Aborigen

A week of classes took Henley’s mind off things, ironically. Losing himself to the study of two tests nourished his soul, in a way. It was familiar ground, to sequester in a quiet room and hit the books, to receive vast reservoirs of information and organize them systemically in his understanding. Make connections. Disprove his own theory. Spend no more than an hour on a tangential rabbit-hole. He imagined this was how runners felt when returning to their drills after losing a couple weeks to a minor injury. The healing was as important as the exercise, but it felt good to shift his mind back into the familiar discipline.

Because without this week of cramming, his head would have been packed full of giant women. Doireann, what a transition. She went from a threatening storm cloud, looking for any excuse to strike him down with a blast, to something not unlike tenderness. And he knew that everything she told him was only a sliver of her vast experience. The titans, what lives they lived. How much have they seen? He thought back to his chat with Éibhlín, when she mentioned how titans come and go like a shift change of workers. Henley wanted to know more about that, but she pivoted from the topic. That told him something important but he didn’t know what.

He set down his pen. No, even study wasn’t enough of a shield to wall off this chain of thought.

What were the titans? They referred to themselves as a distinct category, but only vaguely. Enough to let you know you weren’t eligible to know everything about them. That rubbed Henley the wrong way: it’s one thing to say “please respect my privacy.” Something else to look down one’s nose at him and say “only the elect may know the Mysteries, and you are not worthy.” His giantess girlfriend never phrased it quite that way, but the scent of it was there. Well, no, that wasn’t quite accurate. That was Doireann and Duibhne’s attitude, but with Éibhlín, it was almost like she was protecting him from something. Not that that form of condescension was any more comforting.

There was something else that bothered him about this week of pure study: he’d had room for it. The farmers market was in full swing, but he noticed fewer of the titans working the operation. Duibhne and Conall were rarely seen, Éibhlín wasn’t returning his email, and Doireann had somehow dropped off the face of the planet. When he’d told Cobie about what she’d done with Silas, his buddy’s face performed a sequence of disparate emotions that would’ve made any theater kid green with envy. “What does that even mean,” he’d breathed. “Give him all of his giantess fantasies? I can only imagine what he wanted to do with a giant woman, but Doireann … fuck. That could mean anything.” After a few days they’d gone out to the market to look for the dark, dangerous giantess, but she was nowhere to be seen, not that day or those that followed.

“Do they do that?” Henley asked Cobie. “Have you ever seen them just not show up for work like that?”

“No, their boss … Maeve? She keeps them on a tight leash, from what I’ve heard. They show up, doesn’t matter if they have a shitty attitude about it.”

“You ever seen Meadhbh?”

Cobie shook his head. “I don’t think anyone has. I just overhear her name sometimes, like when a new rule comes down. Or the other day, when the National Guard was visiting.”

In his dorm room, Henley pushed back from his desk and sighed, staring at his empty lap, his hands. The farmers market was shutting down in a couple weeks, that was true. Maybe the titans had less work to do as they wrapped things up. But there was something in the air that made his head turn like he was focusing on a sound, made his body lean forward like it was about to spring. He wasn’t really acquainted with most of the titans, but Éibhlín’s silence was a flashing red sign in his daily thoughts.

He needed sleep. He’d push through the day and try to bank up a lot of sleep tonight. But he also needed food, and the clock told him the cafeteria was closing in 20 minutes. He pulled on some shoes, checked his hair, and patted the keys in his pocked as his door locked behind him.

Almost immediately, a gigantic work boot crashed in front of him on the sidewalk. He looked up the length of the custom canvas work pants to Duibhne’s glowering face. Henley’s armpits stung with flop sweat. Where Doireann was looking for an excuse, Duibhne never needed one.

“We’re talking.”

Henley stepped back from the boot the size of a Mini Cooper. “I need to get some food. It won’t be long, I just need to settle myself or I won’t be good for anyone.”

“We’re talking.”

Duibhne wasn’t the type to pluck a tiny human up and carry him tenderly in his palm anywhere, so it was up to Henley to intuit that he should grab onto the rope-like boot laces and hold on tight as the titan strolled as purposely as he pleased down to the riverbank. That seemed to be their favorite place to talk, for some reason. The titan thrust his hands in his pockets and loomed over Henley, dark and solid and devoid of hope.

His voice was rolling gloom. “What do you know?”

Henley knew better than to ask for elaboration, not from this guy. He puffed out his cheeks and blew slowly, organizing his thoughts. “Titans aren’t like humans. I don’t know how, but I keep hearing it. You guys have been disappearing this week, I don’t know where. Maybe it has something to do with the farmers market, maybe it has something to do with M—”

With terrifying quickness, Duibhne dropped to one knee, ploughing the bank in front of the smaller man. “Shut up. Don’t say her name.” He glowered for a long, tense moment before rubbing his face and turning to the river. It flowed briskly, sparkling with the afternoon sun. “You know I don’t like you little fucks.”

Henley knew.

“I’m going to tell you a bunch of shit. You’re not going to ask any questions.” He looked down at Henley. “And I’m going to tell you to do something, and you’re going to do it. But listen: I don’t need you. You’re only useful. Got it?”

If Duibhne were only a few meters shorter, Henley would’ve had a few pointed reactions to this proclamation. Instead, he nodded.

“Doireann’s gone because of you.” Duibhne sat down heavily, folding his legs before him. His canvas pants rasped and buckled with the force of his casual gesture. “I’m not going to take it out on you, don’t worry, but I’m fucking pissed. She saved your ass, and Meadhbh sent her down. We’re all going to torpor, but Meadhbh sent her down early. She said it was the school’s decision, but we knew.”

“Is that why Éibhlín’s gone?”

“You don’t ask me questions. She’s protecting you. I think that’s stupid, but she says she cares about you. Doireann paid the price for that.” The titan raised a hand, irritated with his own deviation from topic. “Our, what would you call it, college-boy? Our cohort is coming to an end. We come up and work for several years for your fucking university, only because we love the earth. We’re good at it. And then we go back to the earth, to rest.”

Duibhne balled a massive fist and thudded it into the riverbank. Henley started, shielding himself from a wave of wet sand that never came. When he looked again, the huge fist had merged into the bank much like as if he’d held it halfway into the water. It just moved into it without any impact. The titan withdrew his hand, leaving not a mark in the sand. “Meadhbh hasn’t gone to torpor for a very long time. I think it’s corrupting her.”

Henley thought, You’re fucking kidding me.

Duibhne narrowed his eyes. Perhaps Henley wasn’t as poker-faced as he thought. “I’ve got one more week topside and then I can’t do anything. But you’ll be here, and you’ll look into this. Find someone in the next shift. You’ve got your … stupid human ways of worming your way into our attention, I guess.”

When Henley finished wading through the mire of how he could even break into titan conspiracy theory, a connection sparked into place in the back of his skull. “Wait. One more week? Why didn’t Éibhlín tell me this? Is she going too?”

The titan sneered at all the pointless questions, but he didn’t warn Henley away from them. “Yeah, all of us. She’s making preparations and out-processing with Conall and the rest. Guessing she didn’t think you could handle it if you knew.”

“What do you mean, can’t handle it? She fucking lied to me!”

“And what would you have done if you’d known you only had a few months to be with her? Would you have turned her away?” A deep, low chuckle punctuated the question. “You little fucks are too impetuous. You’re too romantic and unstable. You don’t have any right to turn someone like her down. She gave you what you thought you wanted— You know what? Take this up with her. I don’t care.”

Henley clenched his fists and really wished Duibhne were a little smaller. “When will she be back, next year? How long is your torpor?”

The titan smiled and opened his mouth, then faltered and closed it again. “That’s a talk you need to have with Éibhlín. I’m not going to ruin the surprise, as badly as I want to. I think it’ll hurt more if she tells you.” His head swayed slightly, with the weight of massive conflicting thoughts. “Look. She’s been surfaced nine years already. She just wanted to have one nice one with you. If she didn’t tell you about it, that’s her business.”

Éibhlín’s voice echoed in Henley’s head, all the times she said “let’s just enjoy the moment.”

“This isn’t what’s important, little guy.” Duibhne leaned in closer. “Meadhbh’s planning something, I don’t know what. She’s prevented the other leaders from coming out of torpor. She’s sick, and she’s in control of all of us. That includes your big girlfriend, little man.”

Between losing Éibhlín and Duibhne’s endless insults, Henley was on the verge of saying or doing something this titan might not be of a mind to forgive.

The cruel mirth in Duibhne’s face faded a little. “You’re smart. That’s clear. You’re curious and persistent. Éibhlín tells me so.” He counted off on two huge fingers, then a third. “And you’re already involved, no matter what you might think. All right? We’re the fucking power, and I’d love to just—” He clenched a giant fist, trembling before his chest. “But what makes you useful is what makes you pathetic: you’re tiny. She won’t see you coming. And right now … that works.”

“But where is Éibhlín now? How much time do I get with her? How long is she going to be gone?” It was like shouting at an old-growth redwood. “Can you just fucking … ask her to write me? I need to talk to her. Please.” He sighed. “This isn’t in exchange for this investigation into the university’s black ops or whatever. Just—”

The profound discomfort of Duibhne’s confession was Henley’s only solace. He rubbed his temples and tried to focus on the riddle. “I’ll figure out who Meadhbh’s working with in the president’s office, I’ll find out who they’re connected with. Send me anything you think would be helpful. Not through the school’s servers.” He found a receipt in his back pocket, from a Korean corndog joint last night, and he wrote down the address to a private account he maintained mostly out of curiosity, just to have it. It felt cool to have an encrypted account; now it actually served a purpose. Duibhne barely lifted an eyebrow as he accepted the slip of paper between huge fingertips.

The titan wasn’t going to thank him. Henley wasn’t going to tell him it wasn’t necessary. “Please. Ask Éibhlín to write me, that’s all I want.” Duibhne simply rose to his terrible height and strode away, and Henley looked around their immediate environment with fresh paranoia before heading to the …

He cursed, calculating that the cafeteria had closed by this time. The corndog joint was on the way back to the dorm. He got the double-black dog with kimchi and Sriracha mayo. Somehow, he barely tasted it.

The sky outside his dorm window darkened before 8 p.m. lately. Everything was winding down. His little room felt especially empty. He was overly conscious of the pressboard armoire, the student-built bunkbed, unfinished and marred by previous semesters’ boarders. Everything was cheap and ugly, and the room felt still and empty.

He slumped in his desk chair, only his phone glowing in his hand, in the murky room. There was a picture of Éibhlín laughing, the skirt of her white dress aloft as she twirled, with an impossibly blue sky behind her.

In his browser was a few bright white lines of unread email among a column of gray, viewed email. At the top was Éibhlín’s. It had arrived over an hour ago, a white bar with “hey lover ;)” as the subject.

Outside, shitty music rose and fell as someone drove by. A woman laughed briefly. Sirens in the distance. Silence, a bird, silence.

One nice year with him. “Let’s just enjoy the moment.” Her smile, the way she glanced away.

Henley stared at his phone, scrolling through her photos.