The King was unsatisfied. The child pressed her lips together in a thin, tight line.
“Can I at least make the coats uncomfortable?” the King pressed.
“They won’t be wearing them for very long,” the child assured him. Though she refused to explain further.)
* * *
Later, this is what the guests remembered (indeed, it was the only story that anyone told for months after, in the gossip papers, in the taverns, over tea. In all the best circles—the families of the Guilds and the Generals and the Priests and the Council—they could talk of nothing else. Such a scandal! Who could have known how very, very wicked those Daughters had been? For all that time. The poor King. That poor, poor man . . .).
The beads came down. Everyone fell. The music continued. Birds flew in people’s faces. And cloaks seemed to fall from the sky. There was chaos. The candles went out. And there was a scream. And then another. And then another.
“Knives!” someone yelled. Who was it? One of the Barons, surely. “They have knives!”
“Help!”
“Help!”
“I am cut!”
“I am slain!”
The candles burned again, all at once, though no one could tell who had lit them. The guests pulled themselves to their feet and realized something astonishing. The Barons stood in a circle, swords out, staring levelly at their wives. The Daughters, all thirty-three of them, were kneeling on the ground. Their hands were bound behind their backs. Their faces squinched beneath their masks, as though trying to remove them with their cheek muscles. Their towers of hair leaned this way and that. Their dresses fit them ill, but didn’t everyone always say that they were a bit uncouth in their bearing? A little too masculine? A little too hairy? And they were wearing riding boots! So unfashionable! They struggled, but their bonds held firm.
The Barons, on the other hand, were so lithe and handsome in their coats! Their masks showed all manner of beasts—and what beautiful beasts! So brave and noble they were! So delicately boned! And bleeding. The poor things. Each one with a slice to their neck. They held handkerchiefs to their skin to stop the flow. They had married those Daughters as an antidote to their wickedness and this was how the Barons were repaid! A slice to the throat. Shocking. Thank the gods that those thirty-three wicked Daughters missed their poor husbands’ arteries! Thank the gods that all of those wounds were superficial! What was it that people said about women bleeding? Or perhaps they realized, in the end, that they lacked the stomach for true violence. This was the violence of ladies—underdone. The handsome Barons were right. Of course they were. Even marriage could not save the thirty-three wicked Daughters from their own wickedness.
“My own Daughters,” the King said, his gaze flicking between the Barons and their wives. “That it has come to this.” He closed his eyes for a moment, as though reaching a decision, though everyone knew what he was about to say. “To the Giants!” the King bellowed. “They shall be sent to the Giants.”
The decree was irrevocable. Long live the King.
The King ordered a boat to be brought to the harbor and commanded his Daughters to board. It broke his heart, poor thing, but what choice did he have? And he such a tender man—how many times had this punishment been applicable, but he chose mercy instead? Many. Poor lamb. He did not permit them to speak, though they tried. They struggled in vain. They could not remove the gags from their mouths nor the ropes from their hands and feet. They tried to yell. So deep their voices were! This is what happens when you let daughters run wild. They get . . . mannish. I mean. The proof is right there.
“Silence!” the King roared. He asked his beloved sons-in-law to usher those wicked girls onto the boat and to force it into the tide. “To the sea with you! All to the sea!”
The boat found its way to the current, and the current pulled it out of the harbor. By midmorning they were gone. No one knew how long it took the sea to deliver cargo to the Land of the Giants. A day? A week? Did it matter? Good riddance. Everyone agreed.
And then, because the Barons loved their dear old Dad so very much, they abandoned their castles and even forwent their weekly tithing and tax collection and instead moved into the palace. Such good boys! Everyone said so. And what’s more, it seemed that the King and his former sons-in-law (now sons) had opened their hearts and homes to the un-familied children who had been, until now, wandering the streets of the city with nowhere to go. Such humanitarians, those Barons! The castle rang with children’s voices. It was, everyone agreed, the happiest of places.
And then the Barons donated their wealth to the Sovereign Fund. So generous!
And then they reinstated the prayer groups. Setting an unknown, veiled woman to keep them going. This, everyone decided, was a good thing. Prayers and all.
And the schools reopened. One of the Barons instated himself as the teacher. Which one was it? Hard to know. They all blend together. The one with the beautiful face and the long neck. No facial hair. They all look so similar! Did they always?
And suddenly the children had shoes. All of them! The Barons took no credit, but everyone knew it was them.
And one of them reorganized the Court system. Which was good. So unfair before! Too many bribes. Which Baron was it? One of the good ones, one supposes.
* * *
Sometimes, now, the King walks from the castle to the quay and stands at the edge of the water, looking out toward the horizon, to the exact place where the boat carrying his Daughters disappeared. Perhaps he misses them and wishes they would return. Perhaps he worries that they could come back, and bring their wickedness with them. The King is accompanied, as he usually is these days, by his flocks of pigeons. Each time, the pigeons spiral higher and higher and higher, before returning and alighting on his shoulders, arms, or cloak. He whispers to his birds, who whisper back. And then he walks home—a jumble of feathers and wings and beaks and bright, black eyes. He is more pigeon than man these days, poor thing. And walking slower every day. It’s probably only a matter of time. Everyone says so.
Well. He had a good run.
* * *
Three months after the Ball, the King woke with a start.
“Something is different,” he said, to no one in particular, save the pigeons. There were always pigeons. Time was he kept his birds in their aviary at night, and he visited them at the proper training intervals. But since the castle became overrun with children, the pigeons now were everywhere. No one could say for sure who was opening the cages—a child, or several children, or all of them, or the pigeons themselves—but now the pigeons had become used to freedom and would not go back. They loved the children, and couldn’t bear to be parted from them. And they loved the King, too. Most nights he slept under a blanket of pigeons, all cooing in their sleep. The King had never slept so well in his life.
“Something is different,” he said again.
“Coo,” said the pigeons. And then they flew off to find some children to play with.
The King went down to breakfast. His Daughters were there—in disguise, of course. Albina and Althea and Adeline and Aurora and Annika and who knows who else. He hardly recognized them anymore with their shorn heads and their heavy boots and their practiced mannish swagger. They shoved rolled socks in their trousers and taught themselves to spread and snort and slap and own. They farted constantly. Which, the King reasoned, is fine. It’s just . . .
He missed his Daughters. As they were. Wickedness and all. Not actually wickedness, obviously, but, he realized, he missed the way they raised eyebrows. He missed the way they annoyed the Council. And the Priests. And the Barons. He missed the smell of their hair and the swish of their skirts and the way their laughter sounded like music.
Also? He could no longer tell them apart. Granted, he couldn’t before, but now it was worse. They were uniformed now. Their hair was the same, and their clothes, and their mannerisms. They were pantomiming Baron-ness, and doing so identically. He lived now in a household of actors and each
of them was playing the same character.
Only the children helped to break up the monotony. Thank goodness for that, the King thought.
Breakfast was served as the children streaked through the room—climbing the drapes and hanging from the statues and sliding under the table.
“Mind you don’t hurt yourselves,” the King murmured for the millionth time as he thoughtfully munched on his toast. He looked at his Daughters. Or his sons-in-law. Or his Daughters who were pretending to be his sons who were pretending to be his Daughters. His head hurt. This was confusing.
“Um,” he began. The Daughters looked at their father. Their faces softened. They looked like themselves again.
“Althea?” he said weakly. He wasn’t sure if she was even at the table. He winced.
“Yes, Father,” said the most Althea-looking of all of the Sort-of-Barons in the room. The King nearly sighed in relief.
“Has anyone checked the harbor this morning,” the King asked. “Has anyone looked for boats on the horizon?”
“It’s not coming back, Father,” the Baron/Daughter closest to him said, gently reaching over and rubbing his back. Annika, he thought. She definitely sounded like Annika. She had swollen knuckles. That was Annika, right?
“Something’s different today,” the King muttered. “Something is coming. I can feel it.”
The Daughters exchanged stricken glances but said nothing.
“Coo,” said the pigeons. And the King became convinced that the pigeons agreed with him.
Later that morning, the King returned to the water. He saw nothing.
In the afternoon, he returned again. Again he saw nothing.
But that evening, as the sun sank in the west, the King yet again returned to the harbor’s edge, and there, at the rim of the sky, was a smudge. And as he stood and watched, the smudge became a splotch. And then the splotch became a shape. And the shape grew closer and closer until it looked like a boat.
“Fly!” he shouted to his pigeons. “Fly now! Get my Daughters. Get the children. We must make a plan!”
And to his Mariners he said this: “Take your fastest boats and your most skilled sailors. Surround that vessel. Bring it in quietly, and under the cover of darkness. Bring its occupants to the throne room without violence or incident. Bind them if you need to. If they fight, sink the ship and leave its sailors to drown.” The Mariners clicked their heels and bowed low to their King.
* * *
As it turned out, the ship did not carry Barons, nor soldiers, nor mercenaries of any kind.
There were only three occupants aboard, and they were all Giants.
Or, more specifically, two Giants and one Giantess. They were, if everyone was being honest with themselves, much smaller than they would have imagined. No one had been to the Land of Giants for at least four generations. In the stories, its inhabitants were the size of houses. In actuality, their heads hovered near the ceiling, but did not touch it.
The Daughters joined their father in the Receiving Room, and kept close. They eyed the Giants warily. The Giants did not appear to notice. They bowed low. They were impeccably polite.
“My name is Runt,” the tallest one said. “Son of Grunt, son of Brunt.”
The Daughter/Barons bowed in return.
The giant Runt continued, gesturing to his companions, “And this is Og, son of Gog, son of Tog. And this is Marlene. We are emissaries, and we speak with the authority of the Collective, as we have no Monarch. We seek the Thirty-Three Wicked Daughters of King Diodicias. I have a message that can be read only to them.”
The Daughter/Barons looked at one another. Albina cleared her throat, but the King raised his hand to stop her.
“I’m afraid you are too late. The Daughters of Diodicias, after being legally and modestly married to thirty-three dutiful Barons, succumbed to their own wickedness. They attempted to cut their husbands’ throats in order to return to their wicked ways. I placed them on a boat and sent them to the sea. No one will ever hear from them again.”
“Your story is incorrect,” the Giant Og countered. “The marriages you mention were neither modest nor lawful. And while it is true that a boat full of gowned individuals left this harbor, they were nobody’s Daughters.”
Albina stepped forward. She jutted out her chin and narrowed her eye. “You have only told us part of your story,” she said.
The Giant Marlene bowed low once again. “And you, madam, have told me none of yours.”
* * *
The children had not been invited to the meeting. This, they decided, was utterly unfair, and they determined to do something to rectify the situation. Because they had become skilled in the arts of Stealth and Subterfuge and Thievery, they had already made plans for just such a scenario. They knew the safe places to shimmy up behind the drapes. They knew how to scramble through the rafters. They knew how to drop down from the roof. They knew the secret passageways and forgotten gaps. They knew the castle better than they knew their own breath. And so they scurried in—a silent, creeping swarm—and listened to the Giant’s story.
This is how they learned that a ship full of sniveling, weeping Barons landed on the shores of the Land of Giants. They learned how the Barons, in their pleading for their miserable lives, had told the Giants about the Daughters of Diodicias, and how they wept at the wickedness of their wanton once-wives. They told the Giants about the glittering coats, and the sinister gowns. Gowns that trapped them. They told the Giants about the beads and the masks and the children in cloaks. They told the Giants about the prison boudoirs and the perfectly implemented scheme—how they carried each sleeping Daughter off, in the night. How they tricked the King. And then were tricked. By the King. And those wicked Daughters. They told the Giants about the community banks and the schools and the boxing matches and the knives, and the nude dancing and the shoes, and how they had tried and tried and tried to thwart those wretched Daughters, and how they thought they had finally found a way. Until they didn’t.
“So what you are saying is that you poisoned, kidnapped, lied, plotted regicide, and schemed, and are now upset that others schemed against you?” the Giants asked the Barons.
“Well, actually,” sniffed the Barons, but the Giants did not let them finish. They couldn’t stand it for another second. They ate them on the spot. They tasted, the Giants now explained, awful, and gave the entire nation a terrible fit of gas.
“What is it that you are seeking, Giants?” Albina asked.
“We are entranced by you,” Runt the Giant admitted.
“We wish for you to come to the Land of the Giants and live with us,” the Giant Og added.
“We wish to ask for your hands in marriage, if you will accept us,” the Giant Marlene said, “or your presence in our community, if you will not. We wish to have your ideas and your work and your voices and your minds so that we may become more than ourselves.”
“We wish to place crowns on your heads and flowers at your feet, if you wish,” the Giant Runt said, “or work alongside you if you do not. We wish to build libraries and schools and lecture halls. We wish to raise pigeons and learn metallurgy and become good farmers and to study the stars.”
“You can do all of those things without us,” Albina said. “Why should we come with you? Our lives are here.”
“You are wearing someone else’s clothes and using someone else’s names, while your own are maligned,” Og said. “Here you are impostors in your own land, hidden from your own people. We wish to give you a nation, one that is yours forever. Your lives may be here, but is this really the life you would choose?”
Silence fell.
“I prefer slacks,” Albina said, looking the Giant Marlene in the eye.
“So keep them,” Marlene said. She held Albina’s gaze for a moment. Then she blushed.
The children exchanged glances with one another. And then felt their hearts begin to sink. They looked at the King’s face. He curled around himself, as though his heart had been str
uck by an arrow. Indeed, the children thought, perhaps it actually had.
* * *
King Diodicias, years after his eventual passing, was known for his tender, capacious heart. Which is saying something, given how many times it had been broken. His wicked Daughters, gone. His sons-in-law-turned-sons, vanished. In the night. No one knew where they had gone. But, despite those great sorrows, his capacity to love only increased. He threw his attention to the care and rearing of his foundling children, and he knew each one by name. He saw to their education and interests and development. He cheered them in their successes and comforted them in their failures. He loved them every step of the way. And once he raised those children, he continued to open his home to more. He followed in his beloved Althea’s footsteps and built school after school and university after university. He was generous to a fault, nearly bankrupting himself more than once. He dissolved the Council in favor of forming a Parliament of the Peasantry, both in service to the people and voted into office by the people.
He was loved. Venerated. Adored.
Years later, he began entertaining emissaries from the country once called the Land of the Giants, but now called Albion, though the reason for the name change was lost to history. The emissaries—giants, all, with big vocabularies and big hearts, with pronounced chins and broad shoulders and quick feet and bright minds—all called him “Grandpop.”
No one knew why.
ELIZABETH BEAR
Bullet Point
from Wastelands: The New Apocalypse
It takes a long time for the light to die. The power plants can run for a while on automation. Hospitals have emergency generators with massive tanks of fuel. Some houses and businesses have solar panels or windmills. Those may keep making juice, at least intermittently, until entropy claims the workings.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 Page 17