Everafter Song

by Emily R. King

  a prime place for someone to hide.”

  I slide off the chair onto shaky legs and sidle up to the door.

  “We haven’t seen anything unusual,” Corentine says.

  “Keep an eye out,” the sheriff answers. “I spoke to a chief deputy

  in Rackfort last night. Someone saw a man in the city. I thought that was hogwash, but the deputy swears the witness smelled a human. Your cottage smells strange too.”

  “My sister made cabbage stew last night,” Corentine answers tightly.

  “You really should return to your rounds, Ramiel.”

  “If you see anything—”

  “We’ll praise Madrona that the portals have been reopened,” Mistral

  says brightly. “What a miracle that will be.”

  Mistral starts to chitchat with the sheriff about the sisters’ high yield of garlic in their garden, their voices moving away from the door. The sheriff declines to take a bushel and goes on his way.

  “Sneaky fribble,” Corentine hisses. “He didn’t come for anything

  except the pocketful of tomatoes he pinched from our kitchen.”

  “He’ll keep looking for the human,” Mistral answers. “Such a dis-

  covery would surely earn him a promotion.”

  Footsteps thud closer. I raise my sword as the Esen sisters open the closet.

  Mistral lays a hand against her cheek in surprise. “Well, look at

  that. She found her sword.”

  “She better be worth losing half a day’s wages for,” Corentine grum-

  bles. “Put your blade down, woman. We aren’t going to hurt you.”

  My feet tingle from the blood rushing back into them. My wrists

  are bruised from their bindings. “You’ll understand why I don’t believe you.”

  “We locked you away before we knew you were telling the truth.”

  Corentine goes to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water.

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  Mistral gives me a penitent smile. Neither one discourages me from

  stepping into the main living area.

  “How did the sheriff know he’d smelled a human?” I ask.

  Corentine finishes draining her cup. “He didn’t know for certain

  or you’d be dead.”

  Mistral pulls out a chair for me. “Sit, Everley Donovan. Tell us why you’ve come to our world.”

  My side and head throb, and I still need to find the latrine, but

  I’m afraid the sisters will force me back into the closet if I disagree, so I slide into the chair. Mistral puts on the kettle and sets down a basket of tarts bigger than my hand on the table. Corentine hovers over me

  with squinty eyes.

  “As I said,” I start, “I need to find a luthier named the Bard before the prince of the elves does. All of Avelyn is at risk. Prince Killian has already destroyed the Land of Youth.”

  The Esen sisters swap glances of alarm. I decide against telling them that Markham seeks an artifact that can awake their ancestors. They

  may not be against such a notion, especially if it results in freeing the giants and taking back the land of their inheritance.

  Mistral spoons herbs into a teapot sieve for stewing. “Why must

  you find him if the elven guard is here, dearie?”

  “The prince killed my family. He’s the reason I have a clock for a

  heart. I want to be the one who catches him and turns him in.”

  Corentine runs her nail across a groove in the table, making the

  indentation deeper. “Do you worship Father Time?”

  “No.” I rub at my temples, my head pounding. “Not anymore.”

  She stops driving her nail into the table and sits back, satisfied.

  “We asked around the factory to see if anyone had heard about your

  luthier,” says Mistral, steeping the tea. “The one you called the Bard has a shop in Rackfort.”

  I sit up straighter. “How far away is it? Can you take me?”

  The sisters give each other another sidelong glance.

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  Everafter Song

  “Perhaps we will,” Mistral answers, “if you promise to help us get

  our brother back.”

  Neely was captured for helping me. Of course, I won’t let the elves

  keep him. “As soon as we have the prince, we’ll find Neely.”

  Mistral pours our tea and sets the steaming cups in front of us.

  “This is for your fever.”

  My teacup is the size of a bowl, and it smells delicious—lemon and

  honey—but I ask to use the latrine. The sisters keep an eye on me from the window as I go outside through the back door. Upon my return,

  they promptly quit speaking to one another.

  Corentine holds out a spool of cloth to me, bandaging for my

  injured side. “You’re welcome to our tea and our latrine and our bandages, but I want to make something clear, Everley Donovan from the

  Land of the Living. I don’t care about you or your human world. I care about our brother.”

  These giantess sisters will be my guides through their city, and that isn’t much of a comfort. I could create a portal with my sword and leave this place. In seconds, I could be home, but Jamison asked me not to give up, so I accept the bandages.

  “We’ll find Neely,” I promise.

  The sisters exchange one of their we’re-communicating-without-

  talking glances. I’m beginning to think they can read each other’s minds, or perhaps this is how sisters connect, how my older sister, Isleen, and I would have communicated had we had more time together.

  Mistral sets a basket on the table.

  “What’s that for?” I ask.

  Corentine’s lips peel back in a violent grin. “We’re going to bury you.”

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  Chapter Fourteen

  I lie in the back of the donkey cart, buried under bushels of garlic.

  I would have preferred to hide among crates of lemons or a strong-

  scented wood to mask my smell, but the Esen sisters grew an abundance of garlic in their garden, so that’s what they had to spare.

  The big donkey, the size of a draft horse, stops the cart.

  Corentine pokes me. “You alive?”

  “So far.”

  The train platform is empty. Mistral explained while loading me

  down with garlic that giants go into the city in the morning and return in the evening. This is the final run into Rackfort before nightfall. The next train doesn’t return until morning.

  Our train whistles closer. As it pulls alongside the platform, the

  ground rumbles, and wheels screech to a stop. The front part of the

  train—what Mistral called the engine—puffs and hisses. Voices ring

  out, and footsteps pound past us as patrons exit the train cars.

  The donkey cart begins to move. We go over a bump, up an incline,

  over another bump, and stop. A loud screeching, like a door shutting, fills my ears, and all goes dim. A few minutes later, everything starts to shake.

  Mistral pulls bushels of garlic off me and throws off the cover. “You can come out now. It’s just geese and sheep in the livestock car.”

  Everafter Song

  I sit up and brush off the papery garlic skins that fell on my cloak.

  We’re inside a big metal cage rocking from side to side. I climb out slowly to protect my injured side and sit on a hay bale with my sword in my lap. I bandaged my cuts, and the tea lowered my fever, but I’m still babying my wounds.

  Corentine scratches the donkey’s head, and the donkey preens into

  her touch. The giant might have something in common with Neely

  after all.

  “How long until we reach Rackfort?” I ask.

  Mistral takes her knitting out of her basket. “About an hour.”

  Her siste
r slides open the side door of the train car. Wind pours in, and with it, the loud chugging. I marvel at the giants’ ingenuity. They must be at least thirty years ahead of us in transportation and weaponry.

  Mistral knits a shawl while Corentine chews on a piece of straw

  and scowls at the passing grassland. I fidget in my seat, unable to get comfortable. The geese across the way are bedded down in the straw,

  miserable in their confines. I fit right in.

  The skyline changes in the distance, providing a glimpse of smoke

  trails in the sky. Fire from a pyre or more trains? I join Corentine near the door. “What are those?”

  “Smokestacks from the factories.”

  “Factory . . . is that a type of shipping dock?”

  She pulls the straw out of her mouth. “You don’t know what a fac-

  tory is? There isn’t a giant in all the world who doesn’t work in a factory or know someone who does.”

  “We’ve no railroads either.”

  “We’ve had factories and trains for twelve years or so. After the

  Creator took her power from us to build up our lands, we began using our gifts to make new contraptions and machines. The factories are

  where we do our production.”

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  Emily R. King

  “When you did have your power, how did you ‘build up the

  lands’?” I keep hearing this phrase, but I’m uncertain what it means.

  “You reshaped the lands how?”

  “Music.” Corentine’s eyes gleam. “The Creator gave us dominion

  over the call of life. A piece of her voice dwells in us and also in the land.

  Our ancestors would drum their drums and play their instruments,

  and the land would respond depending on the tone of the song—a

  meandering tune sculpted meadows riddled with sweet-water streams or marshlands with gentle grasses. Bombastic brass medleys called up jagged mountains and chiseled away rough shorelines. Poignant melodies

  from string quartets smoothed out valleys and burrowed tunnels—the

  same tunnels that our warriors traveled to infiltrate your world in the war, woman.” She points west. “They’re still there, of course. Only, now, those who leave cannot come back.” Corentine chews on the end of the stalk again and studies me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Our historians say that humans once thought giants were big and

  dense.”

  “Interesting.” I’m not about to tell her we still believe that.

  “But look at us.” Corentine sweeps her arm out to draw my atten-

  tion to the train. “Giants have always been the smartest and most industrious of the triad. Humans are only good as helpmates.”

  My face warms. “That sort of thinking led to your curse.”

  “Hogwash,” Corentine retorts. “We were betrayed by Father Time

  and abandoned by the Creator.”

  “Your ancestors nearly annihilated my ancestors.”

  “Woman”—Corentine scoffs—“if we had wanted the humans

  gone, you would be. We never intended to exterminate your kind.

  Nothor, the great warrior who led the attack on your ancestors, planned to relocate them here and take back the Land of the Living.”

  Corentine is repeating propaganda she heard from someone justify-

  ing their ancestors’ actions. The Creator wouldn’t have interfered and 130

  Everafter Song

  cursed the giants had Nothor’s army been merciful. War is war, and

  what’s done in a time of war is often indefensible.

  A glimpse at the distance stuns me. The immense city comes into

  focus, its shape and size appearing to have been assembled by a god.

  A towering wall with straight-laid bricks surrounds inner rectangular stone structures that rise in height and progression, like a musical scale growing higher. It’s as though someone chiseled a civilization out of a mountain, complete with roads, buildings, security walls, and passable raised archways.

  “Is that Rackfort?” I ask.

  “It is,” Mistral replies from where she’s still knitting. “Does it look like your cities?”

  “Good gracious, no.” Dorestand is a mishmash of structural designs

  that were built over decades. “This is a fortress.”

  “Rackfort was the first city our ancestors constructed,” Mistral

  explains. “Our leader’s eldest son, Nothor, built it to withstand an invasion.”

  Or Nothor was paranoid because he himself plotted to invade the

  human world.

  The train chugs steadily westward toward the setting sun over the

  city of giants. Outlying boroughs, those not inside the fortress wal s, are downtrodden and mucky, full of shabby lean-tos and shacks. Almost

  everything is twice the size of what I know back home. Metal sheets

  are laid down as rooftops and propped up as doors. Smells of rotting rubbish and air thick with the smog billowing from the factories stew over the hovels. Enormous gates stand open in the main city wall, the gatehouse guarded by lawmen. Countless giants depart through them

  to return home for the evening. The square ramparts and turrets atop the stone wall feel archaic next to the factory buildings. One after one, beacons are lit in the lookouts, illuminating the twilight sky.

  The railroad tracks run toward a tunnel in the wal . We enter, everything goes murky for a few moments, then we exit again. The train runs 131

  Emily R. King

  parallel to the outer city wall, our pathway lit by the beacons. Here the city roads are clean and the buildings in good repair. Pixies dart about, disappearing rubbish dropped on the ground with their magical dust.

  I’d been told they’re employed as rubbish collectors, but I’d only seen them in the Everwoods.

  “I didn’t realize pixies live here,” I say.

  “They work in the cities,” Mistral replies.

  “Ill-tempered vermin,” Corentine grouses. “Stay clear of them and

  don’t make eye contact, or they’ll take that as a challenge.”

  “But pixies are inherently good.”

  “Maybe once upon a time, but not anymore.” Corentine shoos me

  away from the door and closes it. “Get ready to disembark.”

  I climb into the donkey cart, and the Esen sisters pile garlic over me again. I stop them before they cover my head. “How far to the Bard’s shop?”

  “Stay hidden,” Corentine warns, “or we might not make it.”

  Mistral clucks her tongue at her sister. “It’s just a short walk, dearie.

  You’ll be all right.”

  A loud screeching noise sounds as the train slows. The giantesses

  cover the last of me and hook up the donkey to the cart. The train stops and the side door rattles open.

  We disembark the car, and familiar scents sneak under the canvas—

  unwashed bodies, discarded wash water, cooking meat—the smell of

  hundreds of people living closely together. I cover my ticker with one hand, my sword in the other. The cart bumps over cobblestones, jogging my teeth together.

  “What’s he doing here?” Mistral asks.

  The cart starts to slow.

  “Don’t slow down,” Corentine snaps. “Keep going or he’ll know

  we spotted him.”

  A question burns on my tongue. Who is here?

  “It’s not working,” Mistral says. “He’s still following us.”

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  I hear a gun hammer cock—Corentine loading her revolver.

  I push my spirit out of my body and hover above us. The mighty

  city nearly knocks me right back down into myself. Everything about

  Rackfort is overwhelmingly enormous. Horses, wagons, and carts are all larger than I’m used to. The sheer size of the stone b
uildings, so tall they mask the sky, and the vast width of the streets packed with countless lumbering giants shrink me like a mouse hiding in a house.

  A purple pixie, a different color than Radella, darts up to me.

  Her gossamer wings have ragged tears around the edges, and she has

  scratches on her legs.

  “Hello, little one. Are you hurt?” I ask.

  The pixie bares her teeth and snaps at me. I recoil and lift my sword to her. She trills crossly and zips off.

  “Don’t go too fast,” Corentine says. She and Mistral guide the

  donkey-drawn cart farther up the street. I catch up to them and float along at their pace.

  “He may not be here for us,” Mistral whispers. “He may have busi-

  ness in the city.”

  I search behind us and spot Sheriff Ramiel in pursuit on foot about

  fifty yards away. A revolver is partially hidden under his cloak. I start to dive back into my body to warn the Esen sisters, but then I stop. I can do something.

  Keeping an eye on the donkey cart, I fly to the sheriff and sink

  down in front of him. Only the pixies can see me while I’m in my spirit form, but they take no notice of me. Once he’s closer, I solidify while lifting my sword and slice his belt in two. His trousers loosen and drop to his ankles.

  “What in Avelyn?” The sheriff stops and grapples to pull up his

  pants.

  Another giant pushing a cart piled high with fruit doesn’t see

  Ramiel bent over and runs into him. Lines of plums spill out of the

  cart, rolling in every direction across the road. The vendor yells at the 133

  Emily R. King

  sheriff, and the two of them begin to gather the fallen fruit. Ramiel will be busy for a moment.

  I float back to the donkey cart and the Esen sisters. After sinking

  back into myself, I uncover my face. “The sheriff’s gone.”

  “Shh,” Corentine snaps. “Be quiet and hide!”

  “But she’s right. Ramiel’s not behind us anymore.” Mistral peers

  down at me. “How did you know, dearie?”

  “Clever guess,” I answer. She gives an unconvinced “hmm” and

  takes care covering me back up. Her gentleness prompts me to ask,

  “Have you ever been married?”

  “I was betrothed once,” Mistral replies quietly. “He was killed in an assembly-line accident at a factory.”

  I don’t know what an assembly line is, but I can guess. “Do you