First Trip: Get Up and Walk the Land 17
The hours before morning were cold and crisp and filled with the cries of birds and insects and the howling of jackals. The moon was very bright despite looking like an orc’s rotten tusk. The night sky was clear and studded with far more stars than usual. If not for the light pollution from the megalopolis, surely the party would have seen the milky way.
The eerie glow of minarets and the bright light of guard towers appeared in the distance. This allowed the party to distinguish Jewish and Arab towns.
Still, they moved carefully. Bedouin camps would have no illumination at all, or a few small campfires if the denizens were in a festive mood. Boars, sadly, were nowhere near the discovery of fire and were as likely to maul a boy as they were to flee his noisy scrambling.
Concerned about both terrorists and mazzikin, the small party stalked through the night in silence, like elite forces in enemy territory, only occasionally consulting their phones on the lowest brightness setting to make sure they were moving in the right direction. Then Waffle cried, “Come!”
The boys came running and found her examining a puddle of black slime that reflected the slender moon above. Dor poked it with a stick and declared that it was crude oil. Eran, excited by the opportunity to prove his friend wrong, pulled out a lighter and demonstrated to everyone that this dark slime was not flammable and therefore not oil; crude, gentle, or otherwise.
“It smells, um…” Yaniv put a finger to his lip and looked upward, “sort of metallic, no?”
“I guess,” Dor said, “You’re the laboratory mouse. Now let’s move. Chop chop. We’re close. If I’m not mistaken, this is their training ground. The road should be only a few hundred meters ahead.”
The party hadn’t walked ten minutes when a sonorous dirge made them cringe and stop. Hyraxes ran, leaves shuddered, birds took wing. Eran wanted to take wing too. He was so tired.
“Waffle, do you know what it is?” he asked the Bedouin, who cocked her head in reply.
Tamar hopped on a boulder and scanned the landscape. “Sounds like some kind of a siren…”
Before anyone had time to respond, a female giant came into view, holding both hands to her mouth and emitting a sound that should rightly have come from a lighthouse. Her red shawl and ringing hair made it easy to recognize her, even in the moonlight. A colorful basket hung from her shoulder like a fashionable shopping accessory.
She stopped and squinted at the humans, as if trying to determine if they were people or just curiously-shaped rocks.
“Hi!” Tamar waved.
“Peace to you, O Children of Enos,” the giant said. “Have you seen my son and daughter?” Her voice was still uncomfortably loud, but not as gut-wrenching as her native keening. “They have not returned and sunrise is nigh. I thought mayhaps they had gone looking for you…”
“No,” Eran shouted. “They trapped us in a big basket and disappeared. We haven’t seen them since. We left a note, though.”
“I hope they didn’t get in trouble because of us…” Tamar added.
The giant’s brow furrowed. “I have seen your message, as has all the lodge. It was wrong of them to treat you thus. This is not our way. They will be punished.”
“There is no need!” Eran shouted. “We are fine. Really. It was just a misunderstanding!” Same way that putting bugs in a jar is a misunderstanding.
The giant looked around and emitted her mournful drone again. Seeing the sound come from a human-looking mouth made it even creepier.
“It does not matter.” She sighed. “They have committed evil by forsaking the training ground. My heart is heavy for such is not their usual way. Have they divulged to you any hint of their schemes?”
“Don’t assume the worst about them…” Yaniv said. “Maybe they just fell into a ditch and broke their legs?”
Dor smacked Yaniv on the back of the head. “Yaniv, shut up and never talk again.”
“No,” Eran shouted. “They said something about gems. They said they knew a place…”
“I know not of any gems.” The giant sighed. “O, if only the fire giant was here. He could read tracks as plainly as if they were letters on a wall. To my plain eyes, all ground looks the same. Now I fear some ill has befallen my children, and I am powerless to help them.”
Despite being the size of a bus standing on his hind wheels, the giant looked so crestfallen Eran was tempted to give her ankle a hug.
“Okay, listen. Children are assholes. Look at Yaniv here. No control over what comes out of his mouth. Ninety percent asshole. Children nowadays don’t respect their parents, don’t value anything, forget expensive stuff in the bus station, don’t call when they promise, and when they’re in a bad mood they make sure everyone else is in a bad mood. Didn’t you ever do anything that wasn’t permitted when you were their age?”
Yaniv nodded in agreement like only an old man trapped in a young boy’s body could. Eran waited for the giant to reply but she just stared at him like a fish on a plate.
“So yeah, maybe once in a million years your kids skipped practice and went to do something fun. They’re probably too afraid to come back because you guys make a big deal out of everything. Let’s search for them together, okay? We can talk to them, you know, like mediate a peace deal?”
“Hey, nice use of Occam’s disposable razor,” Dor muttered. “And thanks for volunteering us to broker the second most difficult peace deal in the middle east after we’ve been up for almost twenty four hours.”
“Treasure, dragon, fame, a giant bodyguard,” Eran muttered back. “Besides, how hard can it be to find them? They’re the size of mastodons!”
“Actually,” Yaniv said, “mastodons were larger. They’re closer in size to prehistoric rhinos. The reason for this false impression is—”
“Say ‘actually’ one more time,” Dor hissed, “and you’ll be picking broken teeth with broken fingers.”
Oblivious to the humans’ bickering, the giant rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Our ways are not your ways, but there is but one father in heaven.” She looked up, as if making sure this was indeed the case. “I was an unruly child and was often admonished by my elders. I once spent six nights outside without permission. It stands to reason my children would inherit this wickedness. Have they given you no indication at all in what direction they might have gone?”
“Well, no… But we can still help, right?” Eran looked at his friends. They nodded with various degrees of reluctance.
The giant lowered her gaze. “You are closer to the ground. You may perceive that which is concealed from me.” She narrowed her eyes at Tamar. “You are certain you are of priestly blood?”
“Yes!” the girl shouted. “I am Kogan, just like my dad. I can even do the shin thing with my fingers. Look!” Tamar raised her hand in a Vulcan salute. “Only priests can do that!”
The giant stared at the girl for a long time. Finally, she nodded, the playground in her hair jingling like a lot of cans on a string. “Then I see no prohibition against accepting your help. May God reward you for your charity.”
“Okay, so as for clues…” Tamar produced the azure bead they found the day before. “We found this yesterday. It looks you-sized. Do you know what it is? We also found some black goo nearby. Looks like oil.”
“Black?!” Red Shawl gasped. “Like blood?!”
“Ummm…” the group intoned like a gathering of Buddhist monks in meditation. Yaniv pulled out his bottle, twisted off the cap, and handed it to the giant. She gingerly took it between forefinger and thumb and sniffed.
“It is blood!” she cried. “Oh, may God preserve my children! And this bead! They often make small gifts to put in my hair, perhaps some evil,” the giant’s voice quavered, “seduced them with promises of such gifts…” The giant grabbed two fistfuls of earth and threw it into the air, showering the whole company with dust and pebbles. “I’d wrestle with Leviathan for my children, but where? Where?!”
Eran shook dust from his hair. “I think we should return to your cave and ask the others to help. The more we are the better.” He sighed deeply. This was the right thing to do, but this meant more walking and more talking and he was so very, very tired.
The giant shook her head. “Without a decree from the decisor, no one will aid me. They will say that all is as God desires and it is a great transgression to strive to undo His will.”
“Okay, but this must be the exception,” Tamar shouted as if talking to a hearing-impaired person. “Your children are missing and we found blood on the ground. It’s probably nothing, one of them must have stepped on a sharp rock or something, but still…”
The giant shook her head slowly. “The decisor has never decreed in my favor…” Her voice trailed off into bitterness. “No one ever has.”
“C’mon!” Eran urged the giant. “What harm can it do?”
***
While Red Shawl petitioned the decisor in the grating language of giants, the party studied more elaborate cave paintings deeper inside the cave. The crude illustrations told a story that started with the usual narrative of Adam and Eve but then deviated to follow the offspring of the Wild Daughters of Cain and the Children of God.
There was construction and repair work performed for kings and priests, and pinning down with blue rocks of triangles that kept trying to fly away. There was also some lassoing of huge birds and crocodiles. In one instance, a crocodile had a rider with long black hair dotted with silver and gold. Angels were also depicted, usually placing obstacles in front of giants or pestering them like oversized flies.
Red Shawl must have said something quite outrageous because the entire cave was paying close attention to the conversation. The scribe in the yellow skirt kept raising his hand and half opening his mouth before letting his hand fall and his shoulders slump.
Red Shawl finished speaking and looked pleadingly at the decisor. The ancient giant looked at her through half shut eyes that suggested infinite exasperation. His speech was slurred, as if even moving his tongue was too much effort. Having finished his reply, he waved her away with a languid flick of his wrist.
Red Shawl got on her knees. The decisor shooed her away like she was a bothersome fly. She moved to kiss his foot but he pushed her away. Eran felt sick seeing this beautiful creature humiliating herself.
Red Shawl turned to plead with the rest of the giants. She spoke with pain, exhaustion, and grief. She didn’t get as much as a sniffle in return.
She turned back to the decisor but as soon as she opened her mouth, he slapped her. Red Shawl massaged her jaw, looking dazed. Someone giggled. She whirled like a dancing dervish and punched the decisor with enough force to knock him off his throne, the ground shaking with the force of the impact.
At once, several males picked up boulders and calcified trees and moved menacingly in her direction. Other giants cried, gasped, and swore. Red Shawl raised her hands into the air. The males lowered their weapons but their gazes remained hostile. Meanwhile, the old bastard struggled to get up as if battling invisible waves.
Ignoring her agitated cavemates, Red Shawl walked across the cave with an air of haughty indifference, only pausing to pick up her basket. The humans followed, half walking, half running to keep up with the giant’s brisk walk of shame.
The scribe reached for Red Shawl, but his hand dropped under the withering gaze of an older female. Red Shawl didn’t spare either a second glance as she walked out of the cave with her chin held high.
“Well,” Yaniv said once the party was under the night sky again. “Now we know what harm it can do.”
Dor cleared his throat. “Listen, I can—”
Red Shawl fell to her knees and started sobbing. Black tears mixed with earth stained her face as she wailed in a volume that was as painful to the ears as it was to the heart. The humans scattered as she tore at her shawl and pummeled the ground and threw earth in all directions.
Eran looked away from the giant’s grief, the wetness in his eyes warping the landscape into something amorphous and ugly. He really needed her to stop crying or he’d start crying himself.
He waited for a long time.