Giants and Ogres Page 9

  When I climbed out of bed, the whole house was warm; it was the first time I had ever known it to be. As I walked into the hot kitchen, my feet sticking slightly to the linoleum floor, my mother looked up from her mortar and pestle. There was bread already rising in the oven. She wore the same clothes from the day before. I made myself breakfast, got dressed, and walked to school.

  When I got home that afternoon, the music box, a small leather pouch, and six fresh loaves waited on the table. My mother sat next to them all. I removed my coat and shoes and sat down as she picked up the breadknife. I told her I wanted to go for a walk in the fields.

  She carved the heel slowly off the pale, pale bread. “Don’t,” she suggested.

  I told her I wanted to go to the old bone orchard.

  She set down her knife and took me gently by the hand. Then she got up to retrieve a plate from the cupboard and the butter and the cinnamon from the counter. She set it all down in front of me and began to cut herself another slice.

  “Don’t.”

  I didn’t. She wound up the music box, and I used extra cinnamon. The small white brittle bits, too unground to chew, we lightly spat out onto the cutting board.

  A year after the missing person report had been filed, we sold what remained of the farm to the first offer and left for a small apartment across town. The fields had become wild long ago without the right care, anyway. The trees crouched over their old borders. The little maples grew broad and strong, concealing the orchard, and the mournful singing of coyotes behind the dark branches strengthened a little more every night. The morning after I turned nineteen I woke up and found that she had gone. She had taken the rusted music box with her but left me a note, the old leather pouch, and a cold chicken sandwich.

  I returned the other day and saw that the herd had also vanished. The vast fields of my childhood were occupied now by a sensible pair of mares, their jumps dotting the field with broken precision. The bass rumble was gone, and the mares cared nothing for patience. Years of storms, of ice and rain, had thrashed against the maple bows; the twisted grey twigs, covered in moss and rot, had slowly hidden the bone orchard. I couldn’t find it although I tried.

  I found a tree near where it had been. It towered over all the others and rattled in the wind. I was not young anymore but not so old that these steady limbs were off-bounds to me. I climbed it as high as I could. Cradled in the branches, halfway in between, above the field and beneath the stars, I watched the firmament until it was an inky blue. The clouds of the day had not yet fled, and they piled before the bright moon. They shone as though the light was their own, like dark castles in the sky.

  Laura (Lore) Keating is a writer for all ages, and is presently seeking representation for her long fiction. When not writing, she is editing. Originally from foggy southern New Brunswick, she spent two years in Japan, and after literally travelling around the world has finally set down in Montreal.

  The Catch

  Melanie Cole

  It’s not the wind, tinged with the coming winter, scraping its fingernails along her weathered skin, that wakes her. No, it’s the growl in her stomach. She’ll have to burrow deeper soon, the cold driving her underground until spring.

  But first she needs food.

  Lots of it.

  She crawls from her den, shaking moss and grass clippings from her hair. Branches rattle above her head like old bones. Out here, the wind is colder, carrying the scent of humans. Her mouth fills with saliva.

  A girl shuffles by, her chin pressed down against her chest, arms wrapped around herself. Tears stream down her face, salting her skin.

  The ogre launches from her hiding spot beneath the bridge. Dashing from tree to tree, she hides behind the bright orange foliage of passing shrubs. The girl doesn’t hear her until it’s too late. The ogre emerges from between the trees, too fast to follow, and snatches the girl by the ankle. Before the girl realizes what’s happened, she’s thrown over the creature’s shoulder.

  The girl kicks at the dark green hide beneath her, but the ogre is unperturbed.

  They’ve reached the hole beneath the bridge, the entrance to the ogre’s hideout. The ogre drops the girl in the dirt and turns to her with a wet, seeping grin. Sharp teeth poke out at odd angles, rough edged like a shark.

  “Jesus Christ!” The girl scrambles back in the leaves, but the ogre still has her foot. The girl’s shaking. Teeth clatter in her head like dice. Her eyes are wide. They bulge from the sockets, rolling side to side in desperation as they flash over the face in front of her. The tang of urine fills the air, wetness spreading down the girl’s pants, into her shoes.

  A loud grumble interrupts her struggles. The ogre looks down at her stomach and back at the girl. She shrugs. “Sorry.”

  Openly weeping now, the girl has snot running from her nose down to her chin, eyes streaming. “You don’t have to do this!” She claws at the dirt but can’t gain an inch. The ogre drags her closer.

  “Please! You don’t want me.” She flails a hand down toward her frame. “I’m too small.”

  The ogre cocks her head, considering.

  The girl swipes at the snot running down her face. This is her chance. “There are others, just that way.” She points back through the trees. “Lot of them. Please.”

  The girl is not wrong. One human is not enough. Who knows when another will pass her lair? She cannot hunt as she is now, not without somewhere to hide. But there is another possibility.

  She grabs the girl’s hand and brings it to her mouth, ignoring the shrieks and whimpers. She presses the girl’s thumb against a jagged tooth. Blood bubbles up from the wound, bright red like the leaves at their feet. She squeezes it until more blood appears, catching the droplets in the palm of her hand.

  She mutters words the girl cannot understand, words in her own language, before rubbing her palms together, licking the blood and rubbing it over her face.

  Time seems to slow to a pause as she shrinks, hair growing from her head, ears receding. Her nose collapses in on itself, replaced by a slightly angular human one. The girl stares at a mirror image of herself.

  The ogre raises a now human finger to her lips, shushing the girl before she can open her mouth. She steps past her into the clearing, tucking her hair behind her ears. Wind howls through the branches above, leaves falling like raindrops. She looks over her shoulder and shoots the girl a smile before turning and walking away.

  The air is so rich with the scent of humans it almost makes her dizzy. She walks back in the direction the girl had travelled, following the smell. A large building stands in the middle of a field, the grass still green despite the cold. People the same age and size of the girl mill about outside, their laughter punctuating the air with their frosty breath.

  “Hey look! Tess is back. I guess she forgot how to get home.” A blond girl points at her, the girl’s face lit up in a smile. It’s not a friendly smile. The eyes above are narrowed, like a cat playing with a mouse.

  Huddled around her are a group of girls all laughing and smiling. They peek at their friend, checking to make sure they’re behaving correctly. She’s their leader. The one the ogre needs to focus on.

  “Hi.”

  “Is it seriously speaking to us?” The blond girl rolls her eyes, looking from girl to girl. “I thought I told you. We don’t socialize with people who have such greasy hair. Why don’t you shower? Is there a ban on shampoo at your house or something?”

  The ogre shakes her head while the other girls laugh. The blond one smells like chemicals manufactured to mimic vanilla and flowers. Her skin is soft; her hair is shiny. It makes the ogre’s mouth water. The girl stares at her, waiting for a response.

  The ogre leans down and picks up a clot of dirt, lobbing it into the girl’s face. “There. Why don’t you go shower?” She turns and walks away, not too fast, not too slow. She holds her chin high, waiting.

  “Hey! Who the hell do you think you are? What kind of bitch throws dirt? Are you a child? H
ey! I’m talking to you.” The blonde strides along behind the ogre, her group of followers streaming behind, their mouths open. The blonde picks up a chunk of dirt and hurls it at the ogre’s back.

  “How do you like it, huh?”

  She hurls another. Her minions follow suit, picking up dirt and throwing it. They land with hollow thwacking sounds, bouncing off the ogre as she makes her way through the trees.

  They don’t realize where they are, what’s going on until it’s too late. The ogre has led them back to her den, the magic slipping off her like rain dripping down window panes. Hair falls from her head in clumps; shoulders broaden as she grows in stature.

  “What the?”

  The sentence goes unfinished, shrieks drowning out the question, leaves and grass kicked up in a flurry of scrabbling limbs.

  The ogre pulls the bodies down into her den where she begins digging a deeper chamber. Winter can batter her with its fury now. She has more than enough to last until spring.

  Across the clearing, a girl steps back from the tree she hid behind. She stumbles away, the cold stinging her cheeks. It takes a few blocks before the nausea subsides and a sort of elation replaces it. She doesn’t have to be afraid anymore. She knows what to do if anyone gives her trouble again.

  Melanie Cole is a writer living in Saskatchewan, Canada with her beloved husband and dog. You can find her on twitter @MelanieKCole.

  Giant’s Song

  K.L. Critchley

  The sun sank slowly behind the mountains, and the shadows began to stretch long across the valley. As they reached towards the darker horizon, they seemed to carry with them a kind of music. It was a strange tune—or would have sounded so to most folks, low and deep on the edge of human hearing, undoubtedly wild. Chaotic, it would have seemed, to those who could hear all the notes. Impossible to predict, with few repeating motifs, yet somehow harmonious and evoking of a deep sense of rightness, like after rubbing the smudges from glass and seeing an image in focus for the first time. The song crept through the trees on the lower slopes of the mountains, as if it knew it had wandered too far.

  It had come along the wide river, drifted through the trees, and flowed down, down from a mountain peak. It had started, hours ago, in a pan-flute. Not a small dainty flute of shined-silver as a glittering musician might play for a queen, nor a rough bound flute of reeds, as a satyr might hold in a Greek sculpture. No, the flute that played these great notes was a great flute, a very large flute, as wide across as three men are tall, twice as long, and several layers deep. The pipes were made from tree-trunks, carefully hollowed, and bound with a darker, harder leather than any merchant could trade for down in the valley. The beast the leather came from was not one men hunted often.

  Bihotzengoizargi played the flute.

  Bihotz was a giant, of the line of Goizargena, and she loved few things as well as she loved to play.

  Bihotz had loved another giant many years before, Itxaro, and had thought to turn mate and make a new clan, but Itxaro had died dragon-wounded before any bonds became solid. When it happened, Bihotz could not even go to her own clan-mother for consoling. Her mother had been killed the season before, as she fished in the great water, by humans with spears and swords. Bihotz had no grandparents. All had died of illness or misfortune farther back than Bihotz could well remember. With the death of the Goizargijuan, and no mated pair to step in, the clan had slowly scattered to their own mountains, and for a time it had been just her and her father Sendoa. But a decade past, Sendoa had become tired. He had become so tired, so weary of a world gone orderly and known, a world losing all it’s magic, that one day he had finally given up, laid down, and slept stone-sleep, becoming part of the mountain.

  There were no other giants left to hear Bihotz play.

  Bihotz played anyway.

  In the mornings, Bihotz often played a lively tune, with unexpected adagio sections and sudden runs of trills, falling off and picking up, gaining speed before crescendoing into her favorite major chords. She had many times been rewarded with laughter from stone, or heard an old friend’s tune. And for a day, a morning, a song, it was good.

  Bihotz paused to listen, but the evening was quiet. It had been many seasons since she had played and received an answer.

  She put her flute to her great mouth.

  Alas for the world, her song seemed to say. Minor keys softly played, alas for me. Alas that I should have no accompaniment, that none can play my music, nor want to learn. Alas that my song soars not to the sky and sinks not to the ground and is too wild for the living things in between. Alas that all is tamed but me, and I sing solo.

  Bihotz loved to play, but she too was getting tired. As the pinks and oranges of the dying sun muted to purple and black, Bihotz thought of sleep. The moon was at its fullness, and there was plenty of light to play by (though she could play just as well without sight at all), but the day had been long. All days lately seemed long, though fall was well headed for winter.

  Bihotz knew she was almost ready to lay down her flute, once and for all, and seek her own stone-sleep. Even melodies as full and adventuresome as hers could lack for harmony. And there was none left, not in the whole of the world that she could hear.

  Alas for night, her song seemed to say, for ending and sleep. For the longest sleep with no waking until the seas rise and the mountains burn and the world begins anew. Alas to be here, alas for one more note, for one more breath—

  And a far-distant howl cut the night.

  Bihotz was startled into silence for a moment, certain that she had imagined the voice. She knew of no packs denning close enough to be heard, so perhaps a solitary creature …. But why would such a one call to her?

  She resumed her song, and soon the wolf joined in again. The lupine voice was as wild as could be wished, effortlessly rising and falling in pitch, with beautiful sustained notes, filling holes in her own song, and creating artful pauses as the singer presumably drew breath. Bihotz would have been filled with joy except …

  Except.

  The single wolf howling from a distant hill was just that. Just one. And the wolf’s song was as desolate and lonely and heartsick as her own.

  Perhaps more.

  But now Bihotz could not sleep. She could not bring herself to be the first to lay her instrument down. She could not abandon another like that. She could not let another musician carry on alone until the silence cut them off.

  She suddenly found she had more energy than she had thought. Perhaps the day had not been so long after all.

  She tucked her great feet underneath her body and pushed, levering herself up and up, until she was tall enough to break the profile of the mountain.

  As she began her descent, heading towards her new partner, she continued to play. Her song was still arrhythmic, still in minor keys full of accidentals, and still so very mournful … but it was suddenly fuller, somehow, and no longer trailing off.

  Oh, it seemed to say, alas for all poor creatures. How unhappy are we who are alone. But here, sad creature, for this night, let us share our woe.

  As she drew closer, she became more certain from which peak the wolf howled. She found herself breaking into a run, causing trees and boulders to tremble with the thunder, yet her breath came no harder for the pace. She was a giant. Her strength was great, and her stamina was unparalleled. Her breathing did not falter and neither did her song.

  Oh please, it seemed to cry, let us mourn together. Let our songs mingle and our hearts weep. Let us grieve all the lost and lonely together. Let us sing together—

  The moon was high by the time Bihotz found the wolf, and so she had no difficulty seeing the trouble. She slowed as she approached, though she knew he would not run. If her eyes could not have told her, her nose would have.

  The dire wolf (for that was what he was, immense and black, and with a voice to match) lay on a ledge, under an overhang. It was a smallish space, certainly smaller than a creature of his size might normally seek out, but if the
blood still slowly dripping down the rock face didn’t tell the story, then the scorch marks and ash stretching for feet and feet in every direction did.

  The wolf had been pursued by a dragon, and being smart enough to avoid being pinned in burning tree line, had sought less flammable shelter.

  But dire wolves were hardy creatures, many able to heal extremely rapidly from the most grievous of injuries. That this one was alive and not healing was a curious situation.

  And then the wind shifted, and Bihotz could smell death.

  The wolf must not have run very far. Bihotz could pick up the scent of the dragon’s other victims near enough down the other side of the peak, though no active scent of a dragon. And there was another such scent, much closer at hand …

  Bihotz finally drew close enough that she hardly needed to exhale to make her song heard. And the wolf, too, sang quiet from where it curled around the last pup.

  There were many, the wolf seemed to sing, and then just us. We ran so fast we thought we could almost fly, but we could not. And we hid and listened, and the enemy listened too, and we could not come down.

  I have failed, the wolf seemed to sing, I am not my mate. She is good at food and warm. She is good at life. I am built for hunting and defending and killing. I have failed. I could not feed my young, and I could not defend my den, and I could not kill the enemy.

  I am done, the wolf sang, I am tired. I am alone, and I bleed, and I go soon to the place my mate and young went. I go to earth and sky. I sleep.

  Bihotz blew a staccato burst of sharp denial.

  Do not, she pleaded, do not yet. You yet breathe, and you sing!

  I sing death-song, the wolf crooned, low and quiet, I sing last-song.

  Please, Bihotz played, a note so sweet it was sticky and grasping. Please. Tonight you are not alone. Tonight we are a duet!

  The wolf tilted his great head on his great paws and looked at the tiny bundle by his side. It was still.