Djiahna turned and strode to the porch, then looked back at her husband. “I don’t want our homes—our children—to be taken. And if I have any voice on the Council, I will not allow it.” She stormed into the hut, the bamboo curtain clacking in her wake.
Kirra had never seen Taro so sad. She hadn’t given much thought to his feelings before, to be honest. But at that moment, she saw him as a whole person—not just her father—and he had a look of such utter defeat on his face, it broke her heart.
Taro walked slowly into the hut, and that’s when Kirra heard Maja calling her name. Not good. She had to get inside without being discovered back here. Kirra stood too quickly, and a flare of pain shot through her cramped legs in protest. The wicker basket fell over, and Kirra rolled out into the dust. She staggered up, set the basket right, and ran around the hut to the front porch.
“Kirra!”
“I’m right here, Maja.”
Djiahna pulled her hair back and quickly tied it in place, then straightened her robes, all business. “I have a Council meeting to attend. Your father is going to see if he can assist with any festival preparations, and I will need to join him when I’m free. You will have to watch Tiko until we get back.”
“Yes, Maja.” She didn’t dare argue with Djiahna, not after she’d seen the fire in her eyes just moments ago.
Half an hour later, both of her parents were gone and Tiko was playing ball with his friends in the courtyard as Kirra watched from the hammock on the back porch. Her brother was laughing and yelling, chasing the frayed rope ball and kicking up mini dust storms. How nice it would be to have just one more day of being free of worries or responsibilities. Little kids could do whatever they…
Kirra sat up in the hammock. What was it Tiko had said? The grown-ups would all be consumed with festival preparations, so the kids could do whatever they wanted. It was true—her parents were either going to work through the night or come home so exhausted that they just collapsed into bed. Kirra could do whatever she wanted.
So what did she want to do? That was easy: First, she wanted to help protect Zedu. Always. But second, she wanted to make sure her parents never had the kind of disagreement she had just witnessed. Watching her mother and father talk like that to each other had disturbed her in a way she was not willing to examine. It was too scary.
The only way to do those two things was to learn the truth about the Takers. She would have to go to Nafaluu and see for herself. If they truly posed a threat, she could convince Paja to take action. She wouldn’t be able to tell him she had been there, of course, but she would think of something. And if the stories about the Takers were just rumors, as she more than half expected, then she wouldn’t have to do anything. All this talk and worry would just blow right through like a warm summer breeze on the steppe. And her parents would never have to fight about fighting again.
She needed to start building a story of her own. A story that would prove she could be a real Storyteller. To do that, she would need to leave the cozy confines of Zedu—alone—and observe the Takers.
Her pulse raced at the thought. But in a good way. Her father had often told her, You’ll know your first story idea when it comes to you. You’ll feel it. She was definitely feeling this.
The waterfall near the village of Nafaluu was only an hour’s walk from the secret exit tunnel on the east side of the crater. She could leave after everyone had fallen asleep, race over there, see what she needed to see, and be back in plenty of time to remain undiscovered. And she could finally be of real service to Zedu. After all, a good Storyteller didn’t just have to know how to weave tales—she also had to know where to find them.
Kirra’s mind was made up. She would leave tonight.
KIRRA’S HEART WAS THUMPING as she made her way through the doorway slowly and gently so the bamboo curtain wouldn’t clack. She realized she was more afraid of getting caught by her mother and father than she was of being Outside all alone. But she had heard their sleep breathing, even heavier than normal, when passing by their private quarters. Those two were definitely out for the night.
She tiptoed down the wooden porch steps, skipping the creaky one. Scanning the courtyard, she was relieved to see that no one was out. Tiko had been right—all the grown-ups were just as exhausted as Taro and Djiahna after a full day of festival preparations.
It was quiet and still. Which made it that much harder not to scream when the lid of the wicker basket came flying off and Tiko popped his head out.
“I knew it!” he whispered fiercely.
“Shh!” Kirra made a keep it down gesture and pointed at the hut.
“You’ve been acting weird all evening,” Tiko said a little more quietly. “I knew you were up to something.”
“It’s nothing.” Kirra shook her head. “I just…I left something…you know, in your secret spot. I have to sneak back there and pick it up.”
Tiko pointed to the knapsack Kirra was wearing. “Then why did I see you packing leftovers, a map, and your cutting stone?”
Kirra sighed. What kind of a Storyteller was she going to be if she couldn’t even lie convincingly to her brother?
Tiko leaned forward, eyes wide. “You’re going Outside, aren’t you?”
Kirra realized there was no way out but straight through. “Okay, yes, I am. But it’s only for a few hours. I’ll be home before anyone wakes up.” She glanced back at the dark windows of the hut. “But you can’t tell Maja and Paja. You promise?”
“Of course I promise.”
Whew. “Thank you so much, Tiko. If they found—”
“Because I’m going with you.” He clambered out of the basket, then reached back inside and pulled out a knapsack of his own. “I’m already packed!”
“No way,” Kirra said. “Not going to happen.”
“Then you’re not going, either.” He turned toward the hut, cupped his hands around his mouth, and took an exaggerated breath, as if preparing to yell.
Kirra clamped her hand over his face. “You wouldn’t.”
Tiko nodded slowly. He totally would.
She sighed again and removed her hand.
“Come on, Kirra,” Tiko pleaded. “I’ll be good, I promise. I could even help you.”
Kirra chewed her lip and looked around the dark courtyard. She wasn’t going to get as good a chance as this again. And with Tiko apparently watching her every move, she might never even get another chance. She reluctantly concluded that he was right—she was going with him or not at all.
She fixed him with a stare. “Rule number one is that you do everything I say.” Tiko grinned and nodded so hard it looked like he was trying to shake something out of his hair. “And rule number two is that you—”
“Do everything you say. I got it. Really and truly, Kirra. You can trust me.”
A few moments later, they were creeping from terrace to terrace, hugging the interior rock wall to stay in the shadows. Their stealth was unnecessary, though. All was quiet throughout Zedu. It was a boring night for the Watchers on duty.
When they neared the eastern exit, Kirra put a finger to her lips and motioned for Tiko to crouch behind a stack of firewood. “When I give the signal, you race straight for the tunnel. No stopping or looking back, understand?”
Tiko nodded solemnly.
Kirra reached into her knapsack and withdrew a stone, then threw it underhand so it rolled after it hit the ground, clattering noisily. Next she ducked down behind the firewood with Tiko and peeked over the top of the stack.
A moment later, a Watcher emerged from the crack in the wall to investigate the noise. As soon as he was far enough away with his back turned to them, Kirra grabbed Tiko’s hand and they raced into the tunnel together, twisting this way and that through its curves. Then they popped out under the vast night sky.
Just like that. As on her previous trips with Paja, it felt exhilarating. But she knew they couldn’t stop to take in the moonlit landscape. The Watcher would be back in just a moment,
and things were much brighter out here. She tightened her grip on Tiko’s hand and had to pull him hard to get him moving, as his mouth was agape and his head was on a swivel as he got his first unobstructed view of all the stars in the night sky. She led him up a path on the outside of the volcano that curved above the secret entrance and away from the gaze of the Watcher. They would head diagonally toward the rim of the crater for a while, then loop their way back down to the base, and, finally, across the plains toward Nafaluu.
This was real. They were doing it.
The going was a bit slow as Tiko—his head permanently craned upward—stumbled over rocks or stepped into holes as they waded through the tall grass of the plains.
“Watch where you’re going, birdbrain,” Kirra whispered as she caught his elbow and set him upright once again.
“I’m sorry, I just…” He spread out his arms to indicate the night sky. “I’ve never lived without walls, you know?”
It was hard for Kirra to stay annoyed, as she knew exactly what he was talking about. On her first trip Outside, Taro had let her ride in the cart almost the entire time so that she could simply take everything in.
As for this journey, Kirra was using the stars to navigate as she had been taught. She also periodically stopped to study the map—one of Paja’s—by the moonlight. If a group of “Takers” was actually camped out near the village of Nafaluu, then, she figured, there was only one place they could be: a lone copse of woods by a bend in the river about a twenty-minute walk north of the waterfall.
And, if her calculations were correct, they should be getting close. In fact, that dark clump of vegetation rising up from the plains ahead of them was likely the spot.
She stopped Tiko and put her hands on his shoulders. “I need you to really listen to me,” she whispered. “I know you are very clever, and starting now, I need you to act like you do when you’re sneaking to your secret spot, okay? Very quiet and alert.”
Tiko nodded solemnly. He mouthed, I promise, to demonstrate how quiet he could be.
“We’re going to tiptoe over to that group of trees”—she pointed to the woods in the distance—“and we’re going to see if there are some people camped out there.”
“What people?”
“I’m not sure. There might not even be any. But if there are, we need to count them and get a quick sense of what their camp is like, and that’s all. As soon as we do that, we’re going to hustle right back home and get into bed.”
Tiko nodded some more. “And why are we doing this?”
Kirra slowly touched a fist to her forehead, hoped that the gravity of the situation would sink into Tiko’s brain. “We protect Zedu.”
“Are these…” His eyes went wide. “Are they bad people?”
She wasn’t sure how to answer. When the strange man in Lukweii had described the Takers, Kirra thought he was making everything up. But when Maja spoke in such worried tones, it had made Kirra think twice.
She frowned. What could Zeduans actually learn about Outsiders when they stayed within the crater walls all the time? The Watchers were just guessing at the potential threats to the community.
“You know what? It doesn’t matter, because they’re not going to see us. Right?” The answer was as much to calm her own rising nerves as it was to satisfy Tiko.
“Right.”
“Good. So I need you to forget about all of those stars up there, watch where you’re walking, and be super quiet until we make it back out here. Sometimes a true Zeduan Warrior has to rely on stealth instead of might.”
Tiko puffed out his chest at those words. “I promise,” he said as he touched a fist to his forehead. Kirra marveled at how much he looked like Taro in that moment. It was oddly comforting.
Her plan was to enter the copse of trees to shield themselves from view. Being out on these wide-open plains was starting to make her feel nervous, even if the tall grass did a good job of concealing them. Then they would slowly creep around the perimeter to see if they could discover anyone inside.
As it turned out, spying wasn’t necessary. Because as soon as they got close to the mini forest, they could clearly hear the people within.
Kirra couldn’t believe how noisy they were. Shouting and laughing and carrying on, even at this time of night. These people had broken the first rule of camping by scaring off any potential game animals. With the racket they were making, she’d be surprised if there were any birds left in the trees.
As they entered the forest and the light dimmed considerably, this little adventure started to seem like a very bad idea. She didn’t want to take Tiko any closer, but she certainly couldn’t leave him here on his own. What if she couldn’t find him again in the dark on her way back out? All Kirra felt like doing, if she were being honest, was turning around and running all the way home.
She glanced down at Tiko, and as they listened to the boisterous sounds of the camp, the look on his face made it obvious he would be fully in favor of the sprinting-home plan. She grabbed his hand and took a step back out of the forest so that—
“Aaahhh!”
A scream cut through the rest of the camp noise. A primal sound of pain and fear.
Kirra felt a moment of water-kneed weakness before her resolve stiffened. She intended to do her part to protect Zedu no matter what. If these were indeed Takers and they posed a real threat, then her people had to be warned. Kirra would find answers, because Zedu deserved them.
“No! Please stop!”
The anguished pleas tore through the night air. Kirra took a deep breath. She would summon her courage and investigate, but she would not risk Tiko’s safety any more than she already had. Scanning the woods around them, she picked out an unusual tree that would be easy to find again. It had a broad trunk and long branches that drooped in a dome-like shape, nearly touching the ground. Tiko would be safely concealed up there.
“Come here,” she whispered. He complied without hesitation, clearly glad to have something to do other than stand there and listen to those horrible sounds coming from the camp. Kirra cupped both hands at her waist to form a foothold. “Step here,” she whispered, “and grab that thick branch to pull yourself up.”
When her little brother had clambered into the branches, Kirra pulled hard on the straps of her pack, cinching it tight to her body so that she’d be able to maneuver better. Tiko proved to be a natural at climbing trees, and soon they were some thirty feet above the ground. Kirra decided this would be more than high enough to hide her brother from anyone who might walk underneath.
She got close to his face. “You are going to stay here until I return. Do not move from this spot, and do not make a noise. Understand?”
“But I want to help—”
Kirra raised a hand to cut him off. “I stayed true to my word. You are Outside. But now you will hold up your end of the bargain and do as I say. You will stay here until I get back.”
Another scream tore the night apart to punctuate her command. Tiko gulped and nodded slowly.
Kirra leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead. Then she turned and scrambled along a limb, and leaped to a branch of a neighboring tree.
She remained high above the forest floor as she made her way toward the sounds of the camp, eyes accustomed to the dim light, hands and feet trained to find secure grips. Soon she was close enough to see the flickering light of campfires.
Kirra poked her head through a thick screen of leaves to find a limb on the next tree that could support her weight, and suddenly there was the camp spread out below her.
The first thing she noticed was the size of the group. There were a lot of people—mostly men, but a few women, too—sitting around the fire. No children that she could see. And nearby, tied to a tree, was a dog. Kirra’s breathing became shallow. She knew dogs had keen senses and hoped it wouldn’t detect her.
After Kirra had wrapped her mind around the huge number of people in this camp, there was time to focus on the individual members. But s
he immediately regretted it. The word used by the uninvited storyteller back in Lukweii was disturbingly perfect: monstrous.
These intruders were so abnormally tall it looked like they had been stretched thin in some places. They were almost skeletal in their long arms and gaunt faces, but they had broad shoulders and big, powerful haunches. Their skin appeared leathery and tough, dimpled and a uniform ashy-gray color, like a rhinoceros’s. Kirra wondered if they came from a desert environment, where that tough exterior would protect them from heat and sandstorms. Also, they each had a shock of bone-white hair, which she figured could have been bleached over time by prolonged exposure to the sun.
And their clothes. There were no animal hides or cloth robes. Instead, these people wore thick coverings of what looked like leather and some sort of shiny, hard material. They looked ready for battle—a real one.
Where could they possibly have come from?
The unsettling feeling deep in Kirra’s chest that these people didn’t belong here was about more than just their strange appearance. They seemed so clumsy as they lumbered around. They had somehow knocked down several small trees to clear a space for the camp, leaving logs and stumps for benches, and had recklessly trampled all the other vegetation nearby. From her bird’s-eye vantage point, it looked to Kirra like an evil, lumbering giant from one of her father’s scary stories had stamped an enormous foot in the middle of the forest and left this ragged clearing behind.
Kirra’s stomach felt queasy—this went against everything she had been taught. Inside the volcano, each action one took could potentially affect others, so Zeduans behaved considerately. These Takers careened around as if nothing mattered.
Most unnerving of all was the source of those screams. A man, much smaller than the others and dressed to the waist in the robes of the Nafaluu, was tied to a tree. His feet were lashed to the trunk while his arms were stretched painfully high over his head and bound to branches above. People were occasionally punished for crimes in Zedu, but never like this. She wondered what horrible transgression the Nafaluu man had committed.
If We Were Giants Page 4
