Again I wrench my hammer’s spike from the dragon’s ruined skull, and this time viscera dribbles out: wrecked machine parts and iridescent oil, not the usual slop of brain and blood. It shudders and collapses like a burning warehouse, and despite the pain in my good arm I follow up with another half-dozen strikes to make sure nothing like life will light its eyes again. If it had been the true dragon we’d been expecting and not this engineered terror, it would only have taken one hit.
A true dragon wouldn’t have had a chance to break my arm. It wouldn’t have had time to kill Tuaamala. It wouldn’t have done anything except bleed out over its stolen hoard of precious ingots and fine statues, stock certificates and shiny things. This mechanical monster couldn’t even do me that decency.
My hammer slips from my hand and crushes a mail coach, one of the dozens that disappeared since the dragon dug its vault, to splinters. Tuaamala is dead, and it’s my fault. I should’ve grown first and told her to wait outside—I’m so much more persuasive when I’m the size of a bell tower—but she wanted to make sure the enlargement spell worked right on me, despite all the practice runs we’d done, and I gave in.
The only way I could be more guilty is if I had to scrape her off my boot. I crumple to the ground, lost in the hollowness of victory.
“Heroes to ashes,” I whisper, one breath to speed their spirits across the Dead Ocean. “Monsters to absence.”
We’d planted fortunesticks outside the dragon’s vault to burn in celebration. We never planned for this bitter victory out of fear it might happen. Maybe I’ll find guidance in their dancing flames. I shuffle out of the vault, and once I meet daylight I follow the instructions Tuaamala gave me and will myself to shrink.
There’s only pain, pulverizing and traitorous, and it’s to my broken arm like the sun to a campfire. Knives both blazing and freezing flay my skin and a dozen nails are hammered into my eyes. I’m on the ground, screaming so loud they must hear me across the sea. It’s all wrong. Tuaamala said it’s not supposed to hurt.
I lie there like meat left too long in the stove. The pain recedes to a dull, throbbing ache and I see from the smallness of the trees that I’m still giant. Of course. I tried to stuff a giant’s worth of heartache into an ordinary-sized body.
I’m not far from town, and I’ll get there even faster on giant legs. Glass shards tear apart my muscles with every step, but I’ll make it. I’ll let everyone know we succeeded, that the dragon won’t trouble them anymore. It’ll be a soft memory to wrap myself in before I tell Ayin, waiting back in town for her sister and I to come back victoriously.
I make it to the highway. I have to keep going.
I don’t remember falling.
Pain wakes me up with a sharp and tingling jolt, a distant cousin of the lightning bolt that Tuaamala accidentally struck me with during the Warleader Piros business. There’s a hard floor underneath me and a gable roof above, close enough to confirm I’m still giant.
Bells, I’m still giant. Had I lost myself and crawled into some farmer’s barn? Crushed some farmer in their barn? I don’t smell blood, at least, and the bookshelves lining the walls suggested the place wasn’t used for agricultural purposes. The light inside was thaumic, with its untorchlike stability and the same bluish tint Tuaamala loved.
Had loved.
“No,” I say, like a mountain groaning. So much compressed into a single word: loss and regret and the unrelenting weight of failure. The ache doesn’t help.
“Oh, you’re awake! I didn’t think I’d disturb you, considering.”
I suck in my breath and freeze. Giant plus unseen person is an equation that too easily works out to bloody pulp.
“Not a disturbance at all!” I keep my voice as light as possible. “Is this your place? I’m so sorry, I don’t remember getting here.”
“That’s because I brought you here.” Breezy, with a whistling accent and an archaic feminine version of I that the holy books stopped using in my grandparents’ day. “It’s not often a giantess falls on the highway. It wouldn’t have been proper to leave you like that.”
“Then I thank you,” I say. “I’m Iadene. I hope I haven’t caused you any trouble.”
“Not unless that shockwave was your work.” I turn my head both ways, the only movement I’m comfortable with, and there’s no sign of her. “Call me Mijanlirel, thaumic artist, and if you could just look to your right I really need to check your eyes.”
I look to my right and there she is, like no mage I’ve ever laid my gaze on. Where Tuaamala had favored gilded robes under a dozen orbiting fabric strips, Mijanlirel wears a simple green worker’s shirt and blue jacket with hard-worn leather pants and a wide-brimmed hat. Her eyes are hidden beneath goggles, but her skin, untanned and paler than mine, speaks to a life spent within walls. Smooth freckle-specked cheeks combine with a soft chin to tell me that I’m safe, I can let out my breath, I’m being watched over.
She’s beautiful.
“What about my eyes?” They’re clearly not broken, or I wouldn’t be goggling at her.
“Function, responsiveness, that sort of thing.” She points a baton at me, its tip flashes bright green, and I flinch. A moment later she does it again. “Looks hale, no serious damage. You’re lucky.”
“I wouldn’t call it that.” I sigh, long and loud, and we both let it hang in the air. “I’m not usually this big, you know.”
“You’re not my first sizeshifter,” Mijanlirel says with a knowing look. “Speaking of, don’t shift your size. It’d kill you.”
My throat knots. After a while I manage a weak “what?”
“You took a lot of punishment. You’ll need to wait until you’re healed through. A couple of months, maximum.”
A couple of months. My mouth flutters, breathless like an angler’s catch. Tuaamala, why didn’t you warn me?
“I can’t stay like this for months!” Only the memory of that world-shattering pain keeps me from shrinking there and then. “I’ve got responsibilities! People are waiting for me! I—bells, what am I going to do?”
“Stay here with me,” Mijanlirel says. I gasp and she raises an eyebrow. “What? You’re already here, and I’d love to figure you out up close. You don’t think I’m frightened, do you?”
I blush at that. “I’m the size of houses! I could crush you by accident!”
“Oh, come on. You’re a puffcake.”
“I am not a puffcake!”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Mijanlirel says with a grin. “Now let me get you something for that pain. You didn’t sound like you were in the best shape earlier.”
“I’m not.” I exhale, and Mijanlirel’s hair waves in the breeze. “It’s been a while since I’ve been this bad, actually.”
“Even giants have off days.” Mijanlirel squints at me, reaches out, and pulls a leaf away from my chin. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”
I wait until she leaves before I let myself cry. It should’ve been Tuaamala and I caring for each other.
One bottle. It doesn’t make sense. Tuaamala lived an oversized life, full of explosions and love and sprawling, and now her ashes fit into a single bottle that could just as easily have held a night’s worth of wine. Everything that she was. It’s unjust. She should’ve been the giant one.
I’ve paid enough attention to know that justice is an idea, not a law.
She’s so light. Her ashes are feathers.
“Was she…” My throat clenches shut. It’s still so painful, thinking of Tuaamala in the past tense. “Is her spirit okay?”
“The area was clear,” Mijanlirel says over the soft pattering of rain against the roof and the occasional thunderclap. “Nothing anchored, nothing disturbed. She’s gone to whatever’s next.”
I close my hand around her ashes and force back the waterfall of my tears. I’d always hoped that I’d walk that road first and prepare the way for her.
“That’s good to know.” I take her rice-grain ashes between thumb and finger and put them somewhere safe, anywhere away from me. “I need to go outside.”
“The weather’s horrid,” Mijanlirel says. “Besides, you’re still a bit—”
“I’m going outside.” I spear her with an iron stare. “Don’t make me punch through a wall to get there.”
Anger like that could’ve destroyed the dragon before it had a chance to kill Tuaamala. Mijanlirel reads it in my eyes and acknowledges my pain, rather than letting her own fear guide her. With a gesture and a word, the far wall grinds open.
The rain should be driving down like screws. To me it’s mist, and it doesn’t hide the boulders crouching beneath the trees. I reach for one and stop, riven by thoughts of catapulted rocks, crushed homes, and powdered bones. Tuaamala didn’t make me giant so that I could be a menace.
Instead I pull a dead tree from the ground and scream, bellow, rage. For all the damage I wreak on the forest with my makeshift club, it’ll be quick to recover. The land knows tornadoes and wildfires, and at my worst I can match but not surpass them. I flay the living rock because I know it will forgive, because it shrugs at agonies greater than mine.
Am I selfish? Certainly, but there’s no altruism in suffering grief silently. Today I’m burdened with more than I could’ve imagined.
Through it all, the sky is dark and silent. After the misty rain soaks me through and no lightning visits, I trudge back inside Mijanlirel’s barn.
“So you didn’t get struck.”
“No,” I say. “One day.”
“I don’t think so,” Mijanlirel says. “You showed that storm you’re an equal. Forces of nature. Embrace that.”
“I’d rather embrace Tuaamala.” The thought of her sends me kneeling, and my tears surpass the rain. “You have no idea…”
“I know a few things.” She presses her palm against my rain-soaked flesh. It’s warm like summer air, like Tuaamala. I can only gasp at the realization of a gift I can’t possibly match.
Instead I offer Mijanlirel my own palm, a wall in flesh, and feel her warmth there too.
She’s so much more than feathers.
As the days grow longer and my arm heals I hide from the sun. It’s easier to confront myself at night, when the remote and glittering stars listen without judgement, and because Tuaamala taught me to love the night. I like to believe that sleeping the day away will make my body miss the sun and heal faster in yearning for it.
More and more, my daylight dreams aren’t of Tuaamala but Mijanlirel. A warm dream of her breaks apart at the sound of angry voices, armored and certain.
“—danger to the entire area! Especially if you’re sheltering one!”
“Danger to your profits, you mean.” Mijanlirel’s voice is a fortress. “If these giant tales are even true. Besides, my road charges are square. You’ve got no business barging in here.”
“Giants are everyone’s business. You know what giants wreak!”
While they argue, I squeeze my eyes shut and poke at the edge of Tuaamala’s spell. It wasn’t meant to last this long; maybe it’s begun to fray and I can unravel it slowly, methodically. I’m alert for the smallest snip of pain as I test the edges, and when it comes it’s like punching stone.
Mijanlirel doesn’t let the hunters linger. The doors thunder shut, and even then they’re whispers next to my footfalls. I shouldn’t have to hide while I’m like this. Tuaamala made me giant so I could protect people.
“Iadene, what happened?” Mijanlirel sounds worried, and hurries close. “Are you all right?”
“I was going to ask you that! Who were those people? Why are they after me?”
“Forget about them for now.” Mijanlirel pushes her palms into the skin of my thigh, and I gasp at the radiance of her touch. “Did you just try to shrink again?”
“Not the same way as before,” I say. “Something’s happened to the spell.”
“I felt something strange. Can I look?” I nod, and the shadows of her questing fingers caress me while she evaluates the magical threads and knots Tuaamala tied fast. It takes effort to keep quiet. Not even Tuaamala touched me like this.
By the time she’s done I’m slick with sweat, from her attention and my own worry. I understand enough about magic to know that when a mage calls something strange, it’s serious. Her long silence makes it even more serious.
“It must be bad,” I say as my patience gives way. “Am I dying?”
“No,” Mijanlirel says without hesitation, but I can tell she’s hiding something behind it. One long look from me wilts her. “Just…try to shrink for me. Right now.”
“Okay.” I close my eyes to block out the world and once again will myself small. There are no shards of glass in my veins, no claws in my guts, no trace of discomfort. That’s a positive sign, but when I open my eyes the roof isn’t any farther away. I’m still every bit a giant. “Nothing happened.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Mijanlirel says. “Can’t believe someone tied it together like this. There’s no failsafe at all. When it should’ve snapped it got tighter, it’s stabilized, it’s integrated…”
While I don’t know magic, I know words and I know the stormy feeling in my stomach. I know that Tuaamala wanted to protect me. I know she’d have done everything necessary to make sure her spell didn’t break and leave me normal-sized against a dragon.
The realization is a boulder on my chest. I spare a thought for all the pretty ladies I’ll never get to kiss now.
“I’m stuck like this, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” Mijanlirel says. “Maybe not permanently, but for now, yes.”
Emotions are strange things, even more mysterious than magic. My old life’s been destroyed and my only grief is for Tuaamala. I’ve had time to get used to being gigantic, and instead of feeling fear or anger I’m relieved. I won’t have to compress my feelings to fit into the world. If another hostile dragon shows up, mechanical or otherwise, I’ll be ready to fight for everyone who can’t.
My only sadness is that I can’t care for Mijanlirel the way she cares for me, in reality and in dreams. It doesn’t matter. I can still do my best.
“Those people were looking for me,” I say. There’s no point in lingering on what can’t be changed for now. “Who were they?”
“Agents of the Honorable North Avazial Road Company,” she says. “Worried about giants carving new roads out of the forest so people won’t have to go through their tolls. Fuckers.”
“But I wouldn’t do that!” At my size it’d be easy to uproot ancient trees like weeds, to stomp hills flat, and to impose my idea of order on the world. That made me feel fear.
“Either way, it’s best that you stay unnoticed for a while,” Mijanlirel says. “The less trouble we have, the better.”
“No.” While I can’t sit up inside Mijanlirel’s barn, there’s just enough room to crouch. “If this is my life now, I’m not going to hide away.”
“It’s not about hiding, it’s about safety,” she says. “Yours and mine.”
“Don’t worry. I do my best to protect the people I care about.”
A cruel woman, a self-absorbed woman, or a woman who only saw me as a problem to be solved would’ve stung me with Tuaamala’s memory then. Mijanlirel’s answer was to press her hand against my skin once more.
“You’re an unusual kind, do you know?”
I smile at her honesty. “Oh, as long as I’ve known anything.”
“I’m sorry for what I said about Tuaamala’s spell earlier,” Mijanlirel says, as if she’d incinerated Tuaamala’s spirit with profane insults. “She must have been a wonderful woman.”
“She was.” I hold the silence for a moment to gauge the atmosphere. Mijanlirel says nothing, so I swallow my uncertainty and fix her with a soft gaze. “I’ve known a lot of wonderful women.”
Mijanlirel cocks her head and smiles. “Is that so?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
“Good,” she says. “I was worried you thought I only cared about putting you back together.”
When she kisses my thigh it’s quick and soft, but my spirit sings anyway.
As much as I’d like to travel after nightfall and have the road more or less to myself, the chance of crushing a late-driving coach or wandering elk in the darkness is too much for me to bear. Instead I leave at first light, while the farmers are still seeing to their beasts and the mail coaches are already on their way. If I’m careful, I can gather up some stolen wealth and return it to town before noon.
Mijanlirel described the route to where she found me, and from there it’s a brief walk through the morning heat to the wrecked dragon’s hoard. The fortunesticks are gone and the dirt has fresh wagon ruts. Inside, the hoard’s been picked clean, with only a few scattered coins, pulverized coaches, and statues left behind. Even the mechanical dragon carcass is gone.
I’d hoped the dragon’s cruel reputation would’ve kept adventurers at bay long enough for me to heal. I also know the average caliber of person who chooses to raid a cruel dragon’s hoard. If any of the stolen treasure found its way back to town, the townsfolk would’ve paid a rich ransom to keep it there. Opportunists got the gold while I did the fighting, Tuaamala did the dying.
Tuaamala died for nothing.
The realization cuts my legs out from under me, and once more I fall. Here, in the cold privacy of the hoard, all the chains I’ve secured myself in come undone. I cry for Tuaamala, for the bereft, and for all the ways my life could’ve gone and now never will, until I’m drained of emotion. Not even the thought of Mijanlirel stirs me.
“Now what do I do?” I ask the emptied hoard. The shadows have no answer.
I lie there for a while at the site of my greatest failure, where everything is my fault. If Mijanlirel was here I wouldn’t marinate in it, but alone I can’t do anything but stew. I wanted to create justice here, and instead I learned that the world abhors it. It would rather everything be scattered and stolen.
Except everything isn’t. Those statues are still here, too big and unprofitable for scavengers to haul away. Mijanlirel could identify them, and I could carry them to town in my pockets. Something’s better than nothing. One looks like a long-dead king, another’s of a man breaking a lute over his knee, and this one…
I gasp. It looks like Mijanlirel. No, it is Mijanlirel—the sculptor captured her every aspect, and it’s far from new. I can see where decades of wind and rain did their work after the sculptor put down the chisel. I’m stunned by what it might mean, and that means I’m quiet and unmoving when a group of scavengers come swaggering in.
“All right, boys, for the last time, everything goes in the bins. If I find you filching, I’ll strip you naked and roll you in honey.”
I recognize that voice. It’s the company man who knocked on Mijanlirel’s door. Of course a company man would plunder a dragon’s hoard. Companies are even worse than dragons. At least you can bash a dragon until it stops moving.
“I don’t think any of that’s yours,” I say. The company scavengers shout and yell “dragon!” and “stand ready!” until they notice me, and then they only start shouting “giantess!” instead.
“So you finally show yourself, monstrosity!” The company man brandishes a sword in one hand and a torch in the other. I can’t help but laugh. He’s as threatening as a fruit fly.
“Monstrosity, really? I was fine enough to kiss the ladies at last year’s festival, and I’ve only grown a little since then.”
He’s the only one taking a stand. All the other scavengers saw me and ran. I hope people don’t make a habit of picking one or the other.
“I knew the reports were true,” the company man says. “How many mail coaches have you eaten, giantess?”
I fix him with an unimpressed stare. “Okay, so first, I don’t eat people or coaches. Second, this is a tomb. You’re raiding a tomb, you’ve already got more than you could ever need, so clear out of here and don’t come back, all right?”
“Your silver speech won’t fool me, giantess! Surrender, or you’ll have the wrath of the Honorable North Avazial Road Company after you.”
“This is ridiculous.” I stuff a few more statues in my pockets and stand. The company man makes a noise like eep. “Forget it, okay? Leave this place alone, if I pass a gate I’ll pay your tolls, and that’ll be that.”
I step well over his head. Even if I wasn’t being careful, his guts wouldn’t be worth cleaning up.
Mijanlirel isn’t there when I come back from the dragon’s hoard. All she left behind was a note: “chasing important things, be back soon.” I hope she meant sooner rather than later. I don’t have anywhere else to go, and the company man won’t be satisfied without the last word.
It gives me time to worry and wonder as I set down the statues, lingering on Mijanlirel’s. She looks about my age—is she the living reflection of an ancestor? A time traveler? Immortal? I know enough about magic workers to not dismiss anything.
No matter how much I peer at it, the statue doesn’t give up any answers and Mijanlirel’s books are all too small for me to read. I sit among all my questions in silence for a while, then all at once the roof is too close, too confining, and a problem that needs to be solved immediately. I crash outside, lie down and breathe my relief into the open sky.
It saves me. Not only from the reminder that compared to the world I’m still small, but because when Mijanlirel’s place starts burning I’m not stuck inside it. In seconds the day fills with billowing smoke and the taste of ash, mixed in with extraordinary spice as reagents steam and explode.
I hurry to work, for now towering over the flames, and break Mijanlirel’s home in two with earthquake boots. For now the fire is vulnerable. If it breaches into the forest…I’ve seen the aftermath of dragon wildfires. I would have to be taller than the mountains to fight it. I can’t save everything, but I should at least save something.
While I’m stomping a firebreak between the burning building and as yet unburned, I spy hurried movement below. From my perspective it looks like a bug, but no bug yells the way the scuttling man does when I have him between forefinger and thumb. It’s the company man from the hoard and he smells like he bathes in firestarter.
“Interesting hobby,” I say, suspending him in front of my eyes. “What, now that the dragon’s gone you felt you needed to fill the niche?”
“Unhand me!” He squirms enough that I’m worried he’ll slip out of my grip, so I drop him on my open palm instead. He staggers back against the wall of my fingers and brandishes a blade. “We meet again, monstrosity.”
“You sure are brave.” I finish building a firebreak around the house’s burning half. “Why’d you think burning this place down with me in it was a good idea?”
“Did you think you wouldn’t be followed? The best way to slay a monster is to burn it in its nest!”
“Bells, this isn’t even my…!” I sigh in frustration. “I’m not a monster, I’m just big. What’s your problem?”
“You! You’re a problem and a danger to everyone in the land!”
“Says the man who goes around setting houses on fire.” I kneel and lay my hand on the ground. He jumps off without hesitation. “Whatever game you’re playing, I’m not interested. Go away.”
I stomp the ground to make my point. After a moment he skitters off, and I turn my attention back to killing the fire. The burned parts are rooms I was too big to see inside. There’s no telling how much Mijanlirel lost in there. All I can do is guard what’s left.
It’s a long wait. The sun rises higher, and my stomach growls. I lie back on the grass to rest through the hunger. It works better than I expected.
“Hey. Wake up. Looks like you’ve got a story to tell.”
I feel a cool night breeze and a warm hand cradling my cheek. I smile softly, then I jolt awake. Cradling my cheek? Did I shrink? I surge to sit up and no, all but the tallest forest trees are still smaller than I am. Then how—?
“I told you I’d be back, didn’t I?” Mijanlirel says, right there, next to me, her eyes level with mine. “Guess I should’ve mentioned something about fire safety, too.”
“What…you’re…why?”
“Well, I thought the best way to solve your little problem was to recreate it first.” Mijanlirel smiles and brushes a loose strand of hair from my eyes. “Besides, this wasn’t fair to you. I could see it in your eyes, what you wanted. What you needed.”
My breath catches in my throat. I spare a thought for Tuaamala, and I know she wouldn’t have wanted me to drown in grief and mourning. We had our time together. Now that it’s over, there’s no reason for me to spend the rest of my life embracing her grave.
I throw my arms around Mijanlirel instead. It’s been so long since I’ve been this close to another’s kindness and heart.
“There’s something I have to ask,” I say. “In the hoard, I found a statue. It’s of you.”
“Is it?” Mijanlirel smiles with clear relief. “Well. It’s not something I’m loud about, but I might be just slightly immortal. It means I’ve known a lot of wonderful women, too.”
My heart trembles. I lean in. She nods. Our lips meet. Her fingers fall upon my breast, rubbing, invigorating. My hands explore in the starlight, and find the places it doesn’t reach.
“In that case,” I say, “I’ll be your puffcake.”
There’ll be plenty of days for research and the Honorable North Avazial Road Company. For this moment, deep in the blessed night, there’s a lot to love about being a giantess, passionate and free.
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Phoebe Barton is a queer trans science fiction writer who has never tried writing anything at this temperature before. Her short fiction has appeared in venues such as Analog, Lightspeed, and F&SF, and she is an Aurora Award and Nebula Award winner. She lives with her family and many typewriters in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Find her online at phoebebartonsf.com. | |