Giants and Ogres (8 page)

Even monsters have birthdays.

For mine, my friends brought me a variety of surprises—not easy, given that we all live on the Cloud together, and everything we get from the outside world comes to us from the Stalk right in the middle. I had only been here a month, though, and the others had had far longer to figure out small deceptions.

I sat on the enormous chair they had built for me, trying not to giggle. I giggle when I get nervous, and it makes the furniture shake. Ella handed up the first present to me, hefting it high with her slender arms. I took it gingerly, carefully tearing the paper away.

It was a hand mirror, my size. Ella must have welded on the enormous handle to a full size wall mirror, and she beamed as I admired myself in it, her whole body thrumming. For just a moment, I felt like an ordinary teenage girl surrounded by friends.

The face in the mirror looked human, ordinary, maybe even slightly pretty with pink cheeks, blue eyes
and blond hair. Ella, below me, was human sized, but curved and slender as a harp, her brown hair chiming with her movements, her body humming. Beside her, Jared hefted up his own present, his squat gray form resembling a rough-hewn statue.

“I hope you like it,” he grated and smiled.

Of course I liked it. I would have liked a garland of paper chains, but he'd made me a massive necklace of gold. It looked delicate around my neck.

“And mine for last, Vivian!” Cyn caroled. She was the most human of us with only her wings, and the fact that she didn't age normally, locking her up here with us. She flew up beside me now, holding out a tiny package too small for my large fingers to open. She obligingly pulled off the paper and held it up close for me to see.

It was a signed picture of Jack.

“How did you get it? How did you know?” I breathed.

Cyn laughed. “How could I not know?”

“Now eat your cake, and then the new episode should be on,” Ella added. She had made me a seven layered cake in her largest pans, while she and the others shared a much smaller one. I could have eaten mine in one very messy bite, but I nibbled instead to show
my appreciation. It was chocolate, and as much as I missed my parents and my former house, I couldn't help feeling that this was home now.

Cyn flew up to perch on my shoulder as we crossed to the Vid area. The others had rooms around the periphery, but the huge open area around the stalk was the only place I fit. They'd made me a bedroom of sorts, curtained off, and then a shared living area with the Vid, a screen taller than they were. I brought my chair along, careful not to crush any of the others. I fingered my new necklace as Ella programmed the Vid, and the familiar music filled the room. In front of us, looking like he was in the room and nearly my size, was Jack, heart throb and musician, host of
Larger Than Life
. His jet black hair hung to his waist, his skin glowed bronze, and his eyes were bottomless pits of darkness I could have fallen into.

My birthday was officially made.

He sang in his amazing tenor voice, a song of hope and loss from pre-colonization, and all the normals in the audience had tears in their eyes. One of mine splashed down, drenching Cyn, but she never even looked up. Jack was captivating, as always.

“We have some exciting guests today, but first, an
announcement. In honor of today's 75th anniversary of colonization, we're going to be doing an entire show at the home of one lucky fan who has a birthday today.” He paused for the cheers and screams to die down, and a sari-draped woman came up to him with a bowl of names. He reached in, plucked one up, and then paused again. “And the winner is … Vivian Cross, of … the Cloud?”

A picture of me flashed up on the screen. I looked less than two meters tall, because there was no one else in the picture for comparison.

“Well, Vivian, we look forward to meeting you!” Jack went on, his smile back in place.

Elation warred with doom, and we all turned to look at the slightly damp Cyn. There was silence, and then Jared spoke.

“Oh, Cyn, what have you done?”

When a new world is colonized, viability is the main concern. New environments encourage mutations, and many of those become the new normal. Some changes, though, are just too far out of human norms to fit in.

I had looked normal when I was born. It was only when I was nine months old, a full meter long, 25 kilos,
but not yet rolling over, that my parents learned the truth. My maturation was delayed, but my growth was not.

When I was five, I was a two meter tall toddler. I learned normally for a toddler, which I remained for another five years, so they taught me languages. Math and reading couldn't begin until my teens, but by then I was fluent in all 23 of the languages our colony contained.

Talk of sending me away began when I was in my twenties, but I was the emotional equivalent of a six year old. My parents wouldn't allow it. I went on to learn math, coding, and reading and writing in all 23 languages. Our community helped to build us a house that would hold a six meter tall child. I kept growing, they kept aging, and finally, in my 60's, they both died. I barely fit in our old house and couldn't stand anywhere in it, but I stayed until the people from the government came, made me an emancipated minor, and sent me up the Stalk to live with the other ageless ones from the era of colonization. The Cloud was the first actual settlement on the planet, a research facility from before the planet was considered safe. There was no longer a need for it beyond housing the few monsters who remained.

We believed I had stopped growing at 24 meters and a few centimeters. The government sent us what
we needed, and all they asked was that we stay safely, quietly out of sight.

It looked like we weren't going to be holding up our end of that bargain.

“Tell them we're contagious!” Jared insisted.

Ella shook her head and music drifted out from her. “Jack did a show in Hazmat suits last year. That won't stop them.”

“What if we tell him that Vivian died?” he offered.

“What if we just let them come?” I asked.

The others turned to look at me, and I shrugged. “How bad can it be? They come up, see we're freaks, go away again. Best case, they realize we're also people. We get to carry on conversations with other people for a few days, hear some music, let the world know that we exist. Then life goes back to normal.”

Jared growled something, but Ella nodded. “That's probably the best attitude. If we don't expect too much, don't get our hopes up, I think we'll get through it.”

“We can do that,” Cyn agreed. “We know better than to care too much what any of them think.”

I nodded, fairly certain that we were both lying.

The elevator inside the Stalk is immense, so big that I can sit cross legged in it without ducking my head. The number of people and amount of equipment that Jack brought still filled it.

There was a moment of silence when the doors opened. There must have been twenty people inside, but I only had eyes for Jack. He looked out at the four of us … and smiled.

I could have died happy right then.

“Thank you so much for having us! You must be Vivian, the birthday girl. Won't you introduce me to your friends?”

I did, hardly noticing the camera people and assorted others as Jack gave the same warm smile to each of my friends, shaking hands with them and even reaching out to touch the enormous finger I offered. His voice was just as compelling up close, and while I suspected that he'd been air-brushed minutes before, he looked incredible.

“Can any of you sing?” he asked. “Or play any instruments?”

Ella shook her head in denial, and he froze at the chiming of her hair. “Oh, Ancestors, that's beautiful. Is that you? I mean, do you do it on purpose?”

Ella blushed, and I stifled instinctive jealousy. “She's amazing, isn't she?” I answered. “Every movement she makes, every breath, is music.”

Jack tilted his head back to look at me. “And how about you, Vivian? Do you sing?”

I cringed. “I never learned how to do that quietly. It's … too loud.”

Jack put his hands on his hips. “Don't stifle yourself to fit someone else's idea of appropriate. You sing out loud, and don't be afraid who hears you.”

“You'll want ear protection, in that case,” Cyn murmured, but it didn't matter.

I was already in love.

By the end of the day Jack had talked Jared into a kind of drumming, Ella and Cyn into a dance routine with just the music of Ella's body, and me into recording a song. They did use ear protection, all of them, but when the tech people played it back it was … beautiful. I'd done a song about a pilot, doomed to stay awake and age while her love slept in cryo, and it amazed me that such a sad song could perfectly capture my joy.

After the tech people had bedded down in the empty rooms and even my friends had gone off to bed, Jack sat
beside me on my enormous bed and talked. It felt weird, talking alone to a boy. It wasn't like he could even kiss me, let alone harm me in some way, but still … weird.

“How do you survive up here, just the four of you?”

I shrugged. “We have greenhouses, although it's hard for me to tend anything except the orchards. The government sends us our necessities, and we save to buy other things we want.”

Jack gestured at my necklace. “How did you manage to get that?”

I fingered the gold links. “Oh, Jared can change metals into each other.”

His eyes went wide, and just for an instant there was something in them I couldn't catch. “That sounds like a fairy tale.” He grinned, and the look was gone. “And you're the princess, trapped in your tower.”

And how will you free me, my Prince, when I can't even kiss you?

I smiled. “Close enough.”

The tech people stayed in the background, murmuring to each other. I amused myself by identifying the languages they spoke, trying not to eavesdrop. Just because Jack accepted us didn't mean that the others did.
Still, the worst I heard was one of them referring to us as “the poor bastards,” and another saying something about a cage, which the Cloud was in a very real sense.

The show went off without a hitch, Jack singing an introduction as usual. Then he taped segments with us and did a live shot of all of us waving and smiling. Ella recorded it, and I imagined all of us watching it, over and over again. It would be bittersweet, but I wouldn't trade the memories for the comfort of before.

It was late that night when Jack knocked cautiously on the wall beside the curtain that marked my bedroom. He slipped in at my call and stood a moment looking up at me.

“Vivian, we need to talk.”

I had considered the possibility that he would want to. They were going away tomorrow. Still, what was there to say?

I held out my hand anyway, let him climb on and lifted him up to my bed.

“I want you to know … I would be your prince if I could. I would rescue you from this tower, but there's no place for you down below. Every step you took would be hemmed in, people would be afraid of you, and I think you'd be miserable.”

All things I already knew, but I nodded, appreciating his effort.

“And I … I can't stay with you, Vivian. This isn't my place.”

“I know,” I whispered, sorry to see his distress. “It's okay, really.”

He shook his head. “It's not okay. Because the others … they can leave, Vivian. They can have a place down below. I can help people to see them as they are, not as monsters. But they won't leave, because they love you.”

I fell back against the headboard, barely registering that the movement of the mattress made Jack fall to his knees. The thought of my friends, sacrificing for me? Oh, beautiful, but not acceptable.

“You have to take them,” I agreed. “They can't give up that for me. It isn't right.”

“You are so beautiful, inside and out,” Jack said fiercely. “If things were different ….”

Blessedly, he left that unfinished.

“Should I say goodbye?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Pretend you're asleep. We'll leave now to get it over with.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I set him
gently back down on the floor, and laid back against the pillows. I turned the light off and stared up at the darkness of the ceiling. I could have undressed, but there was no point. Tomorrow I'd only be alone.

There were soft sounds a bit later, then Jack spoke softly in Cantonese. “Get the shipment in first.”

Two of the tech crew were arguing in Swahili, and a third suddenly hissed in Russian. “The sedative is wearing off!”

Sedative?

In Swahili, “The cage!” and then in Standard a more familiar voice. “Viv?” Cyn called. “Viv, I'm scared.”

“Now, now, don't wake her, you know she's too heart-broken for a goodbye,” Jack said soothingly in Standard, although there was an edge to his voice.