The Reign of the Departed

by Greg Keyes

  “They’ve given us something very nice to get their friends back. You can see it if you want. Now, let them go, little sister.”

  “Sister?” Aster snapped. “You tricked us.”

  “How so?” Mistral asked. “Could you have found them without us?”

  “You probably sent her after them!”

  “As it happens, we did not,” Mistral said. “We all went to see you and your ship, but the Brume does what she does. It’s nothing to do with us.” She frowned. “You’re not considering going back on our deal?”

  Aster held herself defiantly for another moment. “No,” she finally said. She knew that if she did, odds were that none of them would leave this place. “Just—make them right. Make them well.”

  “I hate you all,” the Brume said. Then she brightened. “What did they give us?”

  “Let them go, and you shall see,” Mistral said.

  “Fine,” the Brume said. She pursed her lips and inhaled sharply, making a little whistling sound. Errol and Billy instantly stopped singing. Errol looked at the Brume, then over at them, then down at himself.

  “What the hell?” he blurted.

  Errol sat staring into the biggest fire and fireplace he had ever seen. He still felt chilled to the core.

  “You know,” Veronica said, “if Aster hadn’t given away our only way home, this all might seem kind of funny.”

  “Yeah?” Errol said. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “I’m just talking, honey.” She touched his arm. “It’s warm,” she said.

  “From the fire,” Errol replied.

  “No,” she said. “It’s not. It almost feels like skin. And your face.” She traced her finger along his cheek. “Look, it moves a little.”

  “That tickles,” he murmured.

  “You’re changing,” she said. “But I’m just staying the same.” “That’s okay,” he said. He hesitated, and then put his arm around her, even though he knew Dusk and Aster would see.

  Aster saw Errol put his arm around Veronica. She had been about to join them at the fire, but now thought better of it.

  “What about the orchard?” she asked Mistral instead, who sat a few feet away sipping wine from a tear-shaped glass.

  They were in the great hall of her memory. Like everything else it seemed less than it had been. Not less large—it was huge—but before it had bustled with servants and children. A few new faces had appeared in the evening—about twelve all told—but she gathered they were all siblings or cousins of Mistral, Haydevil, and the Brume.

  “The orchard,” Mistral said. “Come.”

  She followed the older girl from the hall onto a balcony. Mountains rose under the moon, fantastic and breathtaking and seemingly as distant as the moon, but Mistral gestured below, to where a stone wall enclosed about a hundred small trees in neat little rows. Over half of the enclosure was empty ground.

  “Mother’s orchard,” she said. “The giant will not come tonight, but he will tomorrow night.”

  “What happened to your parents?” she asked. She expected the question to be dismissed as it had been before, but Mistral shrugged.

  “They changed,” she said. “They went into things.”

  “You said that before. What do you mean?”

  “A curse came over the mountains,” she said. “I do not know how. Much less why. My father went into the water, into the Hollow Sea, and sleeps there, perhaps forever. He fought the curse—you can see that in the trees, can you not, in the smiting of the land? But he did not win.”

  “And your mother?”

  “In the orchard,” she said. “In the trees.”

  To Aster’s vast surprise, she saw that Mistral had a tear on her cheeks.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “The giant comes once a week and uproots a tree,” Mistral said. “When he has pulled them all, my mother will be no more. Even if the curse is lifted.”

  “Why don’t you stop him?”

  “He is a giant. Our natures are of no use against him. Perhaps yours will be.”

  “I . . . I did not come here to slay a giant,” Aster told her.

  “Then you shall be slain by one,” Mistral said. “And my mother will die.”

  She turned and went back into the hall, leaving Aster to stare at the half-ruined orchard, trying to remember, to think about what tomorrow night held.

  And to hope.

  But it seemed a stupid hope, for a lot of reasons. Actually, all of her hopes seemed stupid now.

  She was about to go back in when a hand fell lightly on her shoulder.

  “Hey, Billy,” she said. Her voice felt shaky in her throat. “What’s up?”

  “Do you want to be alone?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said. And then he didn’t say anything.

  “That’s the orchard,” she said, waving a hand toward it. “The giant comes tomorrow night.”

  “That’s good, then.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It sounds like another thing we have to fight. And Mistral and her family can’t beat it, so what chance do we have?”

  “I guess we’ll find out,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she sighed. “I mean it’s what we came for. But I don’t know anymore.”

  “You gave the ship away,” Billy pointed out.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “To save Errol and me.”

  She nodded, not looking at him.

  “I think I’m going back in,” she said. “It’s cold.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Unless you—”

  It seemed to happen in slow motion, just like in one of those stupid movies. Billy’s face was near, and then it was closer, and she wasn’t sure what it meant. If she leaned forward, and she was wrong, it would be too embarrassing to deal with.

  She leaned forward half an inch.

  She wasn’t wrong.

  She had been kissed before, by Brett Perkins. It hadn’t been horrible, but it had been awkward and felt kind of silly. She had certainly not seen what the big deal was.

  This was a big deal. When Billy’s lips touched hers, she knew in the same instant that he wasn’t thinking about anything but her. Everything seemed more—the sounds of the night, the distant chatter inside, the cool wind on her arms. All of her self-consciousness melted away, and she kissed him back, trying to show him how she felt, what she never had the courage to say with words. His arms closed around her.

  After a moment he stopped kissing her and stroked her hair.

  “I couldn’t find any flowers,” he said.

  “What?”

  “So I hope that was okay.” “That,” Aster said, “was very okay.”

  THREE

  A GIANT MISTAKE

  How big is this giant?” Errol asked.

  “Eh, bigger than you,” Haydevil said, biting his nails and then looking them over.

  “Well, that’s helpful,” Errol said.

  By day it was easy to see the gaping holes in the ground where the giant had pulled up the apple trees, roots and all. He was trying to imagine something big enough to do that, and not liking the image it was conjuring.

  “I don’t suppose you guys have a cannon or a catapult or something?” he asked.

  Haydevil just blinked at him and whirled up into the air.

  “I’ve shown you,” he said. “That’s all I promised Mistral I would do.”

  “Anything can be killed,” Dusk asserted, crossing her arms as she examined the area.

  “Maybe it has a weak spot, like the Snatchwitch,” Veronica suggested.

  “Hopefully, we won’t have to fight it at all,” Aster said. “I really don’t understand this. It flies against what the oracle told me.”

  “Oracles are not entirely to be trusted,” Dusk said. “They may give you the right advice, but twist it up a bit. You came here to find an orchard and a giant. Here we have both.”

  “But maybe it�
�s the wrong orchard, the wrong giant,” Aster said.

  “Starting to second-guess ourselves a little, are we?” Veronica said.

  Aster frowned, but she did not reply immediately.

  “None of you need come here tonight,” she eventually told them. “I will try the giant alone. If he attacks me, I’ll run, that’s all.”

  “You needed me to find Veronica,” Errol reminded her. “You may need us both to—I don’t know, make friends with the giant?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “So I’m in,” Errol said.

  “Whither Errol goes,” Veronica sighed. “Let’s just get this over with. I’m not that keen on hanging out here, and we can’t go back. Forward seems like the only way.”

  “Thanks,” Aster said.

  Errol was wandering along the rim of the Hollow Sea when he noticed Dusk riding toward him. She was running Drake full out, decked out in battle gear except for the helmet. Her long hair streamed behind her like copper smoke.

  She drew near and dismounted. Her eyes were bright.

  “This should be a challenging fight,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “I was just wondering if we could trick him over here, push him off the cliff.”

  “Psshaw,” Dusk said. “We’ll beat him by force of arms. We’ll hamstring him and make short work of it. Don’t forget our battle with the Sheriff.”

  “The one where you nearly got killed?”

  “The one where you saved me,” she said. “I never repaid you for that.”

  And before he could move she was kissing him.

  What surprised him was how warm her lips were, how supple. Dusk was full of passion, but he had never thought he would feel it like this.

  But still.

  She broke it off.

  “Did you not want that?” she asked. “Could I be so wrong?”

  “No,” he said. “No, I really wanted that. It’s just . . .” he held up his arms.

  “Look at me.”

  She laughed. “Is it your seeming that worries you? The world is full of curses and charms and false appearance. If you do not look beneath such things, you will never know happiness, and perhaps be eaten by something you mistook for a flower. I see you Errol, not with my eyes but with my heart.”

  “I . . . Wow, I don’t know what to say.”

  “And yet,” she said, now sounding a little vexed, “you don’t seem worried about your appearance when you’re near Veronica.”

  “Well, that’s because—” he stopped, aghast at what he had been about to say.

  “Because you think you are both monsters,” she said.

  “That’s not what I was going to say.”

  “Because you think only a creature like her could love a creature like you. But it’s not true. I could love you, Errol. You think on that.”

  And with that she kissed him again, very lightly, though it sent shocks all through his strange body.

  Then she mounted up, and—before he could find his voice—rode away.

  Aster was at the orchard a bit before sundown and waited as the others arrived, one at a time.

  “Mistral says the giant comes from the north,” Errol said. “What if we tied a rope or something, something he might trip over?”

  “I will hide behind the wall,” Dusk said. “If he doesn’t trip I’ll slash his ankles as he steps over.”

  “I don’t want to fight him,” Aster said. “I certainly don’t want to attack first.”

  “We should be prepared, though,” Dusk said.

  “If he sees we’re waiting to ambush him, he might fight, even if he wasn’t going to,” Aster said.

  “So we’re just going to wait?” Dusk said.

  “Yes,” Aster confirmed.

  Dusk sighed. “Well, we shall see, then.”

  The night grew darker, and the wind picked up. Aster strained for the any sound of the giant’s approach, but all she heard was the spectral cry of a nightbird.

  “Have you fought a giant before, Dusk?” Veronica asked.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “And did you win?”

  “My brother and I killed it,” she said.

  “And how tall was it?”

  “Thrice the height of a tall man,” she replied. “Perhaps a bit more.”

  “How did you kill it?”

  “We brought it down in a charge with our lances. After that it was sword work.”

  “Thrice,” Errol murmured. “Like eighteen or twenty feet?”

  Dusk shrugged. They sat in silence for a few moments.

  Veronica noticed it first.

  “The birds have stopped,” she said. “Everything has stopped.”

  She was right. Other than her words and the sound of their breathing, the night had gone as quiet as it was dark.

  Aster had imagined they would hear loud footsteps approaching, feel the earth rattle. Neither happened.

  North she could see the dark line of the mountains against the slightly lighter sky.

  And then she saw something else—a shadow showing above the mountains, moving. It was small at first, but it grew, a dome shape, and then a head, and massive shoulders. And still it came on.

  “Holy crap,” Errol said.

  “Yeah, I think this a little more than thrice,” Veronica said.

  Aster kept thinking it was on them, but it just kept getting bigger. When it reached the wall—which was ten feet high—it didn’t even come up to the giant’s calf.

  The giant stopped at the edge of the orchard. Even this close, the light was too dim to make out a lot, except that he seemed to be naked.

  Aster had planned to say something but her mind just wouldn’t work. Sure, a giant was supposed to be big, but this . . .

  The giant stepped over the wall and covered the distance to the trees in two strides. It bent down, reaching for the nearest tree.

  “Wait!” Aster called.

  At first it didn’t seem to hear her at all. It just grabbed the tree. But then it turned toward her.

  And growled, a low rumble that shuddered the air.

  “Wait,” she said again. “My name is Aster . . .”

  She didn’t get any more out. The giant screamed like a jet engine and dashed his fist at her. She saw it coming down, but couldn’t force her feet to work.

  It was Errol who saved her, tackling her from the path of the monstrous hand. She saw Dusk’s blade gleam and flash.

  She shook herself and stood, terrified but also angry.

  “Laikas!” she shouted, and light shattered the darkness as every mote in the air around them became a tiny sun.

  Aster almost vomited. The giant was indeed naked, and hairless, and as far as she could tell, sexless. Its face was only faintly human, like a clay figure sculpted by a child—simple, and weirdly proportioned.

  The light made it shriek again and straighten, shielding its face. Dusk and Errol were running at it.

  It’s not supposed to be this way, Aster thought.

  But it was, and her friends were about to get smashed like bugs.

  So she exclaimed the most terrible Recondite Utterance she knew, the one she had been going over all day, just in case - the Utterance of the Heart of Lightning.

  She felt all of the hair on her body stand out.

  The giant flashed like the inside of a thunderhead, red in the center so they could see the shadows of his ribs and the gigantic sacs that were his lungs. White lightning played all along his body and shot from his eyes.

  Errol and Dusk stumbled back.

  “Wow,” Veronica said. “Remind me not to get you riled again.”

  The lightning flickered out, and the red glow in the giant faded.

  And he laughed, a low, horrible grating sound.

  “Impossible,” Aster murmured. Her father had killed half an army with that utterance. And a leviathan, if he was to be believed. The giant had not turned her magic back, as when she attacked Haydevil. It had simply shrugged it
off.

  Dusk cut at the giant’s leg, but her blade had no effect. Nor did the giant acknowledge her presence. Instead he stooped and reached for Aster.

  She yelped and broke into a run, but the monster was fast, and hard, cold fingers closed around her, lifting her up toward that awful, unformed face.

  She looked down and saw Billy. He hadn’t moved from his place by the trees, hadn’t taken a single step or raised his gun.

  But as the giant lifted her, she heard Billy say something, although it was only a whisper.

  “Oh,” he said. “I remember now.”

  Then he was bigger. And as she watched and the giant lifted her, Billy grew past the height of the trees, and more swiftly, so they were knee-high to him. By the time the giant had brought her up to his unshaped face, Billy was there, too, gripping her captor’s wrist in his now titanic hand.

  And still he grew, his head rising past the giant’s. He twisted the monster’s wrist so it loosened, and gently plucked her from it. Now he towered over the first giant. It looked up at him, its mouth forming a huge “O.”

  Billy picked him up by the neck and began to walk, each footstep leaving Aster breathless and dizzy. The giant flailed at him, but it was no use. In less than ten strides Billy reached the Hollow Sea and pitched the giant into it. Its scream went on for a long time.

  Then Billy lifted her in his palm, until she was even with his face. It was still Billy’s face, although it seemed simpler somehow. He didn’t have any hair. His eyes were dark, and she couldn’t see any emotion in them.

  She remembered, then, what Hattie had said.

  “Well, when you have part of something, you reckon the rest will be along directly. Needs tend to find one another.”

  “Of course,” Aster said to Billy.

  “You were my giant all along.”

  Errol watched Billy—or the thing that had been Billy—toss the first giant into the Hollow Sea and then turn back toward the orchard. It was like watching a movie or something, like he didn’t have anything to do with it. How could that be Billy?

  He realized Veronica was right next to him, and he put his arm around her. She felt cold.

  The gigantic figure bent and his hand came down, and there was Aster.

  “All aboard,” she said.

  “You’re sure about this?” Errol asked.