by Jay Barnson
“You lie.”
“Do I?” It felt strange to lie, even to the giant. Jack didn’t think he was very good at it, and the giant must simply be humoring him. Each second he kept the giant entertained was a second longer that he survived, so he took it. “Well, let’s see who can eat more of that stew. I’m just an average little man, so you should be able to eat far more than me, surely.”
“Why would I let you eat my food?”
“Let’s make it a bet, then. If you can eat more than me, then you can eat me too. That way you get all your stew back, plus me.”
Korak considered. “That kinda makes sense. But what happens if you win?”
Jack shrugged. “Do you really think I’ll win?”
“Har! No. But we need a deal for it to be a proper bet.”
“If I win, you let me free?”
The giant sneered. “If you win, I give you a ten-minute head start.”
“Fair enough,” Jack said. What he really wanted was an overconfident giant with a full belly in the warm summer sun and one minute to move freely.
Korak examined a stack of mismatched bowls, pulling one after another out and comparing them with a squinty eye. He decided on two that were nearly the same size. He filled one bowl and handed it to Jack. Jack sat down and touched the stew with his finger. There was little liquid remaining, leaving chunks of flesh and disintegrating vegetable matter in a syrupy mass. It was warm but not hot. While the giant filled a bowl for himself, Jack lifted the bowl to his head, but dumped the warm contents down between the hide and his chest. It pooled above his belt. Jack tried not to think of the human chunks that might be in the mashy goo touching his belly.
Jack wiped his face with the sleeve of the dead man’s shirt as Korak finished dishing himself up some food. He looked at Jack in surprise. “You ain’t et all that already!”
Jack shrugged. “Oh, I’m sorry, that was awfully rude of me. I should have waited until you sat down before I ate mine. I was sorely hungry after that big hike.”
Korak tipped the bowl to his mouth and wolfed the food down. “Okay, one bowl. We now eat another.”
Jack handed the oversized bowl to the giant. Korak filled both bowls, gave one to Jack, and then sat down. Korak ate, albeit more slowly. As he ate, Jack tipped the bowl up and made eating noises while once again pouring the food inside the pocket formed by the cowhide.
The giant belched. Jack said, “You know, I’m still hungry, but I can wait if you need more time to let the food settle.”
Korak scowled and took Jack’s bowl. He filled both bowls a third time, and they repeated the process. Then a fourth time. By this time, Korak was eating slowly, and Jack’s extra space was filling up. Every time he moved, the mash squished inside the hide, and he felt little bits starting to seep around the sides. Tiny drops of liquid seeped into his pants.
Korak looked into the half-empty cauldron. He filled up both bowls again, but Jack saw the expression of concern on his face. Jack worried that if the giant thought about it too much, the concern would turn to suspicion, and it wouldn’t be hard to discover Jack’s ruse. Korak ate slowly and deliberately. Every time Korak tilted the bowl into his mouth, Jack tilted his bowl into the nearly full cowhide. Another bowlful would never fit without everything spilling out the sides or over the top of the cowhide, or both. The cowhide already formed a really strange funnel-shape inside his shirt, just waiting for Korak to notice.
Jack talked to distract Korak. “This sure is a great place you got around here. What a great life you must lead! No responsibilities, just enjoying the nice warm sun every day. Sleep when you want, eat when you want. Everybody fears you. It must be a great life.”
Korak nodded, and as Jack hoped, the giant’s eyelids drooped. The overly full belly combined with the warm July sun combined to make the giant sleepy. Jack continued, but lowered his voice. “And you really are an excellent host. Sharing your food with me and everything. I really am impressed.”
Korak jerked awake and scowled. “Cheat!” he roared.
Jack stared in terror. Had Korak figured out his deception?
“You try and cheat me, human! You make me fall asleep so you can sneak away!” Sneaking wasn’t quite what Jack had planned, but the giant had the gist of it. Jack’s plan had failed. Korak reached down, but instead of striking Jack dead, the giant picked up Jack’s bowl and filled it with more of the gooey mash. He did the same for his own bowl. Korak sat down and glared at Jack. “I gonna beat you afore I eat you!” he said. “Huh, I rhyme!”
“That was pretty clever,” Jack said, frantically thinking of another way to delay the inevitable. There was no way Jack could make the other bowl of food go away. If he was going to die, he wasn’t about to have his last act be cannibalism. He set the bowl down, which Korak noted eagerly, his lips curling upwards.
“We’re only half done,” Jack said as calmly as he could. “We still gotta air out before we start on the second half.”
“What you mean, air out?”
Jack took a deep breath, and then regretted it as more of the meat and liquid squished out of the bottom sides of the cowhide. Even the nearsighted giant would notice the dark stains along the sides of his shirt sooner or later. Jack said, “You giants must do the same thing, but maybe you use a different name for it. When there’s plenty of food, brave humans can air out our bellies so they can fit more. I just assumed that giants, being bigger and tougher, could do that, too.”
Korak said, “Sure we do!” He shrugged and waved his hand in the air. “But how do you humans do it?”
“Y’all got belly buttons, don’t you?”
Korak nodded. “Yeah.”
“Well, the weak or the sick, they just poke a quick hole in their belly button, let some air out, and then squeeze it closed real fast. But the toughest of us, we do it different.”
“Huh. Yeah, that’s what the babies do, yeah, kind of like that. How do tough humans do it?”
Jack fingered Delcina’s dagger. “Oh, it’s pretty simple, but we have to be quick about it. It also hurts a little, so it helps to be quick, but I’m sure a tough giant like you won’t even notice. We take a knife like this one here—” he pulled the blade from the sheath, “—and set it just below our rib-bones since we don’t want to do no permanent damage, and then give it a quick cut like so.” Jack stuck the dagger tip into the middle of the cowhide, and cut down almost to his belt with a flick of his wrist. The stew oozed out instantly from the cut.
“Ah, that’s better,” Jack said as Korak’s eyes grew wide. Jack picked up the bowl with his free hand and covered the hole before Korak could look too closely. “It takes a few seconds to seal back up,” Jack explained, “but then we’re ready for more food. Just like you!”
“Oh, right,” the giant said, shrugging with exaggerated boredom. “I would, but I lost my knife. It is too bad.”
“Oh, no problem,” Jack said. He held the blade with extreme care, and while keeping the bowl strategically placed over the oozing hole, he offered the weapon to Korak hilt-first. “You can use mine. I know it probably ain’t as good as a giant’s dagger, but it is one of the best belly-opening knives I have ever owned.”
“Oh,” the giant said, and took the weapon. “Uh, thanks, human.”
Jack nodded and eagerly smacked his lips over the bowl.
Korak set the tip of the knife carefully below his rib cage, and with a quick motion sliced himself open down to just below his belly button. Blood and fluids gushed out, along with chunks of other stuff Jack didn’t want to look at. Korak looked down and stared with horror at his belly, and then looked up at Jack. “Uh-oh,” he said. “Did I do it wrong?”
Jack felt the blood draining from his face, but he tried to keep his voice level. “Um, I don’t think so, Korak. I think you done just fine.”
Korak’s worried grin twitched and faded as his face paled. “You... you cheat,” he said, but the dagger dropped from his hand. His eyelids drooped, and he collapsed t
o the ground.
Bachan and his guards were alert and ready to ride as Jack emerged from the trail. They had been expecting to flee before an enraged giant, of course. Jack couldn’t blame them. He wouldn’t have bet on himself, either.
“Jack! You live!” Bachan exclaimed, a grin forming below his mustache. “And Korak Lash?”
“Dead,” Jack said.
“You slew the giant?”
“Sort of. I kind of tricked him into killing himself. His body is up the trail at his camp. I wouldn’t touch the stew. I think it might have people in it.”
Bachan strode forward and clamped his hand down on Jack’s shoulder. “This is wonderful! You have avenged a great number of dead, including many of the king’s army. And many more have been saved because of your actions today.”
Jack shrugged. “That may be true. But right now, I need a bath. And I want to sleep for a week.”
Bachan nodded and lowered his voice so Aidan and Zeke couldn’t hear. “Add to that a desire for a great deal of alcohol, and that is how I have felt every time I have been responsible for death, even when it was justified and necessary. You have my sympathy and my gratitude.” He pointed into the abandoned village. “There’s a well over there where you can draw drinking water and wash, if you desire. Rest now. We’ll take care of everything else.”
Min and Leon sat in the front seats of the SUV, leaving Jessabelle to stew in the back. Wind howled through the shot-out windows and missing hatch, forcing her to strain to hear the discussion between the adults.
“Come with us,” Leon said. “We’ve been hiding pretty well until now, but we could use a witch on our side.”
“You don’t have a side, Leon. There’s nowhere you can run. You remember what happened to Amy.”
Leon’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. “Of course. But that was Amy. She was an alpha. We’re nobody.”
Min pointed to Jessabelle. “She’s not. And we won’t be. We’re on his list. Once he finishes this thing, literally any day now, he’s going to start tying up the loose ends. Unless we fix things, and fast, we are those loose ends.”
Jessabelle leaned forward and said, “That’s if he wins.”
Min turned to look at her, with either sympathy or condescension in her eyes. “He’s going to win, sweetheart. This is literally what he’s been working on for at least two hundred years. His daughter is ready to return, and when she does, she’s going to heal him. Then it’s game over. I haven’t drunk the Coven’s Kool-Aid, but I know enough to make sure I’m on the winning side.”
“Not this time,” Leon said.
“How about this?” Min said. “You two come in with me. Peacefully. Willingly. I’m a hero, you two are given some freedom. Everyone wins.”
Jessabelle shook her head. “Thadeus winning ain’t everybody winning.”
Min rolled her eyes. “Am I talking to a wall? Thadeus is immortal. You can’t kill him. You can’t stop him.”
“What if the dwayyo had killed us all? Then there’d be no Plan B.”
“You are convenient, not essential.”
Leon spoke up. “How? Explain this to us. On the outside chance that we might be willing to go in with you...”
“We won’t!” Jessabelle protested.
“On that chance,” Leon continued, “Why does the Coven need us? What are we supposed to do?”
“I haven’t been told,” Min said, looking down.
Leon’s face turned red. “That wasn’t my question! You never wait until you are told anything.”
She held up her hands. “Okay! I don’t know details. I know it involves people going through an alternate gate.”
“Gate? You mean like the crossroads in Morgantown?” Jessabelle asked.
Min seemed genuinely speechless for a moment. Her face was frozen, strands of her straight black hair whipping around like tiny snakes in the wind, and then she nodded. “Maybe you know more than I do. It’s somewhere south of Morgantown. They call it the ‘Arnot Gate,’ but there’s no town or anything by that name.”
Jessabelle recognized the name, but didn’t see the connection. Debra Arnot was the name of Grandma Annie’s best friend, murdered in Morgantown long before Jessabelle was born. Sean Williams had come to Maple Bend looking for more information about her after he encountered her ghost. “It’s that one-way crossroads. Y’all can go in, but y’all can’t come back out that way.” A moment later, she made the connection. “Y’all are going to go to send people through to go the long way ‘round to Maple Bend.”
Min cocked her head. “You really do know more than me. That would make sense.”
Leon asked, “What do you need us for, then? Aside from wanting to steal our blood for your combat drugs?”
“I don’t know. The gate is guarded, and they said one of you might have an easier time getting through.”
Jessabelle asked, “Guarded, not sealed?”
“That’s right.”
“How do y’all know?”
Min shrugged. “I’m good at listening and getting people to talk.”
“No, I mean, if it’s a one-way crossroad, and the other ones are sealed, how did y’all find out that it’s guarded? And you said his daughter was ready to return... how do y’all know that?”
“That’s far above my pay grade. I honestly don’t know.”
“We’re supposed to believe that?” Jessabelle asked with a glare.
Min riveted her eyes on Jessabelle’s, and her face grew dark and angry. “The only thing you need to believe is that a lot of people are going to die before this is over. Your best chance of reducing the body count and saving the people you care about is to work with us.”
“Or we stop him altogether! We did it once. We can do it again!” Jessabelle didn’t know where her fury came from, but she feared she would change into the panther involuntarily. She sat back as Leon spoke more with Min, and this time she didn’t care to know what they were discussing. Jessabelle crossed her arms.
Thadeus wouldn’t forgive Jessabelle and her family for what they had done against him. He’d made that clear when he captured her, when he murdered Evelyn, and when he arranged the deaths of Jenny’s parents. Was there anywhere in the world they could hide? Maybe not. But there was another world where they could hide from him forever, as long as they stopped him from getting his daughter back.
“It’s only a matter of time before they catch us,” Min said after several minutes. “Especially in this car. We stand out.”
Leon nodded. “You are right. We’ll have to ditch it and find something else soon.”
Min probed. “Where are we going?”
“To get gas.” He pointed to a sign at the side of the road advertising a gas station in two miles.
“After that?”
He shrugged. “Good question. Maybe we’ll decide after we’re back on the road again. Or were you planning on calling someone to let them know where we’ll be?”
Min laughed, but she didn’t deny it.
No other cars sat in the service station when they pulled up, but the woman inside the station stared out the window at them. Leon got out and surveyed the damage. Jessabelle got out as well, anxious to talk to him privately.
“Hey, can I go pee?” Min asked through missing hatch in the back of the car. “Or are you not going to let me do that?”
“Hold your horses,” Leon said. “Potty breaks for all of us, after we’ve got gas.”
Leon handed Jessabelle a twenty-dollar bill and said, “Go pay the lady.”
“We need to talk,” Jessabelle said, quietly enough that Min couldn’t hear her.
“Is it quick?”
Jessabelle nodded. She explained her plan. “If we can find the Arnot Gate, we can go to a place where Thadeus can’t get to us. We can tell the people there what the Coven is planning, and they can seal up the crossroad, just like they did in Maple Bend. We stop Thadeus, and we’re safe.”
“But where’s the gate? Even Min doesn’t kn
ow where it is.”
“Someone’s got to know.”
Leon shrugged. “I know, but we’re running out of time. You heard her. I think they’ll go in with or without us. I’m sure they have a Plan C and D already in place. Our best bet is to get as far away from here as we can and lay low.”
“Forever?”
“Maybe.”
Jessabelle fingered the twenty. “Okay. What if we pretend to give ourselves up?”
“You think they won’t expect us to betray them?”
She shrugged. “It’ll get us to the crossroads.”
“Let me think about it.”
Jessabelle took the money to the cashier in the building. The skinny middle-aged woman standing between the counter and rows of cigarette cartons looked her over as Jessabelle put the money on the counter. “Little warm to be wearing a jacket, ain’t it?” the woman said.
The weight in the right pocket of the jacket seemed to grow heavier. The woman must have noticed the bulge and weight. Jessabelle tried to fight off sudden nervousness. “It’s... um, it’s windy in the car.”
“I noticed that. What happened? Y’all have an accident?”
Jessabelle shrugged. “Yeah. Stupid accident. Hey, where’s the bathroom?”
The woman handed her a key attached to a flyswatter. “It’s just ‘round the side.”
“Thank you.” Jessabelle took the key, wondering why the woman was being so nice even though she was obviously illegally carrying a gun. Maybe the woman was really good at hiding her nerves. She’d call the police while Jessabelle was in the bathroom, maybe.
The women’s restroom was ancient but relatively clean. Jessabelle expected to hear the sounds of police sirens any minute, but nothing happened. When she was done, she exited and found Min and Leon in deep in conversation behind the car. It was clearly a conversation, not an argument, and they almost seemed friendly. They grew silent as Jessabelle drew close.
Jessabelle handed Min the flyswatter. “It’s your turn.” Again, she felt the tension between the two adults, but she couldn’t read much more into it. Min sighed as if she was considering something and then walked toward the restroom. Jessabelle looked to Leon. “What if she runs?”
