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.
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