folds them and plunges like a meteor, her feathers gleaming copper as she streaks toward earth and her prey.

Koda watches for a moment, then hefts the bucket, testing its weight. That ought to be enough for one bucketful. They need enough for altar, "the quarters," whatever those are, and the feast table. Four pails should do it. Time to take this one back to where the horses are tethered and get the second.

Koda finds their mounts ground-tied under a stand of balsam pine, happily browsing the undergrowth. Kirsten’s full pail sits on a stone not far away, overflowing with rich purples and blues. She sets her own beside it and runs her gaze over the high meadow that occupies a shelf of the mountainside here. Nothing. Nothing but the flowers, a pair of swallowtails sipping at the deep cups of the gentians, bees gathering pollen against the winter. No Kirsten.

"Kirsten?" she calls. "Kirsten!"

No answer.

"Kirsten!" All right. No need to panic, Koda lectures herself. She’s probably just off in the woods for a moment. "Kirsten! Asi! Asi! Answer me!"

From twenty yards away, deep among the flowers, comes a high-pitched yelp of greeting, and Asi’s face appears, eyes bright, tongue lolling in a canine grin. Beside him, just barely visible, Koda can make out a paler head, turned away. Koda can feel her heart skip a bit as it brakes, draws a deep, deliberately calming breath. "Kirsten?"

Still no response. Asi, though, comes bounding toward her, leaping among the tall blossoms like a fox hunting in high grass. Kirsten turns then and sees her, a smile lighting her face. Koda checks the impulse to run and instead approaches slowly, keeping that smile in the center of her vision. There is no danger. Kirsten is not hurt. Asi passes her, offering his head for a scratch, then taking himself off under the trees with the horses.

Tactful of him.

"Kirsten?" Koda says again. But she does not answer, only smiles and beckons. Old legends run through Dakota’s memory, mortals taken by the elves, who must bear their sojourn under the hill in silence or remain forever apart from the human world. And among her own people, there are old tales of warriors seduced by silent women in the hills who vanish with the morning, leaving behind only the imprints of a deer’s hooves.

"Kirsten?"

For answer, Kirsten raises one hand to her temple, and suddenly Koda understands. She has seen Kirsten retreat into silence before, knows by now that it is a kind of refuge for one long solitary. More than most, Koda understands. A shaman knows the silence and its power. And last night, gods know, was enough to send anyone bolting for sanctuary.

For a moment she simply stands looking down at Kirsten, at her hair pale gold in the afternoon sun, her skin golden, too, with the long days and weeks of their quest. "Nun lila hopa," she says without sound, letting her mouth form the words, smiling when she sees the glint of understanding in Kirsten’s eyes. She kneels before her, then, forming Kirsten’s name in silence, and again, Nun lila hopa.

For answer, Kirsten draws Koda’s mouth down to her own. The kiss lengthens, deepens, the taste of summer sweet on her lips and tongue. Breathless, Koda draws away slightly and raises her head, threading her fingers through the pale strands of Kirsten’s hair where it lies along her shoulder, smoothing it back. She slips her hand inside the collar of Kirsten’s shirt, running her thumb across the base of her throat, feeling the pulse jump under her fingers. The other woman’s shoulders are hard as old wood, the muscles knotted.

There is a cure for that, one she knows. Koda bends to lay her lips to the pulse-point. Winan mitawa. She forms the words without sound.

My woman. My wife. My love.

Strange, not to say it.

Her eyes smouldering under long lashes, green as the grass, Kirsten leans back onto the crushed stems and leaves about her. It is invitation and promise at once, familiar by now yet new each time they come together. Rising, Koda sheds her clothing, spreading her shirt and jeans on the ground. Kirsten’s hands go to her own shirt, but Dakota stops her and, kneeling beside her lover, slowly looses the buttons, letting her hands linger with each motion as she spreads the cloth, brushing Kirsten’s breasts, their nipples already hard, tracing their curves from shoulder to breastbone and back again. Koda slides her hands lower, below the belt of Kirsten’s jeans, brushing the high arches of her hipbones and the hollow of her thighs. Hooking her thumbs into the band, then, she slides the garment free.

She turns and bends to kiss her lover once more. Fire runs through her blood, but the time is not yet. There is another need that must be satisfied. She leans back and with a gentle touch to her shoulders turns Kirsten to lie on her belly. Koda kneels astride her hips, and beginning at her neck, works her hands in tight circles down the column of her spine. She has no oils for this. Instead she crushes an iris blossom between her palms and rubs its subtle fragrance into Kirsten’s skin with each stroke. Systematically she works the stress from the lithe body, feeling the knotted muscles give way under her hands, the massage taking on a rhythm of its own in time with her heart and breath. The change comes gradually, the tightness of stress and exhaustion becoming tension of another kind. Kirsten’s skin warms under her touch, her blood humming as it runs warm just below the surface. She stretches luxuriantly, almost cat-like, rising onto her elbows and letting her head fall loosely back. She does not speak, letting her body communicate her satisfaction for her.

With a final sweep from hip to shoulder, Koda leans forward and lays a kiss on the back of her neck, then blows softly at the short hairs, still not grown out, at her nape. She feels the shiver as it goes through her lover’s body, feels it deepens to pulse within her own flesh. The fire sings through her, spreading from her belly up her spine to quicken her heartbeat, drawing the skin tight over her breasts, tautening her nipples. She slips from where she kneels across Kirsten’s body, sliding down to lie beside her. The desire for words has left her. She raises Kirsten’s hand to her lips, kissing the palm and wrist. The hand settles between her breasts, then, pressing gently. With a questioning look at her love, Koda settles onto her back. Kirsten kisses her once more, then rises to kneel above her, slipping one knee between Koda’s thighs.

Another kiss, then Kirsten’s fingers brush over Dakota’s face, tracing her forehead, her eyes, her mouth. Her lips follow, pressing against her eyelids, returning to close them again when Koda glances upward. She shuts her eyes, then, giving herself up to touch and sound as Kirsten has given herself to sight and touch. Yet she is not in darkness. The sun beats down directly overhead, and its brilliance shows her red-tinged shadows still, a hint of movement as Kirsten bends over her, letting her hair, fine as cornsilk, trail over Koda’s face and throat.

I would know you in the silence between the stars. The thought is her own, and not. And with it comes another. I see you in the darkness, like a flash of lightning. And the darkness cannot hide you.

Not now. Not ever.

Koda raises her hands to lay them on Kirsten’s shoulders, letting her fingers trail down over her breasts. Faint among the hum of bees, she can hear her lover’s breathing, coming faster now. The fall of Kirsten’s hair sweeps again over her throat, her own breasts, its touch delicate as a summer breeze. Warm lips follow it, then, suckling gently. At the same time, Kirsten’s knee moves between her legs, parting them, and Koda opens to her. Kirsten draws away, sliding back, and Koda feels the brush of her fingers in the hair above her sex, sliding downward to the entrance to her body. The fingers trail upward, lingering on the delicate nub at the apex, and Koda’s belly tightens, her thighs growing taut. Kirsten parts the lips, then, shifting to lie above Koda, center to center. Her hips circle slowly, building pressure. Flame licks down her legs, up her spine. Point counterpoint to her own, Kirsten’s breath come in short gasps that punctuate the silence. The fire runs along her nerves, through her veins, until it seems she must be consumed, the rhythm of her lover’s movements driving it through her body in waves. Her heart hammers against her breastbone, and there is no air any more, nothing now but the flame that owns her flesh. Sound builds within her, seeking release, but she stifles it in her throat until finally it breaks free and she comes, the pulse of Kirsten’s release matching her own. Spent, her lover sinks down into her arms, her skin slicked with sweat beneath the ripening sun.

Now and forever.