Giants at the End of the World
written by
Leena Likitalo
illustrated by
Trevor Smith
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Leena Likitalo hails from Finland, the land of endless summer days and long, dark winter nights. She lives with her husband on an island at the outskirts of Helsinki, the capital. But regardless of her remote location, stories find their way to her and demand to be told.
While growing up, Leena struggled to learn foreign languages. At sixteen, her father urged her to begin reading in English, and thus she spent the next summer wading through his collection of fantasy and science fiction novels. She has fond memories of her “teachers”: J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Jordan, Roger Zelazny and Vernor Vinge.
Leena breaks computer games for a living.
When she’s not working, she writes obsessively. And when she’s not writing, she can be found at the stables riding horses or at the pool playing underwater rugby.
Her Writers of the Future win is her third professional sale, her fiction having appeared in Weird Tales, Waylines, and semipro publications. She has recently finished writing a steampunk novel around her winning short story. She dreams—and oh, how sweet those dreams are!—of seeing it in print one day.
Leena’s first-place story is among those that will be competing for the annual grand prize, the L. Ron Hubbard Golden Pen Award.
You can visit her online at: leenalikitalo.com.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Trevor Smith has happily lived in the desert of Tucson, Arizona, most of his life, except for five years living in San Francisco while attending art school.
Loving art school but not the city he lived in, he came back to Tucson with all of the skills he needed to begin a freelance career in illustration and fine art oil painting.
His illustration degree focused on digital painting, which he uses to bring fantasy and sci-fi stories to life.
Simultaneously, Trevor is oil painting, but on entirely different subject matter. Instead of painting otherworldly subjects, he is inspired by the beauty that he sees around him. This can vary from grungy cityscapes to the pastel colors in the clouds above a landscape. Recently, even graphic cubism has ignited new inspiration.
With such a zeal for learning and sharing his creativity, Trevor revels in the fact that he will never run out of inspiration or ways to expand his art spirit. Perhaps 2014 will be the year for him to make his mark on others—whether through a peculiar cubist piece, or an evocative scene of an alien planet.
You can see everything Trevor is up to on his blog: TrevorSmithArt.blogspot.com.
Giants at the End of the World
It was the last caravan of the giant season. Though the United Company had already started to build the railroad toward the End of the World, the path of iron and wood reached only as far as Halvington. Unlike the other drivers, I realized that the era of salt wagons was coming to an end.
Perhaps Elai had expected the railroad to be ready to take her to find answers to all her existential questions. With pale hair and gray eyes, she looked about eighteen, definitely not a day older. She wore a full-length leather coat, buttoned all the way up to her chin, and boots that looked too new to be yet comfortable. Even so, when she glided down Halvington’s main street, the scrawny miners and shaggy railroad workers alike rushed to tip their hats, and some even bowed.
She noticed none of that.
“I want to buy a one-way ticket to the End of the World,” Elai said to me, her pleasant voice a disturbing breeze from the past I’d thought forever left behind.
My camel-oxen, Edison and Beat, stared at her just as I did. Every inch of her shouted of a pedigree long enough to make me dizzy, the way her mouth shaped words, how she expected to be listened to and obeyed.
“It’s cheaper to buy a round-trip,” I said, rubbing the snouts of my beasts. Edison calmed soon enough, but Beat kept on snorting. He’d never smelled anything as fine as Elai’s perfume, and the scent of lilies confused him. “There’s not much to see at the End of the World.”
“Like I care,” Elai said, the simple words akin to a foreign language. A flicker of emotion escaped to her face, but she tilted her head so that her hat’s wide brim prevented me from interpreting the expression.
“Fine then,” I said, as arguing with an aristocrat was an act doomed to fail. If she wanted to escape some hell of her own making, then who was I to try and stop a paying customer? “Stay with my wagon, don’t lag, and don’t try to steal extra portions of water. In the desert the word of a wagon driver is the law.”
We started the eleven-week journey the next day, my wagon full of water crates and paid parcels. Edison and Beat waddled, slow and heavy with all the water they’d absorbed from the communal mud puddles. The families and the loners hoping to find something better than what they’d abandoned pranced after the wagon, still enthusiastic about the journey.
Elai started to limp as soon the caravan left the valley where Halvington slumped under the ever-thick blanket of coal smoke. The assorted loners tried to strike up conversation with her one after another, only to be firmly dismissed:
“Where am I from? From beyond the sea.”
“Where am I going? To the End of the World.”
“Is there someone waiting for me back at home? That is not for you to worry about.”
Her evasive replies bored me, and so I stared at the scenery instead. This close to the city, the inevitable wastewater gave life to tufts of grass and twisted cacti that stuck out from amidst the dunes. The sand might have contained a few grains of salt, but not enough to warrant efforts to collect it. The wind came in gusts that were pleasant compared to the gales that the caravans often met.
As the day progressed, those who really intended to settle at the End of the World started to lag behind. Children tugged at their parents’ coattails, tiring already under their bundles. It would take the settlers a few days to decide it wasn’t worth the bother to carry all the materialized memories of their old lives with them. Children would abandon their toys, wives their diaries, husbands their medals.
I halted my wagon to wait for them. Elai used the opportunity to rest and sat down on the sand. Much to my surprise, she pulled off her boots and socks in a most unladylike manner.
Blisters covered her toes, and her raw heels glistened in painful shades of red. I was sure she would start complaining, but instead she simply redonned the socks and boots. Perhaps that was why I took pity on her.
“Hop on, girl,” I murmured. She would be nothing but trouble, a hindrance if her feet got infected.
“I can walk, thank you very much,” Elai said, too proud to accept help.
“Fine,” I answered, annoyed at myself for having offered her help in the first place. I flicked the reins, and Edison and Beat resumed their slow waddle. To avoid awkward conversation, I started singing.
There’s a long road ahead of us.
Where does it take me? Where, oh where?
Perhaps back in the Old World Elai had found herself indebted to someone and had fled to avoid having to pay. Or perhaps she’d broken her heart and her parents’ trust. Or perhaps … but her problems were none of my business. She’d made that clear enough.
It’s not the miles I travel that change me.
No, my friend, it’s not the miles …
I realized that someone was humming the melody. I glanced over my shoulder, but there was no one near me but Elai. She clenched her mouth shut, but didn’t stop humming.
I sang louder, even though both Edison and Beat put back their ears.
In the end it’s only the time that matters,
the days and weeks that we leave behind …
The caravan halte
d only when the night fell. The other drivers and I circled our wagons protectively around the campsite and unharnessed our camel-oxen. The beasts would return after enjoying the scarce night mist and scarcer morning dew, as they were bound to whoever had captured and tamed them. Even so, being apart from Edison and Beat for the night pained me.
As the temperature dropped, Elai joined the rest of us around the fire. She didn’t seem to notice how she attracted more looks than was good for her, how the loners edged closer to her, how those on the other side of the fire joked about who would charm her first. She just stared at the sparks disappearing into the night above as though nothing else existed but her and the desert.
I found myself thinking about the Old World and the over-polite ways of the aristocrats. Evidently, Elai couldn’t even begin to grasp how rough life could get outside private schools and ballrooms. As she shrugged her narrow shoulders and tilted her pretty head this and that way, the loners thought she was only acting hard to get.
They wouldn’t take her “No” for long.
I fell victim to the gallantry that still twisted in my veins and made my way to her. “Come with me,” I said, pointing toward my wagon.
She stared at me suspiciously, and I was glad to note she wasn’t as foolish as I’d thought. Then she stood, brushed sand off her trousers. “Sure.”
“What is it?” Elai asked as soon as we were out of earshot. Her teeth chattered, which only seemed to annoy her more.
An aristocrat would never listen to explanations, so I went right to the point. “You’d better sleep under the wagon with me tonight.”
She took my words the wrong way, and her voice rose a full octave. “I certainly will not! Abandon me in the desert if you will, but I will not grant that kind of favor to anyone, least of all a rude old wagoner like you!”
Old? I could be but a decade older than her. Then again, the desert had shaped me a rougher man.
She was about to leave, so I grabbed her hand. She froze, shocked by my apparent lack of manners. It didn’t even cross her mind that I might have known etiquette by heart but opted to act against the rules on purpose.
“Before you turn down my offer, which was by no means meant as you chose to interpret it, look at those men around the campfire,” I said in a low voice. “Really look at them.”
She pulled her hand free, but did as I said. There, amongst the ragged families, sat the men hoping to find a place where no questions were asked: pistol heroes, fugitives, adventurers down on their luck.
“Would you rather have them thinking you’re sharing your bedroll with me, or have them trying to approach you every single night of the trip?”
“Fine,” she muttered, blushing at the idea of being so close to me. She hadn’t broken her heart, then, I decided, but was escaping something. “I will sleep next to you, but nothing else.”
I watched her limp back to the campfire. She wasn’t the kind who knew how to thank.
I had been like her before I shot my best friend.
The next day, I invited Elai to ride in the wagon with me. Contrary to what I’d expected, she climbed up and sat beside me. I didn’t bother her with meaningless chitchat—she wasn’t interested in my company. For her, my wagon was just one more bead in the insignificant necklace of the caravan coiling across the red desert. For me, it was all I had.
A week into the journey, we passed the first village, a cluster of a dozen or so giant-hide tents. Elai stared at the indigenous Lasuo people, a sad frown forming on her flawless forehead. The black-haired, tanned men in the fields waved us a greeting, then resumed working. They knew the caravan would buy salt only on the way back.
“What do you think of the railroad?” Elai asked, breaking the silence that she normally preferred. Her gaze lingered on the women grinding maize and children hiding behind their backs. I could guess what she was thinking—the world was changing, and in a year or two the village would become just a fading memory.
“What is there to think about it?” I asked nevertheless. When the railroad finished, there would be no need for caravans. The Lasuo families would flee deeper into the desert as soon as they saw the first steam-screaming locomotives. They would be wise to do so.
Elai pursed her lips as she did her best to ignore the personal belongings abandoned in the sand. She failed. The caravan road was full of buried treasures, items that had once held importance for someone, only to become nonessential. Tattered photographs peeked from under the rocks; the pages of full diaries rustled in the breeze. The Lasuos never touched what they thought belonged to us, even though our kind never returned the service.
“Doesn’t it make you sad?” she asked. She’d buried her hands in the folds of her coat, and as she wrung her fingers, the leather creaked. “To see the world so diminished in size, to see it all become the same.”
I flicked the reins, though Edison and Beat were keeping up a good pace. There were still untouched deserts beyond the horizon, lands where the Lasuos could live undisturbed. When the railroad was ready, I would follow them. I didn’t want my past to catch up with me. “The world isn’t disappearing anywhere.”
Elai shook her head. At that moment she looked immensely guilty.
Three weeks into the journey, Elai’s guilt had bloomed to full-scale melancholy. She often hummed to herself, the melodies intricate, perfectly memorized. I didn’t tell her I recognized the overtures and arias. There was no reason for her to know that we shared a common upbringing.
That day we were traveling along a ledge extending over another expanse of desert. The sun scorched ceaselessly down on us, and the hides of my camel-oxen were hot enough to fry bacon. Even so, Edison and Beat had more than enough water left in their humps for the rest of the way.
“Halt,” came the shout from farther ahead in the caravan.
I pulled the reins, drawing my pistol. Though, since I’d become a wagoner, I hadn’t had to fire even once. The camel-oxen obeyed only their drivers, the outlaws knew better than to try their luck.
“Wait here,” I told Elai nevertheless.
She didn’t argue. Then again, a society girl like her expected men to act all gallant and duel to resolve the tiniest of disagreements. They never thought what killing a friend in a drunken stupor did to a man.
Haunted by the dark memories, I left her in the care of Edison and Beat.
A wagon at the front of the caravan had broken a shaft, nothing more spectacular. While the driver set to fix the damaged part, the rest of us waited. The families used the moment to eat and rest. The loners started a card game, though not one of them had anything worth losing or gaining. A group of children ran around in pointless folly.
I returned to Elai and told the news.
“Is it always like this?” Elai asked, perched on the wagon seat. She’d removed her hat to rebraid her hair, and the pale locks shimmered in the harsh sunlight.
“What is like what?” I asked her. Edison swished his tail. Beat closed his eyes.
Elai studied the endless desert, her fingers never stopping, weaving her hair. The corners of her eyes glimmered as if she thought the moment immeasurably valuable, something she would lose all too soon. “So tranquil.”
I shrugged. I’d rather lead an uneventful life than see another friend die in a meaningless display of honor. “Caravan journey, or life in general?”
Elai finished her braid with a ribbon. Just then, a boy on the ledge shouted, “Giants!”
No matter how hardened the loners were, each one of them jumped up. The cards fluttered in the hazy air long after them, making their slow way down, to be forgotten on the sand.
“Giants! There below! Giants!” the boy shouted.
As soon as I’d helped Elai down, she dashed toward the shouts, her heels kicking up sand. I walked to the gathered crowd in a leisurely fashion. The giants had even a longer way to go than we did
.
I placed myself between the loners and Elai. The men edged farther away from me. The years I’d spent as a wagoner had given me a name much darker than my actual deeds warranted.
“Giants,” Elai gasped. “They really exist!”
A group of three giants was crossing the desert below, slowly making their way back from the sea, toward the snowcapped mountains looming in the distance. And no matter that I’d seen giants a hundred times or more, a vivid recollection of the first time I’d met one at the End of the World washed over me.
The giant had been young, only twenty feet tall. Yet his hunched shoulders had been as wide as a camel-ox’s back, ochre fur scarred from fighting with older males. He’d beheld me, knife-like fangs peeking from behind chapped lips, saucer-sized nostrils flaring, deep-set eyes glinting with a curiosity of all things. He’d made a sound akin to a boulder tumbling down a cliff, expected me to answer. But I didn’t know the language of his kind, hadn’t replied, and so he’d waded into the gray sea.
Faded staccato grunts brought me back to the moment. As far as we were from the giants crossing the desert, they were small dots that I could cover with the tip of my thumb. And there, I could see now, six Lasuo men trailed the giants to mark in their maps where the giants’ footprints would leave salty pools. They, too, were just tiny specks, almost insignificant.
“They are even more beautiful than I imagined,” Elai whispered, hands clasped over her heart. It took a considerable while for her wonder to subside to curiosity. “Have you ever seen them up close?”
“Yes,” I said, thinking about the young giant. The giants woke in the spring when the mountain glaciers started to melt. When they walked, the ground beneath their clawed feet trembled. When they dived into the ocean, waves the size of houses washed against the shore. Just like the camel-oxen, the giants soaked in the water until full. Then they returned back to the glaciers to sleep through the winter. “But you wouldn’t believe the tales if I were to tell them.”