Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle

by Peter S. Beagle

  Your grandfather must have just stared at her. She said, “Made at the same time, rock-targs and we Qu’alo. Looked the same once, lived together, the same people. But we changed, slowly, slowly, left them, lost them. So now, every night we live, the dream, every night, how it was once. The gods punish us for changing.”

  No, what do you think, of course I don’t know if that’s true or not. It’s what the Qu’alo believed, that’s all. Your Grandfather Selsim never said whether he believed it, but he did say it sounded just like the gods.

  Do you know what she thought was the funniest thing in the world? Telling jokes—I mean the idea of telling jokes. It took a while for her to believe that humans would spend time making up stories and repeating them to each other just to make each other laugh. But once she did take hold of it—why, then it became hers, her own joke, and she might start giggling to herself at the thought of it, any time at all, the way you hear thunder back of the hills on a hot night. He’d find her that way sometimes, your grandfather, playing with her special joke. And sometimes she’d start in really laughing, no warning. He said the ground would tremble, blossoms and leaves would be coming down everywhere, birds would pop right off their nests, and your bones would buzz for an hour afterward. That’s what it was like when the Qu’alo laughed.

  One time he asked if the giants had families, the way humans do. He hardly ever saw more than two Qu’alo together, couldn’t be sure how many of them there were on Torgry Mountain, and he certainly couldn’t even guess which ones might be children. She didn’t answer him, she didn’t speak at all until the next day. Just about the time he’d forgotten his question, she said, “Not. Once, now not.” Her voice was so soft he couldn’t feel it in his body, the way he always did. She said it three times. “Once. Once. Once.”

  He didn’t try to escape until he’d been with the Qu’alo two months, or maybe three, and by then he’d almost forgotten he was supposed to be their prisoner. They never caged or fenced or tethered him; he never saw them following him, watching him, not like that, nothing like that. He could wander any place he liked, stay out of sight of any Qu’alo as long as he felt like it. But the night he walked off through the deepest woods, not going near the trail he’d been traveling when the rock-targ jumped him, but veering, angling, first this way, then that, sidling toward the summit—do you know, he hadn’t gone more than a mile when it was old Dudrilashashek filling his path, saying gently, “No, no, little one, I am sorry. Come, I will take you back, come now.” Just as though he were no older than you, and walking in his sleep.

  That was how it was every time he tried to slip away from the Qu’alo, to turn back to his interrupted journey, back into his own ordinary tinker’s life. Never a reproach, never a threat, but always some huge creature suddenly there in front of him without a sound. Now and then it would be Yriadvele herself, and she’d simply pick him up and carry him, holding him straight out between her two hands, not on her shoulder, the way she did when they were off somewhere. That was how it was for eighteen years.

  Eighteen years, that’s right, that’s how long he lived with the Qu’alo. Eating what they ate, sleeping when they slept, browsing in the shadows the day long, same as they did. Sounds like the most boring life you ever heard of, doesn’t it? Well, it likely would have been just that for you or me, but it was something different for your Grandfather Selsim. Because after a time, might have been a few years, they say he started to think the thoughts of the Qu’alo, do you understand what I’m saying to you? Big thoughts, old thoughts, turning in his mind, the way you see a big fish come up in the evening and heave over at the surface with the sunset on his silver belly, and just slide away back down again. Long, strange, slow thoughts, take even a Qu’alo forever to get them right. Maybe you have to live that way to think that way. After a while, maybe that’s all you want to do in the world. No, you don’t understand, boy, and I don’t either. What I know is, your Grandfather Selsim spent eighteen years of his life with those stinking giants, and after the first three years, four years, he stopped trying to escape. He’d have stayed with them the rest of his life, if he could, and you wouldn’t be here, nor me either. You think about that a little bit.

  The winters? Yes, the mountain winters were hard, but Dudrilashashek taught him the Qu’alo trick for that. Do you know what they used to do when the leaves fell, when the streams all froze, when everything they ate was under two feet of snow? Do you know what the Qu’alo did? Why, they went to sleep, there’s what they did. They’d find empty rock-targ caves—well, maybe they weren’t always empty when they found them, but pretty soon after—and they’d pile together, two or three or four of them, and just sleep it out like that. And if it turned warm for a little, they might get up and wander around, dig under the snow for a nibble, then go back to sleep. People can do that, too, if they learn the trick. Your grandfather did. I think you should try it sometime.

  Why couldn’t he stay with them? Well, that’s the story, isn’t it? That’s what we’re getting to now.

  Yriadvele it was who came for him when that first giant died. It was late on a summer afternoon, getting on for sundown. She just said, “Dead. With me,” so he went with her, sitting on her shoulder like always. She wouldn’t say who it was, nor even tell him his age—he was afraid a rock-targ might finally have gotten Cali or Gali. Well, and what was it he died of, then? That was when she looked sideways at him and said, “Qu’alo. Being Qu’alo.” And what that meant, he had no idea.

  They were in a clearing, all of them, gathered around the dead one. They had him laid out on a sort of scaffold thing—you know the way the Nounos put their dead people up high in the trees? The Qu’alo did something like that except this platform wasn’t any higher than about so, about my chest, and the body was mostly covered with fresh-cut branches that smelled sweet. He couldn’t see the face, but he could see every one of the giants he knew to talk to, so he felt better. We can’t help that, that’s the way we are. As long as it’s no one we know.

  That was when he noticed how few of them there really were—no more than fifteen or sixteen, counting the children. And only about three of those, there’s another thing. Now you’re a farmer’s son, you imagine they’re rishus or jejebhais and work it out in your head, go on. Right—you can’t keep up a herd of anything breeding at that rate, not a chance in the world. The Qu’alo were dying off, they were already doomed, almost on purpose. The way I’ve seen it happen sometimes.

  Well, I have, and so have you, if you’ll think about it. You remember that time when that whole flock of makhyahs over at the Jutt place, when he was going to get rich off those thousands and thousands of bright-red eggs they were going to lay—you remember when they all died, every one of them, almost overnight, and Bala Jutt came weeping for me to come look at the bodies and tell him what could have gone wrong. You were small, but you remember? Right, well, those makhyahs died because they didn’t like Bala Jutt, and they didn’t like the way he kept them, and they decided that living like that simply wasn’t worth it. I don’t mean they held a meeting and took a vote. I mean they just decided. Same with the Qu’alo. Not just the same, but the same.

  Why? Well, if your Grandfather Selsim never knew, I certainly don’t, and maybe the Qu’alo didn’t know either, not in words. I don’t think they ever put anything important into words, even to themselves. Just hush and listen.

  Anyway, your Grandfather Selsim was most likely thinking about things like that when Yriadvele started to dance. He heard the heavy double thump behind him, and when he whirled around he saw her, stepping hard and slow, back and forth, one foot to the other. Then she was stamping, faster, making the platform with the body on it tremble, and then her arms began to lift away from her sides, as though she were getting ready to fly. Her eyes weren’t looking at him or at anything, and her face was just as dark and hidden as always.

  Then the others started in. Fifteen giants, stamping the ground all together. So now it was the trees shaking,
and the ground bouncing like the skin on a drum, and people say the setting sun was bouncing, too, in the sky. I don’t suppose it was what we’d call dancing—most of them just kept jumping up and down and waving their big arms around—but your grandfather said Yriadvele was turning and swaying, bending to touch the earth, kneeling, straightening, reaching out like for something nobody else could see. He said she was dancing, that one.

  The way he told it, the frightening part was the quiet, not the noise. Underneath the noise, those tremendous feet booming on the ground, underneath it was still as could be, silent all the way down. And when they suddenly stopped, all of them together—oh, that quiet was too much for him, he backed away until he bumped into a tree, and then he hid behind it. But they weren’t looking at him, not Yriadvele, none of them. They were looking at the dead Qu’alo on the scaffold thing.

  This is what they did

  I was just thinking, I don’t know if I should be telling you this. If you start having nightmares, your mother will—what? Ah, don’t tell me that—you had one just last week, woke me up yelling about shukris all over you, chewing you to bits. You don’t remember, no, of course not. Your mother does. I think maybe you ought to go to sleep now.

  All right, all right, just quiet down! Couldn’t hear the jejebhai having triplets with you carrying on like that. Be quiet, I’ll tell you the rest of it. Only if you do have a bad dream, I don’t want to know anything about it. Me or anyone, that’s agreed? Gods, how did I get into this?

  So. This is what they did, then. They walked by him one at a time, the dead one, and each of them bowed his head and sniffed at him, really deeply, the same way they’d smelled your grandfather over, so carefully. It took a long time, because they were saying good-bye, not hello, and it was full dark when they all sat down to eat him.

  You heard me. They ate him. They’d already cleaned him, same way you would with a fish, and now they built a big fire to see by—that was the first time your grandfather knew they could do that, they never had before—and they sat down together and ate that dead Qu’alo all gone. Only time he ever saw them eat meat, too. Don’t make those silly faces—I’m telling you, that’s what they did. It took them till dawn..

  Listen to me, stop making those faces. Do you know what your Grandfather Selsim said about it? He said it was beautiful, somehow it was the most beautiful thing he ever saw. They sat around that scaffold in the dark, those huge creatures, and they talked, their voices not just low but soft, sad, gentle, a way he’d never heard them. He couldn’t make out a word, even sitting close, but he knew they were talking about their friend. And at the same time they were eating him, they were praising him and honoring him and loving him, you understand? It wasn’t like people gobbling and grunting over their dinner—it was different, it was beautiful. That’s exactly what your grandfather said.

  It took all night, I told you that. And at the end of it, with the morning rolling up over the trees, there wasn’t a thing left on the platform but these long, clean bones shining there. Yes, sure, the skull too, what do you think? Nothing but giant bones, and they buried those in a special place, your grandfather never would say where. And that was what the Qu’alo did when a Qu’alo died.

  The way old Dudrilashashek explained to your grandfather, they did it for two reasons. “First, the rock-targs,” he said. “We have taught them fear, who would never have known such a thing but for us. They are almost, almost intelligent, but not quite, and they think there are thousands of us, they think we never die. If they dug up a body, if they realized how few we are, and how mortal, we would never know peace again. Then there is another thing.” He didn’t say anything for some while, but your grandfather just sat and waited. Being some better at that than he used to be.

  And finally Dudrilashashek told him, “It is our way of keeping the one who dies with us forever. The flesh is unimportant, and passes through us, but what remains—our lives, our thoughts, our memories, our time in the world—the very last of the Qu’alo will contain all that, contain us all, every one ever. And when that last one is gone….” Your Grandfather Selsim said he shrugged so slowly, so heavily that it was like watching a whole mountain range being born and dying, all in one motion. Dudrilashashek said, “Well,” and nothing more.

  Eighteen years, then. Eighteen years, your Grandfather Selsim lived on Torgry Mountain with the Qu’alo, and one by one he watched them go. Never a wound or an injury, never a sickness that he could see—they just died, one or two a year. Young ones, old, he didn’t ever learn to tell much difference, except for the few he’d become a little friendly with: Jalayakudrilak, who could tell you weeks ahead what the weather was going to be, Tudoguraj, who loved to sing, imagine a giant chirping and twittering away like a tree full of hatchlings; and there was one called Rumirideyol, the only Qu’alo who refused to kill rock-targs if she could avoid it, and wept afterward when she couldn’t. Cali and Gali went together—your grandfather was glad of that. He was the one who found them, lying side by side, one brother’s head on the other’s shoulder, and not a mark on them. One by one.

  Mind now, this is going to sound really silly, and I don’t want one solitary snicker out of you. Mind me. When you’re down to just a handful of giants, it gets hard to do what you have to do with your dead. Are you laughing? You’d better not be laughing. The Qu’alo managed all right, but it was harder and sadder for them each time they came to sit around that brush-covered ceremonial platform. When Dudrilashashek went, your grandfather cried. He liked that old windbag of a giant, he missed him till the day he died himself. He even wanted to take part in the—you know, what they did—but Yriadvele wouldn’t let him. She said it wasn’t right, not while one Qu’alo lived, so that was that. But she let him dance with them, his little hops and thumps like the ghost of the dead one’s dance. And he always helped to bury the great, shining bones.

  Couldn’t he have escaped, with so few giants to watch him? Well, of course, he could have, they were a long way past caring about that. But he didn’t want to—by then he belonged with them, can you understand that? He didn’t want to leave them, they were his family by then, some way. That’s all I know, that’s all I can tell you.

  And finally there wasn’t a Qu’alo left but Yriadvele. After eighteen years. They stayed very close together now, the giant woman and your grandfather—he said they even slept together, with him under her arm like a baby bird. She didn’t seem likely to die any minute, but neither had the others, so he wasn’t going to take chances. That winter, in the cave they’d been using for so long, he slept dreaming that spring had come and she wouldn’t wake, he dreamed that over and over, waking himself up each time to make sure she was still breathing. Then he’d go back to sleep and dream it again. Like you when you’re waiting for your birthday.

  And it came true, that dream, near as makes no difference. Oh, she woke when it was time, but not completely, never all the way. She couldn’t walk at all the first day or two, and your Grandfather Selsim had to forage for her. Well, there’s no chance you can find enough food to fill a twelve-foot giant, especially one who hasn’t eaten all winter. Maybe it would have been all right if she’d been able to feed herself, I don’t know. He said even when she could walk she hardly ate a thing, but she was thirsty all the time and mostly stayed by a stream which had just wakened up itself. Her eyes were the color of cobwebs, not black as they should be, and her coat had that flat, staring, sticky look to it you don’t ever want to see on a rishu, a jejebhai, even a miserable dhrushindi. She didn’t say a word, and your grandfather didn’t know what to do except stay with her.

  And finally she said to him, “You take me there.”

  “No,” he said. “No, there’s no need, there’s nothing wrong with you, you’re just still sleepy. You need to eat more, that’s all.”

  But she put her hands on him in a way she never had done before. She touched his shoulders, and his face, and she took his head between those hands that could have crushed it like a
rotten old chouka nut. Her poor streaked eyes were looking straight into his, and whatever she saw there, it made her smile a little. He’d never seen her smile at him just like that before, not in eighteen years.

  “Time, Shelshim,” she said. “Time, friend.”

  He said it took all day to get where they were going. She wasn’t walking very well, and he couldn’t support her, and he couldn’t do much for her when she fell. Must have been like a tree going down, except a tree doesn’t make a sound when it’s hurt, and it can’t clutch and scrabble and claw itself back up again. Once she tumbled into a ravine and lay there so long without moving he thought she really was dead, but when he climbed down to her, she opened her eyes, grabbed out to catch a root or a branch and started over. Come sundown, they were standing by that rickety scaffold where all her people before had rested one last time. She was staring down at it, holding herself as straight as she could, but her head was rolling on her neck, and she smelled wrong. The last day or so, that good Qu’alo stink had all faded, just thinned out and blown away. Now she just smelled like any old animal.

  He said, “I can’t do it, you know I can’t. Even if I could make myself do it, I’m a human, I’m too small. It’d take me forever.” He laughed a little, saying it, hoping she’d laugh, too.

  “Bones, Shelshim,” she said. Her voice was such a whisper that he couldn’t feel it in his body anymore; she actually had to pick him up one last time, bring him close to hear. “Bones, Shelshim. Cover me, leave me, you come back sometime. Please, Shelshim.”

  He didn’t understand. He said, “To bury your bones. Of course I’ll do that for you. I can do that.”

  She shook him then—not hard, nothing like the way they did with the rock-targs, but his head still jolted back and forth and his arms flapped around, weak as she was. “Eat,” she said. “The bones, eat. Not gone, so, not gone. Keep us, Shelshim.”

  And those were the last words Yriadvele ever spoke to him. She lay down on the platform, and your grandfather covered her with the softest new boughs and twigs and leaves he could find, and she just nodded when he had it right, and closed her eyes. He sat by her all that day and night, but he couldn’t tell when she died.