The following is the account of Kera Ruenstoll. Selected from Annex A-4581Q.
It is a long and cold walk through the woods to reach the source of the song that has haunted me ever since I was old enough to hear it. The night breeze carries more chill than it ought to this time of year, a symptom of the shrinking summers and swelling winters that I now hear mentioned at nearly every village meeting. My feet crunch through too-soon frost as I traverse the forest, and I nearly lose my way through the dark bramble on multiple occasions, turning around and craning my eyes skyward for some hint of starlight every time I lose my course. In the end, the stars fail me as a frigid fog rolls in, and I am only able to orient myself thanks to the perpetual, ever-nearer moaning of “the shame” that I have set out to find. By the time I come across an old, nearly overgrown trail that seems eager to guide me to the source of the mystery, I have already exhausted my meager stores of the pitiful carrots we pulled from the fields just days ago, and hunger is beginning to claw at my belly once again. An aching, empty reminder of the swiftly falling winter, each one colder and hungrier than the last. The harvests have been bad for nearly two decades, my parents say – though supposedly it was not always so.
It is my father who speaks of it most, while my mother simply agrees. His endless tales of better days long gone by rattle in my skull as I stomp through the forest, and in my minds eye I see my mother nodding alongside him, eyes cast down, unable to meet mine. They speak with such mourning for the old times, an era I never had the privilege to experience. I was born in the first few years of the decline and have only ever known each new year to be worse than those that came before. It angers me if I think about it, feels unfair that I should have been born into an era of such decline. My thoughts whirl downward at the injustice of it as I stomp through the shivering shadows, and I am only brought back to the moment I currently inhabit when a piercing bleat ripples outward from just in front of me. I come to a stop, and for the first time in what feels like hours, wrench my eyes upward and away from the root-latticed ground before me.
There’s a clearing ahead. Even in the dimly starlit darkness, I can see the thickness of the trees abating, some fifty feet in front of me. And in that clearing, the silhouette of something massive resides. A colossal form leaned against a tree, slowly rising and falling with ragged breaths that I thought until now to merely be the grinding of brittle leaves and bare branches in the autumn’s harsh wind. I slow to a creeping crawl, my own breath caught in my throat, and step off the trail to take a wide track around whatever lies before me. I should be afraid of whatever this thing is, this unknown mass of wheezing sorry, but for some reason that I can’t possibly begin to understand, I’m just not. I’m calm, focused, curious – perhaps moreso than I’ve ever been. Despite my unnatural clarity, I can’t help but hold my breath when I finally step out of the tree line, around a large boulder, and into the clearing – nor can I help expressing my shock in the form of a gasp once I see what lies within.
It's a great giant, the most enormous creature I’ve ever seen, laying in the dirt against a tree. Its enormous body is covered in shaggy fur, and its face is some strange mix of a dog’s, bear’s, and old man’s. It looks at me with shining, pool-like eyes as I enter its clearing, but makes no moves towards me. As I take several small, cautious steps toward it, I see why – the handle of an enormous, rusted sword protrudes from its chest, just below its heart.
My mind races and my brow furrows in confusion as my gaze flits between the weapon buried in its chest and the giant’s massive, pleading eyes. Who would do this? And why? It responds to my unspoken query with a simple look past me, over my shoulder, and I turn to see the supposed perpetrator of such violence – a ragged skeleton in a corroded armor, its bones picked white and clean by insect, bird, and time. A thick moss grows around its arms and chest, binding it to the boulder it leans against and giving it the impression of a prisoner long forgotten, chained to a wall in a dungeon. Except this is no dungeon – it’s a clearing in the wood, no more than ten miles from the village. I look back to the giant and speak aloud for the first time since I left my home.
“What happened here?”
It tries to speak but only succeeds in loosing a moan that send the birds nesting in the trees around the clearing soaring for the sky. Its moan trails into a whimper, and I find myself unable to stifle the sob that comes lurching forth from my chest. Its right hand rises, only slightly, and makes a shaking, weak gesture towards the sword, before it falls to the ground once more. It looks at me, and I see a single massive tear well from its right eye and roll down the matted fur that covers its face.
Suddenly, I’m moving toward it, and climbing up the side of its belly. It looks at me in confusion, but I don’t stop. I don’t know what I’m doing, what my plan is, but I’ve got to do SOMETHING. I get to the top of its softly rising stomach and find the sword handle in front of my face. It’s enormous, far larger than anything I could ever hope to wield. I look at the giant and see it offer me a slight, barely perceptible nod of affirmation. Its eyes close.
I breathe in deep and, unsure of what else to do, reach out and grab the sword… but the moment my fingers brush the rusted metal of the hilt, something changes. The dark, cold world of the clearing falls away, and quite suddenly I see something both new and old laid out before me.
It is a long, long time ago. Gone are the forest and the flowers, gone is ALL green life save for a crawling lichen and slow-moving stone. It is silent too, so very silent… save for a lumbering, thundering rhythm coming from over the horizon. Footsteps. The GIANT’S footsteps. The giant was the first to come to this place, after wandering here from somewhere impossibly far away. It looks upon the barren, rocky ground with delight, reaches down with its great hands, wakes the trees from their invisible slumber, and walks among them for untold eons before man ever sets foot in this wood. It learns the language of the flowers, hears the stories of the stones, and comes to know the secrets of the river – secrets it has kept for uncounted millennia.
It is forever, or perhaps only a moment, until mankind meets the giant. They come to this place, to its forest, in fear and flight, but it welcomes them. It shows them the way of its world, teaches them how to live in the wood. It shows them where the sweetest fruits grow in the spring, which bushes to eat from and which to avoid, where the fish gather and how, if they are fed with shavings of bark from a certain tree, they grow ever larger and more numerous. It teaches them the magic of the stones, and it shows them how to keep the balance of life in the forest through constant conversation with the hills, clouds, and waving summer grass. And in return, the people love the giant. At the zenith of every season they journey to the clearing it calls home, wherein they feast and sing and dance in circles around the delighted guardian of the forest. They come to worship it even, a form of praise the giant never quite seems comfortable receiving. Yet, despite such overzealousness, all is GOOD, so very good, for so very long. Until, one day not so long ago, He arrives.
He is a man from far away, tall and strong and handsome, with words sweeter than honey and an awful, hollow intensity behind his eyes. He tells the villagers what they want to hear, plays to their greed and their fear, and convinces them, slowly, that they have no need of the giant. That they alone should own their fate, that they alone should own this PLACE. I watch as, over months and years, he poisons the minds of the villagers against their guardian, eventually working the people I know and love into a frenzy against the giant their ancestors treated with such reverence. In horror, I see how they march, armed with torches and swords and spears and pitchforks into the wood. I see my parents among the angry crowd. My father wields our family lance; my mother holds only a kitchen knife. The torch-fire glints off their eyes, and I do not recognize the venomous look upon their faces… but I know that I have seen the echo that such an expression has left behind, the wrinkles it has wrought in its wake. It is the hollow, sagging regret that flits across their faces when I asked them about “the shame” – a look always accompanied by silence.
I see how they, along with everyone else, follow the man into the woods. How they march through the dark, moonless night until they reach the clearing the giant calls home. I watch as they cheer and yell as the empty man shouts and screams and curses the giant, all while the placid creature looks on with a nervous curiosity. That curiosity turns to fear when the man, frustrated by the giant’s unwillingness to fight him, leaps upon its chest – and plunges his sword directly into the soft space beneath the giant’s heart.
The sound it makes is like the tearing of world. The crowd covers its ears, and all around them a gale roars through, ripping the leaves from the trees and bringing autumn’s cold winds months early – the first great throbbing of a wound in the seasons that has been festering ever since. The man, the empty, beautiful, evil man, goes flying backwards, propelled not by the giant’s hand but instead by some unseen force, and collides with the boulder on the other side of the clearing. A sickly crunch signals the end of his brief flight, and as blood runs down the side of the stone he rests against, what little light there was within him vacates the space behind his eyes. The giant attempts to stand and instead crashes to the ground, loosing a mournful howl that everyone else in the village and I know all too well. No other steps forward to finish the job. I see the bloodlust leave the eyes of the villagers as they stare at the sobbing form of the giant, and watch as a bitter, corrosive shame takes its place.
Time skips forward as I witness the giant, now gravely wounded, lose its balancing hold on the wilderness that surrounds its clearing. Winters rise quicker and stay longer, summer heat bakes the earth without reprieve, and spring showers are replaced by raging deluges of water that scour away all the soft dirt that lies upon the earth. I watch as the candle of life flickers but stubbornly refuses to go out as the injured giant falls into a deep, pained slumber, waking only when the moon vanishes and pure darkness surrounds. I watch dozens of villagers, those who once carried torches and swords through the night, as they come to the giant and attempt to right their wrongs by pulling the sword from its chest. All fail – unable to atone for their wrath with hands and hearts weakened and stained by the guilt and regret they carry. Fewer of them come every year, fewer try to right the wrongs they once encouraged, until none come at all. A hush falls over the clearing, a deathly quiet interrupted only by the ragged breathing of the giant and its monthly, mournful song. A hush broken only now, by footsteps crunching over the carpet of dead, frostbitten leaves, MY footsteps, as I watch myself enter the clearing and reach up to touch the sword…
Then I’m back. Back in my body. Back in the now. Back in the clearing, staring with wide, tearful eyes up at the giant and the sword and the gnarled tree it leans against. It meets my gaze with a soft glance and a ragged sigh.
I know what I must do.
With two hands I reach up to the hilt of the sword and grasp it by its rusty pommel. The rough, biting corrosion flakes away beneath my fingers, but I find my grip – and pull. There is resistance, and for a horrifying moment I’m struck by the futility of my effort. How could I succeed where so many others have failed? Who do I think I am? But then, a shudder - and the sword comes sliding out with a brilliant flash of light. Surprised, I stumble backwards, and fall off the belly of the giant, rusty sword in hand.
The giant grunts, then gasps, then howls louder than anything I have ever heard. I raise my hands to cover my ears and drop the sword in the process. It disintegrates into a fine brown dust the moment it touches the stony ground below. The giant rises to its feet, whirls about, and for a single, terrifying, moment, I’m sure it’s about to crush me… but it doesn’t.
Instead, it looks at me… and smiles. A soft grin, full of relief, and I somehow know it’s thanking me, even though I cannot hear its words. It stands tall and raises its arms above its head in an enormous stretch, and I watch in wonderment as the wound in its chest stitches itself shut. A single drop of its glittering blood falls from its fur and lands on my hand. It soaks immediately through my skin, and I feel a small tingle, a bristling of something new awakening within me.
I stand, and the giant looks down at me – and bows. Then, it points behind me, towards a pale dawn just now rising over the tops of the trees. With a jolt of alarm I take its meaning and depart. As I pass the skeleton of the hollow man, the moss which covers it now blooming with flowers, I cast one last look back at the giant. Already it has begun whispering its strange words to the trees and to the sky, setting forth to right all that has gone wrong in its time of injury. It smiles at me one last time – and then I’m gone, down the path and into the wood, through a forest somehow greener than it was before.
I make it back to the village just as the sun climbs over the ridgeline, and I’m shocked to find the barren fields I stole through last night now brimming with budding green plants. The farmers look as confused as I am, and the puzzlement on their faces only deepens when I come tearing across the field out of the wood. They try to stop me, but I pay them no mind. I make it back to my home and into my bed only moments before my mother knocks to wake me. I feign illness, and as I begin to drift off to sleep I feel a warm beam of sunlight kiss my forehead. Outside, the rest of the village has found the strangely growing field, and a commotion is rising. I hear the words “miracle” and “magic” cut through the clamor, and I resolve to let them sit with the mystery. They made me walk through the dark to find the source of my wondering – it's only fair I make them walk through the day to find the source of theirs.
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