First Trip: Get Up and Walk the Land 14
The young giants broke into a run that nearly relieved Dor of his other foot. The painting crone whispered to her living canvas. The pregnant giant giggled. Eran smiled at her. She scowled back.
A giant with a great black mane and a scar that parted his chest like a lightning bolt shook his head disapprovingly. The giant who painted on the walls shrugged helplessly as if saying, “don’t look at me, I just work here.”
“The Name preserve us!” Dor said as soon as he and his living crutches caught up with the girls. “This creature is a military grade asshole.”
“Shh!” Eran hissed. “Maybe he can hear us!” They passed by a female dressed in a black car cover. She stared blankly into space as a toddler tried to fit an olive branch into her ear.
Dor snorted. “I doubt it. His rock seems to require the use of all his brain cells. Both of them!”
Eran glanced back. The wrinkled decisor had picked up his pet rock and resumed his attempts at communication. The humans passed between three giants admiring a rock with some dirt on top of it. None looked in the humans’ direction, which made sense because no matter how interesting you are, you will never be as interesting as a rock with some dirt on top of it.
Red Shawl’s daughter, already at her mother’s side, tapped her thigh like she was calling a dog. Eran rolled his eyes. He had no intention of being a pet. In fact, according to the decisor, he was now a secondhand prophet.
Eran wondered when the treaties mentioned by the decisor were last used. Did someone in a suit come from Jerusalem in a helicopter to sign a document as large as a carpet? Did the dignitary hold a giant pen in both hands like it was a broom? Maybe it was some general on a horse in British or Turkish times? Maybe it was someone they studied about in Bible class? Was the government of Israel aware it had a treaty with these people? If he convinced the giants to teach him Keys and Sigils, would Eran and his friends be the only humans in the world in possession of this skill? Would it grant them superpowers? What would Eran’s superhero name be? Was there a chance of screwing up a Key and meeting something terrible? Was there a toilet in the cave?
Eran noticed ghostly lights slowly drifting around some vaguely egg-shaped stones near the entrance to the cave. He pointed at the pale illumination. “What’s that?”
“Our placeholders,” the giant boy said. “No one goes there because our cousins live there and they are annoying but we must still respect them so we cannot punch them.”
“What do you eat?” the giant girl asked. Her cheeks were stained with black tears, giving her the appearance of a kindergarten goth.
“They eat very small rocks!” her brother blurted.
“I was not talking to you!” The girl scowled. “Children of Enos, what do you eat?”
“Other Children of Enos!” The boy’s laughter sounded like a cement mixer filled with rocks and happiness. The girl growled and used her shoulder to literally push her brother out of the conversation. The young behemoth was caught off balance and stumbled against a wall. The cave trembled.
This only increased the young giant’s mirth. “They eat the placeholders of bad Cainites!” The boy roared with laughter, shaking the ground with his convulsions and drawing many disapproving glances from the cave’s older denizens. “They eat the droppings of dragons!”
“Children! Behave!” Red Shawl barked from her colorful corner.
Tamar smiled. “We have our own food, thank you.”
“I saw a dead cow in the hills,” Red Shawl’s daughter said thoughtfully. “You eat animals, no?”
“Stop teasing the humans,” Red Shawl said. “It is not dignified. You know that an animal found in the field is terefah.”
Eran picked up the cue. He spoke loudly and clearly like he did with his grandmother. “We have food! Thank you!”
“I wonder what they eat…” Yaniv mused.
“Stones, I guess.” Dor frowned. “They don’t seem to be interested in anything else.”
Tamar grinned. “They’re interested in us…”
Red Shawl’s children left the humans to discuss something with their mother. It seemed negotiations didn’t go their way, as is usually the case in child-parent negotiations.
Red Shawl’s daughter returned to the humans. She sighed deeply. “Mother says we must finish our training and that you cannot come with us.”
The giant girl leaned over the humans so that her face filled their entire field of vision. When she spoke, her breath washed over them like a hot summer wind. At least she doesn’t have bad breath, Eran thanked God or whatever deity was responsible for the dental hygiene of giants. “Do not eat the dead cow. It is terefah. My brother made a bad joke.”
Eran gave her a thumbs up. “We’ll do our best to resist this temptation.”
“Ew— Ow!” Tamar’s vomiting girl impression was interrupted when Eran flicked her on the back of the head. She looked at him vindictively and smacked him back.
“Stop it!” Dor hissed and flashed his teeth in what was either a terrible fake smile or a slightly above average simian battle face.
The boy stuffed some freshly painted stones into his basket. “Do you wish to see our placeholders?”
“Do not tarry,” Red Shawl growled. “Surely the children of Enos will honor you with their presence once you graduate in six days.” She looked down at the humans. “Wait a while before you leave or my children will give you no peace on your return journey. Surely, you thirst and hunger and desire to sleep in this late hour.”
“But mother!” her son whined. “Surely we can at least show them the placeholders. They are near the exit. They can walk with us until the end of the cavern and then our paths will divert.”
“This is acceptable to me.” The woman’s attention returned to her basket. “But do not try my patience. After the last placeholder, your paths diverge. Do not shame me by failing your exam.”
The giant girl grinned and whispered to the humans. “I will find a big basket that will protect you from our annoying cousins if you cross paths with them…” She started going through the pile of baskets by her mother, testing each for weight and shape. “We will show you our dragon when we return. We will hold you high over the tophet so it does not burn you.”
Tamar glanced at the children’s mother, engrossed in her work again. “What if we come visit you during the day?”
“We’re not here during the day,” the boy said.
Tamar raised her eyebrows. “Where are you?”
“In the garden… come, we will show you the placeholders.”
“So what is a placeholder?” Eran asked the giants as they walked for the exit, “and who should we be worried about?”
The man in the junkyard also mentioned placeholders. Eran wondered if these were the same placeholders. Did this man plan to steal these rocks? Eran could imagine plenty of easier ways to commit suicide than to go against bulletproof giants who could hurl watermelon-sized rocks over the horizon…
“Placeholders,” the boy said petulantly. “They hold us in place.”
They were walking through the bluish rocks now, their silvery veins brightly reflecting the phone lights. The ghostly shapes they saw earlier were gone.
Red Shawl’s daughter nodded. “No one ever visits this spot because of our annoying cousins. It can be our secret place. The basket will protect you while we are away.”
“Protect us from who?!” Dor cried. “Are these rocks like the eggs from Alien? Do they rape your face?”
Eran rolled his eyes. Of course these preteen, antediluvian, cave-dwelling, half-angels are up-to-date on horror fiction tropes.
“These, um, placeholders are very pretty,” Tamar said. “Thank you for showing them to us. Now, we really need to go home because we almost ran out of water and food… but don’t be sad, we’ll return soon!”
While Tamar spoke, Red Shawl’s daughter threw the basket into the air, showering the humans with dust and gravel, then caught it upside down with both hands, looking pleased with herself.
Eran’s guts twisted as he realized what was about to happen. “Don’t do this!”
His plea was drowned by the sound of an outsized picnic basket coming down like a giant mousetrap. The party bolted in all directions but was too slow. The cave was replaced by a prison of reeds and branches through which almost nothing could be glimpsed. The giants giggled and skipped away, ignoring the gaggle of shouting humans behind them.