by Emma Hamm
The Unicorn’s horn dug into his thigh as he moved. It was a comforting reminder why he was still here. Why he was taking the chance to trust a woman he did not know.
He crested the stone rise, sparse shrubs rustling around him, and stared down at Mercy. She stood at the edge of nothing. The white shirt wrapped around her fluttered as she stared down the edge of a cliff. Her toes hung over open air. Her red hair streamed in the wind like a banner of war.
There was no blue sky before her. Only gray clouds obscuring their future like a shield.
He slowed.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Where we are supposed to be.”
“They’re still chasing us.”
“Let them.”
He inched towards her and looked down into the mist swirling below them. There was no escape from here. They were trapped. Anger tore at his mind, red and powerful.
“You led us to a dead end,” he said. “We’ll be captured for certain.”
Bluebell whimpered. “We can’t go back there.”
Mercy’s burning gaze settled on him, but she did not speak. Her hair burned and cracked like a whip around her. One long strand lashed out against his cheek. He knew he would bear that mark for a while.
She was everything he had never thought to want. Wind. Fire. Fury. Uncontrollable elements that would never make sense to him. She was destruction.
“Well?” He called out. “We’re done now. You’re going back to that little cell with me.”
“Oh Jasper,” she murmured. “Have you no faith in me at all?”
The wind carried great billows of mist over them, muting their surroundings. Dark forms gathered on the crest of the hill; Malachi’s soldiers, all large, powerful creatures. And here Jasper stood, with a mad woman. Teleporting was an option, but his mind was moving so quickly he could not not remember any part of the forest with enough detail to reach it.
Mercy reached out, trailing her fingertips along his jaw and forcing him to look at her. Even her smallest touches burned.
“Trust me,” she said. “You have to learn to trust me.”
She gently nudged him backwards. He stepped away from the edge and towards Malachi’s men. Trusting her was not easy, for she was not predictable. He had no idea what she had up her sleeve.
He had a feeling that it would involve a significant amount of death.
Her hands glowed, brighter and brighter until the light burned. She threw her head back, and the flames grew, until she was a pillar of light. A figure — tall, broad, and strong — stepped out of the fire. Jasper shielded his eyes with a hand as the human-shaped sun hovered in front of Mercy.
He winced as Malachi’s men shouted. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he was certain it was a warning. They would kill her.
The clarity of the thought lanced through him. They would remove her from this world even if she was useful to Malachi. His plan moved forward whether she was alive or dead.
“Mercy!” Jasper shouted. He did not know if he was saying her name or begging.
The skin of his raised arm blistered, and the stench of burning hair filled his nostrils. His flesh tingled with heat. But Jasper would not move farther away from Mercy, fearful that a bolt of magic would push her over the edge.
Then he heard it. A great, groaning sound that rolled across them and made the earth shudder and shake.
The mist stirred.
From the grey swirls, a large shape emerged. Jasper’s eyes widened as he watched the figure walk towards them and then realized it wasn’t a figure at all. It was a head. And the closer it came, the larger it appeared.
Attached to the head was a body unlike anything Jasper had ever seen. It was a man but larger than a man. It was four of him, no five, impossibly tall. Impossibly large. And each step it took made the earth quake.
Laughter erupted from Mercy’s chest, and she opened her arms wide as though she welcomed the Giant.
Jasper felt sick. This was a Giant. Not a man possessed by the soul of a Giant but a real life creature. Jasper distantly heard the clattering of metal as Malachi’s men dropped their weapons and ran.
The Giant reached the edge of the cliff and leaned down to look at Mercy. Her hair and the man of flames stirred in his breath. Impossibly large lips stretched into a smile as the Giant met her gaze.
Embarrassingly enough, Jasper’s knees went weak. He tried to catch himself, but the earth was coming up to meet him. He fell flat onto his face and fainted dead away.
10
“Do you think he’s all right?” Mercy asked.
“I suppose he will be.” The rumbling voice replied. The words were slow and quiet. Steady, like the Giant they belonged to. “I’m an unusual sight for one such as him.”
“You have a good point. Still, I didn’t expect him to faint.”
The Giant chuckled. “Neither did I.”
She was perched upon his shoulder, holding on to the top of his head for balance. When it came to Giants, Tiny really wasn’t all that big. She could just manage to sit on his shoulder if she leaned. He was somewhere around twenty-four feet tall, when Giants of old were closer to fifty. He was the same size as their children.
Tiny graciously carried Jasper under his arm like a football. At least then he could hold onto him solidly. Even for a Giant, carrying two people was tiring. Tiny was a kind and gentle soul, always trying his best to make people happy. And there weren’t many like him left.
The best part about Mercy’s Giant friend was that he always had something to eat in his pockets. Mercy was crunching into an apple and pleasantly enjoying the ride. She chewed for a few moments before wiping her mouth on her arm.
“Thank you for picking us up,” she said.
“It is my pleasure to finally meet you in person. Ignes has told us much about you.”
“He’s a good man. He tried to keep me as involved as he could.”
“He did a good job.” Tiny held a large broomstick in one hand. Ignes was placed on the straw end, setting it merrily on fire. “We all feel as though we know you.”
“I should hope so. I sent enough messages through the flames.”
She grabbed onto Tiny’s hair as a loud laugh made his entire body shake. “And quite the messages, little one! You should hold your tongue. I’ve met sailors who’ve had milder vocabularies than you.”
“Oh hush!” She gave his hair a gentle yank. “I’m not that bad.”
“You certainly are.” He shifted his hold on Jasper. “Is it normal for humans to not wake up while being jostled?”
“I think he’s exhausted. And also seeing you was probably quite the fright.”
“Did he not know?”
“I told him.” She bit into the apple again and spoke around a full mouth. “But he said he didn’t believe it.”
“Foolish.” Tiny shook his head. “Do they really think that the world is going to stay the same forever?”
“That’s what I said!” She finished off her apple and threw it into the distance. “I told him that magic would take back the world. I said that there were plenty of humanoid creatures, and those were the ones that remained in the cities. The ones who aren’t so human looking go back to their roots. They follow the call of the trees, the dirt, the ancient humming of stone calls to its creatures.”
“And sometimes, even the humanoid creatures hear the call.” Tiny reached up to pat her foot, which brushed his ribs.
This was another reason why he had always been her favorite. He understood her in a way that she didn’t think others could. Tiny was an anomaly. He shouldn’t have grown so big. Or, at least, no one had thought it was possible.
There were other Giants in the world. They were big humans, certainly, but they weren’t like him. He was unusual, strange, an oddity that didn’t fit in with the rest of them.
For that, she loved him all the more. The tension inside of her had eased when he had lumbered towards them. And her heart relaxed for the
first time since she had been sealed beneath the World Tree.
“How many times did Ignes visit, do you think?” she asked.
“Oh, hundreds,” he replied. “I remember him visiting when I was just a little boy. He used to show up in the fire and tell me not to cry. I was bigger than all the other children, and I thought it made me ugly.”
She leaned down to look at him. Upside down and far too close to his face to really get a good look, she gave him a critical once over. “Ugly is still debatable. You sure look like a Giant to me.”
Tiny guffawed. He shrugged a shoulder, shifting her back in place. “Careful. You’ll fall off, and I won’t be able to catch you.”
“Why not? You’re stronger than any man in the known world!”
“A strong man whose hands are currently full.”
“Oh.” She sighed and leaned back against his head. “You can drop him if you’d like. We might travel faster.”
“Do you wish me to?” He lifted Jasper up so she could see his lolling head. “I’ve never met a Fairy in real life. Thought perhaps it would be interesting to speak with him.”
“Probably not. He’s not a very interesting person.”
“No?”
“He’s much too interested in following rules. Not to mention that I rub him the wrong way. Everything I say makes him angry.”
Tiny shrugged the shoulder she was not seated on. “I suppose that’s a good thing. Women who make men angry are usually the ones they like the most.”
She tugged his earlobe. “Are you trying to give me dating advice?”
“Wouldn’t need to. You’re beauty incarnate. Any man you wish to have will follow you on his knees for a few moments of your time.”
Mercy pressed her hands against her chest dramatically. “Oh sweet Giant, keep whispering sonnets in my ears!”
They laughed together, and for the first time in her memory, she experienced what it was like to truly have friends. Long-repressed memories bubbled to the surface. She used to be a nice person. She and her friends had enjoyed nights out. Skinny dipping in the river when no one was looking. Drinking at the bars and waiting for other friends to come get them.
She didn’t want to remember her old life so vividly. Being a Phoenix now meant all the things she wanted to do were off limits. She would hurt someone.
Not Tiny. She didn’t think she could hurt Tiny even if she tried. It was easy to let her guard down around him. It was easy to joke, to laugh, to poke fun at.
Her heart ached. This was what she had missed for so many years. She might be a little rusty at being sociable, but it was easier with Tiny. He knew her story. He knew what she had gone through, and didn’t think less of her for it.
She would always respect him for that.
“Are the others waiting for us?” she asked.
“Of course. But we moved since the last time you sent Ignes to us.”
“Really? I liked the last spot. That was quite a pretty little place in the woods. You had even built a cabin for the others!”
“Someone found us,” Tiny said.
He never sounded angry, never grumbled, and hardly ever spoke ill of someone. But Mercy was angry for him. No one had any right to push them out of their homes. He and his band of misfits were closer to her than her own family had been. She hated to hear that they had to move because yet another person could not accept them.
“Mercy,” Tiny said with a laugh, “you’re burning me.”
She snatched her hand away from his ear and beat out the flames on her arms. Only when she had sufficiently cooled down did she reach out to rub the burn mark.
“I’m sorry, Tiny. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“You got angry again?”
“Yes,” she growled.
“I thought you were working on that?”
“I was.”
“Unsuccessfully, I take it?”
She didn’t answer that question. Instead, she stared directly ahead and watched the tops of the trees. Ignes had let her talk through the flames to these people, when he wasn’t too tired. Tiny and Mercy’s last conversation had been about her learning to control her anger at the world. He’d said she needed to be careful about who she directed that anger towards. She’d said she would direct it towards anyone who deserved it.
“Your anger is too strong a force,” he said now, the words mirroring the past. “You cannot point it in any direction and expect someone to survive it. You are not made of feathers, but of lava and pain. If you expect a person to survive your wrath, you must be careful with it.”
“I know, I know.” She kicked her feet. “But I don’t have any reason to hide what I am.”
“We all hide who we are,” Tiny said as he ducked beneath a particularly large tree. “Why do you think we all hide here? We do not want the rest of the world to see us. And we are not the only ones to do so.”
“Why are you still hiding anyways?” Mercy grumbled. “I remember your mother. She was nearly as large as you. It’s a miracle her husband managed to even get her pregnant. After all this time, you should be living in a home that was built for you. You should have children!”
He snorted. “Children?”
Mercy’s face burned beet red. “All right, maybe not a bushel of them, but at least one! Surely there’s another Giantess out there who wants a family too? Settle down. Have a farm. Maybe a couple giant pigs?”
“It is not time.”
“When is it going to be time? It’s never time, and it never will be time unless you make it!”
Tiny shook his head, and she frantically grasped his hair to avoid being unseated. “People are not yet ready. We cannot force them to accept our existence. They still want to believe that the creatures are not changing their world overly much. Let them play in their new power and not realize just how much they are going to have to accept.”
Mercy crossed her arms and hooked her toes into his armpit. “They’re going to have to accept it sometime.”
“You are young and rash. You do not understand how much they will have to accept. We do not need another witch hunt on our shoulders.”
“I’m older than you!”
“You do not act like it,” he told her as he stepped into a clearing.
Very gently, he placed Jasper on the ground. Tiny had a talent for delicacy, despite the size and impossible strength of his hands. Just watching how careful he was with Jasper warmed her heart.
Mercy huffed out a breath, but did not complain when he reached for her. His fingers wrapped around her ribs snugly. Ignes had told her that Tiny had never crushed anyone accidently. Rumor had it that other Giants had experienced difficulty in that regard.
He deposited her onto the ground next to Jasper’s limp form and then held the burning broom before Mercy. Like a mother reaching for her child, she held out her arms. Ignes jumped onto her. His flames tingled as they ran along her body. He always checked to make sure she didn’t need him.
She pet him as she spun on her heel.
“Come on, Tiny,” she said in excitement, “I want to see it for real this time.”
The Giant shook his head and raised his hands. The air in front of her shimmered and parted like a curtain at the opening of a play. And why shouldn’t it? This was the greatest performance the forest could offer.
Brightly colored tents appeared all around them. Small and compact, they housed the strange and wicked creatures that called this place home. For the first time, Mercy was going to meet them face-to-face.
One of the tent flaps lifted, and a Hag emerged. Not a human possessed by a Hag, but a true creature in the form she was meant to hold. Her back was bent nearly in half, showcasing a significant hump, and her skin was mottled gray. In place of her mouth and nose was a beak that clacked as the Hag’s eyes raised to meet hers.
“Mercy?” High pitched and grating, her voice was not muffled by the beak. Anyone else might have winced.
Not Mercy. She had desired to meet these pe
ople for longer than she could recall. And now she was here.
Mercy was overwhelmed as the others began to step out of their tents. A Hippocampus, more horse than fish, bobbed its head in greeting. A Centaur rose to his feet, regal and imposing. A Thunderbird flew above her and landed with a soft thud.
“You’re all here.” Her voice cracked with emotion.
“We’re all here.” The Hag nodded as she said the words. As Mercy met her gaze again, the Hag’s eyes crinkled with laughter. “And you are finally here in person.”
She felt as though she had come home. Though she had only sent them messages through Ignes and his flames, their words had kept her alive. Her mind had not wandered nearly as much as it could have because they had welcomed her into their community without fear or judgement.
These kind hearted creatures looked at her as one of their own. Mercy did not know how to thank them, she owed a debt to them that could not be repaid. She did not know how to be a person who was kind and good. They deserved that.
So she hesitated. Her fingers curled into fists at her sides, and Ignes burned a hole in her shirt.
The Thunderbird stamped its foot and spread its wings wide. “Well?” Its great booming voice made her head ache. “Are you going to say hello or not?”
“Yes.” She laughed as the dams burst open. “Yes, I am!”
She ran towards them, a burning pillar of woman, but none of them flinched. They knew she could not control her powers in this moment, nor did they expect her to. They had all been there once before.
The Hippocampus snorted a fine mist that put Mercy’s fire out the moment she reached the Hag. Though the woolen robes that enveloped Mercy smelled slightly of must and burnt hair, she could not be happier.
The Hag was a mother. Kindness and honor had saturated the messages she sent while Mercy slept. The Hag’s wrinkled hand pat Mercy’s head and pressed her further into warmth and comfort.
“You’re home now, girl,” the Hag told her. “Welcome home.”
Ignes burned so hot against Mercy’s chest that she was certain he would burn the old woman. Mercy pulled back and reached up to dry her eyes.