The Last Hour of Gann (181 page)

They couldn’t laugh, but she hooted once, and then relaxed back onto her haunches and hooted again, capping her teeth with her lips for a few clicks, a belated and much resigned greeting.

“White Echo,” said Pool, rolling back onto his side.

“Light Echo,” she agreed, in what might have been a wry tone if they had any understanding of sarcasm. She looked at the flask and then at his hard root. She snorted and crouched low, hiding her belly from sight and ready to jump at the first opportunity. “Echo sees shining thing.”

Not, ‘Echo sees Pool,’ but definitely progress. Lying in the tunnel mouth as if the rough, wet stone were his own cozy sleeping place, Pool picked up the flask and blew across it, pursing his lips to make the sound especially strong. He put it down, gave it a careless shove toward her, and lay that way, his arm outstretched, his hand open and fingers lightly curled, watching her.

She didn’t touch it right away. She could still see the insistent jut of his root and knew what it meant to her, but the lure of the flask was irresistible. She came for it eventually, rattling at herself in a soft, disgusted manner even as she crept up and reached for it.

Pool could have jumped then. He didn’t need a good jump either. A hard lunge and a quick snatch would have been enough. He lay quiet and did not move, purring at every slow breath.

In the moment before her fingers touched the flask’s silver sides, she looked at him again. Her gaze was calm and dark with understanding. Then she crinkled her nose at him and picked up the flask.

She was clever, and it took her far less time than it had taken him to figure out how to make it sing. She retreated to the shaft and sat in full light to play with it, and perhaps she was unaware of how beautiful she looked there, how clean and perfect, but then again, perhaps she wasn’t. Her eyes had a way of coming back to him as he lay and watched her and her eyes were filled with thoughts.

He could have leapt for her at any time. When she found that the flask could catch the Upworld light and splash it bodilessly around the walls, her fascination was such that he could have stood boldly upon two legs and thrown himself at her, but he did not. He lay, feeling neither the damp rainwater puddling up around him nor the rough stone beneath him; all his power to perceive sensation had focused for the moment in his swelled and throbbing man-root. Pool purred and was patient.

“Hot meat,” said Echo at last, which was the greatest expression of satisfaction any of them knew. She looked at him and crinkled her nose. “Echo sees Pool.”

He rolled onto his back and balanced on his head again, softly yowling. His man-root pointed straight up, quivering. He rolled back onto his side and looked at her.

She put the flask down and came toward him, brushing her knuckles once across his outstretched palm before she settled practically at his side and within easy, immediate reach. Her scent was like light in his mind. The sound of her scratchy, awkward purrs (she didn’t seem to know quite how to make them) seemed to catch in his ears and linger. Like echoes.

How long that moment lasted could not be measured, but when the light from Upworld began to fade at last, she bent down and touched her face to his hand. Pool’s fingers twitched, not unmindful of those sharp, white teeth, but she did not bite. She turned, letting his limp hand stroke at the smooth side of her head, back and forth and back again. She lay down, belly to the ground at first and then, as she pressed her smooth cheek into his hand, she rolled onto her back.

“Pool and Echo,” he said.

“Good hunt,” she replied, with that same, dry tone of unnatural humor.

He would have laughed if he knew how. He purred instead, somewhat raggedly, and mounted. She arched her back; he slipped his hands beneath her shoulderblades, supporting her. His knees prodded at the backs of her thighs as he pierced her, and she wrapped his hips with only a little hesitation. He nuzzled at her open mouth as he began to move. She shifted once, grumbling, then sighed and put her arms around him.

The light went away, and Pool was alone in the dark with Echo. Upworld’s air was cool and sweet and wet with rain, and Pool knew who he was and where and with who, and life was very, very good.

Pool by R. Lee Smith

Coming mid to late 2014!

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