“Leave?” Maham said.
“Where would we go?” Luwan asked.
Loba was studying Kirra. “Why have you not talked about these people before?”
“Hush, Loba,” said Maham. “Can’t you see the poor thing is—”
“It’s okay,” Kirra said. “It’s a reasonable question.” She took another deep breath. “I was trying desperately not to think about it. I blocked it out. Remembering my family…it was just too much.”
“And we understand, dear.” Maham squeezed her shoulders again.
Loba was still looking intently at her. “Can you tell us why they attacked your people? Anything that would help us make a plan moving forward?”
Kirra swallowed hard. She was absolutely certain that a full confession would be the best way to handle this moment…and yet she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t bear for this family to turn on her, be repulsed by her. So she shrugged and quietly said, “I don’t know. They just showed up one day. Our people were caught unprepared. I was lucky to escape.” She shivered all over. “I’m telling you, we should pack up and leave right now.”
“I hear what you’re saying, Kirra. But even if we decide to do that, we would not need to leave today. The rainy season will last for several months, and while it’s here, no strangers will be crossing that river.”
“I know. But as soon as the waters lower, they will come. And we will be helpless.”
Luwan scoffed. “What’s all this talk about running? Didn’t you see them falling all over themselves to get away from our giant? What we need is an army of giants.” He smacked his fist into the wooden floor. “We’d fight them so hard they would never return.”
“You know that’s impossible,” Kirra said. “Please don’t get me wrong—I am so grateful for what you and your friends did, but the only reason it worked is because you caught them by surprise. When they come back, they’ll be ready. And they won’t be afraid.”
Loba shook his head. “She’s right. Use your sense, boy. It took you and your friends over a week to build that thing. And it didn’t even have a body! You would need hundreds of people, all working from sunrise to sundown, to build enough of those things to stand up to a real army.”
An image flashed in Kirra’s mind. Peering under the rocks with Mome, seeing the bivouac ants and their structure made of thousands of bodies. Each small component of the community weak on its own but strong as a unit. All of them, working perfectly in unison to protect their most precious assets.
She looked around at each member of the family. “But…we do have hundreds of people.…”
Loba wrinkled his brow. “What do you mean?”
Kirra made a sweeping gesture with her arm, indicating the forest all around the hut. “The Tree Folk. This affects all of them. Instead of warning them and telling them to leave the forest—”
“We could ask them to help build an army of giants!” Luwan jumped in. “And we could make them even better! It was Teeha’s idea to make the arm into a weapon, right? Well, she had lots of other amazing plans, but we just didn’t have enough time to do all of them. She had even figured out a way to make them walk if we had enough people! We could be an unstoppable force. I bet we could—”
Loba held up his hand to cut Luwan off. “This is foolishness. There’s no sense in even talking about it.”
It was silent for a few moments before Kirra worked up the courage to say, “Why?”
Loba scowled. “What do you mean? Because Tree Folk families keep to themselves and always have, that’s why. We take care of our own and do for the people we know. It is our way.”
“But the Takers coming back will affect everyone!” Luwan said.
Maham cleared her throat. “The people in this forest have never been faced with a threat like this before,” she said quietly. “They may have the capacity to change if the situation is dire enough.”
Loba looked around the hut, saw that he was outnumbered. “I need to think about this.” He stood and walked out the door.
Kirra, Luwan, and Maham sat silently. They had spoken together for an hour or so after Loba left, and made some plans of their own, but they had talked themselves out. None of it would happen if Loba disagreed.
It was well past dark when he came back. He stood by the cook fire, and the dying embers made shadows play across his face. They all looked up at him in anticipation, waited for him to speak first.
“So”—he looked at Kirra—“what is it, exactly, that you are proposing?”
Kirra stood and met his gaze. “If we can get all the Tree Folk in one place at the same time, I can speak to them. I will explain. I will make them understand what needs to be done, and ask for their help.”
“And if they refuse? Which they will, I have no doubt.”
“Then we leave the forest, protect this family. The others will have to make their own decisions.”
Loba dropped his head and ran his fingers through his hair for several moments. At last he looked back up. “And how will we gather everyone?”
“My friends and I can do it!” Luwan said. “We’ll start in the morning and go from tree to tree. Say there is an important gathering and the fate of the entire forest rests on the outcome.”
“Not everyone will come,” Maham said gently. “But I am willing to bet that enough show up to make a difference.”
Loba considered the three expectant faces and sighed heavily. Then he stared directly at Kirra. “If we do this, it’s going to be my name on the line. And if the meeting does not go well, I’m sure we will be strongly encouraged to leave this forest even if the Takers never come back.”
Kirra stood up straight. “I will do my very best to convince them. I’ll tell them my story.”
He waited a long time to respond, so long that Kirra thought the entire plan might be scuttled. But finally he spoke. “This family has put its trust in you.” Loba pointed a thick finger at Kirra. “Your story,” he said, fixing her with his gaze, “had better be good.”
KIRRA SAT ATOP THE ROCKY RIDGE by the lake in the soft morning light, trying to calm her nerves. Besides Luwan, Loba, and Maham sitting beside her, the clearing was empty. They had been waiting for over half an hour, and she could tell from their uneasy silence that the others were feeling more than a little edgy, too.
As she looked around at the bare trees and vacant meadow, Kirra honestly didn’t know which was more unsettling to think about—having to make a speech in front of the entire Tree Folk community…or the prospect of no one showing up at all.
Finally, Loba spoke in a half whisper. “Are you sure you and your friends told everybody that the meeting was this morning?”
“Of course, Father!” Luwan shook his head. “I’m not a child anymore, you know.”
“All will be well.” Maham placed a hand on Kirra’s and Luwan’s shoulders. “This is just a very unusual request for these people. It may take them some extra time.”
Several more minutes passed and still nobody came. For moral support, Kirra stole glances at the place where Mome had shown her the bivouac ants’ remarkable structure. Stronger together. If only people would turn up, she would try to make them see that.
Luwan started to scowl and fidget with his hands, which didn’t ease anyone’s anxiety, but then she saw him break into a huge grin. Kirra looked questioningly at him and he pointed. She turned to see Teeha silently stepping into the clearing from behind a tree. The master builder was followed by six people who could only be her parents and brothers, as they all shared the same stoic expression. They were also all carrying large knapsacks. Teeha briefly lifted her hand in greeting, and her family wordlessly sat down in the wild grass.
Shortly after that, Makina emerged from the tree line on the opposite side of the surrounding woods, leading a gaggle of younger sisters even tinier than her. She waved enthusiastically, and her sisters imitated her, all with beaming smiles. Kirra returned both the smile and the wave, which helped allay her nervousness a bit.
Well, at least a few Tree Folk were here. They would just have to…
It was hard to say when it started, because the people of the forest were so quiet and moved with such stealth, but as Kirra looked around at the surrounding trees, she realized that it was definitely more than a few.
People parted leaves in the upper branches to see out, revealing huddled groups of three or four sharing a wide branch. Others dropped from low-hanging limbs to sit at the base of a trunk, while some were bold enough to step out of the forest and sit in the open. And some had perhaps been there all along, seated among the branches, their camouflage clothing and natural stillness allowing them to blend in with the woods.
Over the next several minutes, the forest surrounding the clearing filled with people. Kirra turned her neck as far as it could go in both directions and took them all in. There must have been several hundred gathered here. And they kept coming. Perhaps over a thousand? Even two thousand? Kirra would never have dreamed there were this many Tree Folk.
And had she really thought she was nervous before? That was just a mild case of the jitters. Now it felt like she couldn’t breathe. Though none of these people knew it, their fate rested on Kirra’s words and how much she could encourage and inspire them to respond. It all depended on her.
When the emergence of newcomers slowed to a trickle and finally appeared to stop, Loba stood up on top of the ridge and surveyed all the eyes looking down at him from the surrounding trees. Kirra noticed his hands were trembling before he clasped them together and took a deep breath.
“My name is Loba. I was born in the branches, as was my father and his father before him.” He was speaking loudly but not shouting. There was no need. The people in the clearing were so quiet and focused that his voice was able to carry to the entire assembly.
“I am not a man of many words, but my family and I want to thank you for coming here this morning. We know this is unusual. After spending my entire life in this forest, I do not remember a single time that all of us were called together. It is not in our nature to decide things as a group. We take care of our own and let others do as they will.”
Loba swallowed heavily, appearing to search for the right thing to say. This clearly did not come naturally to him, and Kirra’s heart swelled with gratitude knowing that he was going through with it solely on the basis of her word.
“Anyway…I say this because you must know I do not treat this lightly. But events have taken place recently that could have dire consequences for all of us. And we will be asking for your help to put things back in order so you may all go on living your lives as normal.”
Loba turned and motioned to Kirra, who stood up. She felt very small in the middle of all those people. “This is Kirra. She was not born in the branches. She did not start out this life as one of us.” Loba turned and looked right into her eyes as he spoke. “But I have come to trust her. And respect her. I never thought I would say this about an outsider before I met her, but we have fully accepted Kirra into our family. I consider her my daughter. And if you have any trust for me as a lifelong member of the Tree Folk, I would like you to extend the same respect to her as she speaks with you now.”
Kirra, standing there before the entire crowd, didn’t know whether to thank Loba or curse him. His public support certainly helped steady her nerves…but how was she supposed to speak around the lump that was forming in her throat? It had been so long since someone had called her daughter, and she’d thought she would never hear that word again.
Brushing a stray tear from the corner of one eye, she took a shaky but deep breath and spun around slowly to take in her audience. And as she did so, a warm and familiar feeling of calm washed over her as she realized something very important.
This was a storytellers’ circle.
She could see that now. And how many times had she watched the first man who called her daughter perform in front of an audience? Perhaps not a crowd this big, of course, but was there really any difference? She had seen Taro speak to groups of the elderly, or hordes of children, gatherings of families, and unfamiliar faces in distant villages. She had observed him closely, studied the ways he drew people in and delivered the goods. She had also kept an eye on the crowds and discovered something else: Everyone loved a good story. Taro was skilled, for certain, but at the end of the day, he was merely giving the people what they wanted.
And her father—her first father—had chosen her Helper position perfectly. Taro had seen it before she had: This was what Kirra had been born to do.
If Taro had felt she was capable of carrying on his legacy and telling meaningful stories that made an impact on others…If Loba trusted her, and so did Maham and Luwan and his friends…then she knew she could do this. The nerves melted away and she began to speak.
“As Loba says, I was not born here. But the place where I come from had many similarities. We also hid ourselves from the outside world. My ancestors built a perfect community deep inside the hollow crater of a dormant volcano.”
Kirra described the towering walls of stone that protected Zedu like a fortress, throwing her hands in the air to illustrate their formidable vastness. She paced around the ridge in a circle, describing the various clans on the different terraces that lined the interior, and how they worked together to bring resources to all the people in the community. Making broad gestures to the surrounding trees and meadow and lake, she praised the natural beauty of the land of the Tree Folk and explained that the Zeduans also had a respect for nature and similarly sought to live in harmony with their surroundings.
Her voice grew stronger as she described her native home. It was the opposite of a Memory Trap; instead of letting the dark things in her past drag her down, the bright and beautiful things she had experienced were infusing her with confidence and power. To remember everything—both the good and the bad—was to honor those whom she had loved.
She rotated, taking in her entire audience. “When you have been born and raised in such a special place, and taught to respect your lands and live within their means—as all of you have been lucky enough to experience—it can be difficult to understand those who do not. It can, in fact, be difficult to even acknowledge that such people could exist.”
She paused dramatically, because she knew it was something Taro would have done at that point. That was another memory that lifted her up and empowered her once she allowed it to come back.
During the pause, she scanned the crowd, establishing direct eye contact with as many people as she could, forging a personal connection with her audience, just like she had been taught. Finally, she spoke again.
“But I have met such people.”
Then she slipped from Storyteller into Actor, as all good tale spinners must do at times. As she described Red Streak addressing his troops, she became the man. She puffed up her chest and made her voice gruff, using hand gestures to suggest his bulging muscles, intimidating armor, and cruel weaponry. She imitated him as he bullied the Nafaluu captive and snarled bloody orders at his men.
With a rush of pride, she noticed something happening in the crowd—the same thing she had observed when her first father competed in the storytelling competitions. People were turning to one another, nodding in approval or making faces to their neighbor that said Oh, my, did you hear that? She knew they were with her. Time to press on.
“And now these people have come to our lands. You may have noticed them in the last few weeks, crossing the river at its lowest point and hunting in our forests. And if you saw them, then you must have noticed that each one carried as much game as possible, trip after trip after trip. It’s not hunting; it’s plunder. That is their nature. My people called them the Takers because th
at’s what they do—they take beyond reason.”
She swept her hands with a flourish to indicate the surrounding woods. “You have all learned the lesson, passed down from each generation, to leave a healthy population of each type of beast so the hunt may continue the next season. Why, even the Hook Hunters have enough sense to follow that rule.” This earned a ripple of laughter through her audience.
Now that she had them, really had them, it was time to lower the hammer. Get to the meat of this meeting. “But these Takers cannot be reasoned with. And they have discovered our little corner of paradise in this world.
“They have warned us.” She paced a bit. “No, that’s not quite right.” Another pause, another scanning of the crowd. “They have threatened us. They have vowed to return after the rainy season ends and the river becomes crossable again. The best outcome we can hope for is that they wipe out the entire store of beasts, fish, and birds in the forest, and make our home unlivable.
“The more likely scenario, however, is that they not only do that, but also destroy the trees and enslave us. Or worse. Simply wipe us out.”
Kirra paused and took a deep breath, but not for dramatic effect. Because she knew this next part would be difficult to say. She didn’t dress it up with any storytelling tricks or flourishes. She just said, simply, “That’s what happened to my beloved community. The Takers barged in, took what they wanted, and burned the rest. I am the only survivor of my people.”
Kirra found strength in the fact that she had gotten through that part without breaking down in tears. Her voice was clear and powerful when she said, “They must be stopped when they return. And we are the only ones who can stop them.”
It was silent for a good long spell while this information sank into the crowd. Until an older man, his customary beard long and gray, stood up from where he had been sitting at the base of a nearby tree. “I’d like to ask a question.”
If We Were Giants Page 15
