He said, “I can’t do it, you know I can’t. Even if I could make myself do it, I’m a human, I’m too small. It’d take me forever.” He laughed a little, saying it, hoping she’d laugh, too.
“Bones, Shelshim,” she said. Her voice was such a whisper that he couldn’t feel it in his body anymore; she actually had to pick him up one last time, bring him close to hear. “Bones, Shelshim. Cover me, leave me, you come back sometime. Please, Shelshim.”
He didn’t understand. He said, “To bury your bones. Of course I’ll do that for you. I can do that.”
She shook him then—not hard, nothing like the way they did with the rock-targs, but his head still jolted back and forth and his arms flapped around, weak as she was. “Eat,” she said. “The bones, eat. Not gone, so, not gone. Keep us, Shelshim.”
And those were the last words Yriadvele ever spoke to him. She lay down on the platform, and your grandfather covered her with the softest new boughs and twigs and leaves he could find, and she just nodded when he had it right, and closed her eyes. He sat by her all that day and night, but he couldn’t tell when she died.
He would have buried her right then, if he could have, to keep the rock-targs from finding her body and learning that the Qu’alo were mortal and gone. But there wasn’t anything he could do, not for her, not for them, so he went away and he waited, the way she told him to. I can’t tell you how long—how long does it take insects, little animals to strip away the rotting flesh from a twelve-foot giant? All I know is, as long as it took, your Grandfather Selsim lived alone in the woods, same way he’d lived for eighteen years. Except now he slept in the giants’ old nests for the comfort of the smell, and he said he talked a lot to imaginary human beings, because he needed the practice after such a time of thinking Qu’alo thoughts in Qu’alo silence. And he thought about the world he almost remembered, and about what Yriadvele had asked of him, and whenever it was that he finally went back to the scaffold and pulled away the dead branches, there were the bones, and he knew what to do with them. You’re making faces again, stop it.
No, there hadn’t been any rock-targs there, he could tell. They wouldn’t come anywhere near the smell of the Qu’alo, as they still won’t, all these years later. Your grandfather took Yriadveie’s bones, one by one, and he ground them up as fine as he could, stone against flat stone, and he ate them. No, I don’t know how long it took him, what they tasted like. I don’t know if he just ate them or drank them in water, or sprinkled them over some nice kami leaves. All I’m sure of is that he ate Yriadvele’s bones, all of them, and then he stood up from there and he walked back to the trail over Torgry Mountain, and on down the other side, and he kept walking. And in time he came to this flat, hazy country where we live today, and settled to farming, and married and started our family, all that time ago. And that’s the end of the story, and I’m in the barn, and you’re asleep, good night.
What? Well, I told you, that’s why we’re all tall, that’s why I know you’ll be tall soon enough. Now do you understand me? We’re whatever’s left of the Qu’alo, you and me and the rest of our family—they’re in our bones now, because of your Grandfather Selsim and his giant friend. Mind, we just got a bit of their height that’s all; we didn’t get the hairiness or the stink—the gods do get something right once in a while. And if any of us got any of those great, slow, wonderful thoughts, I surely haven’t noticed it. But maybe those are inside you, who knows? Who knows what a little boy who can’t keep his eyes open to ask any more questions is thinking, hey? Good night, then, good night.
What? In ten bloody years, that’s when I’ll have the strength to tell you another story. Most exhausting work I ever did. I swear I don’t know how your mother manages every night. And that bloody jejebhai’s going to wait till I’m finally asleep, I know that much for certain. Good night, boy. Let go of my hand. Good night.
THE END
PETER S. BEAGLE
Peter S. Beagle was born in 1939 and raised in the Bronx, just a few blocks from Woodlawn Cemetery, the inspiration for his first novel, A Fine and Private Place. Today, thanks to classic works such as The Last Unicorn, Tamsin, and The Innkeeper's Song, he is acknowledged as America's greatest living fantasy author; and his dazzling abilities with language, characters, and magical storytelling have earned him many millions of fans around the world.
In addition to stories and novels Peter has written numerous teleplays and screenplays, including the animated versions of The Lord of the Rings and The Last Unicorn, plus the fan-favorite “Sarek” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. His nonfiction book I See By My Outfit, which recounts a 1963 journey across America on motor scooter, is considered a classic of American travel writing; and he is also a gifted poet, lyricist, and singer-songwriter.
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The Magician of Karakosk, and Other Stories Page 28