I’m a child again, clutched tightly in her arms. Outside, the battle has been raging for hours. Fire erupted some time ago, shortly followed by horrified screams. Not Titan screams. We didn’t scream like that, not when death came to claim us. We welcomed him like an old friend.
My mother pulled the blanket off our bed and moved to the corner. She sat down and hurled it over us. To someone passing by, it might look like a pile of laundry like the others on the floor.
Fire blossomed and bled yellow puddles across the sheet. I pointed at the shadows that danced across the blanket’s surface. My mother held my finger and lowered it, shaking her head gently.
She froze when a large shadow paused in the rectangle of the entrance to our hut. My mother kept her eyes on it and placed her thick hand over my mouth. I watched, transfixed, as the shadow swelled across the sheet’s surface, growing larger.
Closer.
The shadow’s head turned one way and then the other. He lurched forward and slammed his blade into a pile of laundry. It rasped against the hard stone floor as his blade tore into it. He pulled it free and began that slow head movement once again.
My mother pressed a finger to her lips, signaling for me to keep quiet. I copied the movement. She raised the blade she kept at her waist to chop vegetables.
That shadow growled low and grunted as he edged closer still.
Mom coiled her legs under herself to spring up and attack the shadow at a moment’s notice.
And that’s when the other shadow turned up.
Bigger, more powerful. I recognized him through the blanket even without seeing his features.
My father roared as he broke into the tiny space of our hut. The creature, taken by surprise, screeched like rusty iron across an anvil before turning silent and still. He crumpled to the floor as my mother dropped the blanket and embraced my father.
He raised me to his face, already cut and bleeding. He cupped my mother’s face in his hand and kissed her. Normally, I would have groaned and turned away in disgust but this time I sensed something was different.
He led us out the door and into the darkness of the jungle. Perched on my mother’s shoulder, I saw the village I’d once called my home burned like the deepest fires of the forge, and the people I loved screamed and cried among them in blood-tinted soil.
We hustled through the village, shrill screams, and pained cries chasing us into the night. A large shadow burst from behind a hut and swung his huge sword at me and my mother.
It was a Titan.
My father was there, blocked his attack with his sword, and cut the figure down. The Titan clutched his chest, his eyes flashed yellow. His body morphed into my father before shifting again to a creature with a long face and a dozen black eyes.
I stared in wonder. I wished I could change shape like that. It must be a lot of fun.
Father grabbed my mother and led us out of the village and down a slight incline. I didn’t recognize where we were. Everything looked so different in the dark.
“Get in!” my father said.
My mother climbed into a canoe as my father shoved it forward.
Arrows thudded into the side of the boat, but my father took no notice. Shadows high up on an embankment backlit by a bonfire rained arrows down on us.
“Come with us!” my mother said.
“I cannot,” my father said. “I love you.”
And without time even to kiss her, my father waded back to shore and waved his huge arms as he drew his sword. “Hey! Here I am! Shoot me!”
“No!” Mother cried. “No!”
The arrows slowed and then stopped thudding into the boat and turned instead on my father, who ran up the embankment, sword held high.
We disappeared around a corner, wiping him from view.
I never saw my father again.
I awoke to the comforting sensation of cold cloth pressing against my blazing skin. It relaxed me. And when the cloth was taken away to dampen again in freshwater, I missed its icy kiss.
A powerful headache pulsed at my temples and shook me to my core. My eyes were clenched tightly shut and I could barely open them. When I did, a searing pain bolted from my eyeballs and down to my racing heart.
I cracked my eyes open and peered at my nurse. The female human maid called Maisie. She’d been taken prisoner aboard the Silent Shadow when I’d been little more than a deckhand. A customer ordered a human beauty, but by the time she arrived, he was all but destitute. With no intention of returning her to Earth, she was tasked with maintaining the ship and cooking our meals.
I laid prostrate on the bathroom floor. I pushed myself up and wiped the saliva from my lips. I took a moment before stumbling into my bed.
Maisie wore a frown that made her once-youthful appearance crinkle with age.
“The fever’s getting worse,” she said.
My eyes moved toward the door. I didn’t like talking about my weakness, especially when the crew could be listening.
I said, “I am a Titan. We don’t—”
“—get sick,” she completed. “I know, I know. And yet, you are sick. Very sick. If you don’t see a doctor soon, I don’t think you’ll live much longer.”
“I won’t live much longer if I don’t get some of your delicious soup in me soon,” I said, sitting up.
She moved to my desk and carried the tray over. Her skinny arms shook with the weight. She placed it on my lap. With this sickness, it was just about the only thing I could keep down. The only thing more demanding than my headache was my intense hunger.
I spooned it into my mouth and let it slide down my throat. “One of these days, you’re going to have to teach me the recipe for
