Tomorrow Sucks Part 24

Vaylance took hold of the horse's mane and vaulted up onto his back. Shanty made a half rear and pivoted, galloped to the far end of the field and came back at an easy lope. Vaylance bounced down next to her again.

"You can ride a strange horse without saddle or bridle!" exclaimed Myrna.

"Only to show off for you," he said. "Actually, I am not that good. Back home I could introduce you to some real riders. When you tell a Russian boy that he rides like a Cossack, he takes it as a compliment, but to Varkela it is an insult."

When they got back to the apartment they were hungry. Vaylance insisted on cooking for her.

"It is a custom of ours. I haven't prepared food for a woman in a long time. It would give me pleasure," he said.

They searched in the refrigerator and found lamb chops. Vaylance, as he set about to cook, consumed a quart of milk, explaining that on the steppes he had lived mostly on mare's milk. Myrna showed him how to work the electric stove and then found a snack for herself as she awaited the results of his experiment."What's that funny stuff you're eating?" he asked. "Surely that can't be good for you."

"Coca-Cola and potato chips. I eat them all the time."

"Ugh!" he said.

"What's wrong with it?" said Myrna, knowing full well but desiring to provoke him a little. They had been having contests of the will all day. It was some sort of Varkela custom having to do with courts.h.i.+p or flirting.

"If you were my blood-love, I'd make you eat lots of green, leafy foods, bran meal and meat," he said.

"Why?"

"So my love wouldn't weaken you, and your blood would grow back rich and strong. I'd not have it said that my woman faints. And of course you would have to eat lots of karacheer."

"What's that?"

"Jerked goat's liver."

"Bleccchhh!"

"If you wouldn't, I'd force it down your throat!"

"The h.e.l.l you would!" she said.

He engaged her eyes and tried to stare her down. She felt the force of his will as he tried to "Call" her to him. She thought a fierce, sharp thought that sent him reeling backward.

"Ow, you are wolf-minded. Now you've gone and given me a headache just as Favarka used to do."

It was fun, but it made him look at her throat with such longing.

"You will eventually yield to me, won't you?" he asked hopefully. "It's not fair for you to be so good at the teasing game if you don't intend to yield."

"Wait and see," she said. She seemed to have the upper hand and she was enjoying it.

After dinner she had to admit he was a very good cook.

His presence had stimulated Myrna into a lovely fantasy. She had an idea: "I wish I could dreamwalk and go back with you. I think I'd like helping you in the medical tent. I know first aid and I could teach you a lot about modern medicine."

Vaylance was surprised. He had been wis.h.i.+ng he had more time with her. Then perhaps it might have worked.

"We don't know each other well enough," he said. "To dreamwalk requires love and trust in your guide. It can be dangerous.""We could at least try," she said.

He tried half-heartedly to dissuade her. He really wished it could be so. Finally he agreed to try. He sat her in a chair and stared into her eyes, trying to put her into the proper trance. But she resisted. He could see that she didn't mean to, but she couldn't help it. The wolf in her that so strongly attracted him fought against him now.

"Keep trying," she insisted. "I feel something beginning to happen."

Carefully he tried to coax her soul into the void. Finally he seemed to be succeeding. She slumped forward in her chair.

Myrna found herself inside a long, dark tunnel. She moved toward gray light in the distance until she felt gra.s.s under her feet, and, looking up, she saw the night sky, a panoply of stars. In the distance a rider approached over the steppe. No sound came to her from the horse's hooves, only the small ringing of tiny bells. She could see the rider clearly now, outlined against the starry mist, a woman clad in baggy trousers wearing a fur cap. A loose Tartar jacket enclosed her arms, which held a small wolf cub. The st.u.r.dy horse of the steppes came to a halt before Myrna, shaking its mane with a sprinkle of wind chimes. The fierce, dark-eyed woman offered the cub to Myrna, who cradled it in her arms. No word was spoken. The rider spurred her mount and cantered away, making no sound except the jingle of tiny bells.

Myrna looked at the small wolf and thought she saw sentience begin to glow redly in the depth of its eyes. Abruptly its countenance changed so that it was no longer a cub, but the wizened face of a small demon.

"Are you then one of the chosen?" it asked of her.

Myrna screamed and flung down the cub. Where it fell the ground split open in a great rent. Something made a scratchy noise deep in the dark hole, and then Myrna saw it, a giant centipede-like creature with many-jointed legs. It began to come toward her. She turned and fled. As she ran, she could hear the gnas.h.i.+ng of chitinous jaws just behind her. Then she was in the tunnel again, which seemed to wind on forever as the thing gained on her. Just as a whip-like antenna snaked out to touch her shoulder, she woke up sobbing in Vaylance's arms.

"I was afraid of something like this," he said. "Where did you go? I couldn't find you."

She told him about the dream as he held her close, comforting her.

"You have seen the ghost-soul of my mother, Odakai," said Vaylance, "but what it means, I do not know."

He lifted and carried her into the bedroom, and, setting her gently on the bed, he lay down beside her.

She had avoided any affectionate gestures from him all day, being both attracted and repelled by his vampire nature. But now, partly because she was upset, and partly because he would be leaving soon, she pressed closer in his arms."If you yield to me now," he said, "I will make your blood to sing."

She could feel his breath on her neck and she braced herself for what she knew must come next. But he didn't bite. He kissed her tenderly, and then he was kissing her mouth and her nose and her eyes and carefully undressing her. "Why you're tattooed!" she said, when he took off his s.h.i.+rt.

She traced with her finger where a stag raced across his chest.

"It's my soul-beast," he told her.

They played at love for a long time. He was gentle, teasing, the most sensitive lover she had ever known.

Vaylance, when he saw the soft fur of her bosom, made a little cry of joy. This and her scent proved to him that she was one of his own kind, and he banished his Christian conscience to a remote corner of his mind where it could not touch him.

When he finally pulled her over on top of him and entered her, she was so close that she could hardly contain it, but he sensed this and stopped, then brought her close to the knife's edge several times before allowing her to finish. And her blood sang, pulsing in her ears, a song of the open steppes. As she lay satiated on top of him, he sought the jugular vein in her throat and bit deeply. She didn't really mind.

She felt so warm and sleepy that she was content to lie there and enjoy the intimacy of it. When he finished, he licked the wound clean with his pink dog-like tongue, and Myrna, having recovered, reached up and nipped him playfully in the throat.

"My poor little wolf with no teeth," he said. "I must help you." And he turned his head and bit his own shoulder so that the blood flowed.

"I share myself with you," he said.

She looked at the red trickle. She knew what he wanted her to do, but she didn't want to do it So she just stared down at him.

"You reject me then?" he asked with such soft, wounded eyes that she couldn't refuse him. She pressed her lips to the small cut and drank a little of the warm liquid.

The taste of his blood awoke in her some ancient need and she continued to drink until it was satisfied. For an instant it seemed as if she saw herself through his eyes.

The moment pa.s.sed and she was aware that he looked at her intently.

"Our souls have touched," he said.

They lay together a long time without talking.

Vaylance's conscience uncoiled from where it lay sleeping like a dormant asp and bit him.

"I have sinned and must repent," he said. "The Christians have such strange rules about love."

Then he looked at her and brushed back her hair to kiss her forehead. "And yet I don't think G.o.d would begrudge me to share blood-love with you," he said,"because it's such a comfort, and doesn't the Bible say, 'Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith the Lord'?"

Myrna laughed.

"Have I made a joke?" he asked.

"Sort of," she said. "That's the first time I ever heard anyone quote the Bible to justify fornication."

Hurt, he rolled away from her, pulling the pillow down over his head.

"You make it sound like something people write on the wall of a latrine," he said.

Myrna pulled the pillow away and was going to clout him with it, when she saw that although his eyes were tightly closed, a tear wet the lashes.

"Hey, I'm sorry," she said. "I was only teasing you."

"It's nothing," he said. "Just my romantic nature showing. I'd hoped we could call it love, not fornication. But I know it's much too soon to know."

He was silent for a moment and then he said, "Do you know why it's so difficult for you to love, Myrna?"

"No," she said honestly, almost guiltily. "I thought it was because I'd been hurt once, but I know it goes much deeper than that."

"It's because the wolvish soul builds trust slowly," he said. "It rejects all but those who persistently continue to take the risk of courting it. It may be befriended, never tamed."

Myrna felt that, for the first time, someone had really understood her nature. It seemed impossible that he could be leaving.

"I wish we had more time," she said.

"So do I," he said, "but perhaps we may meet again someday. I think that dream you had gives us cause for hope. It may mean that Odakai accepts you, but you are just not ready yet."

They held each other for a long time in the dark, saying nothing.

From somewhere in the room, Myrna seemed to hear a faraway voice, singing in an unknown language, his language.

"I must leave you now," he said.

"I wish I could go with you," she said, "but if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride."

He didn't understand the English proverb, and she had to explain to him that back in the 17th century only those with enough money could afford a horse.

"It sounds funny to me," he said, "because where I come from even the beggars ride. I'll change the saying around and give you my blessing as a parting gift. May your wishes be horses, Myrna, and carry you wherever you desire to go.""May your wishes be horses," she said. "I like the sound of that."

He gave her a parting kiss and an affectionate little nip on the neck, and then he was gone.

IV.

In 1845 it was raining. Vaylance slogged back toward camp in the evening drizzle.

On the way to the medical tent, he pa.s.sed the cook's station. Old, fat Temboyov was boiling a vat of some kind of lumpy gray porridge and bragging to a new recruit about how he'd looted a set of porcelain tea cups. Vaylance surrept.i.tiously relieved him of a few of the saucers.

The crossmatch worked just as she said it would. He was able to rule out any incompatible donors by watching for red clumps against the white porcelain background The transfusion was a success, and Dr. Rimsky was up and around on the third day. Vaylance moved back into the medical tent, after spending two days sleeping in a hollow tree.

"I'm relieved to see that you are not slinking into camp looking like a drowned rat anymore," said Rimsky. "But why didn't you just take your bed and claim illness? I would have thought up some way to cover for you."

"Because no one would believe me," said Vaylance. "I look healthier than the lot of you."

It was true. His complexion was almost rosy. Thanks to the transfusion in Myrna's hospital, Vaylance was in better health than he'd been in a long time.

"What's that tune you keep humming?" asked Dr. Rimsky one night as they worked together in the tent.

"I think it's called 'The Waters of Time,' " answered Vaylance, a little sadly.

V.

Externally, Myrna's life did not change much after Vaylance left. Work was still a series of frantic rush orders interspersed with periods of boredom. She brought a book on Russian history to the hospital to read when she wasn't needed.

Shanty still moved his big feet with the grace of a fairy dancer, and she won another blue ribbon at the shows. But he could not carry her to the place she really desired to go. One Sat.u.r.day afternoon as she brushed the saddle marks out of his hair, she pressed her face into his neck and wet his mane with tears. It was then that she heard him make the little noise in the throat, as horses do when they wish to express sympathy, and she realized she had allowed herself to love again.That night when she went to sleep, she dreamed that she walked through a long, dark tunnel. She came out into a large gra.s.sy place under a starry night sky. A horse and rider approached, making no sound except the jingling of faint harness bells. As the figure drew closer, Myrna recognized the Cossack woman who carried the wolf cub. The dark-eyed woman stopped her horse and offered the cub to Myrna, who took it and held it close to her heart. The woman pointed to a rutted wagon road, then turned her horse and rode away making no noise of hooves but only the ringing of tiny bells.

Myrna followed the road indicated until she came to a wagon parked by the roadside. A man was just climbing up to the driver's seat. Myrna put the cub on the wagon bed and boosted herself up. There were men, some lying, some sitting up, in the wagon. The man nearest her was crudely bandaged about the head and he muttered softly to himself. The driver clucked to the horses and the wagon creaked on its way. Myrna tucked the small wolf under the light flannel she was wearing. She felt its cold nose against her bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s. It was getting colder, so she moved closer to the man and placed her back against the side of the wagon. They lurched along until the road turned in at a large tent. Horse were tethered in a small grove of oak trees, and there was a fire a little ways from the tent. The driver pulled up and said something in Russian. A st.u.r.dy, gray-haired man with a bandaged arm came out of the tent and spoke to the driver, who climbed down from his seat.

Myrna reached for the wolf cub and found it was missing.

She looked down the front of her flannel gown and saw that in the hollow between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her little patch of gray fur was denser. Before she had time to think about this, she heard a voice she recognized from inside the tent. She jumped down from the wagon, and, ignoring the gray-haired man who spoke to her, ducked under the flap and entered.

Inside, in the lantern light, she saw him, with his back toward her, bending over a patient. He turned to look her way and his mouth fell open in astonishment so that his blood teeth showed.