Crossing the Plains by Talha Ahmad
Afsha receives a message that her long-lost mother is dying, and she must cross the Middle Plains to see her before it's too late, but the annual invasion of giants is worse than usual.
Afsha pulls her machete out of the giant's thigh, twirling away to avoid the jet of blood that arcs from the wound. The lumbering beast falls with a wet smack on the crimson-soaked grass of the prairie. The ground shakes as Afsha advances with her squad, finishing off giants lying prone and close to death around her.
She had always heard of Crossing the Plains as if it were the final battle before the Day of Judgement. When she grew older, she learned it wasn't a final battle, but one that recurs every year as Winter slowly melts into Spring.
But this truly feels like the final battle she had feared as a child. Screams cry out from every direction. Blood squelches under her boots with each step. The smell is unimaginable.
"There's too many of them," Rakesh says from her left. His large, muscular frame looms half as tall as the giants' fourteen-foot height. He is solid next to her.
"There's not that many." She swings her machete to cut down a thick stalk. She slices through it in one clean stroke, and the stalk retreats into the clouds. A giant climbing down its length is flung off, landing in a bone-crunching heap on the ground. She doesn't always get so lucky, cutting the stalk before the giant can descend. There are too many stalks, and not enough people to cut them.
"Nothing we can't handle," Rakesh replies, "but more than usual this early in the Spring."
He is right. Ever since the stalks started growing across the land, giants had been climbing down them and terrorizing any town, city, or settlement close enough to reach. No one knows where they come from, for the stalks reach far into the clouds, and no one who makes the climb ever returns.
The legend goes that fifteen years ago, a gullible boy traded a cow for a handful of magic beans from a wandering salesman in strange clothes. The boy planted the beans, hoping for a quick crop. Instead, a giant climbed down from the stalk and savagely murdered the boy and his family. The wind carried seedlings from the stalk across the continent. Beanstalks grew in every land with soil rich enough and rainfall plentiful enough to sustain them. Giants descended. Cities burned. Humans have been fighting back ever since.
"Don't worry," Rakesh says as they march on. "We'll reach the mountains before the Equinox."
Afsha does not speak, focusing on her surroundings. She hates lulls in battles.
Rakesh interprets her silence as an invitation to continue.
"Your mother will be fine. Did I not promise I would see you to her?"
"You did," she says.
Rakesh smiles. "We will be drinking rosemilk tea by a fire before you know it."
Afsha smiles back, unwilling to believe him until she's there, holding the mug of tea in one hand, her other tight in the fist of her mother. Not before.
As the scourge of giants grew, most of the survivors retreated to the mountains and to the deserts, lands where the beanstalks could not grow. Bands of roving giants sometimes reached these outlying settlements but were easily defeated. The giants appeared to lose their strength and vitality the further they strayed from their stalks, as if the stalks themselves were umbilical cords to some higher source of power above.
A stalk looms before them, a sickly green color like noisome puke with tangles of branches and leaves. Even now the wind scatters its seeds, perpetuating a cycle that has continued for nearly a generation. The stalk appears to undulate like a worm. Afsha and her unit freeze momentarily, their eyes rising to the sky.
A giant skitters down the stalk, his thick arms of ropey muscle allowing an agility that seems impossible for his size. His skin is of the same sickly green as the stalk, though a shade or two lighter. Gauntlets adorn his wrists and ankles. A simple garment hangs around his waist. His chest is bare of cloth, though carpets of hair tangle along his chest, shoulders, and back. His head is large, his scalp bare and smooth.
As he slams his enormous feet on the ground, he gazes at the assembled warriors before him. His grin is wide, showing two rows of blunt teeth. They don't look dangerous, but each tooth has the power of a hammer. A man caught in that mouth will split in two after a single bite.
Rakesh and Afsha give each other significant looks before bellowing at the top of their lungs. It's a battle cry, but also an instruction to assume a specific formation. The unit follows with practiced swiftness, and the giant is surrounded by twelve men and women, all armed and deadly. Rakesh brandishes a war ax. Rumina twirls twin daggers which fly about like extensions of her own hands. Mika swings a mace that is comically large against his size, though he wields it with the ease of a man swinging a twig. The rest carry swords, spears, and knives crisscrossing their bodies.
The giant is outnumbered, but not by much. This close to his stalk, to his source of ungodly power, he is a fair match for the entire squad. Victory will be tight.
As the giant bullishly charges forward, the warriors dance out of the way, cutting with their weapons in quick, careful thrusts. Through painful trial and error, Afsha found that agility and quick attacks were the preferred methods for felling a giant. Strike the giant enough (and survive long enough to hit a major artery or two), and the giant will collapse dead. It was a simple philosophy: as many holes in as little time as possible.
The giant swings a fist, colliding with a warrior. In the chaos, Afsha can't tell who is hit. The horrid sound of fist meeting skull makes it unlikely that the blow was survivable. Blood traces arcs in the air as warrior after warrior slices the giant's flesh. The squad remains in tight formation, ensuring the giant is always surrounded.
"The stalk!" Rakesh shouts, and Afsha thinks it's a command. She looks up and her heart sinks. Another giant descends the stalk. In all her years of fighting, she has never seen two giants climb down a single stalk. It was always one. Are their enemies in the sky adapting? Or has she been blind to their capabilities? There is still so much they don't know, even after all this fighting. They don't know how many giants there actually are, or why they're even attacking people in the first place. They don't seem to gain anything from it except the pleasure of shedding blood, if they are indeed capable of feeling pleasure.
Perhaps the giants intend to cultivate the Earth themselves, and therefore need to cull the human population. Or they need slaves for some unknown and terrible purpose, though Afsha hasn't seen them take any prisoners. There are more theories, all of them full of holes like the tattered loincloths the giants wear. To Afsha, their motives don't matter. They're like a storm that must be endured, an enormous hill that must be climbed.
Afsha dodges the giant's gauntleted arm and slashes its elbow. The blow is only skin-deep, but it slows the giant's momentum enough for Rakesh to close in and cut the artery in the giant's thigh. As the life bleeds out of the creature, Afsha makes for the stalk. She swings her machete back, but a blow to the top of her head throws her off-balance.
Dazed, she looks up and sees the second giant, tearing large branches from the stalk and dropping them below. She dodges another bough and swings her machete with the last of her strength, severing the stalk at its base. The stalk shudders, and Afsha is pulled out of the shadow of the falling giant by Rakesh's steady grasp. The giant's meeting with the earth is followed by a quake that almost knocks her off her feet.
As she watches the stalk retract into the sky like a tugged rope, she feels the inevitability of their victory. Her heart is beating fast, her blood hot in her veins. She wipes her machete on a cloth that she keeps tied to her waist for just this purpose, then surveys the land around her.
Her breath stops in her throat.
All around her is blood and screams. Though the stalks are spread out, there are now two or three giants climbing down each stalk. The twelve-person squads do not stand a chance against this many foes. Their formations were specifically designed to efficiently fight a single giant.
Around Afsha, soldiers die in the dozens. Some have their limbs torn off and thrown to the side. Others are crushed beneath large boots the size of horses. By and large the most casualties come from blunt force trauma. The giants strike with clenched fists and open palms alike. The blows are hard enough to break necks and smash skulls, through from far away it looks like the giants are lazily brushing aside swamp flies. As she looks around at her squad, she notices she is down two fighters: Hashan and Pey are both lying still on the ground.
"To me!"
Rakesh's call is loud and commanding. Though Afsha typically leads charges in her squad, anyone can call a new formation. Battle is fluid; their squad must be as well.
Afsha, Rumina, Goya, Sanso, Mika, Yanto, and Junaid form around Rakesh like moths drawn to a flame. Weapons are raised. Hair is smoothed away from faces. Boots are kept firm on the ground.
"Listen up! We're going to assist. To the nearest stalk. Ten degrees northeast of our position. Let's move!"
There is a chorus of roars and battle cries from the group as they charge forward.
Afsha does her best not to look at the corpses that surround her. They were people of all ages and genders, all sizes and abilities. Some were keen fighters, while others took up arms out of duty or desperation. Though the weather is temperate, the breeze carries the smell of the dead. Any of the bodies below her could have been people from her squad. They could also have been her.
She doesn't know most of the dead. She only knows that this group they're crossing the Plains with, this group of hundreds of reluctant soldiers in dozens of squads, are all united in a simple purpose: survive the crossing and kill the giants.
Afsha has another goal as well: reunite with her birth mother. In her memory, Afsha's mother is a large and solid presence, though she's unsure if she can trust her memory. There are times when she imagines her mother like a bear, flowing brunette hair and a warm embrace that will swallow her. Other times she imagines her like a hawk, sharp and fierce and protective of her young. She can't be sure either vision is true.
The years hadn't allowed for many trips across the spoiled lands of the giants. Survival was razor-thin, and long journeys were rarely successful. But when a letter sent via the wings of a dove arrived at Afsha's window, she knew she had to attempt the crossing. Her mother was dying, and there wasn't much time. They would have to cross the Plains if there was any hope of reaching her before she passed.
When Afsha was five years old, her father died fighting off a horde of giants that had massed near the edge of town. Grief-stricken and frightened, her mother attempted to smuggle Afsha to the mountains.
It was calm right before the giants attacked their caravan. The day was warm and sunny, and for Afsha, the cramped and smelly covered wagon she was in couldn't dampen her spirit. Though she felt the tension rippling off those around her, and though she could feel the anxious iron grip her mother had on her, the clear skies felt like a promise, like a dream they were about to enter.
How quickly that dream turned into a nightmare.
It started with chatter. To Afsha's ears, it sounded like a flock of birds that had decided to make their presence known in the trees. Only she hadn't heard a bird chirp in a long time.The chatter increased in volume, and Afsha's mother's grip on her tightened. It began to get uncomfortable, and Afsha turned toward her to complain, but a force like a battering ram slammed into the side of their wagon, causing it to tip onto its side with a crash.
People screamed and moaned, but that sound was background noise to the roar of the giant outside. Afsha couldn't see it, but she was sure she could feel its breath against the wagon. She scrambled in her mother's arms and struggled to free her limbs from those around her. She was successful in freeing herself, but she hesitated to run. The wagon rocked back and forth, like the giant was shaking a hollow egg toy hoping to guess the prize inside.
Afsha saw her mother lying among other bodies, blood trickling from her temple. She saw her chest rise and fall and felt a rush of relief. Even at five, Afsha knew what death looked like, and this wasn't it. She grabbed her mother by the wrist and tried to free her from the pile of bodies. People groaned. Someone swore.
She guided the injured woman toward the opening of the wagon when a large green hand with cracked and yellow nails reached through and grabbed the woman closest to the exit. She was the oldest person Afsha had ever seen, and the violence of her being dragged screaming from the wagon was enough to give the girl nightmares for months. She tried to ignore the loud crunching of bones being broken in a tight fist.
Everyone screamed: men, women, and children. They poured out of the other end of the covered wagon in a panic, uncaring of what lay beyond. Afsha and her mother exited as well, surveying the chaos around them.
Giants. At least eight of them attacking the thirty-wagon caravan. Every wagon was damaged in some way, and the cacophony of refugees screaming, and giants roaring were the only discernable sounds. Afsha remembered the colossal giants, their sickly green skin, their enormous frames, their teeth, but thankfully she remembered little of the carnage that befell those trying to flee into the forest. She was sure she'd never fall sleep again if her brain had decided to record those events in detail.
In the chaos, Afsha's hand slipped from her mother's. She desperately searched for her in the chaos, but all she could see was blood and death.
She ran.
The forest was thick with trees and brambles. She ran on despite being slapped in the face by branches as if the trees were particularly annoyed schoolmasters. She made steady progress, but it was only a matter of time before she tripped on a large root jutting out of the ground. The fall was hard, and Afsha found the breath knocked out of her lungs. She gasped and wheezed as she pulled herself to her feet.
She almost gave up then. She was seconds away from collapsing against a tree and sliding to the ground.
All it took, in the end, was the sound of a large tree branch snapping close by for her to continue her flight. She acted on instinct, letting her fear guide her. Soon, the trees thinned, giving way to a rocky field that stretched toward a small settlement. Night was falling, but she could still see small stone buildings in a cluster, smoke emanating from several chimneys. They reminded her of the home they had abandoned. Carefully, she walked to the nearest building. As she approached, she saw a light appear in a window. That light moved through the building and out the front door, where a woman in a brown dress and equally brown hair appeared holding a candle. Behind her, approaching quickly with an ax in his hand, was a large, muscular man with long black hair. He was the tallest man Afsha had ever seen, and she recoiled, thinking this was another giant. The woman slapped the man's meaty forearm and whispered something harsh to him.
"Hello, dear," she said, "What are you doing all alone out here?"
Afsha sat on the ground and cried. The woman came forward and scooped her up, holding her just as a mother would.
"There, there," she said. "My name is Luna, and this is my husband, Rakesh. We live in this house right here. Why don't you come inside and we'll get you something to eat."
And as simply as that, she was taken in by strangers with big hearts and an even bigger patience.
And Rakesh, the man she'd mistaken for a giant, stands next to her now, sworn in his duty to deliver his adopted daughter to the birth mother she still cherishes.
Afsha and her team reach the nearest squad in a tight formation. She only counts three fighters in this other squad. A pair of giants loom over them, swinging fists and cudgels the size of tree trunks. The fighters are doing their best to counter the attacks from the two giants. They're purely on the defensive, locked in a struggle for survival with no ability to inflict pain on their foe.
One of the remaining fighters fails to sidestep far enough to avoid a cudgel to the side of their head. The crunch of wood on bone is sickening, and Afsha knows before the body hits the ground that they're dead. Her rage doubles, and she almost breaks away from her squad's formation. They can do this if they work together. With the survivors from the other squad, she's sure they can take these two giants.
With a roar to signal the attack formation, Afsha charges. She knows her squad will follow. Junaid gets a slash into a giant's side before the beast has time to react. He skirts back as Rumina follows on the opposite side with another deep slash. The giant roars in anger and swings his cudgel in a wide arc. The second giant sees the new fighters and charges them. Its grimace shows teeth made jagged and sharp by chewing on bones. Rakesh sees the charging giant before anyone else and runs towards it. Afsha wants to scream, but she trusts him, and decides to let him do what he came here to do. She watches out of the corner of her eye and sees Rakesh approach the giant at top speed, keeping his center of gravity low. As the giant winds up its cudgel arm, Rakesh dives, rolling the rest of the way, closing the gap. He pulls a second blade from his hip, crosses his arms across his body, and swings the blades out to his sides just as he passes between the giant's legs. One blade makes contact with each ankle, slicing so deep that Afsha winces.
The giant screams and starts to topple. Afsha, deep in her battle, doesn't know something is wrong until she hears a roar of pain from Rakesh.
Pulling away from her foe, she sees that the other giant has fallen sideways, pinning Rakesh up to the waist underneath the giant's massive leg. Rakesh is slicing at the giant's thigh with his blade while the beast roars in pain and frustration and attempts to swing its cudgel at the small human fighter that accidentally fell into its clutches. The angle is awkward, though, and the giant succeeds only in shattering its own shin bones. Afsha runs towards Rakesh, knowing that it will be only a matter of time before the giant figures out how to dispatch its little annoyance.
She pushes aside a strand of dark hair that has freed itself from her bun, only to have it fall in front of her eyes again. She grabs the strand and with an angry swipe slices it off, letting it fall to the blood-soaked ground.
The giant turns towards the new danger and roars. Afsha can hear Rakesh's pleading "no!" over the sound of the giant, but she ignores her father, hard as it is to do.
It's over quickly. The giant raises its cudgel and brings it down like a hammer. She steps out of its path with plenty of time to spare but lingers long enough to bring her machete down on the giant's wrist, severing its hand from its body. She twirls away from the fountain of blood and focuses immediately on the giant's second arm. This one is pinned beneath the giant. It tries to work it free, its hand in a pulverizing fist. She realizes as she approaches that she doesn't have a good angle to attack this arm. Instead, she makes the more dangerous call, one that she should have made from the very start.
Go for the throat.
It was advice that had come from Oolan, the warrior and former princess who traveled from town to town, training villagers in weapons and combat in exchange for food and shelter. Oolan had been a fierce warrior, but even her army of former subjects and refugees was overrun by giants in the Middle Plains. She'd died a warrior's death, but she still died. It's with bitterness that Afsha realizes that they're in the very same Plains where a legend had fought her last.
Throwing caution aside, she charges at the giant. It sees her approaching and attempts to bludgeon her with its stump, but she's inside its reach before it can bring the blow to bear. She raises her machete and, with a downward arc that causes her arm to jolt, slices the main artery in the giant's throat.
She pulls away quickly but is unable to spare herself from the fountain of blood that erupts from the wound. She raises her arm in a vain attempt to block the flow. She staggers back as the giant thrashes in its final death throes. She runs to Rakesh. He's lying on his side, legs still pinned beneath the giant's.
"No," he says through rough exhalations. "Please. I'm fine. Regroup with the squad."
Afsha doesn't listen. She tries to lift the giant's dead weight. Fails. She pulls her machete out and starts hacking at the meat, but she gives up after Rakesh grabs her leg, his strength still present in that grip.
"Afsha, my Flower, please stop."
The tone of his voice makes her pause. She looks down at him, lying helpless on the ground. No, not helpless. There is steel in the man's gaze, and concern. She follows his gaze behind her, where she can see the other giant lying dead. Six more bodies have joined the rest of the corpses on the ground.
Her throat catches. Two of the bodies are from the squad they'd attempted to rescue. The other four bodies are familiar, their heaps on the ground a cruel joke.
Rumina, Goya, Sanso, and Mika.
Sanso had been one of the first to join her quest. She hadn't even finished asking the question when he'd said "yes." He too had an ailing mother dying slowly in a distant land. This quest was personal for him.
Rumina and Goya were a couple, or had been. They were together for years, their habits so intertwined that it was sometimes hard to say where Rumina ended and where Goya began. They were as old as Rakesh, and both had a fighting spirit in them. Every swing of their blades was revenge against another family member lost, another dear friend trampled beneath the boots of the giants.
Mika she didn't know that well, for he was quiet, and spoke only when spoken to. She figured it was from a deep trauma that he'd suffered, so she never pushed him to speak. Now she wishes she had insisted. The guilt of not knowing how to mourn for him was already seeping into her skin, like the acrid blood of the giants.
The remaining two standing came to join Afsha and Rakesh. They have looks of pain and anger on their faces. She knows not if these looks are for her abandoning formation to save Rakesh, or if they're for the giants. At this point, she doesn't think it matters. Anger pushes them forward, as does their pain.
Yanto and Junaid extract Rakesh. His legs look broken and bruised, but Afsha can't see any bones sticking out through his flesh. She sighs in relief, standing back so Yanto and Junaid can add splints to his legs. There isn't enough space for another. She isn't sure how she can face leading the squad again, not after she lost half of them in a single charge.
"Afsha," Yanto says, pulling her out of her self-pity. "Stretcher."
She does as she is told, using old staffs littering the ground and the clothing of the dead. Yanto and Junaid carefully lift Rakesh from underneath the giant and place him on the makeshift stretcher. There is a practiced urgency to their movements. Afsha glances at the battlefield. Chaos still reigns all around her. Stalks dangle from the clouds, undulating softly in an unfelt wind. Dozens of giants continue to descend as squads battle them, cutting stalks as they kill, those umbilical cords pulling up into the heavens. Their army is moving forward steadily, gaining ground. They're making progress, despite the heap of bodies they're leaving behind.
Afsha and the remaining members of her squad make slow progress across the blasted Plains. The giants' stalks have thinned out in their march, which is halted every time someone needs a rest from holding Rakesh. Afsha takes her turn, rotating with Yanto and Junaid. Her father remains unconscious for most of the journey. The only sound he makes is a mumble from some deep dream that he can't escape.
Afsha tries not to blame herself for the deaths of the rest of her squad. Yanto and Junaid don't look at her askance, nor are they brusque or short with her. They still treat her like the squad leader. And maybe that's the biggest indictment of all; she is still the leader, still responsible for the remaining lives in her charge, no matter her previous mistakes.
Rakesh moans. "Luna..."
Afsha almost drops her end of the stretcher, but manages to adjust her grip. If Rakesh is calling for his dead wife, then he really must be in a bad way. She finds her visions blurring as she walks over the earth turned by the many feet who have used this road to reach the mountains. Her boots squelch in the mud. The sky above is gray with clouds, the sun peeking through infrequently enough to bring both hope and despair.
"He's raving about Luna again," Yanto says.
Afsha turns to him to admonish him for his use of the word "raving" but stops when she sees his face. Yanto is usually pale, but now his face is so marred with blood and mud that he looks like he only has pale freckles. His red hair is similarly dirty and frames his face in stringy strands.
She sighs. "Rakesh always does that when he's sick or injured."
"Makes sense," Yanto says, grunting as he takes the other end of the stretcher from Junaid, who hasn't uttered a word since the battle. "I've been told that I call out for my father when I'm delirious."
"Luna was..." she begins, stopping to catch the hitch in her throat. "She was a great woman. When I first showed up outside their house all those years ago, they thought I was an intruder. Rakesh came outside brandishing an ax. But when Luna saw me, her tune immediately changed. She took me in, cleaned me up, dressed my wounds, and fed me. She didn't even ask what had happened. She probably knew.
"Rakesh at first wasn't too keen on having to raise a child that wasn't his." Afsha laughs, more bark than mirth. "But I was able to slowly wear him down. I went from being his biggest nuisance to being his most precious flower.
"He looked to Luna for everything. When he caught me in his workshop playing with his tools, he'd ask his wife how he should punish me. When I would get hurt from falling out of the walnut tree in their yard, he'd carry me straight to Luna, asking her to help me. It wasn't that he was simply an ignorant man; there was something about Luna that made her a great comfort and a guiding light in darkness. I can't remember perfectly, but I'm pretty sure she never raised her voice at me once."
"She sounds wonderful," Yanto says from behind her, his breath heavy with the weight of the stretcher. "I wish I could have met her."
"Me too," Afsha says.
They walk. They stop for quick meals and steal sips from babbling streams. They sleep in short bursts that leave no time for dreams. They speak in low whispers, or they travel in silence. They grunt with the effort of their makeshift stretcher, which is starting to come apart at its hastily constructed seams. Afsha leads the charge, the handles of her father's stretcher rubbing the skin of her palms raw. She tries to ignore his delirious rambling by humming songs Luna had taught her.
She remembers the weather, and little else. She isn't sure why this is. The sun was shining bright and there weren't any clouds in the sky. A breeze traveled across the landscape every so often, tempering any discomfort from the heat. Perhaps she remembers it because it was the last time she appreciated a beautiful day.
Afsha was thirteen years old and playing with the other kids of the village. These friendships had been hard fought; at first she was ostracized for being a refugee. She doesn't remember what they were playing, but she does remember Luna emerging from their house with a tray of snacks and cold drinks. She was halfway to the yard when she swayed and collapsed to the ground, dropping the tray with a loud clatter. Afsha stopped playing and ran towards her mother, reaching her just as Rakesh did. The worry she saw in his face was all it took to bring her to hysterics.
It turned out Luna had some sort of wasting disease. She'd had it for almost a year when she'd collapsed. The worry on Rakesh's face didn't hold any shock. When Rakesh told her that Luna had been sick for a while, and it was now getting worse, Afsha stared back with the same worry. She thought she would be mad at him for keeping it a secret, but all she was was worried.
Luna was confined to her bed, grew weaker daily, and was soon unable to keep down any food. She passed away a skeletal version of herself, surrounded by family and by doctors who had done all they could (which wasn't very much at all).
After her death, Afsha was angry. She knew her adoptive mother's death was no one's fault, and that made her angrier still. In fact, it kept her angry for a very long time.
It was Luna who first showed her the letter from her birth mother. It was rolled up like one of Rakesh's cigarettes and tied with a string. She'd explained in very careful tones that this was a letter from very far away, that it had been sent by a bird called a dove across many hundreds of miles.
In the intervening years, she'd been able to bury the trauma of the day she and her birth mother were separated, bury the fact that she ever had a mother other than the one in front of her, the one clutching the letter in her hand, eager to pass it along like it was a praying mantis.
The letter contained a simple message: she'd survived, she'd been living in the mountains, and the reason she was writing so late was because it took a long time to locate her daughter. She wanted Afsha to write back.
Write back, Afsha did. Her mother answered. She learned her name was Naila, which is what her mother preferred Afsha to call her. She seemed to understand that Luna had become Afsha's mother, and Afsha did not linger on the pain that this must have caused her. Still, they corresponded, through Afsha's coming-of-age, through Luna's illness, through the hardships of a young girl growing up in the giant-ravaged world. She wasn't just a correspondent; she was a guiding hand, a loving advisor. She was a second mother.
When Afsha received the last letter from the mountains, it was written in the hand of another. It was Ariya, the town doctor, who broke the news to Afsha. The neat, angular script seemed too beautiful to convey the terrible news that it bore: that Naila was dying, and that she wouldn't make it past the spring.
It was mid-winter when Rakesh and Afsha decided to cross the Plains and brave the giants. Even if their journey put them in the middle of the Plains in late winter when the giant stalks began their ominous descent from the skies, they were sure they could make it across.
And now they're across, albeit with fewer people than when they started.
Afsha sees the edge of the forest ahead and quickens her pace. She hears Junaid, who is holding the other end of the stretcher, breathing hard to keep up. Yanto increases his speed as well, eager to stay close.
When they burst through the trees into a clearing, Afsha's heart sinks. The entrance to the mountain pass stands one hundred feet ahead. Between her squad and their destination is a giant's stalk, thick as a tree trunk.
Everyone freezes. A giant is climbing down the stalk. Afsha turns to the remaining members of her squad. Yanto and Junaid look at her solemnly. Rakesh is unconscious, but breathing hard like he's just sprinted a mile. He won't make it unless they can get past that giant and into the mountain pass, into the safety of Mountain Hold, where Naila is dying, just like Rakesh.
Tears threaten to spill, but Afsha holds them back with the force of a dam. She signals over her shoulder to Junaid to retreat into the forest. They duck behind a few trees, lower the stretcher, and draw their weapons. Afsha leans over and kisses her father on the forehead. His skin is covered in a cold sweat. She kisses him again, for a brief instant believing in her childhood fantasy that kisses can actually heal.
"I'll come back for you," she says. "I promise."
She gives another signal, and the three remaining fighters march towards the stalk. The giant continues descending, its thick limbs limber on the branches as it carefully makes its way down.
When it's about twenty feet from the ground, Afsha raises a battle cry. It's all they need to spring into action. Junaid screams, the first sound he's made since the horrible battle earlier. He winds his arm back and throws one of his spears across the field. The giant turns at the sound and sees the projectile heading for him. He raises his arm, but isn't fast enough. With a thunk, the spear drives into the meat of the giant's shoulder, and he loses his balance. His grip is still iron on the beanstalk, and he sways like a drunk man at a Solstice Festival.
Afsha stares at Junaid, unable to comprehend how the man, weak and weary, is able to throw a spear over twenty feet and still have it sink into the giant's thick flesh.
She runs closer to her enemy and grabs two knives that are sheathed at her waist. They won't do as much damage as Junaid's spear, but she hopes for something a little more dramatic. She throws them with a flick of her wrist, watching them sail through the air. She's close enough to her target to smell the distinct odor of dirt and sweat, a scent that wrinkles her nose and throws her aim off. The first knife glances across the giant's boot harmlessly, but the second finds its target.
Afsha grins as her knife enters the soft meat behind the giant's knee. It roars with pain and attempts to descend faster. This is a mistake. As the giant tries to plant the foot of its injured leg onto a branch, it slips. It reaches out, but fails to grasp a handhold. It falls to the ground, tossing up dirt and sending shockwaves through the ground.
They're already running, machetes and spears held high, anger and grief and bloodlust driving them forward on the shaking ground.
It doesn't take long. The giant flails, but its injuries keep it from attacking with any speed or strength. Afsha, Yanto, and Junaid slash and poke and stab and cut, bleeding the giant slowly, its blood soaking the earth. The beast goes from a roar to a cry to a whimper, yet Afsha feels no sympathy. She feels nothing but hatred for the creatures that have wreaked havoc on her world for decades, feels nothing for their elusive purpose or their plight. She only feels grief at what she has lost, and anger that there is still more to lose.
After the giant is dispatched with a jagged cut to its throat, Afsha goes to the stalk and slices it with her machete. It retreats into the sky. She doesn't stop to watch it. They go back to the forest, sighing in relief as they pick up a still-breathing Rakesh from his hiding place.
"We're almost there, Papa," she says, smoothing his hair away from his forehead. "We're almost to safety."
The fighting drained the last of their energy. They make slower progress. They're safe now, deep enough into the narrow mountain valley that a giant cannot reach them.
The town they come upon feels more like a small settlement. Tents dot the landscape, an order to them that speaks of military precision. Cookfires flicker everywhere, people sitting around them warming their hands or stirring large pots. The air is chilly, but Afsha doesn't feel it. She takes in the sight of safe and settled people, a sight she has been unable to find for weeks. Children are playing between the tents, their parents only giving them a cursory glance.
The new arrivals are attended to quickly. Yanto is taken to a tent to have his injured arm set and wrapped. Junaid follows a woman who promises him hot stew. Afsha tries to follow the healers who take Rakesh's stretcher from her, but a woman wearing tattered but surprisingly clean robes pulls Afsha in another direction.
"He will be fine," she says. "You brought him to the right place." Her smile is warm, the creases around her eyes telling the story of a lifetime of such smiles. "I think someone's expecting you. Right this way."
"You're Ariya, aren't you?" she asks.
That smile again. "Yes, I am."
"You have beautiful handwriting."
"Thank you."
She takes Afsha by the arm and walks her to a tent that looks like all of the others: stained white canvas stretched over a rectangular frame with cables tying the structure to stakes in the ground. They walk through a flap, and just like that, after almost fifteen years of separation, Afsha and Naila are reunited.
The first thing Afsha notices is just how small the body underneath the blankets is. Her mother is a thin woman, her raven hair still full and past her shoulders. She has the look of a woman starved, one whose body refuses to digest any food. Her skin is pale, in contrast to Afsha whose skin has the hue of a golden afternoon.
The second thing she notices is her face. Naila may be on the verge of death, but that forehead, that nose, the shape of that chin. This woman is undeniably Afsha's mother. It is this fact that takes the warrior woman's breath away.
"Afsha."
The voice is weak and soft, but Afsha takes off toward the bed like it's the sound of the wooden clapper used to start footraces. She sits by the bed, taking in her mother's visage, her vision blurred by tears. She gently grabs Naila's hand and is surprised to find her mother's grip strong. Her eyes bear that same strength, and Afsha knows that this woman will survive past the predictions of even the most skilled doctors.
Afsha gazes outside the flap of the tent, the sunlight falling behind the mountains and bathing the valley in gray shadow. She is covered in dried blood and mud, but she's grateful that Ariya didn't insist she clean up first.
She thinks of Spring, and all the promises that it brings. She thinks about renewal and the flowering of flora, but she also thinks of the beanstalks that will descend from the sky in alarming numbers. She thought her journey here was bad, but in the height of summer, the land will be so thick with giants that even this outlying mountain hamlet won't be safe all the time. They will eventually have to retreat deeper into the valley. She'll need to get to know those in charge, see if she can help in any way. She could go back to the town where she grew up, back to the house she and Rakesh still share, but she doesn't feel any desire to leave at the moment.
She looks down at her hand, carefully gripped in another. She isn't sure what the next season will bring, but she can only hope that most of her free time will be spent right here, at the side of her mother's bed.
They begin talking, barely noticing that Ariya has brought hot tea for the both of them. They take sips and speak of everything, trying to cram fifteen year's worth of experience into one evening. Soon the tea is gone, and her throat is dry once more. Still, they keep speaking, well into the night.
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| Image generated with OpenAI |
She had always heard of Crossing the Plains as if it were the final battle before the Day of Judgement. When she grew older, she learned it wasn't a final battle, but one that recurs every year as Winter slowly melts into Spring.
But this truly feels like the final battle she had feared as a child. Screams cry out from every direction. Blood squelches under her boots with each step. The smell is unimaginable.
"There's too many of them," Rakesh says from her left. His large, muscular frame looms half as tall as the giants' fourteen-foot height. He is solid next to her.
"There's not that many." She swings her machete to cut down a thick stalk. She slices through it in one clean stroke, and the stalk retreats into the clouds. A giant climbing down its length is flung off, landing in a bone-crunching heap on the ground. She doesn't always get so lucky, cutting the stalk before the giant can descend. There are too many stalks, and not enough people to cut them.
"Nothing we can't handle," Rakesh replies, "but more than usual this early in the Spring."
He is right. Ever since the stalks started growing across the land, giants had been climbing down them and terrorizing any town, city, or settlement close enough to reach. No one knows where they come from, for the stalks reach far into the clouds, and no one who makes the climb ever returns.
The legend goes that fifteen years ago, a gullible boy traded a cow for a handful of magic beans from a wandering salesman in strange clothes. The boy planted the beans, hoping for a quick crop. Instead, a giant climbed down from the stalk and savagely murdered the boy and his family. The wind carried seedlings from the stalk across the continent. Beanstalks grew in every land with soil rich enough and rainfall plentiful enough to sustain them. Giants descended. Cities burned. Humans have been fighting back ever since.
"Don't worry," Rakesh says as they march on. "We'll reach the mountains before the Equinox."
Afsha does not speak, focusing on her surroundings. She hates lulls in battles.
Rakesh interprets her silence as an invitation to continue.
"Your mother will be fine. Did I not promise I would see you to her?"
"You did," she says.
Rakesh smiles. "We will be drinking rosemilk tea by a fire before you know it."
Afsha smiles back, unwilling to believe him until she's there, holding the mug of tea in one hand, her other tight in the fist of her mother. Not before.
As the scourge of giants grew, most of the survivors retreated to the mountains and to the deserts, lands where the beanstalks could not grow. Bands of roving giants sometimes reached these outlying settlements but were easily defeated. The giants appeared to lose their strength and vitality the further they strayed from their stalks, as if the stalks themselves were umbilical cords to some higher source of power above.
A stalk looms before them, a sickly green color like noisome puke with tangles of branches and leaves. Even now the wind scatters its seeds, perpetuating a cycle that has continued for nearly a generation. The stalk appears to undulate like a worm. Afsha and her unit freeze momentarily, their eyes rising to the sky.
A giant skitters down the stalk, his thick arms of ropey muscle allowing an agility that seems impossible for his size. His skin is of the same sickly green as the stalk, though a shade or two lighter. Gauntlets adorn his wrists and ankles. A simple garment hangs around his waist. His chest is bare of cloth, though carpets of hair tangle along his chest, shoulders, and back. His head is large, his scalp bare and smooth.
As he slams his enormous feet on the ground, he gazes at the assembled warriors before him. His grin is wide, showing two rows of blunt teeth. They don't look dangerous, but each tooth has the power of a hammer. A man caught in that mouth will split in two after a single bite.
Rakesh and Afsha give each other significant looks before bellowing at the top of their lungs. It's a battle cry, but also an instruction to assume a specific formation. The unit follows with practiced swiftness, and the giant is surrounded by twelve men and women, all armed and deadly. Rakesh brandishes a war ax. Rumina twirls twin daggers which fly about like extensions of her own hands. Mika swings a mace that is comically large against his size, though he wields it with the ease of a man swinging a twig. The rest carry swords, spears, and knives crisscrossing their bodies.
The giant is outnumbered, but not by much. This close to his stalk, to his source of ungodly power, he is a fair match for the entire squad. Victory will be tight.
As the giant bullishly charges forward, the warriors dance out of the way, cutting with their weapons in quick, careful thrusts. Through painful trial and error, Afsha found that agility and quick attacks were the preferred methods for felling a giant. Strike the giant enough (and survive long enough to hit a major artery or two), and the giant will collapse dead. It was a simple philosophy: as many holes in as little time as possible.
The giant swings a fist, colliding with a warrior. In the chaos, Afsha can't tell who is hit. The horrid sound of fist meeting skull makes it unlikely that the blow was survivable. Blood traces arcs in the air as warrior after warrior slices the giant's flesh. The squad remains in tight formation, ensuring the giant is always surrounded.
"The stalk!" Rakesh shouts, and Afsha thinks it's a command. She looks up and her heart sinks. Another giant descends the stalk. In all her years of fighting, she has never seen two giants climb down a single stalk. It was always one. Are their enemies in the sky adapting? Or has she been blind to their capabilities? There is still so much they don't know, even after all this fighting. They don't know how many giants there actually are, or why they're even attacking people in the first place. They don't seem to gain anything from it except the pleasure of shedding blood, if they are indeed capable of feeling pleasure.
Perhaps the giants intend to cultivate the Earth themselves, and therefore need to cull the human population. Or they need slaves for some unknown and terrible purpose, though Afsha hasn't seen them take any prisoners. There are more theories, all of them full of holes like the tattered loincloths the giants wear. To Afsha, their motives don't matter. They're like a storm that must be endured, an enormous hill that must be climbed.
Afsha dodges the giant's gauntleted arm and slashes its elbow. The blow is only skin-deep, but it slows the giant's momentum enough for Rakesh to close in and cut the artery in the giant's thigh. As the life bleeds out of the creature, Afsha makes for the stalk. She swings her machete back, but a blow to the top of her head throws her off-balance.
Dazed, she looks up and sees the second giant, tearing large branches from the stalk and dropping them below. She dodges another bough and swings her machete with the last of her strength, severing the stalk at its base. The stalk shudders, and Afsha is pulled out of the shadow of the falling giant by Rakesh's steady grasp. The giant's meeting with the earth is followed by a quake that almost knocks her off her feet.
As she watches the stalk retract into the sky like a tugged rope, she feels the inevitability of their victory. Her heart is beating fast, her blood hot in her veins. She wipes her machete on a cloth that she keeps tied to her waist for just this purpose, then surveys the land around her.
Her breath stops in her throat.
All around her is blood and screams. Though the stalks are spread out, there are now two or three giants climbing down each stalk. The twelve-person squads do not stand a chance against this many foes. Their formations were specifically designed to efficiently fight a single giant.
Around Afsha, soldiers die in the dozens. Some have their limbs torn off and thrown to the side. Others are crushed beneath large boots the size of horses. By and large the most casualties come from blunt force trauma. The giants strike with clenched fists and open palms alike. The blows are hard enough to break necks and smash skulls, through from far away it looks like the giants are lazily brushing aside swamp flies. As she looks around at her squad, she notices she is down two fighters: Hashan and Pey are both lying still on the ground.
"To me!"
Rakesh's call is loud and commanding. Though Afsha typically leads charges in her squad, anyone can call a new formation. Battle is fluid; their squad must be as well.
Afsha, Rumina, Goya, Sanso, Mika, Yanto, and Junaid form around Rakesh like moths drawn to a flame. Weapons are raised. Hair is smoothed away from faces. Boots are kept firm on the ground.
"Listen up! We're going to assist. To the nearest stalk. Ten degrees northeast of our position. Let's move!"
There is a chorus of roars and battle cries from the group as they charge forward.
Afsha does her best not to look at the corpses that surround her. They were people of all ages and genders, all sizes and abilities. Some were keen fighters, while others took up arms out of duty or desperation. Though the weather is temperate, the breeze carries the smell of the dead. Any of the bodies below her could have been people from her squad. They could also have been her.
She doesn't know most of the dead. She only knows that this group they're crossing the Plains with, this group of hundreds of reluctant soldiers in dozens of squads, are all united in a simple purpose: survive the crossing and kill the giants.
Afsha has another goal as well: reunite with her birth mother. In her memory, Afsha's mother is a large and solid presence, though she's unsure if she can trust her memory. There are times when she imagines her mother like a bear, flowing brunette hair and a warm embrace that will swallow her. Other times she imagines her like a hawk, sharp and fierce and protective of her young. She can't be sure either vision is true.
The years hadn't allowed for many trips across the spoiled lands of the giants. Survival was razor-thin, and long journeys were rarely successful. But when a letter sent via the wings of a dove arrived at Afsha's window, she knew she had to attempt the crossing. Her mother was dying, and there wasn't much time. They would have to cross the Plains if there was any hope of reaching her before she passed.
When Afsha was five years old, her father died fighting off a horde of giants that had massed near the edge of town. Grief-stricken and frightened, her mother attempted to smuggle Afsha to the mountains.
It was calm right before the giants attacked their caravan. The day was warm and sunny, and for Afsha, the cramped and smelly covered wagon she was in couldn't dampen her spirit. Though she felt the tension rippling off those around her, and though she could feel the anxious iron grip her mother had on her, the clear skies felt like a promise, like a dream they were about to enter.
How quickly that dream turned into a nightmare.
It started with chatter. To Afsha's ears, it sounded like a flock of birds that had decided to make their presence known in the trees. Only she hadn't heard a bird chirp in a long time.The chatter increased in volume, and Afsha's mother's grip on her tightened. It began to get uncomfortable, and Afsha turned toward her to complain, but a force like a battering ram slammed into the side of their wagon, causing it to tip onto its side with a crash.
People screamed and moaned, but that sound was background noise to the roar of the giant outside. Afsha couldn't see it, but she was sure she could feel its breath against the wagon. She scrambled in her mother's arms and struggled to free her limbs from those around her. She was successful in freeing herself, but she hesitated to run. The wagon rocked back and forth, like the giant was shaking a hollow egg toy hoping to guess the prize inside.
Afsha saw her mother lying among other bodies, blood trickling from her temple. She saw her chest rise and fall and felt a rush of relief. Even at five, Afsha knew what death looked like, and this wasn't it. She grabbed her mother by the wrist and tried to free her from the pile of bodies. People groaned. Someone swore.
She guided the injured woman toward the opening of the wagon when a large green hand with cracked and yellow nails reached through and grabbed the woman closest to the exit. She was the oldest person Afsha had ever seen, and the violence of her being dragged screaming from the wagon was enough to give the girl nightmares for months. She tried to ignore the loud crunching of bones being broken in a tight fist.
Everyone screamed: men, women, and children. They poured out of the other end of the covered wagon in a panic, uncaring of what lay beyond. Afsha and her mother exited as well, surveying the chaos around them.
Giants. At least eight of them attacking the thirty-wagon caravan. Every wagon was damaged in some way, and the cacophony of refugees screaming, and giants roaring were the only discernable sounds. Afsha remembered the colossal giants, their sickly green skin, their enormous frames, their teeth, but thankfully she remembered little of the carnage that befell those trying to flee into the forest. She was sure she'd never fall sleep again if her brain had decided to record those events in detail.
In the chaos, Afsha's hand slipped from her mother's. She desperately searched for her in the chaos, but all she could see was blood and death.
She ran.
The forest was thick with trees and brambles. She ran on despite being slapped in the face by branches as if the trees were particularly annoyed schoolmasters. She made steady progress, but it was only a matter of time before she tripped on a large root jutting out of the ground. The fall was hard, and Afsha found the breath knocked out of her lungs. She gasped and wheezed as she pulled herself to her feet.
She almost gave up then. She was seconds away from collapsing against a tree and sliding to the ground.
All it took, in the end, was the sound of a large tree branch snapping close by for her to continue her flight. She acted on instinct, letting her fear guide her. Soon, the trees thinned, giving way to a rocky field that stretched toward a small settlement. Night was falling, but she could still see small stone buildings in a cluster, smoke emanating from several chimneys. They reminded her of the home they had abandoned. Carefully, she walked to the nearest building. As she approached, she saw a light appear in a window. That light moved through the building and out the front door, where a woman in a brown dress and equally brown hair appeared holding a candle. Behind her, approaching quickly with an ax in his hand, was a large, muscular man with long black hair. He was the tallest man Afsha had ever seen, and she recoiled, thinking this was another giant. The woman slapped the man's meaty forearm and whispered something harsh to him.
"Hello, dear," she said, "What are you doing all alone out here?"
Afsha sat on the ground and cried. The woman came forward and scooped her up, holding her just as a mother would.
"There, there," she said. "My name is Luna, and this is my husband, Rakesh. We live in this house right here. Why don't you come inside and we'll get you something to eat."
And as simply as that, she was taken in by strangers with big hearts and an even bigger patience.
And Rakesh, the man she'd mistaken for a giant, stands next to her now, sworn in his duty to deliver his adopted daughter to the birth mother she still cherishes.
Afsha and her team reach the nearest squad in a tight formation. She only counts three fighters in this other squad. A pair of giants loom over them, swinging fists and cudgels the size of tree trunks. The fighters are doing their best to counter the attacks from the two giants. They're purely on the defensive, locked in a struggle for survival with no ability to inflict pain on their foe.
One of the remaining fighters fails to sidestep far enough to avoid a cudgel to the side of their head. The crunch of wood on bone is sickening, and Afsha knows before the body hits the ground that they're dead. Her rage doubles, and she almost breaks away from her squad's formation. They can do this if they work together. With the survivors from the other squad, she's sure they can take these two giants.
With a roar to signal the attack formation, Afsha charges. She knows her squad will follow. Junaid gets a slash into a giant's side before the beast has time to react. He skirts back as Rumina follows on the opposite side with another deep slash. The giant roars in anger and swings his cudgel in a wide arc. The second giant sees the new fighters and charges them. Its grimace shows teeth made jagged and sharp by chewing on bones. Rakesh sees the charging giant before anyone else and runs towards it. Afsha wants to scream, but she trusts him, and decides to let him do what he came here to do. She watches out of the corner of her eye and sees Rakesh approach the giant at top speed, keeping his center of gravity low. As the giant winds up its cudgel arm, Rakesh dives, rolling the rest of the way, closing the gap. He pulls a second blade from his hip, crosses his arms across his body, and swings the blades out to his sides just as he passes between the giant's legs. One blade makes contact with each ankle, slicing so deep that Afsha winces.
The giant screams and starts to topple. Afsha, deep in her battle, doesn't know something is wrong until she hears a roar of pain from Rakesh.
Pulling away from her foe, she sees that the other giant has fallen sideways, pinning Rakesh up to the waist underneath the giant's massive leg. Rakesh is slicing at the giant's thigh with his blade while the beast roars in pain and frustration and attempts to swing its cudgel at the small human fighter that accidentally fell into its clutches. The angle is awkward, though, and the giant succeeds only in shattering its own shin bones. Afsha runs towards Rakesh, knowing that it will be only a matter of time before the giant figures out how to dispatch its little annoyance.
She pushes aside a strand of dark hair that has freed itself from her bun, only to have it fall in front of her eyes again. She grabs the strand and with an angry swipe slices it off, letting it fall to the blood-soaked ground.
The giant turns towards the new danger and roars. Afsha can hear Rakesh's pleading "no!" over the sound of the giant, but she ignores her father, hard as it is to do.
It's over quickly. The giant raises its cudgel and brings it down like a hammer. She steps out of its path with plenty of time to spare but lingers long enough to bring her machete down on the giant's wrist, severing its hand from its body. She twirls away from the fountain of blood and focuses immediately on the giant's second arm. This one is pinned beneath the giant. It tries to work it free, its hand in a pulverizing fist. She realizes as she approaches that she doesn't have a good angle to attack this arm. Instead, she makes the more dangerous call, one that she should have made from the very start.
Go for the throat.
It was advice that had come from Oolan, the warrior and former princess who traveled from town to town, training villagers in weapons and combat in exchange for food and shelter. Oolan had been a fierce warrior, but even her army of former subjects and refugees was overrun by giants in the Middle Plains. She'd died a warrior's death, but she still died. It's with bitterness that Afsha realizes that they're in the very same Plains where a legend had fought her last.
Throwing caution aside, she charges at the giant. It sees her approaching and attempts to bludgeon her with its stump, but she's inside its reach before it can bring the blow to bear. She raises her machete and, with a downward arc that causes her arm to jolt, slices the main artery in the giant's throat.
She pulls away quickly but is unable to spare herself from the fountain of blood that erupts from the wound. She raises her arm in a vain attempt to block the flow. She staggers back as the giant thrashes in its final death throes. She runs to Rakesh. He's lying on his side, legs still pinned beneath the giant's.
"No," he says through rough exhalations. "Please. I'm fine. Regroup with the squad."
Afsha doesn't listen. She tries to lift the giant's dead weight. Fails. She pulls her machete out and starts hacking at the meat, but she gives up after Rakesh grabs her leg, his strength still present in that grip.
"Afsha, my Flower, please stop."
The tone of his voice makes her pause. She looks down at him, lying helpless on the ground. No, not helpless. There is steel in the man's gaze, and concern. She follows his gaze behind her, where she can see the other giant lying dead. Six more bodies have joined the rest of the corpses on the ground.
Her throat catches. Two of the bodies are from the squad they'd attempted to rescue. The other four bodies are familiar, their heaps on the ground a cruel joke.
Rumina, Goya, Sanso, and Mika.
Sanso had been one of the first to join her quest. She hadn't even finished asking the question when he'd said "yes." He too had an ailing mother dying slowly in a distant land. This quest was personal for him.
Rumina and Goya were a couple, or had been. They were together for years, their habits so intertwined that it was sometimes hard to say where Rumina ended and where Goya began. They were as old as Rakesh, and both had a fighting spirit in them. Every swing of their blades was revenge against another family member lost, another dear friend trampled beneath the boots of the giants.
Mika she didn't know that well, for he was quiet, and spoke only when spoken to. She figured it was from a deep trauma that he'd suffered, so she never pushed him to speak. Now she wishes she had insisted. The guilt of not knowing how to mourn for him was already seeping into her skin, like the acrid blood of the giants.
The remaining two standing came to join Afsha and Rakesh. They have looks of pain and anger on their faces. She knows not if these looks are for her abandoning formation to save Rakesh, or if they're for the giants. At this point, she doesn't think it matters. Anger pushes them forward, as does their pain.
Yanto and Junaid extract Rakesh. His legs look broken and bruised, but Afsha can't see any bones sticking out through his flesh. She sighs in relief, standing back so Yanto and Junaid can add splints to his legs. There isn't enough space for another. She isn't sure how she can face leading the squad again, not after she lost half of them in a single charge.
"Afsha," Yanto says, pulling her out of her self-pity. "Stretcher."
She does as she is told, using old staffs littering the ground and the clothing of the dead. Yanto and Junaid carefully lift Rakesh from underneath the giant and place him on the makeshift stretcher. There is a practiced urgency to their movements. Afsha glances at the battlefield. Chaos still reigns all around her. Stalks dangle from the clouds, undulating softly in an unfelt wind. Dozens of giants continue to descend as squads battle them, cutting stalks as they kill, those umbilical cords pulling up into the heavens. Their army is moving forward steadily, gaining ground. They're making progress, despite the heap of bodies they're leaving behind.
Afsha and the remaining members of her squad make slow progress across the blasted Plains. The giants' stalks have thinned out in their march, which is halted every time someone needs a rest from holding Rakesh. Afsha takes her turn, rotating with Yanto and Junaid. Her father remains unconscious for most of the journey. The only sound he makes is a mumble from some deep dream that he can't escape.
Afsha tries not to blame herself for the deaths of the rest of her squad. Yanto and Junaid don't look at her askance, nor are they brusque or short with her. They still treat her like the squad leader. And maybe that's the biggest indictment of all; she is still the leader, still responsible for the remaining lives in her charge, no matter her previous mistakes.
Rakesh moans. "Luna..."
Afsha almost drops her end of the stretcher, but manages to adjust her grip. If Rakesh is calling for his dead wife, then he really must be in a bad way. She finds her visions blurring as she walks over the earth turned by the many feet who have used this road to reach the mountains. Her boots squelch in the mud. The sky above is gray with clouds, the sun peeking through infrequently enough to bring both hope and despair.
"He's raving about Luna again," Yanto says.
Afsha turns to him to admonish him for his use of the word "raving" but stops when she sees his face. Yanto is usually pale, but now his face is so marred with blood and mud that he looks like he only has pale freckles. His red hair is similarly dirty and frames his face in stringy strands.
She sighs. "Rakesh always does that when he's sick or injured."
"Makes sense," Yanto says, grunting as he takes the other end of the stretcher from Junaid, who hasn't uttered a word since the battle. "I've been told that I call out for my father when I'm delirious."
"Luna was..." she begins, stopping to catch the hitch in her throat. "She was a great woman. When I first showed up outside their house all those years ago, they thought I was an intruder. Rakesh came outside brandishing an ax. But when Luna saw me, her tune immediately changed. She took me in, cleaned me up, dressed my wounds, and fed me. She didn't even ask what had happened. She probably knew.
"Rakesh at first wasn't too keen on having to raise a child that wasn't his." Afsha laughs, more bark than mirth. "But I was able to slowly wear him down. I went from being his biggest nuisance to being his most precious flower.
"He looked to Luna for everything. When he caught me in his workshop playing with his tools, he'd ask his wife how he should punish me. When I would get hurt from falling out of the walnut tree in their yard, he'd carry me straight to Luna, asking her to help me. It wasn't that he was simply an ignorant man; there was something about Luna that made her a great comfort and a guiding light in darkness. I can't remember perfectly, but I'm pretty sure she never raised her voice at me once."
"She sounds wonderful," Yanto says from behind her, his breath heavy with the weight of the stretcher. "I wish I could have met her."
"Me too," Afsha says.
They walk. They stop for quick meals and steal sips from babbling streams. They sleep in short bursts that leave no time for dreams. They speak in low whispers, or they travel in silence. They grunt with the effort of their makeshift stretcher, which is starting to come apart at its hastily constructed seams. Afsha leads the charge, the handles of her father's stretcher rubbing the skin of her palms raw. She tries to ignore his delirious rambling by humming songs Luna had taught her.
She remembers the weather, and little else. She isn't sure why this is. The sun was shining bright and there weren't any clouds in the sky. A breeze traveled across the landscape every so often, tempering any discomfort from the heat. Perhaps she remembers it because it was the last time she appreciated a beautiful day.
Afsha was thirteen years old and playing with the other kids of the village. These friendships had been hard fought; at first she was ostracized for being a refugee. She doesn't remember what they were playing, but she does remember Luna emerging from their house with a tray of snacks and cold drinks. She was halfway to the yard when she swayed and collapsed to the ground, dropping the tray with a loud clatter. Afsha stopped playing and ran towards her mother, reaching her just as Rakesh did. The worry she saw in his face was all it took to bring her to hysterics.
It turned out Luna had some sort of wasting disease. She'd had it for almost a year when she'd collapsed. The worry on Rakesh's face didn't hold any shock. When Rakesh told her that Luna had been sick for a while, and it was now getting worse, Afsha stared back with the same worry. She thought she would be mad at him for keeping it a secret, but all she was was worried.
Luna was confined to her bed, grew weaker daily, and was soon unable to keep down any food. She passed away a skeletal version of herself, surrounded by family and by doctors who had done all they could (which wasn't very much at all).
After her death, Afsha was angry. She knew her adoptive mother's death was no one's fault, and that made her angrier still. In fact, it kept her angry for a very long time.
It was Luna who first showed her the letter from her birth mother. It was rolled up like one of Rakesh's cigarettes and tied with a string. She'd explained in very careful tones that this was a letter from very far away, that it had been sent by a bird called a dove across many hundreds of miles.
In the intervening years, she'd been able to bury the trauma of the day she and her birth mother were separated, bury the fact that she ever had a mother other than the one in front of her, the one clutching the letter in her hand, eager to pass it along like it was a praying mantis.
The letter contained a simple message: she'd survived, she'd been living in the mountains, and the reason she was writing so late was because it took a long time to locate her daughter. She wanted Afsha to write back.
Write back, Afsha did. Her mother answered. She learned her name was Naila, which is what her mother preferred Afsha to call her. She seemed to understand that Luna had become Afsha's mother, and Afsha did not linger on the pain that this must have caused her. Still, they corresponded, through Afsha's coming-of-age, through Luna's illness, through the hardships of a young girl growing up in the giant-ravaged world. She wasn't just a correspondent; she was a guiding hand, a loving advisor. She was a second mother.
When Afsha received the last letter from the mountains, it was written in the hand of another. It was Ariya, the town doctor, who broke the news to Afsha. The neat, angular script seemed too beautiful to convey the terrible news that it bore: that Naila was dying, and that she wouldn't make it past the spring.
It was mid-winter when Rakesh and Afsha decided to cross the Plains and brave the giants. Even if their journey put them in the middle of the Plains in late winter when the giant stalks began their ominous descent from the skies, they were sure they could make it across.
And now they're across, albeit with fewer people than when they started.
Afsha sees the edge of the forest ahead and quickens her pace. She hears Junaid, who is holding the other end of the stretcher, breathing hard to keep up. Yanto increases his speed as well, eager to stay close.
When they burst through the trees into a clearing, Afsha's heart sinks. The entrance to the mountain pass stands one hundred feet ahead. Between her squad and their destination is a giant's stalk, thick as a tree trunk.
Everyone freezes. A giant is climbing down the stalk. Afsha turns to the remaining members of her squad. Yanto and Junaid look at her solemnly. Rakesh is unconscious, but breathing hard like he's just sprinted a mile. He won't make it unless they can get past that giant and into the mountain pass, into the safety of Mountain Hold, where Naila is dying, just like Rakesh.
Tears threaten to spill, but Afsha holds them back with the force of a dam. She signals over her shoulder to Junaid to retreat into the forest. They duck behind a few trees, lower the stretcher, and draw their weapons. Afsha leans over and kisses her father on the forehead. His skin is covered in a cold sweat. She kisses him again, for a brief instant believing in her childhood fantasy that kisses can actually heal.
"I'll come back for you," she says. "I promise."
She gives another signal, and the three remaining fighters march towards the stalk. The giant continues descending, its thick limbs limber on the branches as it carefully makes its way down.
When it's about twenty feet from the ground, Afsha raises a battle cry. It's all they need to spring into action. Junaid screams, the first sound he's made since the horrible battle earlier. He winds his arm back and throws one of his spears across the field. The giant turns at the sound and sees the projectile heading for him. He raises his arm, but isn't fast enough. With a thunk, the spear drives into the meat of the giant's shoulder, and he loses his balance. His grip is still iron on the beanstalk, and he sways like a drunk man at a Solstice Festival.
Afsha stares at Junaid, unable to comprehend how the man, weak and weary, is able to throw a spear over twenty feet and still have it sink into the giant's thick flesh.
She runs closer to her enemy and grabs two knives that are sheathed at her waist. They won't do as much damage as Junaid's spear, but she hopes for something a little more dramatic. She throws them with a flick of her wrist, watching them sail through the air. She's close enough to her target to smell the distinct odor of dirt and sweat, a scent that wrinkles her nose and throws her aim off. The first knife glances across the giant's boot harmlessly, but the second finds its target.
Afsha grins as her knife enters the soft meat behind the giant's knee. It roars with pain and attempts to descend faster. This is a mistake. As the giant tries to plant the foot of its injured leg onto a branch, it slips. It reaches out, but fails to grasp a handhold. It falls to the ground, tossing up dirt and sending shockwaves through the ground.
They're already running, machetes and spears held high, anger and grief and bloodlust driving them forward on the shaking ground.
It doesn't take long. The giant flails, but its injuries keep it from attacking with any speed or strength. Afsha, Yanto, and Junaid slash and poke and stab and cut, bleeding the giant slowly, its blood soaking the earth. The beast goes from a roar to a cry to a whimper, yet Afsha feels no sympathy. She feels nothing but hatred for the creatures that have wreaked havoc on her world for decades, feels nothing for their elusive purpose or their plight. She only feels grief at what she has lost, and anger that there is still more to lose.
After the giant is dispatched with a jagged cut to its throat, Afsha goes to the stalk and slices it with her machete. It retreats into the sky. She doesn't stop to watch it. They go back to the forest, sighing in relief as they pick up a still-breathing Rakesh from his hiding place.
"We're almost there, Papa," she says, smoothing his hair away from his forehead. "We're almost to safety."
The fighting drained the last of their energy. They make slower progress. They're safe now, deep enough into the narrow mountain valley that a giant cannot reach them.
The town they come upon feels more like a small settlement. Tents dot the landscape, an order to them that speaks of military precision. Cookfires flicker everywhere, people sitting around them warming their hands or stirring large pots. The air is chilly, but Afsha doesn't feel it. She takes in the sight of safe and settled people, a sight she has been unable to find for weeks. Children are playing between the tents, their parents only giving them a cursory glance.
The new arrivals are attended to quickly. Yanto is taken to a tent to have his injured arm set and wrapped. Junaid follows a woman who promises him hot stew. Afsha tries to follow the healers who take Rakesh's stretcher from her, but a woman wearing tattered but surprisingly clean robes pulls Afsha in another direction.
"He will be fine," she says. "You brought him to the right place." Her smile is warm, the creases around her eyes telling the story of a lifetime of such smiles. "I think someone's expecting you. Right this way."
"You're Ariya, aren't you?" she asks.
That smile again. "Yes, I am."
"You have beautiful handwriting."
"Thank you."
She takes Afsha by the arm and walks her to a tent that looks like all of the others: stained white canvas stretched over a rectangular frame with cables tying the structure to stakes in the ground. They walk through a flap, and just like that, after almost fifteen years of separation, Afsha and Naila are reunited.
The first thing Afsha notices is just how small the body underneath the blankets is. Her mother is a thin woman, her raven hair still full and past her shoulders. She has the look of a woman starved, one whose body refuses to digest any food. Her skin is pale, in contrast to Afsha whose skin has the hue of a golden afternoon.
The second thing she notices is her face. Naila may be on the verge of death, but that forehead, that nose, the shape of that chin. This woman is undeniably Afsha's mother. It is this fact that takes the warrior woman's breath away.
"Afsha."
The voice is weak and soft, but Afsha takes off toward the bed like it's the sound of the wooden clapper used to start footraces. She sits by the bed, taking in her mother's visage, her vision blurred by tears. She gently grabs Naila's hand and is surprised to find her mother's grip strong. Her eyes bear that same strength, and Afsha knows that this woman will survive past the predictions of even the most skilled doctors.
Afsha gazes outside the flap of the tent, the sunlight falling behind the mountains and bathing the valley in gray shadow. She is covered in dried blood and mud, but she's grateful that Ariya didn't insist she clean up first.
She thinks of Spring, and all the promises that it brings. She thinks about renewal and the flowering of flora, but she also thinks of the beanstalks that will descend from the sky in alarming numbers. She thought her journey here was bad, but in the height of summer, the land will be so thick with giants that even this outlying mountain hamlet won't be safe all the time. They will eventually have to retreat deeper into the valley. She'll need to get to know those in charge, see if she can help in any way. She could go back to the town where she grew up, back to the house she and Rakesh still share, but she doesn't feel any desire to leave at the moment.
She looks down at her hand, carefully gripped in another. She isn't sure what the next season will bring, but she can only hope that most of her free time will be spent right here, at the side of her mother's bed.
They begin talking, barely noticing that Ariya has brought hot tea for the both of them. They take sips and speak of everything, trying to cram fifteen year's worth of experience into one evening. Soon the tea is gone, and her throat is dry once more. Still, they keep speaking, well into the night.
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