Don't Let the Fairies Eat You (5 page)
“Here, Lyri,” Dansi said, kneeling next to her sister and untying the mouth of the black sack. “A gift from the giants of time, who sleep when it isn’t night or day, and a gift from a fairy who knows how much I love you. And a gift from me, sister, because I love you.” Dansi dipped the sack toward Lyri’s mouth. What fell out looked like a thin cream made of wind and light, blowing like a hurricane from the sack and sliding between Lyri’s lips like a soft breath.
Within moments, Lyri’s eyes fluttered with life and she sat up, hugging her sister. “Dansi, it’s been too long!” she cried. “What happened?”
“Your time had nearly run out,” Dansi said. “A fairy told me of the place in the forest between day and night where giants milk the time drunken by the sun and moon from mortals. I stole some of it and gave it to you, Lyri. I don’t know how much, but you’ll live for a while longer. Now, stand up. Our people must’ve rested while the heavens were confused and we can still catch up to them.” She helped her sister to her feet and they hurried through the woods, out from the trees into a grassy valley, where they spotted their people camped by a blue pond.
Dansi was all smiles and pride when she and her sister reached their people, but everyone looked to Lyri with wide-eyed alarm, and then to Dansi with wintry disdain. “What’s wrong?” Dansi asked. “I’ve done it! My sister’s all better. We can follow the herds with you.”
“Where did this help come from?” the leader asked. “All of us smell it on you—the taint of the fair folk and the giant-kin, in your mind and her body. Your hair grows red even now from their touch. They’ll be drawn to hunt our people more than ever before if we let you stay with us, and only you two will be safe. We don’t want to see you again. Leave before Lyri’s doom finds us instead.”
The nomads packed up and left the valley pond, and the twins in tears beside it. The sisters followed at first, but then the leader commanded their people to drive them off. Old friends from childhood, along with mentors they’d learned from, hunters they’d admired, and wise women all began to lob stones at the two girls. Dansi and Lyri ran before getting too many cuts and bruises, and watched their people wander beyond the hills, as if they’d never known the two at all.
“It would’ve been better for you to let me die,” Lyri said as her tears ebbed.
“I’d rather keep you around than all of them, if that’s how it is,” Dansi said. “We’ll leave their sight, and everyone’s sight as well.”
Lyri wasn’t certain what her sister meant, but followed Dansi up out of the valley, through a sprouting forest, to the underside of a hanging cliff where they found a system of caverns. “You want us to live here?” Lyri asked. “Spend the rest of our lives in the darkness, without friends or hunters or the sky?”
“Especially not the sky,” Dansi said, dragging her sister by the arm into one opening. “Our people who betrayed us can wander under the sky, letting the sun and moon drink their days away. We’ll hide here and keep our time for ourselves, living forever on.”
In the woods around the caves, they learned to hunt enough to feed the two of them, but only in the early dawn and twilight, when neither the sun nor the moon could watch them. They lived peacefully, though by living away from other mortal men and women, the twins were prey to the whispers of the wilds. The nighttime voices carried by the wind often drove men mad, but the two young women found knowledge poured into their heads. They learned how to tell which stones spoke and sang, and which of them told lies. They learned of fairy doors, of how to hurt and heal with blood. They learned the forbidden, true names of fairy-kin—pixies, glums, goblins, brownies, whistlers, and dryads—treated as curses by most peoples. They dreamed of the names of giant-kin—burls, frost giants, ogres, dornics, danes, trolls, and stroms—which most clans feared like titanic calls to dinner.
The twins remained young for many decades, hording their time and their knowledge without seeing another soul, until whispers about them began to carry through the night, reaching the dreams of any people who traveled in the land close to the caves. Soon, people came asking for help. At first, Dansi shooed them away with lies, shadow tricks, and even cursing one poor man, but eventually their pleas bit deeply enough into Lyri’s heart that she couldn’t stand it.
“I know what it’s like to need help and be ignored,” she told her twin. “We’ve been miserly with our gifts. A day spent here and there won’t be missed for good deeds.”
Dansi didn’t like the idea, but acquiesced for her sister. When a stranger came looking “for the witch sisters bridging our people to the fairy-kin,” as their visitors put it, the twins would go help the unfortunate man, woman, or child if the sisters didn’t have to travel more than a day’s journey and if Dansi deemed the problem worthy of their time. They once helped a pained pregnant woman ease into sleep through helpful herbs and so her baby slid out painlessly as a drop of water. Another time, they steered a starving clan in the direction of a white deer herd by watching the shimmer of moonlight from their distant antlers. They even, at Lyri’s insistence, helped a lovelorn woman snare her true love with a special onion clove she had to sew to a belly cut from a bull, which would find its way to her intended man’s heart.
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 around 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.