Aborigen

A huge structure nestled in the valley, a building crafted from old oak trunks and boulders, having cleared out much of the surrounding territory, looking as though the earth itself woke up with a cunning thought and formed the house itself. A young woman bounded up to the house, her heavy footsteps pounding up the basalt flagstones. Carefully she wiped her boots before entering, grinning from room to room as she looked for the others.

“Beate? We’re in here.” The woman’s voice rang out like a chorus of trumpets, bold and clear with a warm, amber resonance. Beate turned quickly, her springy black hair whipping over one shoulder as she ran to find the source.

Keld was seated on the hearth, holding a large stone pipe, carved out of a single boulder by some friends. Smilla sat in a vast chair stitched of a thousand head of cattle and polished to a buttery finish. Her long legs stretched before her, shins peeking out from a lavish wool gown. Her toes toyed with the edge of an immense stone slab, the surface of a broad and low table amid their furniture. Smilla grinned at the younger giantess, smelling the ozone of an active body radiating from her.

“Someone had quite the adventure, it seems,” Smilla said. Her smile was just a bit wider than anyone’s, and everyone loved to see it. “Why don’t you tell us about your day?”

Beate’s dark eyes glittered with electricity. “I got rid of one of those nasty bugs.” She lifted her chin in anticipation of praise.

Keld’s heavy brow furrowed slightly. His wrinkled hand lowered the pipe from his jaw. “What would those bugs be, now?”

“One of those stupid, nasty bugs that doesn’t know where it belongs,” she said. “It was way far out in our territory, so—”

He lifted one arm in a sweeping gesture, to direct the imagination to the hillsides and expanse outside the house. “This is all our land, Beate. We all share it. It doesn’t belong to us …”

“We belong to it,” Beate finished. A pout began to form on her face. “But still, it was out where it shouldn’t have been. But don’t worry, I took care of it.”

Glancing at Keld, Smilla sat up to reach out and cup the younger woman’s shoulder. “I don’t think we understand what you’re talking about, Beate. Perhaps you should explain it as though we weren’t there, watching with you.”

Beate looked at each of them, then threw her head back and laughed. “Of course you weren’t there. Let me start over. I was going out for a run, because the fog feels so good around my legs.” She brushed her broad, black linen skirt flat, showing off finely shaped shins and calves that disappeared into her heavy boots. “I went out to the ocean and kicked it around a while. There was a whale, but it swam off before I could get to it.”

“Please leave the whales alone, Beate,” murmured Keld, drawing at his pipe.

“And then I went out to the white cliffs, where Uncle tore them away. I wanted to see his handiwork again. And I was walking along the sands, minding my own business, and someone yelled at me.” She pinched her own brow, to share the sense of confusion she felt at the time. “I thought it was some gulls, but they were out over the whale. I looked, and there was a stupid little bug, standing on the edge of the cliff, yelling and waving at me.” Envisioning the scene, she pantomimed reaching out to the cliff top and extending her finger to where the bug must have been, just ahead of her collarbones.

Keld drew a long breath, casting a cloud of rich pipe smoke around his features. Smilla looked at him, frowning. “Beate, you left him alone, right? You don’t know who that was.”

Beate’s face went blank for a moment, jerked out of her reverie with the mention of some boring lesson of conduct they’d tried to hammer into her. Soon, however, she tilted her head and sneered at the remembered bug. “It shouldn’t have bothered me, then. If it wouldn’t have said anything, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it. But it went out of its way to interrupt me, and it didn’t take a hint.”

Keld’s thick gray eyebrows lowered over his dark eyes. “What sort of hint, Beate?”

The younger giantess stared back, confused. “It doesn’t matter,” she tried, but the full weight of his gaze bore into her. “I tried slamming … I mean, I rested my hand nearby, a respectful distance, and told him to mind his own business. Kinda.”

“What did he look like, Beate?” Smilla’s smile was gone, and her eyes were crystalized with seriousness.

“I don’t remember. It was just tiny, that’s all.” She looked defiantly at the other two giants. “But it wouldn’t leave me alone. I gave it every chance, and when it wouldn’t stop screaming … I mean, talking to me, then I climbed up onto the cliff and I … took care of it.” She smirked and shrugged her shoulders carelessly. “You would’ve done the same, anyone would’ve. It was just an annoying, ugly little bug. No one’ll miss it.”

Smilla spun the young woman around less gently, gripping both of her shoulders. “Beate, you have to think hard. What was he wearing? I want you to go back and picture the scene exactly. And,” she added, tugging back as Beate tried to tug away, “you’re going nowhere until you tell us.”

“It was just a stupid, insignificant, annoying bug! Why are you defending it? It deserved to get crushed.”

“Beate!”

The young woman cried out as Smilla squeezed too hard. Smilla dropped her hands and Beate turned to run. “Get back here,” thundered Keld, motionless on the hearth. Despite herself, Beate’s limbs would not move another step further. She turned and faced the other two.

“We’re bigger and stronger. They’re pathetic and weak,” she said, digging deep to find some strength. “It’s the natural order. If they get in our way, then they get what’s coming to them.”

“What was he wearing,” Keld said quietly. “And if you say ‘it’ one more time, I’ll put you into torpor myself.”

“You can’t,” Beate gasped. “Why are you two being like this? It was just an annoying little pest!”

“Beate.” The quieter he got, the more her blood chilled.

She pinched the bridge of her nose and screwed up her brow. “I don’t remember, let me see. The cliffs were pale, chalky white, and I could see the deep furrows from Uncle’s powerful fingers.”

“Beate.”

“… He was sitting there on a little pebble. Its—his—legs were black and his body was green, kinda. Like the foam of the sea, that kind of milky green.”

Smilla leaned in. “Was it a sweater? Was he wearing jeans and a sweater?”

“I don’t know, it’s impossible to say. He was just so wretched and puny.” The young giantess’s fingers flexed and clenched, recalling the detestable being. “If he wouldn’t have said anything, I wouldn’t have noticed him. That’s how tiny and pathetic he was.”

“He was probably being friendly, waving to you like that.” Smilla’s chest swelled as she drew a long breath. “We’ve given them no reason to be afraid of us any longer. The world’s big enough for all of us, they’re not hurting anyone.”

“But they’re so pathetic and disgusting—” Beate jumped at the loud bang from the hearth.

Keld slammed his pipe upon a hearthstone, then held it up. “This was made by those pathetic bugs you picked on, Beate. They found the largest boulder they could, and they broke it apart with their fine, cunning hands and sharp eyes, and made this lovely, rare piece. It’s one of my favorites, and gods know none of us could have crafted it.”

Beate sneered. “They made that, and you put it in your mouth? I had no idea.” She flapped her hands, trying to recall whether she’d ever touched it.

Smilla held up her palm to Keld before he could get up. “You have to think harder, Beate. Tell  us anything else you know about him.”

“This is stupid,” Beate said, stamping her boot.

“No, this is very serious.”

“I don’t see why.”

“You don’t have to. Tell us everything, right now.”

Beate closed her gaping mouth and smirked. “Why don’t you ask him yourself? He’s probably on the doormat.” A half-second later she yelped and reared, anticipating the back of Smilla’s broad hand, frozen in position at the start of the arc by her head.

Smilla lowered her arm, mad at herself for letting the younger woman provoke her. “You have one more chance, Beate. Tell us everything you remember. I won’t stop him from sending you to torpor. This is serious.”

Beate looked at the old man on the hearth and the woman in the leather chair, and she huffed forcefully. “He had some stuff around him, around the pebble.”

“What kind of stuff? Boxes, bags? A pet?”

“No, nothing like that. Just thin little things. Square, probably. One of them opened and there were, like, feathers in it.”

“Do you mean a book, a tiny book?” Smilla tilted her head, then her eyes widened and she stared at Keld; Keld’s mouth formed an O as he met her eyes. “Oh, no, Beate, you didn’t.”

“It was nothing.” Beate shrugged. “He was going squeak-squeak-squeak, and I couldn’t hear him over the waves, and I just wanted to get back anyway, so I climbed up there and stomped him flat. Didn’t even take a second.” She looked at the larger woman’s stricken expression. “It’s what he deserved, it’s what they all deserve. Maybe I’ll go down to the plains tomorrow and wipe them all out.”

Smilla’s hand flashed out like a snake, squeezing Beate’s bicep until she cried out. “You’ll do no such thing. You’ll stay as far from the plains as you can. You may not even leave this house. Do you hear me?”

“That’s not fair! We’re the powerful ones, we’re in charge of this domain! You said so yourself!” Beate struggled in Smilla’s grip, but she may as well have been tugging at an iron ring in a stone wall.

Smilla dragged the young giantess across the room to a modest bookshelf, shaped out of halved old-growth trunks, perpendicular to the hearth. “Look at these, Beate. These are some of my favorite books. They come from all over the world, but we didn’t write them. Look.” With one hand, Smilla pulled a large, floppy book from the shelf. The cover was soft, unreinforced leather from a hundred horses, and the pages were a similar patchwork of parchment. “You can’t begin to imagine the resources and months that went into making one of these pages.”

Beate’s head shook slightly. “That’s not right. That’s something we can do in a day.”

Smilla’s voice raised. “This wasn’t our work. Look at the letters.” She half-flipped the book to let it fall open.

The younger giantess peered at the mottled, uneven page surface. “What are those symbols? Those aren’t runes. They’re just unfinished blocks or something. I mean, some of them look familiar, but it looks made up, like nonsense.”

Smilla glanced at Keld. “This girl, I tell you.” Keld looked as though he were barely holding back from what he wanted to say. “It’s just a different language, Beate, a different alphabet. The humans killed many of their animals to make this cover, and they labored for years to make enough pages for this story. They crawled all over the pages, using gallons of their ink and paint to write out their language and decorate the edges, to share their story with us. Stories,” she added, nodding at the single bookshelf, holding nine other books beside the one she gripped.

“What difference does that make if we can’t read that nonsense?”

“We can both read them. They’re fantastic stories of an entirely different history, a completely different way of looking at the world. We can read them,” she iterated, nodding at the older man. “You can’t, because you don’t have any greater curiosity than destroying parts of the world you think you’re in charge of. Do you even know who made that dress you’re wearing?”

Beate looked down at the black dress, fitting tightly around her torso and blooming out into a silky skirt.

“That’s the work of the plainsmen. That dress alone is years and hundreds of acres of flax beaten into linen, years of hundreds of their sheep sheared and sheared again, and I don’t even know how they make their durable, night-black dye, but it’s a miracle.” Smilla released Beate’s arm with a forceful jerk. The smaller giantess stared at the fabric of her skirt as though she’d never seen it before, never tried to study its weave, simply took it for granted as always existing like she did.

“That man you killed …”

“I didn’t kill anyone.” Beate reared slightly in confusion.

“That man you killed,” Smilla said, more forcefully.

Beate glanced at Keld, now rising from the hearth. “It was just a pathetic bug.”

Smilla slowly drew a long breath through flared nostrils. “His name is Luke.” She reached back and indicated four unrecognizable letters at the base of four of the ten spines. “He oversaw the creation of these books, as a gift for us. The other six were the work of his father and grandfather. They don’t live nearly as long as we do—”

“They sure don’t,” Beate scoffed, and this time Smilla did not hold back.

“That’s three generations of plainsmen dedicated to nothing but making our clothing and a small library of books for us to enjoy. These gifts are beyond precious: nothing like them exists anywhere else in the world. Except for the much smaller versions steeping in his blood, at the head of the cliffs.” Smilla rose, and when Beate stepped back, she grabbed the younger giantess’s arm. “Luke was our favorite writer, and he was a close friend of mine. Very close. You have no concept what your simple-minded moment of whimsy has cost us. I don’t think I could ever explain it to you.”

“You’re hurting me.” Beate’s boots scuffed against the floor as Smilla dragged her over to where Keld stood.

Smilla held the massive door as Keld’s iron grip hauled the younger giantess out of the house, dragging her up a barren slope of stone. Smilla went to an opposite crest in the ridge, one overlooking the wild hillside leading down to the plains. She curled her hands around her mouth and let out a keening, mournful howl that pierced the mist and flowed over the settlements of smaller people. Grimacing, she turned and climbed up to the peak where Keld forced Beate to the ground.

“We don’t pretend that this is going to make anything better,” Keld said, planting his palm firmly upon Beate’s sternum. Struggle though she might, she was unable to resist even his one hand. “This is only our form of apology to the others. I can only pray you’ve done no lasting damage between our people.” He glanced sidelong at Smilla, who heaved a sigh and nodded.

“It was just a pathetic little bug! It was nothing! We’re better than it, we’re better than all of them!” Beate shrieked. Her flailing grew weaker as her joints began to stiffen.

“Take this time to think about what you’ve done,” he said, and with a grunt, he pushed her into the stone. Her long, powerful body melded with the rock, sinking into it like water, merging with it. Soon, there was no trace of the young giantess or her beautiful black dress, only the bald peak of a mountain.

Still on his knees, Keld said, “I’m getting too old for this. I’m sorry to leave you with the clean-up.” He, too, spread himself upon the rocky peak and merged into the stone, sinking an unknown depth into the earth’s crust.

Smilla hugged herself for a moment, rubbing her palm over her abdomen and recalling Luke’s gentle, warm touches. If it were up to her, she would crack the rock in which Beate lay in torpor. Instead, with her long linen and wool tunic flapping in the chilly sea wind, she picked her way back down the slope to the immense house, thinking of what she’d say to her little visitors.