Perhaps that is what they were waiting for. To hear me scream. It was obvious they intended to eat me but had not done so at once. Why?
Vengeance, Jinian, I told myself. They want to hear you scream, girl. Want you to struggle. Cry out. Beg.
They will eat Jinian then. But not until then. Perhaps.
So she would not scream. Would not let herself make any sound.
Out of this frantic fear I heard an old voice, long remembered, harsh as a slap across the face.
“Enough, Jinian. Consider water.” Murzy’s voice, coming clearly even through this hysteria and fear. So I took a deep breath and considered water. The dams had always suggested this as a way of recovering calm and good sense. I considered water in all its aspects, raging and still, bringing myself at last to a kind of quiet.
Outside the low archway, in the light, something moved from right to left. By raising my head from the pole I could see its shadow. There was something familiar in that shadow.
“Our vengeance approaches,” rumbled the voice of the Dream Miner. “Are you content at that?”
“Who can say?” the answer came, a whisper, something familiar about that voice. “Who can say if we will be content?”
“You have planned it. These hundreds of years, you’ve worked at it, as we have. It was you who began it.”
“And yet, who can say we will be content? Some of us think not.”
“Faugh. Some of you are witless fools, hiding in your graves like rotten nuts in their shells.”
“Still, they are some of us. We feel their absence, Giant One. As you might feel Storm Grower’s absence if she were reft from you.”
“In which I would delight,” came the other giant’s voice. “I would walk the world in joy.”
“You could not walk the world at all,” said the Miner. “Nor could I. We have grown too great for our bones to carry us. Never mind.” The great voice paused, then continued speaking to the smaller creature, whatever it was. “No, never mind. Vengeance will come from here, at last, as it was begun a thousand years ago when you gathered up all the blue crystals and brought them here.”
“Which some of us have since regretted.”
“Fools. Hadn’t you suffered enough at men’s presence?”
“We thought so, then.”
“And now?”
“Some of us still think so. Though we may find our vengeance bitter.” There was a titter then. Highpitched; the sound a bird makes in the night when it only dreams of singing.
“It wearies me,” whined Storm Grower. “Send it away. Then give me one. I’m hungry.” There was a great huffing sound, as of lungs compressed. Into the light came great groping fingers.
One of the poles was pulled outward into that light and the munching sound began. Another pole followed. And then two more. Chewing, swallowing noises, a scream. One of the poles had carried live meat. Now there were only three left. The ones on either side of me and the one I was lashed upon.
I began to rip at my clothing. Perhaps they had left me the Dagger. If I could get to the Dagger, I could cut the ropes. It took only a moment to find what a vain hope that was. The scabbard lay at the back of my thigh, tight between my leg and the pole, bound there.
The Seer. She had seen me falling to the Oracle.
She had seen the Dagger being of no help to me. Of course they had left it. As they had left my pack, out of reach. Out of hope.
I fumbled at my waist, trying to find the cord on which my pouch was hung. It was tangled deep in the fabric of the pantaloons, lost in them, which was probably why I had it still on me. If they had seen it or felt it, they would have taken it.
I worried it out at last, opening it to pour the contents onto my chest. The amethyst crystal in which Huldra’s sending was trapped. The yellow crystal from the mines outside Fangel. The blue one Beedie had given me. A few restorative herbs. A tiny bottle of scent, shaped like a frog. A lock of Peter’s hair. My fragment from the well of the sevens. I lay, head up, looking down at these few things. After a time I returned all but two of them to the pouch, shoving it inside my shirt.
The munching had stopped and the breathing sounds from the cavern had become louder, slower, as though the giants slept. Soon this breathing was succeeded by snoring, great rumbling sounds, rhythmic as tides.
I braced my feet and arms against the rock on either side of the pole and pushed, trying to drag it back, out of the light. It moved a finger’s width.
Again. Again a tiny movement. I timed the pushes to coincide with great snores. Once again. And again.
Over and over, endlessly, exhaustingly. I was wet, even in the clammy cold of the cavern, soaked with the sweat of this effort. Push, and push again. The creature on my left was almost even with me now. I reached out to touch it. My fingers were a hand’s width from the thing’s mouth. I needed its mouth.
Push again. The snores stopped. A giant mumbled in his sleep. A giantess answered in hers. Again the breathing of sleep. Push, and push again. My legs felt as though they had been dipped in fire. I could reach the thing’s mouth.
I took the amethyst crystal in one hand, reaching out. I was trembling. My hand was slick with sweat. I dropped it, dropped it, rolling about on the stony floor.
Tears then, silent and bitter and exhausted. And after the tears some measure of resolution. I rolled as far to my left as I could, explored the floor with my hand. It could not have gone far.
Fragments of rock. Bits of bone. Things filthier than these. And then the hard, faceted shape of it in my fingers. I
