Giants and Ogres (12 page)

He picked up a rib, his shaking hands brushing away the loose moss.

“This is a bone orchard,” he mused. I imagined rattling branches of ribs on tall trunks of vertebrae where daisies and yellow flowers bloomed at the skeletal roots. He took his large silver flask from his pocket, fumbled the cap off, tremors in his fingers, and finished it as I proudly recited the names back. I smiled when I thought he was smiling at me.

I told my mother about the place later.

“Oh,” she told the laundry she folded. “That is nice.” She then continued muttering like I had not said a word. I wished I had not.

Dad and I took a skull from the orchard as a memento one day, pairing two random jaws that seemed to fit enough to complete the grin. I shielded it from the black, watery eyes of the cattle; I did not feel like a thief, but I thought it was better that they did not know.

Back home dad told me to put the skull in his shed;
he'd find something to mount it on later. I stared at him for a moment and then carried it in both hands, my thumbs looped into the musty eye sockets, and delivered it to the work shed. I unlatched the door and bummed my way inside. A bag of old lime fertilizer stooped in the corner, spilling, and old gardening tools rusted on bent nails on the walls. On the small splintering table rich with the skunky hum of old oil was a birdhouse I had made (broken, waiting almost two years to be mended) and his dusty axe. I put the skull on the table and moved the axe to the floor. That was the last time I saw my birdhouse, the skull, or the axe.

The herd got smaller every month after that. Dad was away more often, and the fighting grew more frequent. I couldn't hide in the herd like I used to, so I would stay in my room and play my music loud.

He would call her a troll and Blunderbore. She would shout things I couldn't understand. He would say he was leaving, but he never did. There were cold nights (the nights he was home), and warm nights (the nights he didn't come back until the morning) when she would stoke the furnace. He stopped going back to the fields or checking on the cattle, but I no longer
would have wanted to join him if he had. I didn't stop hating her the night he broke her nose, but I thought I loved her more because of the way she walked to the bathroom and calmly reset it with a cracked pop. When he left, she came out with a bandage between her eyes, and we made bread. She didn't instruct me anymore, and we worked together in silence—except for her muttering. She ground the grains, and punched the loaves. Fie. Foe.

How much time went by before it happened? I do not remember. I did not know that there was something to wait for back then. I remember that the day that Chris Hemford kissed me was the day she came home from the hospital. I remember it that way, not the other way around: that Chris Hemford in his tight black jeans kissed me as we walked home, near the gas station where the street ended. That I stood on my toes, and at home she was in the kitchen like an afterthought.

“Who drove you home?” I asked. I got a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water from the tap before I took my backpack off. I had driven her there.

“Who is the boy?” she asked, not looking up from
the dish she was washing. Both of her eyes looked like they had been blotted with purple bingo dabbers. I looked out the window and could still see Chris's back shrinking down the street. “He is good boy?”

My head turned sharply. “Don't tell dad.”

The dishcloth stopped squeaking around the plate, and at last she looked at me. “He saw. He is gone now.” She wrapped her huge, wet hand around my fingers, smiled, and for an instant I thought I would cry. But then she let go and went back to work.

“Do not fear small men,” she said.

It was that night, I think, that she came to my room to tell me a story. She looked too happy for me to tell her I was too old to be tucked in, and I was still too consumed by what would happen when dad came home to ask her to leave. She told me one of her Old Country stories again, a story about the sky.

“Once there was great king,” she said. Her accent was always soft but somehow severe; like snow pushing through pine boughs. “Who was murdered by thief. The king had been very happy. His kingdom, happy. His queen, happy. There was plenty food. The queen had a golden eagle. Every morning it would lay a golden egg, and this egg would crack every evening, releasing not
just egg but great feast. And the people were content.

“There was endless gold from purse king wore. Every morning he would throw gold, and every day city sparkled when great sun reached over clouds and touched shining streets. And people were happy.

“There was such music. King's music box, made of silver starlight, played as moon rose and every night, dancing. And people were merry.” She paused a long time. “But thief took these all, one by one, laughing as he ran. The king pursued, and he fell.

“With no eagle there was hunger. As kingdom starved, the queen's heart broke, and she lost her mind. With gold vanished, sun no longer shone through streets, and there was darkness. Only music now was crying of city. Like wolves, they mourned.”

She held my chin then, softly in the cradle of her hand. “But the king's daughter said, ‘I do not fear dark. I will make it right.'”

She smiled then and produced a plastic shopping bag. From the bag she withdrew an old metal box. At one time it would have been silver, but it had long ago tarnished a mottled green-grey. It flaked with dirt as she ran her thumb along the carvings and creaked when she pushed open the clasp. As she eased open
the lid, a small dancer holding a harp tilted upright.

She smiled as she wound the key in the back and placed it on my dresser. The small dancer began to turn, and arthritically the box plucked out a melody that was at first sore but soon turned sweet.

I lay back and listened, slept and dreamed of a twisting, green tree that scratched heaven. The branches boomed like a slammed door against the sky. The wind howled around the branches, screamed and fought. The fighting wind ended sharply, decisively. I thought that I woke once, from noises from the furnace room; heavy, wet, chopping. But it was the giant tree and a laughing man with an axe.

It was uncommonly warm in my room, and I woke early to the dim grey light of dawn. Later, I could not tell if I had seen her from my window, walking into the fields, covered in dust.

When I climbed out of bed, the whole house was warm; it was the first time I had ever known it to be. As I walked into the hot kitchen, my feet sticking slightly to the linoleum floor, my mother looked up from her mortar and pestle. There was bread already rising in the oven. She wore the same clothes from the day before.
I made myself breakfast, got dressed, and walked to school.

When I got home that afternoon, the music box, a small leather pouch, and six fresh loaves waited on the table. My mother sat next to them all. I removed my coat and shoes and sat down as she picked up the breadknife. I told her I wanted to go for a walk in the fields.

She carved the heel slowly off the pale, pale bread. “Don't,” she suggested.

I told her I wanted to go to the old bone orchard.

She set down her knife and took me gently by the hand. Then she got up to retrieve a plate from the cupboard and the butter and the cinnamon from the counter. She set it all down in front of me and began to cut herself another slice.

“Don't.”

I didn't. She wound up the music box, and I used extra cinnamon. The small white brittle bits, too unground to chew, we lightly spat out onto the cutting board.

A year after the missing person report had been filed, we sold what remained of the farm to the first
offer and left for a small apartment across town. The fields had become wild long ago without the right care, anyway. The trees crouched over their old borders. The little maples grew broad and strong, concealing the orchard, and the mournful singing of coyotes behind the dark branches strengthened a little more every night. The morning after I turned nineteen I woke up and found that she had gone. She had taken the rusted music box with her but left me a note, the old leather pouch, and a cold chicken sandwich.

I returned the other day and saw that the herd had also vanished. The vast fields of my childhood were occupied now by a sensible pair of mares, their jumps dotting the field with broken precision. The bass rumble was gone, and the mares cared nothing for patience. Years of storms, of ice and rain, had thrashed against the maple bows; the twisted grey twigs, covered in moss and rot, had slowly hidden the bone orchard. I couldn't find it although I tried.

I found a tree near where it had been. It towered over all the others and rattled in the wind. I was not young anymore but not so old that these steady limbs were off-bounds to me. I climbed it as high as I could.
Cradled in the branches, halfway in between, above the field and beneath the stars, I watched the firmament until it was an inky blue. The clouds of the day had not yet fled, and they piled before the bright moon. They shone as though the light was their own, like dark castles in the sky.

Laura (Lore) Keating
is a writer for all ages, and is presently seeking representation for her long fiction. When not writing, she is editing. Originally from foggy southern New Brunswick, she spent two years in Japan, and after literally travelling around the world has finally set down in Montreal.

It's not the wind, tinged with the coming winter, scraping its fingernails along her weathered skin, that wakes her. No, it's the growl in her stomach. She'll have to burrow deeper soon, the cold driving her underground until spring.

But first she needs food.

Lots of it.

She crawls from her den, shaking moss and grass clippings from her hair. Branches rattle above her head like old bones. Out here, the wind is colder, carrying the scent of humans. Her mouth fills with saliva.

A girl shuffles by, her chin pressed down against her chest, arms wrapped around herself. Tears stream down her face, salting her skin.

The ogre launches from her hiding spot beneath the bridge. Dashing from tree to tree, she hides behind the bright orange foliage of passing shrubs. The girl doesn't hear her until it's too late. The ogre emerges from between the trees, too fast to follow, and snatches
the girl by the ankle. Before the girl realizes what's happened, she's thrown over the creature's shoulder.

The girl kicks at the dark green hide beneath her, but the ogre is unperturbed.

They've reached the hole beneath the bridge, the entrance to the ogre's hideout. The ogre drops the girl in the dirt and turns to her with a wet, seeping grin. Sharp teeth poke out at odd angles, rough edged like a shark.

“Jesus Christ!” The girl scrambles back in the leaves, but the ogre still has her foot. The girl's shaking. Teeth clatter in her head like dice. Her eyes are wide. They bulge from the sockets, rolling side to side in desperation as they flash over the face in front of her. The tang of urine fills the air, wetness spreading down the girl's pants, into her shoes.

A loud grumble interrupts her struggles. The ogre looks down at her stomach and back at the girl. She shrugs. “Sorry.”

Openly weeping now, the girl has snot running from her nose down to her chin, eyes streaming. “You don't have to do this!” She claws at the dirt but can't gain an inch. The ogre drags her closer.

“Please! You don't want me.” She flails a hand down
toward her frame. “I'm too small.”

The ogre cocks her head, considering.

The girl swipes at the snot running down her face. This is her chance. “There are others, just that way.” She points back through the trees. “Lot of them. Please.”

The girl is not wrong. One human is not enough. Who knows when another will pass her lair? She cannot hunt as she is now, not without somewhere to hide. But there is another possibility.

She grabs the girl's hand and brings it to her mouth, ignoring the shrieks and whimpers. She presses the girl's thumb against a jagged tooth. Blood bubbles up from the wound, bright red like the leaves at their feet. She squeezes it until more blood appears, catching the droplets in the palm of her hand.