by Darryl Fabia
The brothers didn’t have to wait long as the bull’s heart burned and its smell wafted over the stone circle, coupling with the flowers’ scent. The shadows themselves seemed to stir near the cliff’s edge as a fairy-kin emerged. She was a head shorter than the men, dressed in robes so thin they might have been wind and water, and her hair shined like a rainbow. She crept into the stone circle, likely out of curiosity as to why there was no fairy man to greet and woo her, and then suddenly Listor’s hand snatched the flowers away.
“I bind you in love, lust, and sacrifice,” Listor said. Three sets of eyes glared down on the fair one. “You will be my bride.”
“Why do you get to have her?” Mor asked. “She’s incredible.”
“I feel she should be mine,” Elor said. “I’ll gamble for her, unless she’ll have us all.”
The fair lady cringed. “Good sirs, I cannot wed all of you, but I do have sisters. If you’ll listen, I’ll tell you how to catch them, keep them bound to you, and then there will be no need for bickering or sharing, and I won’t be lonely in your company.”
Listor beamed—all was going exactly as he planned. “Tell us then, fair woman, how to snare your sisters.”
The fair one, called Felidrea, told the brothers to fashion ropes out of mammoth hair, which they had in abundance from the bed of skins nearby. Mor’s rope was shortest, Listor’s was longest, and Elor’s was a length between them. Each rope was tied in a noose on each end.
“One noose is for your ankle,” Felidrea told the brothers. “The other will catch the sister. Cast the spare nooses into the darkness, where my sisters will step into them.”
“Then we’ll have three women,” Elor said.
“What about you?” Mor asked, looking to the fairy.
“My sisters outshine even me in womanliness,” Felidrea said. “They are shapely, well-endowed in the proper places, and their wild passions stir when lying with men. They’ll be happy to bear many children.”
Excited, the brothers tossed their second nooses into the darkness, beyond the firelight.
“Now, I’ll call them,” Felidrea said. “Melemity! Esty! Lality! Come visit your sister!”
Within moments, the ropes of mammoth hair went taut and the brothers grinned in victory. Then their brides appeared from the shadows and all semblance of mirth sank from their faces like stones in water.
Melemity came tied to Mor. She was more than twice his height, her clawed hands grown longer than his torso, and her black eyes lay wide on a round face, staring as unsympathetically as a lion.
Esty came tied to Elor. She was even taller than Melemity and just as pale. Her claws hung longer, her back bent as if she’d had to stoop under many tall trees, and wild hair scattered every which way from her scalp, like a lion’s mane. Her white eyes gleamed as hungrily as her sharp, white teeth.
Lastly, Lality came tied to Listor. She was the tallest of all, the palest of all, the most well-endowed, with the widest hips, the longest claws, the most wild of hair. Her silver eyes stared dumbly down at the men. Her lips curled back hideously like a shark’s, revealing blackened gums, crooked flat teeth, and a long, lapping tongue.
“Felidrea, what sweet gifts you give,” said Melemity.
“Sweet enough to eat,” growled Esty.
Lality said nothing, but a wet, slurping sound echoed from her cavernous mouth, where her tongue plopped around like a dying snake. Her toes flicked at the stones surrounding Felidrea, breaking the circle, and Felidrea went to embrace each of the slack-jawed men.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” she cried. “My future brothers by marriage, I know you’ll make my sisters happy—or else.” She bounded away then, off the cliff and into the darkness, laughing with every step.
“Yes, that is the way of it, my dear,” Melemity said softly, tugging the rope around her ankle until she had Mor upside down in her hands. “Off to home.”
Elor pulled a dagger from his belt and began to saw at the mammoth hair rope that had been so easy to sever and twine an hour earlier. Now his blade grated and sparked like he was trying to cut stone with bone, and he realized some fairy binding was at work here. A flick of Esty’s finger sent his hand throbbing and his dagger clattering over stones. Then she dragged him away by the ankle.
“Come, husband-to-be,” she hissed. “You’ll follow on foot or your back will bleed.”
Listor was on his feet and running before Lality could grab him and confuse her betrothed for a side of beef. He clambered down the rocks, through the sparse woods, his long rope giving him decent leeway, and hoped the spell on the binding would break if he reached other people. The ground quaked and trees snapped behind him as Lality chased, clacking her awful teeth.
The clearing came into Listor’s sight, where Zazan’s wedding party was winding down and the fires shrinking. “Help!” he cried. Zazan himself was the first man he saw. Everything Listor and his brothers had done spilled from his mouth in the few moments before Lality neared the clearing.
“Tug the rope, Lality!” Melemity’s voice cried.
Listor’s leg and luck jerked back from the clearing and Lality’s horrid face breached the tree line.
Zazan started to chase his friend, and then realized he couldn’t hope to stop the pale giant. “What can I do?” he asked.
“The whispers of the wild once told me of two witch sisters who live in a cave a day west from here,” Listor said, sliding back through the dirt and brush. “Take my place in the tether while I go fetch them, and they can help free us from our new brides-to-be.”
Zazan was a fearless hunter, and intensely loyal, but he wasn’t stupid. “I’ll find the witch sisters for you and your brothers,” he said as Listor was scooped into the giant’s arms. “Hang in there.” Shrieking was Listor’s only response as his bride or devourer carried him back to his brothers and her sisters.
Zazan meant what he said, even if he wasn’t willing to trade places with Listor. He was married now and couldn’t risk having the pale giant marrying him—his people wed one-to-one, no more. He also wasn’t willing to ruin his own wedding night over the brothers’ foolishness. The stars and moon passed over his head, and Teli’s, as they slept on soft furs, and also didn’t sleep, through the night. In the dawn, he told her where he had to go, why, and when he’d return.
The hunter prepared for a harrowing journey, packing what food he needed and a few weapons—a great axe, a barbed spear, and a bola made from mammoth skin and stones. He laid with Teli again, so in case he wouldn’t return, she would hopefully still bear his child. Then he set off for the west, ready to face tusked cats, two-headed, crawling dragons, and horned burl giants that were thicker, larger, and bulkier then the one he’d seen take Listor.
Yet he traveled through the thick woods and plains with not so much as a fairy-kin to come trick or hurt him, and arrived at the hill of the witch sisters without once having to draw his weapons. Cave mouths opened from the foot of the hill to the top and likely connected within.
“Look, here comes a disappointed man,” said a kindly voice.
“How do you know that?” he called, not daring to leave the waning sunlight for the caves’ darkness. “Did the wild whispers says I was coming?”
“You’re simply well-armed without a nick in a single weapon,” said a sterner voice. “You expected a challenge in finding us, but actually, many people want our help and the way is often clear.”
“Don’t worry,” said the sweeter voice. “We might find something for you to do.”
Two identical-looking women appeared at the mouth of the lowest cave, along with three grim-faced men. Zazan had expected the sisters to be old and wizened, but they appeared so young and beautiful that the hunter would’ve been tempted to impress them if he wasn’t married.
“I’m Dansi,” said the one with the harsher voice.
“And I’m Lyri,” said the sweeter twin. “What did you need?”
Zazan briefly retold what Listor had, about the broth
ers’ envy, their fairy trap, and the fairy’s trap for them.
“What did the giant look like?” Dansi asked.
“Thin, pale, wild-haired,” Zazan said, not mentioning Lality’s unfortunate face.
“Dornics,” Lyri said. “Giants with fairy blood.”
“How do giants and fairies have children?” Zazan asked.
“The less you visualize, the happier you’ll be,” Dansi said.
Now that he’d been watching the two for a few minutes, Zazan found the twins easy to tell apart—Dansi appeared as grim as the witches’ men, while Lyri smiled prettily, like his own wife, so much so that he began to doubt he had the right place. “Are you really the witch sisters Listor wanted, who could help my friends?”
“We’re older than we look,” Dansi said. “And we know more than all your people together. We know the secret paths that all forests hide.”
“We know the pacts between the heavens and the giants,” Lyri said.
“We know the names of the giant-kin, that the peoples fear as if speaking them might summon giants to dinner—burls, frost giants, ogres, dornics, danes, trolls, and stroms.”
“We know the names of the fairy-kin, that the peoples mistake for curses—pixies, glums, goblins, brownies, whistlers, and dryads.”
“You’re in the right place,” Dansi assured the hunter. “Do you really want our help though? Everyone we help is indebted to us.”
“I’m certain your friends are important to you,” Lyri said. “But the favors we ask in return come in all sizes.”
Doubt tugged at Zazan’s heart, but he’d already given his word to Listor and his loyalty burned stronger than his fear. “I want your help. I can’t pretend the giants won’t kill or eat them.”
“Or worse things,” Dansi said, giggling.
The sisters were ready to travel within moments. They tossed supply bags made of deer skin onto their backs and stood at the cave entrance. Then their three men, who may have been husbands or servants or the last of their clan, each took a wooden shaft in his hands and held a triangle of mammoth skin over the witches' heads. When they left the cave, Dansi and Lyri walked under the skin’s shadow, never touching the vanishing sunlight or straying out into the coming moonlight.
They traveled through the night, resting momentarily here and there, and resting longer as the day came and they reached Zazan’s people. The witch sisters slept beneath their mammoth skin, its poles stuck in the ground to form a tent, and their silent men slept in the shade with them away from the clan. Near evening, Zazan left Teli once more. He and the sisters and their men moved onward, around the cliff where Mor, Elor, and Listor had called the fairy, through a meadow, and up a hillside leading to a wooded plateau. All the way, Dansi and Lyri never left the shadow of their hairy tarp.
“I’ve seen those who fear the night and heard of creatures that fear the day,” Zazan said. “Yet you two fear both.”
“We have a misunderstanding with the sun and the moon,” Lyri said.
“You’ll see why soon enough,” Dansi said. “It’s best to sneak up on those you’re going to make use of unwillingly—and here we are.”
A short distance from where the group stood, in a clearing carved out of the woods, the three dornic giants sat on a fallen tree while their husbands-to-be bustled desperately to appease them.
“All I asked was that you brush away the ashes from the fire,” Melemity said to Mor, holding a tree branch and standing in the center of a smoking stone circle as large as the giant’s foot.
“All I demanded was you find enough food for our supper,” Esty growled to Elor, holding up a sheep that could’ve fed the brothers for two days, but was barely a bite for a giant.
No one knew what Lality wanted, clutching Listor in her hands, but she went on clacking her teeth and whipping him with her long tongue while he cried and begged not to be eaten.
Zazan stared in horror, but the witch sisters giggled together. “They aren’t very good at pleasing their lovers,” Dansi said.
“We’ll have to advise them,” Lyri said, and the sisters ushered their men forward.
The twins called up to the giants, catching their attention first, and with a few kind words about their complexion and a promise to teach proper behavior to the three husbands-to-be, the witches soon caught the three sisters’ trust.
“You,” Dansi said to Mor. “Forget the ashes for now and rebuild the fire. Melemity is clearly cold.”
“You,” Lyri said to Elor. “Climb to the top of the black tree we passed at the bottom of this hill and swing on its highest branch to shake its apples onto the plateau. The apples are plentiful, larger than sheep, and Esty is clearly hungry.
The sisters weren’t sure about Lality, but guessed she wanted some attention. “You,” they said to Listor in unison. “Take Mor’s branch, stand on Lality’s teeth, and scratch her tongue. She clearly feels it’s dirty.”
The three dornic giants looked pleased as the brothers performed their duties, and as the sun set, they each fell into peaceful, heavy sleep. Mor, Elor, and Listor hurried to Zazan and the witches, or as close as allowed by the mammoth hair ropes binding their ankles to their future brides.
“Quick, witch sisters,” Listor called. “Undo the fairy’s magic and cut us free!”
Dansi clicked her tongue. “Only your betrothed can undo the ropes,” she said. “Not to worry—we have a plan.”
“Step close to the fire,” Lyri said. “And stand up straight.”
The brothers moved as close as they could to the fire without getting burned and stood high on their toes, stretching their backs.
“Zazan, ready your axe,” Dansi said. “You’ll have a fight on your hands momentarily.”
“Is Zazan going to fight the giants?” Mor asked.
“Yes, force them to set us free,” Elor chimed in as Zazan lifted his axe.
The witch twins ignored the brothers’ foolishness and ushered their men close to the brothers’ feet. They muttered a few words while plucking up soft blades of grass, and then began waving them in the brothers’ long shadows. Within moments, the shadows began to writhe on their own, waving their arms wildly and slapping at their torsos, though the brothers remained still. Then Mor felt a tug at his ankles as shadow hands grasped his legs. The same happened to Elor and Listor, and a chill ran through their bodies.
“What’s happening to them?” Zazan asked.
“They’re being pulled into a grim world of shadows,” Dansi laughed. “It’s one path of escape from their giant fate.”
“Oh, quit teasing,” Lyri said. “Hurry, Zazan. The tickled shadows will only live so long before stealing your friends away. Cut them loose.”
Zazan hefted his axe and stepped over the shadows. The same chill ran through his body as the shadows grasped and pulled at his legs and arms, but Zazan was stronger than his friends. He stamped at the shadows’ heads and kicked at their bodies. It felt like fighting the ground itself, except for one kick which felt like fighting one of the brothers, and then Zazan brought his axe down on the shadows’ feet, close to the flesh feet standing near the fire.
Mor’s shadow was chopped loose first. It hesitated, as if it didn’t know what to do with freedom, and in that moment Dansi and Lyri caught and tied it to the shadow of their mammoth skin. They did the same to Elor’s shadow once freed, and though Listor’s shadow thought itself cunning and bolted right away, the witches’ men moved the mammoth skin, and thus its shadow, into Listor’s shadow’s path, where the witches caught it.
“Plenty of time for running at daybreak,” Dansi said, binding the shadow.
“You did well, Zazan,” Lyri said. “What a lucky bride you have at home. Were you not of a people who only wed one-to-one, we would have you for ourselves.”
“What of us?” asked Mor, but no one answered.
Dawn came sooner than anyone expected and the sisters seemed to feel it. For a few minutes, they left their tarp, basking in the pre-dawn when nei
ther the sun nor the moon ruled. Then the first beam of sunlight shot from the eastern horizon. The witch sisters snatched it in their hands, bending it toward the shadow of their mammoth skin, and they swiftly tied the shadows to dawn’s earliest ray of light.
“Quick, wake the dornics!” Dansi cried.
Zazan hollered loudly, pounded rocks, and kicked at the giants’ feet until the pale sisters awoke together. The first things they saw were three men’s shadows, stretching longer than their own shadows.
“Look at those three!” Lyri cried excitedly. “Girls, you shouldn’t settle for these mortal fools. Go, get yourselves those men instead. See them running? See their height and speed? Catch them before they get away. You deserve better!”
The sun began its slow gait across the sky, dragged by some unseen giant in the heavens, and the shadows moved with it. The dornic sisters looked to each other like they shared a single thought, and then each reached down, ripped the rope from their ankles, and took off down the hillside, chasing long shadows into the west.
The freed brothers whooped and laughed, shaking the nooses from their legs. They gathered close to Zazan and the witches, bowing and clapping and thanking them over and over.
“Thanks will not be enough,” Dansi said.
“Zazan only fetched us for your sake and has proven himself a loyal friend,” Lyri said. “You three owe us a debt.”
“I propose you take two of us as husbands,” Listor said. “We’ll treat you as well as we would’ve treated the fairy wives we wanted.”
Dansi laughed. “You think we’d have you?”
“Poor boys,” Lyri said. “If you’re so intent to wed beautiful women, there is a valley of sand half a day’s journey to the east. The women there are beautiful and will give you many sons.”
Filled with hope once more, the brothers thanked the witches again, wished Zazan farewell and happiness with his wife, and set off for the small desert.
“Those women will whip them silly,” Dansi said.