In the Bones of Giants

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Jinn's Tale

    She had always led a quiet life. She had managed this for many years and saw no reason why anything should change. Each part of her life was crafted for stability. She lived in the very center of a large village. The village was surrounded by farmland. If there was a bad harvest, the hunters could still provide enough for everyone. If the hunters failed, she had her own garden, which she worked to keep consistent in its output. Her husband's trade was safe and reliable - making tools for the hunters. Her children were afraid of the outside world. She had instilled them with enough fear to keep them in line and close to home. The climate was harsh but consistent, and she had it all figured out.
    As happens, a day arrived when all of this changed. It arrives for everyone, except those for whom it does not. It was still early in the morning. She had risen to look at herself in the mirror next to the bed. It was an antique, certainly, as no mirrors were made in the village. Her own father had bought it from a merchant a lifetime ago. She had looked in it every day since, measuring the gap between the top of her head and the top of the mirror, making sure to always stand at the same distance from it in order to get an accurate reading. When her mother had placed a rug beneath it, she moved the mirror herself and flipped the rug out from under it to make sure its height remained the same. Of course, she had reached her tallest height years ago, still inches from the top of the mirror, but the ritual remained. In the past ten years, she had switched from measuring her progress toward being a woman to admiring the woman she had turned into. Her face was full and round like the rest of her. She still had some of the weight of her last pregnancy on her, the product of which began to wake at that moment. This is how the day began, as innocuous as all other days, to be quickly sent awry without even giving her the courtesy of time to reflect on these changes.
    The first sign was the cry of a horn in the distance, echoed by two others from two other directions. She left her bedroom and continued out the front door and through the garden, listening. The cries of horns became the cries of her people, also from three directions. This was the second sign that something was not as usual, and more troubling than the first. The third turned visible just as the cries rose in volume, a tree of black smoke to the North. This was worrying, because she had no contingency in mind for it. She had taught her famiy how to respond to a fire, but she sensed that this was something else. In fact, what she felt was an overwhelming wind that rushed from behind her, the same feeling one gets as the waters are pulled back from the ocean's edge to form the wave rising above. Beneath her feet, through the air, in the sky, and all around her there was a tide of history rising to submerge all her plans. Her youngest son approached and stood beside her. She put her hand on his head, felt his hair beneath the tide, felt that he was about to die.
    The cries followed the black smoke, fading in the East and South, but still approaching from the North. Her husband appeared, jogging up the lane to stop before the garden where she stood. "We need to run," he said. "All of us."
    She nodded, but said, "We can't run."
    He looked her in the eyes with fear. "We must."
    So she did. She ran back inside and shouted, not sure what she was saying, only calling to her family. All of them knew how to run but the newborn. She ran back into the room and grabbed her out of the crib next to the mirror, took one final look at herself and the quiet life she had built, then ran out the front door.
    When she did, they were already there. The cries, the smoke, and those who inspired both, on horseback galloping up and down the street, the cries emanating from those they dragged behind. She could not take her eyes from one of these, could not stop trying to recognize it; its snarling face, its teeth drawn too far back, looking as inhuman to her as the armored horsemen. One of these galloped from the opposite direction, slicing her along the neck as he went.
    She fell still watching the creature being dragged, still clutching the infant to her chest. The child began to cry, its cries lost in the torrent of sound that washed over the village from North to South. Then later it began to sleep. When Mabibwi arrived from the day's hunt, Jinn and everyone else was dead. Yet still she saw. She could not remember his name, but recognized him as human and knew his face. He carried a giant egg in his backpack. She tried to lift her arms to hand him the child as it woke, but they would not move. She tried to move her lips to speak the child's name, but no breath passed between them. Everything was quiet, had been quiet for so long. She wanted only for sound to break forth from the world, to break from her into the world. As she still struggled, she watched Mabibwi reach down and close her eyes with his fingers, felt the infant being lifted from her grasp while she spoke its name only to herself. While she spoke her own name to anyone who could listen. Jinn.   

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Mabibwi's Tale

    Mabibwi trudged, the child slept or cried from its sling across his chest. When the winds died, the temperature cooled. This brought the familiar sigh of evening. Beyond the village, the sun began to melt. Its color cooled with the air as dark set in. He began later than he should have to look for a place to camp. It was then that he came upon a spot hidden on three sides by weathered stone. He approached it from the open side, which faced toward the setting sun, and found that it was occupied by a man who was a lizard. This lizard man watched him silently with his head turned to the side. Mabibwi raised a hand in greeting, both of his hands in fact, to show that they were empty. The lizard man flicked its tongue and copied the gesture, whether in mockery or not. Regardless, he sat down across from the stranger, a pile of bones between them where a campfire should have been.
    The lizard man turned its head from side to side and watched him, then spoke. "What is that?"
    "What?"
    "That." It pointed to the baby slung over his chest.
    "Oh. That's a baby."
    "Where is the mother?"
    "She's dead."
    It studied him. "Did you kill her?"
    He shook his head. "She was already dead."
    "My condolences," the lizard man said.
    "It's okay. It's not my baby."
    It studied him again. "Are you going to eat it?"
    "Eat what?"
    "That." It pointed to the baby again.
    "Um. No."
    "Then why do you carry it with you?"
    "To care for it, I guess."
    "No offense..." It turned its head and flicked its tongue before continuing. "But if a mother asked me to care for her baby, I would eat it."
    "None taken." Mabibwi could think of nothing else to add. It occurred to him that it was quite impressive that the lizard man could speak a human language when its lips and mouth were so poorly suited to the task. "She did not ask me."
    "Just the same. What will you feed it? I've been told that human children feed on their mothers."
    "I'm not sure." Mabibwi put his finger in the baby's mouth to check something. "It has no teeth."
    "Would you like me to eat it for you?"
    "The baby?" Mabibwi thought for a moment. "No."
    "Suit yourself. It is yours. Where will you go?"
    "What do you mean?"
    "You must go somewhere, yes?"
    "I suppose I must."
    "Then where are you going?"
    "I don't know." He shrugged. "I know of no place but the place I came from, and I cannot go there."
    The lizard scratched his chin with a claw and made a face. Mabibwi could not tell what it was meant to express. "There is a city to the East. A long walk for a human, but perhaps you could make it."
    "That sounds good."
    The two of them sat for a bit. The lizard man did not offer him food, and had clearly already eaten its own supper. It seemed to be turning its head to bask in the setting sun, and made no motions that Mabibwi interpreted as hostile. They struck up stilted conversation throughout the evening, during which Mabibwi learned that the lizards were solitary creatures. Upon maturation, a lizard man (or woman, Mabibwi assumed, though the speaker made no distinction) would leave his nest and travel. If he found a suitable place in the world that no living lizard had claimed, he would settle. It could be an empty plot of land, or the former home of a lizard now deceased. He would hunt, improve the land, and live out his days there. They joined together only for reproduction and funerals, at which each attendee would devour a piece of their dead relative, and then go their separate ways.
    Mabibwi thought it seemed a lonely life, though his companion did not seem troubled by it. It explained that it was now in this wandering stage, searching for a home. It explained that it was on its way to the coast, to find a human ship of suitable size. It would then eat the crew and take over the ship, setting sail for uncharted waters. This was the first Mabibwi had heard of lizard pirates.
    When the sun had set, he found himself uneasy about sleeping near this creature, though it had assured him it would not eat him or the baby while they slept. All things considered, though, he was too tired to think of any alternatives, or to care much what happened to himself or his charge. He fell asleep, still crouched by the bone pile.

    He dreamt he was in a city. He had never seen a city, yet it was vivid. Sprawling onion domes twisted into the clouds. Market stalls seemed to grow from the walls. The sky was full of bridges. As he walked down the middle of the street, people burst into flame. Their eyes and then skin would glow like hot coals, sparks would shoot from their mouths, the hair fizzle away like a dynamite fuze. They would dance and scream. Colored lights flickered in the windows from which the music flowed. Ecstasy was welling out from the deepest part of his brain. It filled the channels and buoyed his skull till he was just a balloon trailing legs and arms, drifting on the breeze through the onion domes.
    It was all gone when he woke. So was the lizard man. The baby was still there, strapped to his chest.


    On the second day, it began to cry constantly, no doubt hungry. He tried his best to ignore the sound, but there wasn't much to hold his attention. The ground was flat and featureless, barring a few plateaus on the horizon and the occasional pile of carrion. Mabibwi laughed at their situation. On his back was a meal large enough to feed several families. On his front was a creature unable to chew or digest that meal. He had no way to prepare it, anyway. The further he went, the more they strayed from the old hunting grounds and into the heart of the desert. He wondered allowed if he perhaps should have stayed at home. But how could one man bury a whole village? Or fend off the scavengers if he did not.

    On the second night, he met a man wearing armor like none he had ever seen, neither the man nor the armor. He was pale with a long, white mustache. The helmet sitting next to him reflected the glow of the campfire.  
    The fellow stared in the direction of the child. "I saw a man eat an infant much like that one only a few days gone."
    "What is it with you people and eating children?" By reflex, he held his arms around it, in case the stranger thought to skewer it with his longsword.
    The other man shook his head. "Not my taste, I assure you. I could not stomach it in any sense." He paused and fidgeted. His hands shook on the hilt of his sword, which he held with its point to the ground like a walking stick. "Tell me about your gods, stranger."
    "Gods?" Mabibwi wondered at the purpose behind this line of questioning.
    "You have gods, do you not?"
    "Many of them."
    "My god offers eternal life to the man who wars against the infidels. What do your gods offer?"
    "They offer us nothing, only strike us dead from the sky or devour us beneath the Earth." He paused to search for the right words to express something he had always taken for granted. "Death is our rest, as Father would have said."
    "A grim philosophy. Tell me about one of your gods."
    Mabibwi picked the one closest to the top of his mind. "Watanga. The beast of the Underhells."
    "Watanga." The man seemed to be testing the name, riffling through the sounds it made. "What is the Underhell?"
    "Underhells. There are many. Together they are the world below our hell."
    "Our hell?"
    "Yes." Mabibwi waved his hand at the desert.
    "Do you mean....we're in hell now?"
    He scratched his head. "Of course."
    Roland shuddered and twitched the bars of his mustache. "Tell me about this Watanga."
    "It is unsafe to describe him beyond the name, even in dreams."
    But the stranger was interested now. "Tell me about him, and I promise not to kill you." He flexed his fingers on the sword hilt before him. The blade was the shiniest thing Mabibwi had ever seen, seeming to be made of the same fire that burned between them.
    Mabibwi had not considered himself in danger before. But he needed no additional convincing. It seemed like a fair deal. "Watanga is a great beast of many legs. He stalks the halls of the Underhells, feeding on those who venture too deep."
    "Why would anyone do that?"
    "The Underhells are filled with treasure. And Watanga grants wishes for a price."
    "What price?"
    Mabibwi shrugged. "I don't know. A price you shouldn't wish to pay, I suppose." There was a pause. The knight seemed to be mulling over this new information. "What are your gods like?"
    He lowered his eyes from the sky. "There is but one god, named God. He controls and is all things. When we die (if we prove worthy), we become one with him to live eternally, as masters of the universe."
    "What is your home like?"
    "My home?" He searched the fire for his memories. "I come from a great city called The Mausoleum. Crumbling spires surround us on all sides, spanning both sides of the river mouth. The ground is made of stone, the streets lined with travellers from all lands. At night, the forge fires keep the darkness at bay." Other memories came to him, but did not make it to his tongue. He went silent.
    Mabibwi cleared his throat. "No, I meant....what is the weather like? The world."
    "The world? The weather? Much like this, I suppose. But cooler."


    The third day was so much like the second that he forgot it was the third. By the time he saw a silhouette shaped like a house on the horizon, he assumed he was hallucinating. Smoke drifted from what was either a chimney or a geyser. The house or geyser stood atop a shallow hill that ran for a mile in every direction, textured with evenly spaced shadows that he took to be plants. If this was a hunger dream, it was an elaborate one. As he moved up the path, the house was unobscured by the hill on which it stood, revealing lantern light in a window. Night arrived in force as he examined the scene, his head tilted to one side as if we were musing or mulling. But no thoughts accompanied the gesture. He only looked at the house and the backdrop of stars that was forming behind it, slowly rotating as if the house were the axis of the world.
    He shook himself and did have a thought then. He wondered how to approach a strange home all alone in the countryside, himself a stranger. Not approaching was out of the question. He saw no movement but the stars and the sway of food plants in the breeze. He considered calling out from a distance, but announcing himself when he was still under cover of darkness seemed a method for the guilty. There was nothing for it but to knock on the door. He resolved to make sufficient noise as he approached up the path, careful not to stomp, but scraping the dust and stones with his feet loud enough to present audible footsteps. This he did, then knocked on the door, too quietly at first, then louder. The door opened immediately, the light that spilled out framing a man of beastly proportions. "Speak, stranger," he said.
    Mabibwi began to, and instead toppled forward across the threshold, either fainting or falling asleep on the spot.

    He awoke to laughter, rotund and jovial. He awoke to firelight bouncing off the sandstone interior of the house. He felt at peace, considered shutting his eyes again to stay in that feeling. He knew nothing of his host, or what they might do when he woke. But the room was warm, and he ached. It was the return of hunger that convinced him to open his eyes and sit up.
    "THERE he is," said the same voice as before, still with the same laugh in its tone. A hand clapped him on his back before he even saw the speaker. He turned his head to the left to see him, still of the same proportions but no longer beastly. He was clean-shaven, even his hair cut short. Mabibwi's first thought was that the man's skull was enormous, and closer to the surface of his face than normal. He was quite handsome in spite of or because of this. "Glad you're not dead, or planning to sleep through your stay. Eat, my friend." The fellow removed his hand from Mabibwi's back and reached out to pull a table toward them, where they sat on a small bench. Mabibwi looked at the table, or at the food on the table. It was a feast, far too much for one man. Numerous dishes in concentric circles, some half-empty; what was left after a meal. Still enough for three or four Mabibwis.
    The dishes were only half-visible in the firelight, chunks of what could be meat or fruits or vegetables in dark sauces. He ate from all of them without distinguishing anything from anything else. Rainbows burst in his mind and he held back tears as he ate. When his eyes could focus beyond the table, he examined the rest of the room. Before the fireplace across from them, a woman, smaller but also of similar stature to the man, sat in a rocking chair nursing an infant. The firelight danced on her bare chest, her neck, thighs, the left side of her face. Her eyes were dark and half-hidden in shadow. Unable to do otherwise, he took in every part of her and was instantly aroused. He looked away and focused on the food. There was a bowl of fruit that suddenly looked round and supple, feminine, as if her shapes had been transferred onto it, and he had to look away from that, too.
    "Thank you," he stammered. He breathed and took control of himself. "I've never tasted any meal to compare with this."
    "You're welcome." Her voice suited her. He resolved to reflect on why this was so. He did not look up, but felt her examining him.
    "I'm not surprised," said the man. "You look as if you haven't eaten for weeks."
    He continued to eat between responses. "Days, not weeks. But I am starving."
    The man laughed again. "Well. Perhaps someone was underfeeding you before then. Eat all you like, and there is more to be had if needed."
    He bent over the dishes on the table, but could not stop his eyes from drifting back to the woman before the fireplace. He watched her nursing for what could've been a fraction of a second, but felt like far too much time to him. Then he realized something, felt at his own chest by reflex. "Thank you," he said again, this time addressing her directly, and he pointed to the infant nestled against her chest. It was his. Well, not his, but he thought of no other way to refer to it.
    She nodded, still inspecting him. "You are welcome. She certainly needs it." She looked down at the child, smoothed what little hair was on its head.
    He looked away again. "It is a she?"
    "Yes. IT is a she. Is she not yours?"
    "Yes. I mean no. Our village was attacked. I found it. Found her lying there, crying." He felt defensive, for some reason. "I found no one else living. It seemed best to leave."
    "You're lucky to have found us when you did."
    He could not disagree with that. He nodded, still eating, finally beginning to taste the individual ingredients.
    The man cleared his throat, and his voice boomed with an energy like laughter. Mabibwi thought it must be how he always spoke. "Well, I think introductions are in order. I.…am Ketanka!" He snapped his hand across his face as if twitching a curtain aside. "This is my wife, Khalisi. The children are under strict orders to sleep, but you can meet them in the morning. What were you called at home, friend?"
    He stopped chewing long enough to speak. "Mabibwi. I do not know the child's name."
    "Mabibwi..." Ketanka said. "It has a ring to it." As if they were brainstorming names for him. "Perhaps you should name the child. Or I could name her if you like."
    "You," said Khalisi, "should not be allowed to name any child ever again."
    "Nonsense!" He lit his pipe for emphasis, and perhaps to avoid arguing with her.
    Mabibwi's furious dining had slowed to the point where he was able to examine his surroundings at the same time. The interior was smooth sandstone: floors, walls, and ceiling, though much of the floor was covered with rugs of varied patterns. The chimney was a hole in the ceiling above the open fireplace, which blazed with hot coals and provided much of the room's light. A few candles burned on shelf or table. These were the mundane backdrop for the dreams which decorated the walls, and every flat surface but the floor. Objects which he could not categorize or even recognize in many cases. A skull shaped like a horn that ended in a mouth full of fangs, covered in holes along its length; eyes, nostrils, something else, he could not tell. There was a box of some unknown material sat on a shelf, one side made of glass but not reflective enough for a mirror. A long contraption of wood had a spearhead on the end of it, but the rest was covered in metal parts that looked like they were meant to move. There was a dagger, but shaped like a flowing river. A human face peered down at him from the wall, too realistic to be artificial, too shiny to be natural. He shuddered.
    "That one bothers Khalisi, as well," said Ketanka, noting what he examined. "I can see why. But there is something about it I like. Something...ethereal."
    "What is all this?"
    Ketanka rose to his feet and stabbed the air with his pipestem. "The spoils of adventure, my friend! To the north of here lies an ancient city, long abandoned, most of it buried beneath the sands." He sat back down and grinned. "Most of it looted long ago, as well. But I've found a few corners that still hold something worth seeing. And some worth bringing back."
    "That place will be the death of you." Khalisi sounded angry but weary.
    "Death is the last stop on the road to legend, my dear!"
    "Just so," she said. "You will make a fine legend."
    He bowed in her direction, pipesmoke describing an arc to match, cleft in two by his own forehead. Then he sat and turned to Mabibwi. "And you, friend! You seem to be out on an adventure yourself."
    "I am?"
    "Of course! A lone wanderer, a mysterious infant, a whole village to avenge..."
    "I hadn't thought to avenge them."
    "She is just an orphan, not a mystery," Khalisi said, lowering her head to gaze at the mystery latched to her nipple, nearly asleep. Her curls fell across her face. Mabibwi stared a moment too long again.
    "Harrumph!" said Ketanka, twin streams of smoke curling from his nostrils. "Do not lack for the imagination to see your life as it is. Man is ever a story -- or Woman --" he gave his wife a nervous glance. "Every woman or man is a story to be told, lived from quiet hour to seconds of no consequence; but a teller makes it brilliant. You, however, will already shine brighter than most. I can tell these things."
    Mabibwi felt lighter for the words, though unsure if he believed them. He liked this strange, giant man. But he also watched the subtle expressions of Khalisi, whose thoughts he coveted, and noticed the twist of disapproval on her lips. He felt heavier. Belying her expression, her speech danced playfully across each syllable: "Do not project your delusions onto him, husband. He is just a man doing what must be done in the face of misfortune." He felt much, much lighter.
    Ketanka himself smiled at this, raising the caterpillars he used for eyebrows onto his massive forehead. "That is just it, my dear. That is exactly it." He leaned back where he sat, grinning with satisfaction, stretching his arms behind his head.
    The conversation continued in fits, synchronized with the slowing tempo at which he ate. He resolved to ask what he was eating if there was a next meal. And hoped dearly that there was for several reasons. Ketanka's rambling pronouncements began to rush by his mind unseen, though still heard and responded to when bidden. Exhaustion took hold of him, along with the most contented warmth he could remember. Anxiety drained and his head began to nod, still chewing, still listening, still talking, but also dreaming. A dream in which he was a wandering legend, broad-shouldered as Ketanka, stopping for an evening to rest by a stranger's fire. He was an infant clutching Khalisi's heroic breast in his arms; then he was her husband, the child between them through the night as they slept, his skull reaching toward the front of his face as if it wanted to merge with hers, directly in front of him. Her lashes parted, her eyes opened, and in them were ruined towers at midnight, sandswept, white as ivory in an ocean of ink. When he drifted from her eyes to half-awake, he was lying just where he had sat by the table, a leather blanket over him, the coals still glowing, crackling amid the silence of a warm place out of the wind. He shut his eyes and waited for his brain to tell him another story.

    In the morning, the children were up. Everyone was up, but the children made themselves known. They were screaming in the background, and in the foreground. He heard them before his eyes opened, saw his village under attack, every person open mouthed wailing including the invaders, who were all plastered with the faces of lizards, or white-mustached men in armor. Then he opened his eyes and the screams were laughter. The only ones not screaming were the three standing right in front of him, staring with blank expressions. Two almost identical girls, long of limb and hair, and a small boy with an oversized head. When he sat up, the boy shrieked and ran away. The two girls stood watching him as he watched back, challenging him to be the first to speak. Only when the silence stretched did they turn away as one and disappear toward the back of the house.
    When they moved, he could see Khalisi before the fire, preparing breakfast. It was then that he noticed the monstrous egg shell cast onto the floor at her side, split in two. An iron pan to match hung over the fire. The contents of the egg he had carried for so long filled the entire pan. She had not asked him, but he could think of no reason why she should have. His stomach rattled in its cave and he began to salivate. Hunger took him, and something else, called to the fore by seeing her standing in the light for the first time. He stomped whatever that was into the background and let his hunger take over, as it was the one he could do something about. He wished to see up close what she was doing to his egg, and this would require him to move up next to her.
    He did so. The egg white bubbled and shook like a cloud of lava. Dark brown oil curled up around its edges. She was pulling chunks of sausage out of a wooden bowl and tossing them into the pan. Peppers, leaves, and some unknown fruit were already sinking beneath the egg, along with pieces of a doughy flatbread. Spices assaulted him where he stood. Even so close to the fire, he felt that he could sense her body warmth, and the combination of it all made his head swim. "I've never seen an egg this size," she said.
    "They nest west of our village."
    "How do the birds taste? Or whatever lays something like this."
    "Birds. I don't know. We do not try to hunt them. Only the eggs, when the nests are unoccupied. That smells amazing."
    Ketanka stooped through the curtain and into the room, wearing fresh clothes and eyes. "Mabibwi! Sleep well? Join me in a wake up drink!" He took two cups from a shelf, and the gourd sitting next to them. "Do you like gilanthus wine?"
    "I've never had it."
    "Aha! Then you are in for a treat." With the cups and the gourd palmed in one hand, he picked up the dining table with the other and placed it next to the bench where Mabibwi had slept. They sat. "My dear, will you join us?"
    "No." She carried on.
    "Then we must drink her share as well. Cheers to that, and to welcoming a traveller into our home. It must be good to rest a bit, eh?"
    He could think of no way to describe just how true that was, so he said nothing, only bowed from his seat, tapped his cup on the table in imitation of Ketanka. The wine was sweet, so sweet he thought his tongue might shrivel and retreat down his throat. He coughed.
    "A devil's nectar, is it not? It's easier once it gets to your head. Drink up." He poured another for them both. "In honor of your stay, I have an idea."
    "An idea?"
    They tossed off another one. It was already proving easier. "That's right. You are going to tell us a story."
    The response from the children was instantaneous. "A story!?"
    "That's right," said Ketanka.
    "I'm not much of a speaker, let alone a narrator."
    "Then make it a long story, so we can see you improve as you go. Normally, I would tell a story in the morning, but this is a special occasion." He rapped his cup on the table again. A strand of liquid leapt out, curling in the air, then snapped back. "Drink up! And let the words flow like wine."
    Everyone watched him, including Khalisi. A radiance was leaking from his temples to the sides of his neck, across his shoulders and down his arms. "Should I tell MY story?"
    "It could be your story. It could be any story. Trust me, this is not a discerning lot." The two oldest girls frowned at him and he laughed. "Well, a couple of critics in the house, perhaps. But the rest will cheer you on."
    "A story, eh?" Mabibwi tried, subconsciously, to adapt a bit of Ketanka's manner. He needed some manner but his own, if he were to string so many words together. "Now let's see here..." He set about adapting the truth to their expectations.

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Mabibwi's Tale (as told by Mabibwi)

    Once there was a man named...Mabibwi. Is that an okay beginning? Don't ask me, you're the story teller. Hmm. Once there was a man named Mabibwi. A young man named Mabibwi. He was returning from the hunt, prize in tow. Should this be in first person? It won't sound like a legend anymore, but there's something forceful in it that draws me onward. I was returning from the hunt, prize in tow. Lines in the soil led to the horizon, jagged with home, clouded with miasma leaking into the sky. I began to run, my burden weakening my knees until I thought they might buckle under the strain. Toes sinking into the soil with every stride. How often had I played amid the grain stalks when they still rose above my head? Now they were only to my waist, and a new world towered above, made of smoke. I ran to the center of the village as if something there might answer my questions. The signs lay all around. Dried blood, burst and scrambled people, the hum of kingflies feasting. Is this appropriate for children? Don't worry, they've heard worse. They are tough little warriors, all. Of course. I stalked the streets, examining the remaining faces one by one, searching for those I recognized. I saw none, and scrubbed them desperately from my memory. They were dolls cast aside, playthings of vengeful giants, the refuse of a festival in honor of someone else's god. I could find not one left alive. Except the child. Out of the chants of the kingflies rose a tiny, ragged voice down the street. I saw her right then, open mouthed and pointed to the sky. I ran. She was clutched in the arms of a young woman whom I wanted to lift off the ground and out of the road, but I feared she would fall apart in my arms. The infant was intact though, not leaking but for drool and tears. I took her from her mother's grasp, careful to be sure she would let go when I did, felt the first feeling but numbness. Panic. I had to do something. Had to help, had to go somewhere. Who had done this and why, and where were they? This is an awfully long story, isn't it? Not at all, we are just getting involved. From where I knelt I rose, stood over the remains of my beloved Kalini and swore vengeance unto my dying breath. Stormclouds joined the smoke and kingflies: wind and rain, a vortex that wiped what was left of home from the face of the Earth, even as I stepped from it into the wild, my two charges in tow. Little child, all that remains of my beloved, you are my divining rod now. Point me to the villains, that I might repay them.
    Even as the last blood of my kin was washed away in a tempest, the sun ahead bled onto Earth and softened it as I passed. We hadn't even a chance to name you, little one. Let us call you Ariala, then. Ariala of the Tempest. Ariala, baptized in blood. The heat beat down upon us as the day wore on, sands giving way to jagged spires and sudden rents in the landscape. Refusing to give up the prize of my hunt, I scrambled over the land and suffered for it. Bending my ankles on uneven soil, straining to clamber over the gaps in the path on which you led us.
    As the sun bled out, I happened upon a cove in that sea of spires. I rounded the edge of this rock formation in search of shelter, discovering a path that led downward into the Earth. The light faded but gave way to a ghostly glow ahead. There was a cave where the rock itself gave off light. And in the center, a burning pyre of human remains warmed a dragon.
    As I approached, weary and hoping to share the fire's warmth, he raised his head. "What do you carry, human?"
    "An orphaned child," I said, seating myself across the flames from him.
    He regarded me with one eye that glittered gold in the light. "Give her to me."
    "I will not."
    "Do you not wish to ease your burdens, weary traveler? Give her to me, worry not, and leave this cave with a light heart and an open future."
    I knew then that the beast could see into the darkest corners of my soul. "I will do no such thing. The burden is mine to bear, for some god wills it."
    On the side of his face turned toward me, the corner of his mouth cut up to his eye in a grin, revealing fangs with the gore of his last meal on them. He chuckled. The roof of the cavern shook. "There are no gods here, little man. There is only me. You may say what you wish, but that is all. If I want to take her from you I will do so, and you will be glad that I did in spite of yourself." With that, he sighed and placed his head atop his claws, still smiling. "Luckily for her, I have already eaten too much." A pillar of smoke exhumed itself from his nostril, glowing orange at its base. "Rest, human. I shall not eat you or your charge this night. But I suggest you be gone with the sunrise."
    In my current state, I had little choice but to do as he suggested. I slept lightly and fitfully, Ariala dozing against my chest in the sling I had fashioned for her. Dreams of waking in the dragon's jaws woke me each hour, and on the hour when the cave mouth was lit. I left as quietly as I could, leaving the beast still slumbering, not having moved from its position. Its snoring shook the walls, yet the same golden eye was still open all the while.
    When I returned to the surface, the storm had caught up with us. The rumble of a sleeping dragon gave way to thunder. The wind howled and picked up the sand, pushing me onward. Yet already, the sun began to warm my back from where it sat below the clouds, and I felt renewed despite the night's unsavory conditions...

    Mabibwi spun his tale through the morning, spurred by the wine and the wide eyes of the children. He came to his arrival at their house, and was relieved to fall silent at last. It was nearly lunch time. Then it would be time to move on, and Ariala with him. He was about to attempt to pawn the child off on Khalisi, but the disapproval in her eyes when he began to speak was more than he could bear.  

 
    On the third or fourth day, the wind brought him a memory. When he'd been a younger and more inquisitive man, a traveler had once stopped at the village. He was covered in robes and cloaks, each of them compensating for the parts missing from the others. A thick coating of grit clung to them and to his beard. He carried a walking stick about his own height and a collection of rusted canteens that must have travelled as far as he. Mabibwi had asked the man what sand was.
    "What is sand?" he said.
    "Sand," the old traveller said, "is the bones of a hundred million giants ground to dust beneath the weight of the world."
    He still remembered looking at his toes digging into the earth, then looking up into the stranger's eyes. They were sad. He asked a child's question. "Why?" The old man did not respond, but lowered his eyelids and went to sleep where he stood.