by Darryl Fabia
On every venture, Dansi eyed the sky warily, fearing the sun and moon would grow suddenly greedy and swallow her days all at once, and she watched the people who watched her and her sister, their eyes full of suspicion and disdain. Those who lived outside of tribes and clans were feared for their closeness with the fairies, but Dansi hadn’t seen a fairy or giant since the day she saved Lyri, and she didn’t regret her choices then, no matter how many evil eyes she received. Their gaze only made it harder for her to come out and help people.
One midday, with seven days lost according to Dansi’s count, Lyri heard a big, but whispering voice outside the mouth of the cave. “Hello?” it said. “I’ve come to find the witch sisters. I need help. My poor brother is hungry. If I only had a sack of some kind, I could easily catch a wild sheep I’ve been chasing all over, but I don’t know how to make one or where to find one. Do you?”
Lyri knew she’d seen a sack lying around and ran off to Dansi. “Was there a black sack someone could use to catch a deer?”
The only sack Dansi knew of was the black one with the word Eon stitched to its outside. She’d kept it all this time, but saw no use for the thing now. “Ridding us of it might throw off the sun and the moon, if they’re onto us,” she said to herself, fetching the bag and handing it to Lyri. “We can give this, if the person promises never to tell where he got it and never to come back.”
Lyri brought the sack to the mouth of the cave, holding it out toward the sunlight and repeating her sister’s instructions.
The voice rumbled with laughter and a heavy shadow darkened the woods outside the cave. “No worries, girl. We’ll not be coming back.” An enormous hand swept over Lyri’s head and scooped her into the sack.
Dansi heard her sister’s terrified screams and ran to the mouth of the cave just in time to see a thick-muscled, wide giant of the burl breed with Damvr on his forehead carrying away a writhing black sack. His every step meant twenty for the young woman, but she chased the giant anyway, careless to the sun’s gaze. Sometimes Damvr vanished behind a hill, or a nest of tall trees swallowed him up, but Dansi went on following like a thick rope tied her to Lyri. Even when she at last lost sight of the giant, she didn’t lose hope, as she knew exactly where he would put the black sack.
When Dansi reached the clearing in the woods where she’d found the giants so many years ago, Damvr was too busy tying the black sack to a tree to notice her. The other burl, Nirvm, was sleeping by the spider silk hung with crystals. Dansi dared not tread within the ring of trees while either giant was awake.
“You won’t have time to wait for twilight,” said a soft voice. The white-lit moon floated next to Dansi, bobbing between the trees like a will-o’-wisp and laughing in her face. “See now, as the giant of the night sleeps, the giant of the day wakes the eater of time to feed on people’s days, sipped up by the sun and milked in the brazier.”
Dansi had paid little attention to the stone building on her last visit, but now she took notice as its stone doors slid open and a black creature slid out. It was large enough to come to Damvr’s knees even as it crawled on its belly, and looked to Dansi like a char-colored salamander, its back spotted with white. The creature, Eon, swiftly dragged itself to one tree, eyed the letters on one sack, and then opened its mouth over the sack’s opening, sucking its contents until the leather hung limply from the tree trunk. Then the creature moved on to the next tree.
“Couldn’t you bring the twilight, when both giants sleep?” Dansi asked the moon.
The moon laughed again. “Why should I help you? You were foolish to trick the sun and the moon. It is unwise to make enemies of the heavens.”
Dansi had a little more trickery in her head then, and looked to the sunlight piercing through the tree branches. “Then I should ask the sun’s opinion too, as a gesture of friendship. Maybe he’ll be more forgiving.”
“I doubt it.”
“He can speak for himself.”
The moon then called the sun and the sky went gloomy with twilight. The ground thundered as Damvr dropped to the forest floor, fast asleep, and the sun bobbed next to the moon near Dansi’s face. His voice was stern and his brightness shown even in the dense deepness of the forest.
“Why is this happening to my sister?” Dansi asked. “One of you must explain.”
“I believe I will explain best how we drink away the days and nights of mortals and the giants feed it to the eater of time, in sacks bearing his name,” the moon said.
“But I believe I will explain best how the giants and Eon ignored the girls for so long, until they left their caves and the giants recognized the girls’ time once more when milking it from us,” the sun proclaimed.
As the sun and moon argued over which would best explain what Dansi already knew, and twilight lingered on, Dansi hurried into the clearing. Every black sack hung stiff and still except one, squirming and shaking, and she rushed to untie it from its tree as black-mouthed Eon bore down on a sack nearby. Lyri’s face appeared in the opening of the sack, stained with tears. “Quick, Dansi, grab the sack and get us away from that monster!” she cried.
Dansi knew better than to haul Lyri away in her entanglement, thanks to the moon’s gloating. She tugged and tugged at the ropes until finally the sack dropped heavily from the tree. Then she pulled Lyri loose just as Eon turned to the fallen sack, and the creature sucked up nothing from where Lyri would have been.
“Let’s get away before it realizes its mistake,” Lyri said.
Again, Dansi knew better, that Eon would only touch what bore his name. Nonetheless, she hurriedly led her sister past the sun and the moon as they finished their bickering, and the moon rose into the sky just as the twins returned to their caves. For a moment she thought she heard Nirvm’s heavy footsteps pounding to follow them, but the sound was likely the giant’s yawn and nothing more.
“We can’t help anyone anymore,” Dansi told her sister when they were safe and sound. “The moment the sun drinks a day or the moon drinks a night, the giants will be on us again, and maybe next time they’ll take us both, or leave no caves for us to run home to.”
“But you gave another day to help me,” Lyri said. “Shouldn’t we share our gifts? Don’t you like being indebted to? Don’t you enjoy their smiles? Why should we submit to two burls, a salamander, and the sun and the moon, as if they were all so important? Staying here without ever leaving, never seeing anyone, would be like giving up and dying after our people abandoned us.”
Dansi wanted to argue, but for one, Lyri was difficult to resist, for two, her pride was hurt for having been laughed at by the sun and the moon, even if she’d tricked them again, and for three, the sisters were indeed indebted to by the people they’d helped. “Then the people will have to submit to us,” she told Lyri, and the sisters wove a plan between them.
First they found rocks that spoke, and then rocks that would parrot their words, and then at last they found a fast-flying parrot to carry the parroting rocks to those who needed to hear the twins’ message. The rocks told instructions to the husband of the pregnant woman they’d helped, to the hunters who followed the white deer, and to the woman who now had her lover, whose hands knew sewing and stitching.
After three days and three nights of holing up in the caves, Dansi and Lyri spotted the hunters coming to the mouth of the lowest cavern. Over their heads, three of them carried a great fur mat, the skin of a mammoth. Any who stood beneath it were caught in perfect darkness, untouched by any light from the sky. The hunters held the skin over the mouth of the cave as Dansi and Lyri stepped beneath it, and then the march to the woods began, to seek the clearing where Damvr and Nirvm lived with Eon. Not once was the skin removed from above the sisters’ heads, and so neither lost a day in the journey.
They arrived outside the clearing near twilight. There they found the once-pregnant woman and her husband, carrying a satchel of sleep-inducing herbs, and the woman who’d caught her lover with a bull’s belly, her arms wrapped arou
nd bundles of oiled hair used for stitching and sewing.
“Wait with the tarp,” Dansi told the hunters.
“Hand me the herbs, please,” Lyri said to the man and wife. They were free to leave then.
When twilight fell and both giants slept, one at his brazier and one at his spider web, Dansi and Lyri sped into the clearing and each clambered up a giant’s leg, belly, chest, and onto his fat nose. Then Dansi rubbed sleeping herbs across Damvr’s eyes and Lyri rubbed them across Nirvm’s. When twilight ended moments later, neither giant stirred in the moonlight.
“Hurry now!” Dansi called to the sewing woman. The woman entered the clearing nervously, and Dansi urged her on faster. She knew what Eon would eat, but not exactly when. Maybe without the giants, there was no signal for the creature to feed, or maybe it came out whenever it liked.
The sewing woman reached the top of Damvr’s nose and then pulled loose the red stitches that formed his name on his forehead. When this was done, she hurriedly stitched another word into his skin, and Dansi helped her down so she could do the same to Nirvm. Then the sisters descended the burl giant of nighttime and left the clearing before the sleeping herbs could wear off, huddling beneath the mammoth skin once more. Dansi hoped this would be the last night she and her sister lost to the moon.
Nirvm was the first to awaken. He yawned groggily, his head stinging, and then took a sack from a tree and held it under his spider web, where the fluid of time leaked. When the sack was filled, he tied it to the tree and grasped another to do it again, while the stone doors holding Eon opened slowly. The great black salamander stared at the man-sized sacks, hanging from the trees with its name on them, and then turned to the giant of nighttime, now also wearing the creature’s name. The name Eon was stitched into Nirvm’s forehead, as bright and red as the stitching of his own name had been.
Waggling its body across the clearing, Eon scrambled up Nirvm’s leg, his side, and then opened its mouth wide over the giant’s face. Before the burl knew what was happening, the salamander had latched onto his head and began to suck the time away from the giant. It took several minutes, for giants are often long-lived, but despite Nirvm’s pounding fists and muffled cursing, Eon drained all the giant’s days and nights, leaving only an enormous, horned skeleton draped in dry skin and hair. Eon then dropped to his belly again, and when he spotted his name on Damvr’s forehead as well, he didn’t even give the giant of daylight the chance to awaken before latching its mouth of his face.
When both giants were no more than bones, the great black salamander rolled over on its back in the center of the clearing, its belly swollen larger than the entire rest of its body. Its wet breath heaved in and out of its gaping mouth and its bulging white eyes stared vacantly at the trees, where tiny meals of time hung like withered, worthless fruit.
The sisters giggled. “Eon shouldn’t be hungry for another hundred years,” Dansi said.
“The poor thing,” Lyri cooed, and then turned to all the people they’d helped whom had helped them in kind. “Thank you, all who came. Your debts are all repaid, though we would be grateful if we were seen home.”
The hunters held the mammoth tarp over the twins’ heads and escorted them back to the caves. Three of the men remained with the witch sisters, to hunt for them, serve them, and help them travel without the harassment of the sun and the moon, as repayment for keeping their people alive.
In the early dawn, after a few hours rest, Dansi awoke to find the sun and the moon waiting at the mouth of her cave. For a moment they didn’t look like will-o’-wisps, but like a man and woman, and then a woman and a man, but when Dansi was fully awake and staring at them with focused eyes, she found they were distant lights and nothing more.
“We saw what you did,” the sun said with resentment in his voice.
“And you tricked us once more,” said the moon wistfully.
“I thought you’d let me save my sister out of mercy and only pretended I was tricking you to keep face with the giants,” Dansi told the heavenly bodies.
“You are foolish to make enemies of the heavens,” the sun told her, as the moon had earlier.
“We owed debts to the burls, and gave them days and nights to solve their own trouble and ease their burden of that monster, Eon,” the moon said. “Now we must find other ways to repay them, and they may be ways you mortals will not care for. But then, you sisters do not see yourselves as mortals. So we will see how greatly our ways trouble you in the decades and centuries to come.”
The sun and the moon left her then. Dansi saw no reason to repeat their words to her twin—Lyri would desperately seek ways to make it all right, which Dansi didn’t want, and Dansi found herself forgetting the words already. The heavens could be upset all they pleased, so long as the twins might go on living out of their sight.
Elephant Funerals
The dry season had come harsher and hotter this year than anyone could remember, and elephants have long memories, so it is said. One herd’s watering hole was nearly dry when they experienced the season’s first death, and the funeral at least eased the other elephants’ minds from their own plight. They laid stones over her, big and small, until her entire body was covered.
Another day went by and not a drop of rain had fallen. Thin clouds lingered overhead, taunting the land, but the elephants paid no mind. They waited patiently at the watering hole, each taking a tiny sip a day from the muddy water, and they prayed for rain.
Great Ash was the first who didn’t want to wait. He was larger than all the others, his skin the color of ash, and his enormous ears supposedly caught time itself in their flaps. He knew the dry season would go on longer at their hole, but he heard the patter of rain in the herd’s future if they traveled east.
His friend, Iron-Tusk, supported him, named for the men’s blades that decorated his tusks. Split-Tusk opposed the idea—the herd had remained at this hole for many decades. The herd was desperate though, and they followed Great Ash. They did not want the dry season to bring any more funerals.
Yet funerals they had, for the walk was perilous. Predators had lost much of their prey, growing hungry enough to attack young elephants even in sight of the herd, and the dry season did not waver. If anything, it worsened in traveling. The grass yellowed and thinned, the trees withered and died, and elephants followed with them as their skin grew as dusty and cracked as the earth.
Great Ash would leave no living elephant behind though. When one mother floundered, nearly falling over, he let her lean against his side and kept her walking. He helped her onward until she couldn’t walk, couldn’t stand, and then dropped lifeless onto the barren ground. The walk halted for a time and the herd held another funeral, covering the mother with rocks until she couldn’t be seen.
Each time an elephant grew weak, Great Ash lent himself as a crutch, keeping them going. At one time, two or three leaned on him together. Supposedly he could carry any elephant, and he did so, until each that he helped had to be buried under stones.
After five deaths, Split-Tusk could not stand the walk anymore. He wanted to head back to the watering hole and he needed Great Ash to lead the herd there, for they followed him now without question, as if he was their only hope. Great Ash would not be turned away. He heard the patter of rain in their future, so long as they remained on this path.
Split-Tusk saw no choice then. He feigned weakness, slid to Great Ash’s side as if he was one who needed support, and then gored the ash-colored elephant, jabbing Great Ash’s head with savage tusks and tearing one of his ears. Great Ash’s legs wobbled. He needed someone to lean on, but Split-Tusk only pushed him into the dust for all the herd to see.
Iron-Tusk fought him, enraged over the murder of his friend. He was a heavier elephant than Split-Tusk, and had endured many battles, while Split-Tusk was cowardly and thin. Their tusks clashed once, twice, three times, and then Split-Tusk’s tusks broke away entirely. Iron-Tusk ran him through beneath his jaw and dropped him into the dust, away f
rom Great Ash. No stones would be laid upon him—the jackals could have his corpse.
Though the herd was tired, thirsty, and weak, the elephants began the funeral for Great Ash, piling stones on his body until he could not be seen. When they had finished the task, however, Iron-Tusk sought out another stone and laid it on the mound. Then he found another, and another, and the rest of the herd joined him, piling stones upon stones until the mound was the height of Great Ash himself, the elephant whose ears heard future rain, the elephant who could carry any other.
The mound needed to be higher, Iron-Tusk decided. He rolled boulders from a nearby hill, while others carried stones, pebbles, anything they could find, even blocks of building from the ruins of man’s ancient cities. As the mound heightened, Iron-Tusk ascended, climbing up and down from the top of the pile, finding, carrying, and laying more stones.
In time, he neared the taunting clouds, and in one last ascent, a mighty stone held in his trunk, Iron-Tusk vanished from the sight of the herd. A thunderous stomping echoed through the land, as if some great elephant had pounded the sky.
The clouds darkened, sinking lower, and then a torrent of rain broke free from beneath them, splashing down on the elephant herd and pattering over the dry earth. The elephants opened their mouths, shook the dust from their backs as it rolled into mud, and trumpeted triumphantly, for Great Ash had led them to rain after all.
The sky shook in answer with an elephant’s roar. Through the thickening rain, anyone looking up might have seen two elephants walking across the storm, one large and clear as mist, the other dark and made of flesh. Their heavy feet squeezed rain from their cloudy path as they marched onward over the sunset lands, and none could tell which one leaned on the other.