Chapter Five

The Felled Giant

‘People live here, like actual people?’ Ariea said.

‘Actual people do live here, like,’ replied Oxford with a cute smile. There was a dull clank and the door of The Felled Giant swung open. A dewy-eyed blonde girl, about Agloff’s age, stood beaming at them. She had a button nose and freckled cheeks.

She was paler than Agloff imagined for someone living out this far west. Oxford said the heat was unforgiving. Maybe she never left this place.

‘Oxford!’ she said, surprised. She seemed to think about hugging him but restrained herself to a pat on the shoulder. One-at-a-time, she waved them through. The inside was as uninviting as the out. On one side a staircase, laden by dust and mould, ran up to what Agloff presumed was the inn. On the other, the hall stretched into a bar buried at the back of the pub. The floor felt as though Agloff was sinking into it with every step. If the intention were to give the impression no one lived here, they had more than succeeded.

They reached the bar, and a man was perched upon a stool. He was dark-skinned and shaven-headed, thin, like most people these days with pointed features. But there was a menace in his frantic eyes. Like the girl, he was but eighteen or nineteen. Resting in his hands was a well-polished shotgun.

‘Memph,’ the dewy-eyed girl said.

The boy offered Oxford a nod of recognition. His eyes darted across Ariea and Agloff and his fingers tightened their grip across the barrel of his firearm. ‘You trust these people?’ he said quietly.

‘Yes, I think so,’ Oxford replied, glancing at Agloff, which did not go unnoticed by the boy. He took his time to study Agloff, as if he were eyeing up a piece of meat. Suddenly, Agloff felt naked.

‘Can I get you a drink?’ the girl said, rounding the bar to pull three chipped glasses from above her. The blackened ceiling hung low, and Oxford almost had to stoop his way to a stool. Circular tables potted the floor to a bay window at the back, where angled beams of light rifled in from across the street.

‘Water if you have it,’ Ariea said pleasantly.

The girl scoffed. ‘Funny you think we’d have much of anything else.’ She tugged on the tap of a barrel laying slanted across the bar then pushed the glasses in Ariea’s direction. Agloff downed his in a single gulp.

‘Agloff, Ariea,’ Oxford began, ‘this is Meredith- well, Merry- Cutter and Memphis Teller. Merry, Memph, this is Agloff and Ariea. Escorting them from Backwater to the Underground.’

‘Thank you for taking us in,’ Agloff said, awkward. Merry replied with a kind look as if to say it was no bother.

‘Who are they?’ Memphis sneered.

‘If you mean why are they cargo, that’s private, Teller.’

‘Memphis is fine.’

‘Lovely to meet you both,’ said Ariea and Memphis replied with a curt smile. Merry just grinned. Agloff assumed they weren’t used to meeting new people.

‘What brings you here?’ Merry asked to Oxford. ‘Long journey?’

He shook his head. ‘Not today, no. But we got picked up by some pilgrims few miles east. Sitting out the storm, so to speak.’

Memphis looked uncomfortable. ‘If you’ve brought pilgrims here…’

‘I don’t like it, but I had no choice. I’m sorry. Far as I know they didn’t track us.’

‘Far as you know.’

Merry sighed disdainfully. ‘Memphis, go fetch Lady,’ she cut in. Memphis nodded and vanished out the bar and up the stairs. ‘Sorry, he’s a… he gets tense. About strangers. As he should. An angel once you know him.’

‘How do you know Oxford?’ Ariea asked, taking a sip from her glass.

‘Oh, he passes through time to time. He’s our only regular guest.’ She laughed.

‘Tends to be a last stop on the way back. I can vouch for Merry and Memphis,’ Oxford said, turning to Agloff and Ariea. ‘They’ve been nothing but good to me.’ He turned back to Merry. ‘And likewise, I can vouch for them.’

‘Good enough for me,’ she said, beaming. Agloff wondered what could compel her to be so cheery when living in the armpit of the Colony, the hotel at the end of the world. But he was jealous of her. Happiness didn’t come easy in this place. Agloff twirled his empty glass against the bar in ponderous silence. He sensed the slurping of glasses and uncertain glances exchanged between them. But his mind had drifted to a more distant place. He had not slept for seeming centuries and the oak of the bar was as inviting a pillow as any. He thought he might get away with five minutes of shut eye in that awkward moment. But no.

There came a clattering of footsteps and Memphis returned, a young girl in tow. She was about half his size in an oversized trench coat with a cap slanted across her head and earphones stuffed into her ears. She gawked at them through wide eyes. Agloff thought she was no older than nine or ten.

‘Uhh, hullo,’ she squeaked.

‘Lady, this is Agloff and Ariea,’ said Merry. Lady nodded stiffly at them and then ran to give Oxford a hug. He grabbed her by her shoulders, rubbed a knuckle against the back of her cap. ‘Sorry, you must be hungry,’ Merry added, calling Lady away. The two of them headed behind the bar to mix up porridge.

Agloff turned and saw Ariea’s attention up in the rafters. A guitar was suspended there in arm’s reach, lashed up by string. The others watched her.

‘Can I?’ Ariea said, raising an arm towards its neck.

Merry smiled. ‘Please.’

Ariea took the thing down and straddled it across her thigh, then plucked at a string or two with dainty fingers. The image stirred memories in Agloff.

‘You play?’ Oxford said.

Ariea didn’t look up. She was captive by the curves and strings of the instrument. It was polished into a deep red. Any scuffs and chips glossed like sparkles in the cut of the light through the windows.

‘My dad did. He had a… I don’t know what it was called exactly.’ She turned a peg and played a note. Content, her hands danced in gentle rhythm. Wordless notes thrummed the air. Agloff recognised the tune well enough. It was a slow song. It didn’t mean anything as such. It just meant her. Ariea looked momentarily entranced, like an animal captive by its own reflection. The room watched and listened, then silence. Ariea bit at her cheek then levelled the guitar up against the edge of the bar.

‘Is it a sad song?’ Lady said from the other side of the bar.

‘Why would it be sad?’

‘It doesn’t have any words.’

‘Doesn’t mean it’s sad. They’re just notes. You could make up words. My dad whistled it up one day walking home from work.’ She pretended to smile. ‘Said they sounded right. He wanted to make it into a song but never figured it out.’

Agloff looked at her. He wanted to say something, but words escaped him, and the moment passed them.

‘I play a little,’ she continued. ‘But I play violin. It’s like a guitar but smaller. You play it with a string, like this,’ she added at Lady’s quizzical look and gestured the motions. The girl seemed awed.

Agloff saw a second glumness hit her. That violin was at Backwater somewhere, broken up or traded off. It had meant everything. If Eron were the root of Agloff’s obsessions, that violin was the root of hers. The last gift Agloff had bought her were reams of music he had bartered the librarian for. They were gone too.

‘Who’s the girl?’ Agloff asked Oxford, in hopes of distraction.

Oxford dipped a finger in his water and slickened his beard. ‘Lady is an orphan of Winter. Like Merry and Memphis.’

‘Many of those?’ Agloff cut in, thinking if he couldn’t sleep, he may as well indulge in the conversation.

‘I forgot what it was like at Backwater,’ Oxford observed. ‘Drake said she kept Winter a secret, as long as she could. What people didn’t know, couldn’t hurt them.

Agloff supposed he was right. For all the last few days had brought, Winter felt little more than a vague idea. A formless shape, occluded in a nightmare, and left entirely to this worst of his imagination.

‘What do you know about Winter?’ Agloff said, and, for the first time since he met her, Merry looked at unease, perking up from behind the bar.

Oxford leaned back from his stool and the disquiet seemed to pass through them like a contagion. ‘That’s a story. I suppose,’ he said ponderously.

Merry scowled a little and passed across three bowls of gooey porridge. Agloff wolfed it down. It was noxious; somehow tasting hot and cold at the same time. But he had little care. Food was food.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Merry then tucked Lady under her arm, biting her lip. ‘I don’t know Lady needs to hear this, Oxford,’ she warned. Concern was drawn in lines across her pale face.

‘Agloff and Ariea got a right to know.’

Merry sighed but did not argue. She led Lady across to a corner table by the window. ‘It’s okay,’ Lady squeaked. ‘I don’t remember much anyway.’ Agloff smiled kindly at her as she walked past. She reciprocated. ‘Nice to meet you, ‘Gloff, ‘Riea.’

‘You too, Lady,’ Ariea said. ‘Merry taught you your manners.’

‘Of course.’ The girl grinned. There was a pointed awkwardness in the interaction. Agloff stifled a laugh as Lady bobbed to the back of the room, where Merry now sat and made to pull a book down from a shelf beside them. She lit a candle and quietly asked Lady to read, correcting her whenever she made a mistake.

Content there was quiet, Oxford reclined into his tale. ‘Colony’s only twenty-something years old. Bit older than the end of the war. One day, a ship arrived a way north, where it all started. A city called Eden on the River Nanda.’ The name had stuck, thought Agloff. He had whispers of a Winterian city called Eden, but no more than that. Drake did well to keep Jask a secret. ‘But this ship looks like nothing no one’s ever seen before.’

‘What, like aliens?’ Agloff blurted. Was that a stupid question?

Oxford shrugged, as if it weren’t an impossibility. ‘Who knows? Weeks after, Winter pops up and starts raiding villages. Then months go by, it’s taking over towns, forts. Anywhere hit by winged fever and growing since.’ He fell deeper into the embrace of the bar and seemed to await their inevitable questions.

Ariea’s tongue poked in her cheek. ‘Why? Why are they going after winged fever?’ Agloff sensed a trepidation in her voice. He knew she was thinking of Backwater, and how long it might last. Did she want to go back, after all they were going through? The thought left a bitter taste.

‘Easy targets,’ Oxford answered. Agloff couldn’t tell if this was a guess or definitive. ‘No one knows why they came here, and hell to Feng if I know. But they want Agloff.’

‘Winter wants him?’ snorted Memphis. His eyes were scythes cutting into Agloff. ‘And you brought him here?’ His grip tightened across his weapon.

Regret flashed in Oxford’s eyes and his fingers lowered to his holster. ‘They don’t know we’re here,’ he insisted.

‘You said Lady was an orphan of Winter?’ Agloff said, quick to diffuse the tension. His curiosity burned inside him. He was a vulture picking the carcass of Oxford’s brain.

Memphis set his shotgun aside. ‘We all are. After cholera came, the survivors burned the bodies, packed their bags and tried to leave. And Winter came to recruit the children that were still here. We lost everyone. Merry stayed and hid here with her granddad, in the cellar.’ Memphis paused. ‘She was only five. We manage. We hide. And we do both by being careful. You bringing someone Jask wants into our home is…’

Memphis did not finish his thought. Content with his interjection, he continued brooding, shovelling his firearm into his arms and scrubbed it by the cuff of his sleeve. Agloff felt exposed. Even when it wasn’t, he felt the gaze of the room turned upon him. It was a feeling that he was not one of them. These moody characters in their introspective poses.

‘Why’s Winter want the children?’ Agloff said, glancing at Lady reading in the corner.

‘Dunno.’ Oxford shrugged again. ‘But wherever Winter goes, they take the kids, up and leave. Just leave the adults behind. Sometimes, some places, some of the kids get sent back.’

Memphis looked up ‘And your lot’re just as bad,’ he said to Oxford.

Oxford’s eyes narrowed. ‘Meaning?’ Agloff sensed he was a true patriot. He loved his country. The thought of someone slighting it enraged him.

‘The Underground pride themselves on independence. They do favours for forts to keep them happy. To the Underground, Winter’s just a bi-i-ig fort. If they get too close, start to threaten, the Underground only need to do them a little favour. The children Winter misses, the Underground pick them up, hand them over, mutual satisfaction for both.’ Memphis’ tone was in no shortage of irony. ‘Once kids start running out for Winter, I imagine your lot’ll pass over one or two of their own ‘less important’ ones. What you got going on sounds lot like Winter to me. No one cares about a few kids, right?

‘What happened to those kids here, we said would never happen again. I have beef with Winter. They took my folks, my friends. So, who’d have thought it turns out,’ he said with a whimsical sarcasm, ‘I got beef with the Underground too.’ Agloff could see his resentments for the Underground and Winter were well-festered. This agreement the two of them seemed to have that Memphis was at no pains to elaborate on.

Agloff supposed he could see Memphis’ way. The people of the Underground were born, raised and died there. They didn’t know anything of Colony Two. They were indoctrinated into a way of life, no different to Winter raising the ‘children’ who, Agloff presumed, would become pilgrims. Oxford told himself it was different because he must.

Agloff had heard how they treated strangers there. It was a truth Agloff was more and more anxious to spare himself from. But it seemed unavoidable.

Memphis considered Oxford through a pause. ‘I bet, right now, Fall and Jask are fu—’

Oxford burst from his stool and lurched at Memphis. Agloff hauled him back by his shoulders.

‘—cking each other,’ Memphis finished brusquely.

‘Memphis, that’s enough!’ snapped Merry. She stepped across the window, and her long shadow cast a darkness over each of them. ‘We’re friends here.’ Memphis responded with a doubtful look. Any excuse to slight Winter, and any excuse to slight the Underground who he invariably saw as one at the same. Two nations happy to bed each other and screw the little man over. At least, that’s what Memphis must have thought. Agloff supposed he would see for himself.

Memphis set his weapon aside and stood sharply. The five of them exchanged uneasy looks. Oxford then banished himself to a table in the corner and Merry showed Agloff and Ariea to a room each upstairs. Agloff slumped his bags by the door to prop it open and changed into comfier clothes behind the curtain of his four-poster bed. Burdened by the day; he fell into a wistful sleep.

*

Ariea roused Agloff with a violent shake.

‘Quick!’

Agloff gathered himself to his senses, murmured nonsense. He stuffed himself into his clothes and scrambled down the mould-ridden stairs and into the hall. He must have slept through the day as the line of sunlight through the back of the bar was gone.

Lady perked her head above the windowsill. Twisting her cap out of her eyes, she pressed her tiny hands against the glass. Agloff followed her gaze. The buildings opposite were struck in the shadow of a violent glow rising between the rooves of March Town and the blinkered lights of Cerberus. The early night sky was smitten in a haze of smoke and embers, dancing like fireflies. Lady moved to stand across it. ‘Look!’

The others convened across her. Memphis and Oxford left a void between each other. The strange glow danced and rippled across the angles of buildings. Agloff felt his heart pulled down between his ribs. He swallowed his angst. Against the gloom, flowing capes cast darkened shapes, punctuated by the torches of pilgrims.

A dozen of them, or more. Their silhouettes peered through the hollowed windows of history. They cleared each building with a well-trained precision. Content a building was deserted, they lit it ablaze. The sky burned and sparks scattered in the air like stars.

‘Now you’ve done it,’ growled Memphis. This time, he lurched at Oxford. Merry grappled him back, as he clawed at Oxford’s cheek. For a moment, their eyes turned on Agloff who said nothing.

Oxford snapped in hushed tones, ‘I found one in a forest. I thought I dealt with it. I’d never bring them here. I swear. I didn’t know they’d find us.’

‘That’s our home,’ Memphis pleaded. He wrestled half-heartedly against Merry’s restraint, his eyes glazed. She guarded Memphis by one arm, and Lady by the other. There was a blinkered confusion in the girl. Like she was scared but didn’t know why. ‘That’s our home.’

‘And it’s my fault,’ Oxford said, flashing a glance at Agloff who bit his lip, struck by pangs of shame eating his insides. The words cut at his throat like knives.

‘It was me,’ Agloff said, gulping. ‘It was my fault. Not Oxford.’

Memphis’ eyes narrowed. ‘What?’ he said quietly.

‘I got bored in the forest and went looking when I heard something. It was the pilgrim and they followed us. I thought it was a fox. I’m sorry. Oxford stopped them.’ Ariea’s mouth curled and her eyes folded in judgement. ‘Why did you have to do that?’ they said.

Memphis approached. His breaths beat against Agloff’s temple. ‘You did this.’ He poked a finger into Agloff’s chest. Agloff tried to puff it out. To stand strong, but all strength failed him.

Oxford grabbed Memphis’ arm. ‘I know you wanna take this out on him, but we can’t have a goddamn committee meeting over whose fault this is! There’s no chance they don’t spot us. So everyone shut up. We gotta leave. Like right now!’ He swivelled, a gusto in his stride, towards the front door.

‘No,’ whispered Merry. ‘Not there. My granddad kept a cellar for alcohol,’ she said, straining to haul up a section of floorboards, revealing a well of darkness below. ‘There’s a way out through there. He had a brewery. It’s connected to the main water pipeline. It’s how we live.’

Oxford produced a lighter from his pockets and squatted to inspect the ladder that fed into the dark. ‘I’m liking your granddad a lot. Get your bags,’ he urged at Agloff and Ariea, ‘You.’ He poked a finger at Memphis. ‘You can hate us later.’

They each silently obeyed. Agloff collected his bag of belongings and abandoned the rest of his clothes to the bed. He could get more at the Underground. With Ariea in tow, they scurried back downstairs.

‘You got alcohol?’ Oxford said to Merry.

‘Some,’ she replied, her eyes tightening. ‘Mainly granddad’s personal stash. I could never bring myself to drink it and Memphis wasn’t allowed, so.’ She gestured to a shelf behind the bar and Oxford gathered the bottles in haste. Without hesitation, he doused the floorboards in fluid as Merry and Memphis watched, aghast, but neither had the urge to halt him. The shadows of pilgrims flickered across the window and Oxford pointed for Ariea to hoist the curtains shut.

‘They can’t know we were ever here. For all they know they already checked this building,’ he said, and Merry and Memphis could not argue, even as they knew what was about to happen. Oxford pointed for Merry to descend the ladder, then Memphis, together with Lady, and then it was Agloff and Ariea’s turn. They watched as Oxford tossed his lighter through the hatch, drawing it shut. The Felled Giant erupted into flame over their heads.

There was a click and the cellar buzzed into life. ‘Backup generator,’ Merry announced. ‘Haven’t been down here in forever.’ Barrels stacked up on either side towards a low ceiling, connected by a maze of pipes and tubes, running this way and that. ‘They’re empty now, don’t worry.’ The air had a stale miasma, like something or several had died down here.

‘It’s freezing,’ Ariea said. The chill crept down Agloff’s spine, and his shoulders rolled across his back.

‘Give it a minute. Heating’ll kick in.’

Oxford pointed at Ariea. ‘You’d rather still be up there? Least you’d be nice and warm.’ He began to pace, his fuse cut short.

‘Is that a joke? We making jokes now?’ Memphis growled. The dim light seemed to harden Memphis’ stony features. His stare was unbroken, like a portrait, fixed on Agloff.

Oxford shrugged. ‘I just saved your life, cut me slack.’ He plucked a lump of something or other from the floor and tossed it down the cellar aimlessly.

Memphis lurched again, only this time he restrained himself.

‘Hate us later,’ Oxford repeated. ‘You wanna blame someone, blame them.’ He gestured upwards.

‘Bastard.’

Oxford shrugged again. ‘You better learn to love the Underground real soon, ‘cos guess where you’re going.’

‘We could go Colony,’ mumbled Memphis. His demeanour slackened. Like a workman in line for a whipping by an overseer. It was a pose Agloff was well-acquainted with.

‘I’ll take bets on how far you get. Best of luck.’ And Oxford raised a hand in the opposite direction. ‘I’m being nice right now, but I am very impatient, so listen up, dipshit. You seem like a good guy; you got principles. That’s cool and all. But I am giving you your life here. Maybe you hate the Underground. But for god’s sake, do what’s best for the kid.’ His eyes shifted to Lady. ‘She’ll have a home.’

‘How do I know you aren’t just gonna give us to Winter?’

‘This was my fault, lay off him,’ Agloff cut in. He summoned every modicum of courage he could muster. He wasn’t sure if it was a vain attempt to pay Oxford back for the forest. Maybe he was just being kind. It was hard to tell. ‘I think we should go the Underground, where it’s safe. I’ll make it up to you, I swear.’

‘You won’t, but you’re welcome to try.’

Oxford swallowed, offering Agloff a half-smile. ‘My word. My word I won’t give you to Winter.’ He extended an arm to Memphis who stared at it for a moment, puckering his lips in thought. He snapped Oxford’s hand for as little time as courtesy allowed and nodded. Oxford looked to Merry.

‘Fine by me,’ she said. She struggled a specious smile. And Agloff wondered how hard it was to keep smiling, even as the world fell down around them. Hers was the bravest of faces.

‘Time to go?’ Oxford asked.

They each nodded. ‘Time to go,’ said Memphis. And his was the most defeated of faces.