The City
by Clare Monahan
I wake to the sound of shouts and frantic movement. Kin rush past me in blurs of silver and dark winter green. A young drypar whose name I should know stops briefly when he sees me standing quiet in the chaos. “Giants!” he shouts, “Coming from the north. Help make sure everyone’s hidden.” Then he takes off into the rush to go warn others. I do as he says, wandering through the commotion to help those who have fallen behind reach safety.
The wisps have it the worst. The captured moonlight that shines from their skin is difficult to hide, but we have made burrows in which they can seek refuge from the giant’s eyes. The feylings throw on guises, the drypars curl up in their green cocoons, and the sparkers hold their lightning breath. Everyone hides.
As a dawnback, I simply need to be out of their line of sight. By night, my skin is covered in a patchwork of brilliant colours, and as I move, I am more silent than the dead, for the dead still speak in the minds of the living.
The giants come.
They seem nearly as tall as the buildings around them. They are covered in the strangest fur—no two that pass have ever been the same, and the shapes and colours change with the weather.
Tonight it is very cold, and the two that come towards us are covered in thick, dark fur so loose it swings beside them as they walk. They are terrifying, but still I let out a silent breath of relief. Only two means that they will not take buildings tonight.
The giants do that sometimes. Take buildings. A whole group of them come and push a great piece of metal through the base. Then they put it on a strange moving box that is so big that many giants can fit inside it at once. They take our buildings away to their wasteland.
Legend has it that they burn our rooms for fuel, and write their words upon the walls.
But tonight the giants do not stop. They do not take our homes. They simply walk through the city, noisier than I am even in daylight when every sound I make crashes in my ears, though none can see my form.
But then they are gone, leaving only their strange and patterned prints in the snow.
I make my rounds, waking the wisps, who come out of their burrows shining like silver suns. I hate that I can’t reassure them as I would during the day, but by night my silence is absolute.
Next I wake the liarflies, trying hard to stare at only their left wings. Liarflies have delicate paper wings on which appear words that change from day to day. On the left side are written beautiful lies, but on the right, painful truths.
Tonight the liarflies’ wings spin a familiar tale. That this was the last time the giants will ever come, and we can all rest easy. Such beautiful lies.
As night turns to dawn, I help gather the others into the central clearing for a meeting. We always hold meetings at dawn in the city. This is the only time that dawnbacks like me can be both seen and heard.
As always with meetings, the majority are relegated to the sidelines while one representative from each kin is chosen. There are only three dawnbacks left in the city; one is far too young to have anything useful to say, and the other is already fading with age.
So I make my way to the central podium. I am the last to reach it, so when I arrive, the meeting begins. Tilbar, the feyling representative, starts it off as he always does, giving angry words to the thoughts of the uneasy crowd.
“What do we do?” he says, as he has many times before. “Every year the giant attacks become more frequent! There was a time when the idea of a night assault was preposterous, now we have one every week. Something must be done. So, what do we do?”
This is followed by a long silence. Then Reeblin, a small wisp, not their usual representative, speaks.
“We could run,” he says. “Run through the wasteland. There must be a better place on the other side. A place with no giants.”
Everyone turns to him, but no one says a word.
“It’s not that I want to,” he says quickly. “It’s just, well, what else can we do? We can’t fight and we can’t go on like this. That’s all I’m saying,” he finishes in a mumble.
“They say there was a time before the giants,” I say, finding myself agreeing with Reeblin’s idea. “Perhaps there are still places without them.”
“That’s a myth,” yells Tilbar, “no one knows that for sure. I mean, come on, is there anyone here, anyone, who remembers a time before the giants?”
No one answers.
“See?” says Tilbar, turning to me and Reeblin, “That story’s worth as much as a liarfly’s left wing. Don’t give false hope.”
And for a moment I think that will be the end of it, but then a soft voice sounds from the back of the crowd.
“I remember.” And an ancient ore-kin steps forward, the crowd parting before him.
He walks slowly, leaning heavily on an age-warped cane. The ore-kin is so old that his silver skin is black with tarnish and his gemstone eyes have turned glassy and tired. But still his voice is strong as he tells his tale.
“It was many winters ago that they came. First one came alone, and we were scared. But he left quickly. The city was bigger then, much bigger. So big that this clearing could hardly fit all of the representatives, much less all of our city’s inhabitants.”
He pauses for a moment to let that sink in. “You all think I’m exaggerating, I’m sure,” he says, seeing the disbelief of much of the crowd. “Just let me finish and you can decide when I’m done.
“Point is, when the first giant left, we all thought it was over. But a while later they came again, more of them. This time they had the strangest markings too, brighter than a dawnback in moonlight. Orange, I think. Yes, orange. With a strange, shiny, yellow ‘X’ across the chest and back.
“Anyway, they came and painted a red circle around the base of many of the buildings. Then they took their pieces of metal and cut them all down. Over half the city was gone in a few days. Just gone. They came again too, day after day, taking more and more until this was all that remained.”
Here the ore-kin pauses again, this time to take a great, shaking breath. “They stopped here, I don’t know why, but they did.” He speaks softly now, gesturing as he does to the few dozen remaining buildings that surrounded the clearing.
“And by then their wasteland was all around us. Now they come all the time. They mostly ignore the few buildings that remain, but they walk through the city day and night, tearing up the ground and forcing us all to hide. It can’t be like this everywhere. There has to be something, somewhere out there that the giants haven’t found.”
For a while, no one says a word, perhaps imagining, as I am, the great horrors that the ore-kin had witnessed.
“Thank you,” says Reeblin, when it is finally clear that the ore-kin will say no more. “Thank you, sir.”
“Midas,” the ore-kin says. “My name is Midas, and I wish you all well on your journey. I’m too old to run.”
And with that it is decided. We will strike out across the wasteland in the desperate hope of finding some sanctuary still untouched by the giants. Because in the end, what else can we do but run?