Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle

by Peter S. Beagle

  “Keep me?” asked your Grandfather Selsim. “What are you talking about?” And now, now he was frightened as he hadn’t been before, not when he was looking right into the rock-targ’s maw, not even when he knew the giants were quarrelling about whether he should live or die. “Why keep me? What for?”

  “Why, to study, of course,” Dudrilashashek answered him. “For we are a thoughtful folk, and pay all the attention we can to everything that crosses our lives—rock-targs or the tiniest waterbugs, it is all one to us. It is what we were put here for, we Qu’alo—to study, to consider, to turn over logs and stones and ideas equally, to learn what lies underneath. For that, and that alone, we were made.”

  What? That was what they called themselves, the Qu’alo. Means “The Proper People,” if I remember it right. They never thought they were giants, by the way. They just thought humans were stunted.

  Well now, between one thing and another, your Grandfather Selsim had had a really bad day. He put his hands on his hips, and he leaned back and shouted up into that giant’s face, “You’ve made the wrong choice, big one! You can kill me, but you can’t keep me here to be bloody studied! If I’m a bug, very well then—you just try guarding a bug every single minute of the day and night. This bug will be through your fat, clumsy fingers, down the road and long gone before you take your next bath. Which had better be pretty soon, by the way.” Oh, he was definitely in a mood, and just getting warmed up, too.

  But Dudrilashashek still didn’t get angry. No, he kept on smiling that huge sweet smile, and he said back to your grandfather, “Please, little friend, if I seem callous, forgive me—it is merely that I am so glad of you. It is a lonely affair, being the only creatures in the world aware both of the world and of ourselves in it. Would you be offended now if I picked you up, just for a closer look? Being most careful, I promise.”

  Well, you can imagine Grandfather Selsim took his time over that one. He didn’t think he was going to like being scooped up like a baby, like a pet, dangling between those immense hands, or flat on his back with his legs in the air, rocked in the curve of an elbow bigger than himself. Still, Dudrilashashek had asked very politely, considering he didn’t have to, and your grandfather always appreciated politeness, especially from giants. So he said, “All right, but gently does it, then. And no upside-down business, understood?”

  And Dudrilashashek answered him, “My word on it,” and lifted him as carefully as he’d promised, one hand giving him a place to stand, the other steadying him with two fingers, so lightly your grandfather hardly felt the grip at all. The giant raised him up until their eyes were on a level and stared at him, just clucking with fascination, like your Aunt Kelya when she hasn’t seen you for a while. “Look at that!” he kept saying, “you have fingernails almost like ours,” and again, “Look at that—why, I think you could grow a beard like a real Qu’alo, if you fancied.” Your Grandfather Selsim didn’t know whether to fall down in his hand laughing, or to stand there and gape for realizing that everyone thinks they’re the only Proper People in the world.

  He didn’t do either one. He kept his balance, and his dignity, pretty much, and he let Dudrilashashek sniff him all over without. saying a word. Oh, there’s another thing about giants, by the way—they heard better than they saw, what with all that hair, and they could smell another Qu’alo a mile away and know who he was, and what he’d had for breakfast, and how he was feeling right then. Of course, anyone else could smell them a good long way off, too, so much good it did them, hey? But your grandfather said he grew accustomed to the Qu’alo stink by and by—said he didn’t even notice it after a time. And why not, hey? When you think what I’ve had to get used to with your mother’s people.

  What? No, I don’t suppose he ever did know what he smelled like to them.

  Well, when Dudrilashashek was done sniffing Grandfather Selsim, he said to him, “Now, if you don’t mind, my brothers and sisters will do the same. Tedious for you, I’m sure, but the ritual has to be performed, if you are to stay with us. I’ll bring you to them, shall I?”

  “Indeed, you’ll not,” answered your grandfather—still a good bit cheekier than you or I would have spoken to a giant, I daresay. He said, “I’m quite tired, not to mention hungry and thirsty, and I hurt a good deal, and my left eye doesn’t work. This is because I’ve recently been chewed on by a rock-targ. I’m very grateful to whichever of you saved my life, but I don’t want to be smelled over anymore just now, and I’m not planning to stay a day longer than I have to. I want to lie down somewhere. If you wouldn’t mind.”

  But Dudrilashashek replied, “I am sorry, this is more important, though I’m sure it can’t seem so to you. The others must get your scent in their nostrils as soon as I do, in order that we may know you all in the same way, at the same time. For us, smell is so changeable, so easily affected by feelings, fears, health, age, diet, and endless other matters, that one of us might meet you only a few days from now and not know you at all. Which could be a very unhappy thing, for both of you. No, this must be done at once—forgive me, little friend.”

  And with that, he tightened his grip on your grandfather—oh, just slightly, but quite enough—and marched off into the woods calling for his friends and relations. They had a funny way of calling each other, a kind of hollow, hooty sound, not loud, but it seemed to carry forever. I’ve heard it said that when Grandfather Selsim was an old man, there were times when he would sit up in the middle of the night and swear he heard the Qu’alo calling to him, out on Torgry Mountain, so far away. They were all gone by then, and he knew it better than anyone, but even so. Wait, wait, you’ll see.

  Anyway. Nothing for it. Your grandfather had to stand in Dudrilashashek’s vast palm for an hour or more, while the other Qu’alo came one at a time to touch and stare and smell him, just to be absolutely sure they’d know him again. Big foreheads, big cheekbones, small underslung chins, he said they all had, and the younger ones’ hair was grayish-brownish, not really black. He was too weary to notice anything more then, or even to try telling the females from the males. When it was over at last, Dudrilashashek took him to a cave where they brought their sick ones, changed the bandage on his shoulder, fed him a soup of wild leeks and mushrooms out of a bowl he could have bathed in, and personally tucked him up in a sweetsmelling bed of green spring boughs. “There,” he said, proud as proud. “Sleep now, and when you wake, I am sure much will look different to you.”

  Grandfather Selsim was already asleep, near enough, but he managed to mumble, “I’ll not be staying long. As soon as I can travel decently, I’ll be on my way. Rock-targs or no.”

  Old Dudrilashashek didn’t contradict him, only nodded seriously and said, in that voice that always seemed to be coming right out of Grandfather Selsim’s own insides, “When you are healed, we will talk of this. Sleep now.”

  “Giants or no,” your grandfather whispered, and slept for two days.

  Yes, indeed, he certainly did have to piss something terrible when he woke up, thank you very much, I’d have forgotten. And he had to have some more soup, and he had to wash himself, and he had to have his shoulder looked at and tended. Dudrilashashek said he was coming along very well, and lucky with it, because a rock-targ bite usually poisons up and kills you just as dead. But whatever the Qu’alo had put on it, the great ragged gash was already knitting as nicely as you please, not a sign of infection. He still couldn’t see a thing out of his left eye, but it wasn’t hurting him very much, and Dudrilashashek told him that in time he’d have at least some vision back. For now he was to rest and grow strong, and not think of anything else. Especially not about leaving.

  Your Grandfather Selsim looked straight at that giant—as straight as he could with one eye gone, anyway—and he said firmly, “Three days. Three days, and maybe two. It’s nothing to do with you and your tribe—I never stay anywhere any longer than that. I am a tinker and a traveler, and I must be getting along. That’s what I do, get along.”

 
But the giant shook his head, looking solemn and regretful, and answered him, “It cannot be, little friend. The others will not have it, and I can command them only so far. In return for your life, I have already promised that you would be kept with us always, for fear of your leading a swarm of your folk to bedevil us here. I myself believe you’d do no such thing, but they’ll not hear of chancing it. Your pardon, Shelshim”—don’t laugh, that was the only way the Qu’alo could ever say his name—“but I can see that you wish the truth. This is the truth.”

  “If I promised them,” your grandfather said. “If I give my word. Where I come from, we set great store by keeping one’s word. I could swear on anything you hold sacred.” Dudrilashashek just looked sadder and sadder. Grandfather Selsim said, “I’ll run away. You know that, too.”

  “Please,” the old giant said, and they say he was that upset, his enormous face was rippling and trembling all over, just like that disgusting pink dessert your Aunt Kelya makes every Winter-Farewell feast. He said, “Please, Shelshim, don’t, I beg you. We are so good at hunting and tracking, at smelling out on an entire mountainside the one plant we desire to eat—and we are so dreadfully clumsy with these fingers of ours, as you rightly point out. It would be terrible for us all, now that we know you, if you were accidentally harmed in being retaken. Or if the rock-targs found you before we did.” No, they didn’t call them that, of course not, they had their own word. No, I don’t know what it was. Quiet.

  Now your Grandfather Selsim never could abide being threatened, and he answered right off, “I’d rather die this minute with a rock-targ at my throat than live forever as the Qu’alo’s pet human, with never a breath nor one single step to call my own. It won’t do, Dudrilashashek. There’s no one born who can keep me anywhere I don’t want to be.” And with that he turned painfully over and went back to sleep for another day. It’s said that the giant watched over him all that time. Yes, I’m sure he had to go piss, too, at some point. Thank you.

  So there’s the way matters stood, and when your Grandfather Selsim woke again, it was time again for him to learn a great deal in a hurry. Tinkers are good at that, have to be. For one thing, he learned that the Qu’alo didn’t have any one special place—a cave, or a clearing, or maybe a flat rock—where they lived together, or where they might be used to gathering, like the meeting hall in the village. Though if that’s a hall, then our outhouse is a bloody palace, I’ll say that. The Qu’alo roamed Torgry Mountain as they chose, alone or with one or two others, no more. They spent most of their days looking for food, because it’s hard to keep that big of a body properly stoked when you don’t eat meat, or even fish, no more than a rishu does. Well, grubs, they ate grubs and bugs sometimes. They nested wherever night found them, usually in a sum’yadi tree, because of those being the only ones big enough to hold them and thick-dark enough to hide them. And they could go days, weeks at a time without seeing another of their kind, never give a thought to it. But each one of them always knew where all the rest were, same way you know where your fingers or your toes are. Don’t ever have to think about it, do you? Same with the Qu’alo, exactly.

  What? Can’t you listen for even one minute when I’m telling you something? No, he certainly didn’t run off the first chance he got, as he’d sworn. It took him a good sight longer than he’d expected to get over his wounds—even after his shoulder had healed and he was starting to notice a few things out of the side of that left eye, he still ached where he hadn’t been wounded, still moved timidly, looking behind him every other step he took. It’ll do that to you, a rock-targ attack, people say. You know you’re really dead, even if nobody else knows. You keep expecting the thing to come back and claim you.

  Dudrilashashek looked after him for a while, showing him how to find the wild berries and roots and such stuff that the Qu’alo lived on, and where the best streams were, and the safe caves to sleep in. Very considerate giant, that one—he knew a human couldn’t sleep the way the giants did, practically tying the sum’yadi branches in knots to make a bed. Your grandfather paid attention, not like some of us. He paid more attention to the way the Qu’alo did things than he ever had to anything before. Because his life depended on it right then, and he knew that, if he didn’t know much else yet.

  Mind you, it took him the longest while to tell one of them from another, except for Dudrilashashek. All of them huge, all of them covered with hair, all of them stinking to shame a churfa… it wasn’t until after Dudrilashashek had left him on his own, more or less, that he began to know some of the other Qu’alo. And that was only because he was still afraid of being by himself, afraid of some rock-targ finding him alone. If those giants wanted to study him like a book or a bug, that was all right, that was fine—just so they bore him company and didn’t leave him where the rock-targs could get him. Did he get over it? Being afraid, you mean? Oh, in time, in a way, but he never got back to the person he’d been a minute before it happened. Nobody ever does.

  Gods, that wasn’t belching, that was her, I know it! Seen her through enough birthings, I ought to know by now. Bloody spiteful animal—wait, wait, now she’s stopped, not a sound out of her. I ought to go down there, but I won’t, she’s playing with me. They’ll do that, remember that about jejebhais, they’ll play with you like that, once they get to know you. Go in for rishus, boy, when I’m gone. Rishus are nice and stupid, that’s what you want, believe me. Rishus don’t play with you.

  Well, just while we’re waiting. But it might be any minute, you understand that. Now, the Qu’alo. Two or three, he never heard speak a word, not ever. You looked in those black eyes, your Grandfather Selsim said—like undersea caves, they were, once you looked past all the black hair—and you knew the Qu’alo really were a thoughtful people, they thought about things all the time. Only they weren’t like your Uncle Tavdal—they didn’t think talking was the same as thinking, you understand? Just got in the way, more than likely. That’s how they were, mostly.

  Not all of them, though. There were a pair of brothers named something like Calijostylakomo and Galijostylakomo—and not a word out of you, those were their names, and that’s all there is to that. Your grandfather called them Cali and Gali, and he could always tell those two apart because Cali never could grow a beard as thick as the other giants’ beards, and it bothered him. Or maybe that was Gall, I couldn’t say. Anyway, they were young, which is maybe why they talked a bit more than the others, and they were—I guess you’d say mischievous—at least for giants. They liked to wrestle—Grandfather Selsim used to climb a tree to stay out of the way, and even that was risky. And sometimes, instead of bedding down at sunset like the other Qu’alo, they’d go off together and spend the whole night hunting rock-targs. Used to bait them out of their lairs and roll boulders down on them. Used to invite your grandfather to come along—what? No. No, I’m sure he never did. Because none of us is that kind of a fool, not even your Uncle Tavdal. We’re a different kind.

  There was another one he was friendly with, a woman of the Qu’alo—her name was Yriadvele, more or less. Now they were even shyer than the rest of the giants, the women were, and the only reason Grandfather Selsim ever exchanged two words with her is that he once fell into a trap, a pit that Cali and Gali had dug to catch rock-targs in, and he was just lucky that they were young and too lazy to bother with putting poisoned stakes at the bottom. This Yriadvele heard his cries, and she came and scooped him out of there, quick as that. And afterward he somehow had a claim on her, the way it can happen. She’d pop him up on her shoulder and off they’d go for a long walk in the forest, or out on the open mountainside, toward evening, with no chance of travelers seeing them. I used to carry you like that, you remember?

  Your grandfather didn’t talk much about her for years, not until he was really getting on, that’s what I was told. He said he could always tell Yriadvele from the others because she had a grayish sort of mantle up around her shoulders. The hair, I mean, that’s because she was still young. Anyway, t
hey’d talk for hours on end, your Grandfather Selsim and this enormous woman-creature who was so hairy and so stinking that after a time he didn’t notice any of that at all. Truth of it is, he came to think she was pretty, in a way, with her huge black eyes and really delicate little ears—and he said she was graceful, too, moving that body silently among the trees. Like the rest of them, if she didn’t want you to see her, you didn’t see her. But when she was there, she was there, the trees and the mountain boulders all faded into air around her. Now that’s exactly what your grandfather said, word for word, just the way I had it from my own grandfather.

  What did they talk about? Well, she’d ask him how human beings lived, what they ate, where they slept, and what they did when they were sick, and about clothes, and about how they felt about being such small creatures in such a big world. And games, playing games, she never did understand about that. The Qu’alo didn’t play, you see, they didn’t have a notion of what the word meant. She asked him to tell her about the games over and over.

  She didn’t talk at all like Dudrilashashek. No, I don’t know why, and your grandfather never did either. He used to wonder sometimes if she was maybe simple, but how do you tell with a giant? Once she said, slow and halting, sometimes a minute or two between the words, “When we sleep, sometimes we see a story, we are in the story. You?”

  “Dreams,” your grandfather said. “Yes, we dream, we see stories, too. Like you, just the same.”

  But Yriadvele turned her great head slowly to look straight into his eyes, and her own so dark you couldn’t see yourself in them, nor the sky behind you, nor a green leaf or a bit of sun. She said, “With us, the same story every night. Always. The rock-targs. Our brothers.”