ORANGES

It was a sunny day in a land that knew little else. Brown dirt, brown rocks and brown plants baked on hillsides under the bright bowl of the clear cerulean sky. It was a landscape suited for goatherds and hermits, but there I was, for a little while at least.
I adjusted my sword across my shoulders, trying to find a position where it would not bump me so annoyingly as I walked. I should have tried to find a shorter one, one that I could wear on my belt.
A peaceful place, actually, for the moment free of even the aforementioned goatherds and hermits. Morning was still a sweet memory and the worst heat of the afternoon was yet to come, so I kept my pace brisk as I enjoyed the flight of hawks and the scurry of lizards. I meant to reach the mountains within a few days, where a city waited for me; in that city was the man who held Raven's soul captive in a small, mirror-lined box.
I needed that box.
My mind filled with sad and savage thoughts as I walked on over hills and through ovenlike valleys. Slowly the sun climbed and all the world settled under rocks, hiding in holes and beneath the scant shade of the few bushes. Even the hawks disappeared from the burning sky. I was the only moving thing on the face of the earth, a distinction I could only put down to ignorance as I realized my body was beginning to rebel beneath the sun's oppression. Like the scorpion and the spiny lizard I needed to find a hole somewhere and wait for the cooling that the moon would bring.
For the first time in hours I raised my eyes from the small circle of rock around me, hoping to see a cave or overhang.
On the top of the next hill a tree crouched, its dark green boughs starred with oranges. It's a mirage, I said.
Nonsense, I replied. Mirages hover on the horizon, beckoning travelers on to their doom; this tree was real enough, prosaic enough to have a dead branch disfiguring it; as I ascended the trail towards it I could hear the buzzing of flies attracted to the fallen fruit.
A stone on the trail gazed at me in a manner which puzzled me until I got close enough to see that it was actually a skull, weathered brown by this brown land. Other bones revealed themselves among the rocks until the path was lined with them, brown and ivory, long and short and the occasional skull. By the time I stood at the edge of the tree's shadow I had counted half a hundred skulls, some lying near the rusted traces of armor and weapons.
The tree was larger than any orange tree I had ever seen; a team of horses could have fit comfortably beneath it, if I had had the foresight to bring any horses. Half of the branches on the east side were dead, but the others were densely leafed and loaded with oranges nearly as large as my head. In the cool light beneath I could see only fallen fruit and the ruins of a small stone building; the bones stopped at the shadow's edge.
I grounded the tip of my sword and stood just under the branches, waiting and listening.
"You're a woman," said a voice, harsh and sibilant. It came from behind me, from a pile of rock frozen in sunlight.
"I am a warrior," I told the rocks. Not strictly true, but close enough to the truth to serve. "I am Hunter. Who are you?"
It looked at first like a woman, suddenly visible in a spot where I would have sworn there was nothing. Then, as it approached silently and confidently, I saw the short fur covering it, the long talons and the hint of scales around the glowing green eyes slitted like a goat's.
Its mouth was full of very sharp little teeth. "And a virgin," it said. It took me a moment to realize it was still talking about me.
I decided that was none of its business and did not reply. Soon we stood a sword's length apart in the shade, considering each other.
It looked a little puzzled, if I read that alien physiognomy correctly. "I have seen warriors," it said; "they are large men, full of violence and tough to chew. The few women I have had were small like you, but soft and tender even if soured by fear. You do not look like either. Why don't you run screaming like the other virgins? Or draw your sword and attack me, if you are a warrior?"
"You have given me no reason to do either," I replied. "I wish you no harm; I seek only respite from the sun and perhaps to enjoy an orange or two before I resume my trek. If this is your tree then I humbly beg your hospitality; if not, then I ask if you would give me the honor of your company while I rest? It's not often that I meet a being like yourself and I would be pleased to learn more about you."
Now it was plainly baffled. I doubted if many of its victims had bothered to talk to it before it tore out their throats. As I hoped, the novelty overcame its instincts, at least for the moment.
We sat on the stones near the tree trunk a careful distance from each other. I asked its name. After some thought it slowly replied, "I am Daphne." That didn't seem likely, but I courteously refrained from saying so.
"Lovely name," I said. "How long have you been guardian of this tree?"
Daphne blinked a little. I figured she had overheard the name from a traveller and used it for lack of any other, but time wasn't something she knew anything about. I tried again.
"Do you remember why you started guarding the tree?"
"I have always been here. This is my tree. It is forbidden for any to eat of the fruit."
"But I just did." It had been very sweet and full of juice. My hands were sticky with it. Daphne bared her teeth in a sort of smile but didn't say anything.
"Who told you the fruit was forbidden? Was it the people who built the shrine?" The stones we were sitting on had faint carvings worn by time, but on one block I could plainly see the name of my patron goddess and her sigil, a staring bird. It gave me some comfort to be in one of her sacred places, even if abandoned.
Daphne was losing interest. I wondered how much of her was really human, or if she was only a beast of prey after all. "No one told me. It has always been this way. Are you really a woman?" She leaned closer. I could smell her breath, heavy and fetid like a cat's. Beneath the short silky fur of her torso was a compact, muscular body; a long scar crossed her small, nippleless breasts. Claws clicked on stone.
I leaned towards her in turn. Now I could smell musk, thick in the hot still air. "Yes I am," I said, my hand still holding the dagger I had sectioned the orange with. "And you? Is there a part of you that is still a woman, too?"
"No." Her teeth were very sharp looking. I sensed her shoulders tightening for a killing slash, and readied myself for her assault. I took one last chance. "I don't want to hurt you," I said.
"You won't."
I was blunt. "I'd rather have sex with you than fight you." I said it quietly, looking right into her peculiar eyes.
It worked; she was taken completely off guard. "What?" I put the dagger on the slab between us, close at hand just in case. Then I reached out and as slowly as I dared I stroked the fur on her upper arm.
For a moment she wavered, caught on the fine line between the violent intimacies predators use for both killing and sex; what I hoped was that sex was rare enough for this isolated being that it would overcome her hunger. It was possible that she would just decide to kill me afterwards, or lose control and do me in accidentally, but those were risks I had to take.
It was hard to say what she decided at first, for the way she launched herself at me certainly seemed like a murderous assault. Those lethal looking claws swept past and her solid body slammed into mine, carrying me off my seat and onto my back on the ground. A putrid orange squashed under me.
Wrapped in a haze of orange and musk I kept her from biting too hard into my shoulder by keeping a tight grip on the short hair at the back of her head, while trying to prevent her from tearing my clothes.
I don't like being on my back. After a brief, violent struggle which bloodied my nose and broke one of her teeth when I backhanded her for biting my left breast, I pinned her awkwardly against a half-buried pedestal, her strong thighs constricting my waist. I bent her head back and kissed her neck; I think she was purring.
It all reminded me of the night I'd spent with a Cytherian kitchen girl a few months before.
Just like then, my interlude was interrupted by a man who insisted on taking the wrong view of things. Then it was the king's security officer, a dour man of conventional attitudes who thought he would have the two of us hanged for perversion before I managed to change his mind with a few sword thrusts through his gut.
The tall man in bronze armor who came charging towards us was motivated by higher thoughts. He had come to slay the fabulous monster who haunted the tree and, seeing two figures engaged in what looked like mortal combat, decided one of us was in need of help.
I was by that time mostly naked, and now obviously female; Daphne was of course still covered in fur which was smeared with blood from both of us. I didn't even realize he was there until he'd grabbed me by the hair and thrown me onto another pile of rotten oranges. Still on the ground, Daphne bared bloody fangs at the intruder, who raised his sword to hack off her head.
His breastplate and backpiece didn't quite meet at the sides, which is where I drove my dagger, right through the ribs and into his hero's heart.
Made wild by anger and frustrated lust, Daphne tore the man's throat out as he dropped dead on top of her; then she started dismantling him entirely. I sat on a rock and watched as she pulled out his entrails.
I ate another orange, my fifth, as she gorged happily on his liver. The stink of a fresh kill mingled unpleasantly with the reek of putrifying oranges, making it hard to really enjoy the fruit. I politely declined her invitations to join in her feast.
Our hungers satiated in different ways, we slept curled around each other for the rest of the afternoon; she was a fitful sleeper, constantly twitching and waking, but the heat and my exhaustion let me ignore her and drift dreamlessly until the gold of early evening was touching the land and it was time for me to go.
The dead hero had carried a short sword which suited me very well, along with other bits of kit - water, some gold, a talisman for a god I didn't know; but his nicest present was a horse, left at the foot of the hill in the shade of an outcrop. I filled the mare's saddlebags with oranges. It didn't like Daphne much, but she was full and not interested in horsemeat. She had buried parts of the man in a hole near the base of the tree, so she wouldn't need to be hungry for a while.
"You will return this way someday?"
"Perhaps; I don't know. It might be a while. You'll remember me if I come by again?"
"I will remember your smell." I mounted the horse and looked up at the violet sky. On the horizon a fat moon was climbing to meet the stars that were just starting to show.
I prodded the horse with my heels and started on the long road to the mountains. Daphne stood on her hilltop and watched for a while, then as I reached the crest of the next hill I looked behind and saw only the tree.