Tristram stood just beyond the ring of light cast by the giant’s cook fire. It was dusk, and the light from the flame made the shadows on his face slide and fade and jump. He was looking down at something he held in the palm of his hand—a plastic miniature of a young woman with aquamarine hair attached by a key-chain to a pocketknife. He ran his thumb over its tiny head and closed his fist around it. When he looked up, the flames of the campfire danced in his eyes.

Tristram skittered around the edge of the firelight. The cage which held his captive princess was on the far side, its wicker bars melding seamlessly with the thatch-work of branches behind it. A faint blue streak within the cage, like moss pasted to a sheet of tar paper, quivered under the leonine orange of the roaring fire.

Meanwhile, the giant was having a conversation.

“She’s quieted down somewhat,” said Crake, chopping ginger for the stew with a door-sized piece of flint.

“That she has,” agreed Blake. “I can’t recall ever hearing one make such a racket. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’s not keen on becoming part of the soup.”

They shared a thunderous laugh, the vibrations of which jiggled the jelly of Tristram’s eyeballs as he tip-toed through the darkness. Not being the most perceptive, he stumbled over a root and tumbled forward, his face grating against what felt like a wicker cage.

“Hear that?” said Crake, setting the ginger aside. “I think she’s starting again.”

Tristram held his breath. The sound of the stew bubbling in its minecart-sized cauldron filled the air. After a few more tense seconds, the sound of mincing resumed.

“Guess not,” said Blake.

After he let out his breath, Tristram rubbed his exfoliated cheek and winced. He got to his knees and shuffled over and peered into the cage. There, in the dead center, curled up like a pill bug, was Kaya. If not for her aquamarine hair, a few stray strands of which caught the firelight like luminescent spider silk, Tristram might’ve mistaken her for a bundle of dirty laundry. He jostled the cage a bit.

No response.

Tristram swallowed. He looked around for something to poke her with. Not finding anything, he scrabbled in the dirt and found a small pebble. As has been mentioned, Tristram did not play much baseball as a kid. He could not hit the broad side of a barn door, or any door for that matter. After resting the pebble on the pad of his thumb, he flicked it with his index finger, sending the stone off at a perverse angle where it sailed straight through the wicker mesh, ricocheted off the lip of the cauldron, and caught Blake right in the eye.

“By the Pantaloons of Pantagruel! My eye!” bellowed Blake, dropping the humongous piece of flint.

“What? Got ginger juice in your eye?” asked Crake.

“No. It was solid as a rock, whatever it was,” said Blake, rubbing his right eye.

“A moth, perhaps?”

“Could’ve been,” said Blake. He opened his watering eye and rolled it around in its socket. “Damn things. Got a brain the size of a grain of sand, you know.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. A wizard told me that once.”

“I remember,” said Crake. “I was there.”

They shared another bowel-shivering laugh and went back to cooking.

Tristram, who had been listening to this whole exchange in petrified horror, dropped his hands from his head where he had reflexively put them. He put his hand over his heart and took a few deep breaths. In the cage, Kaya still hadn’t stirred. After piecing together what remained of his composure, Tristram pressed his face against the cage and hissed, “Psst!”

Kaya raised her head with a jerk. When her eyes adjusted to the low light, she could make out just the contours of a pale face peering in from the outer dark, the eyes cavernous, the smile toothy and white. Understandably, she shrieked in horror.

“Oh, there she goes!” said Crake.

Blake nodded as he tossed the minced ginger into the cauldron. “She’s got some lungs on her, doesn’t she?”

“Stick some pinions on her and she’d make a regular harpy.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“That’s the truth.”

“Welp,” said Crake, clapping their hands. “Time for the main ingredient?”

“I’d say so,” said Blake. “Careful of that sticker she’s got. Don’t want to get nicked, now do we?”

“No, we don’t,” said Crake. In a louder voice, meant for Kaya, he added, “Hear that, young lady? No funny business.”

Trapped between what she took to be a nightmare and a hungry two-headed giant, Kaya sat in the perfect center of the cage and drew her knees up and rocked back and forth. The ground shook under her as the giant approached. She shut her eyes. Her mind went back in time, back to when things were green and grand, and she was something more than what she was about to become. She saw a castle with more rooms than a beehive has combs, its stone walls draped with tapestries depicting her ancestors engaged in the very feats that had earned her family a name known throughout the land. Men and women bedecked in silver armour, riding noble steeds, banners waving and a great multitude of faithful marching in their wake. Down the hall, parallel with the tapestry, Kaya ran and ran, soaking in scenes of monster slaying, coronations, jubilations, and glory. And, when she reached the end, the tapestry was blank but for the name woven as a placeholder for the latest of the lineage and her future feats of renown: Sayaka.

Kaya opened her eyes. The blade that she had been holding against her own neck flashed in the firelight, cutting deep across the giant probing pointer finger that had descended down from the top of the cage. A gut-gurgling bellow split the night like phantom thunder. The cauldron boiled over. The wicker cage rattled. Kaya felt her eardrums were about to burst but she grit her teeth and kept her hands at the ready. Her face was slick with blood from the gash she had cut in the giant’s finger.

“I told you to be careful!” roared Crake into the ear of Blake. “We should have smushed her with the club first.”

“What? And ruin the texture of the meat?” snapped Blake, peering down at his slashed finger. “Keep your suggestions behind your rotten teeth, imbecile.”

“I’m the imbecile? Look what happened to our finger because of your thoughtlessness!”

“Oh, stick it up your ass,” grumbled Blake.

“You mean our ass,” retorted Crake. “Why are you like this?”

“Like what?”

“You act as if you’re the only head on these shoulders.”

“If only,” mumbled Blake.

“What was that?”

“Just get the club.” Blake glared murderously at Kaya through the wicker. “I’m past caring about the texture of the meat.”

Crake scoffed. “Oh, sure, right on it. You stay here while I go get it.” He glared into the ear hole of Blake. As if by some secret signal, they turned as one and stomped off.

Kaya watched them go, moving only her eyes, her head seemingly fused to her body from the sheer tension. Behind her, a voice hissed.

“Now’s your chance! The top’s open.”

Kaya rolled her eyes up, then tilted back her head. The starlit sky peeked through the foliage above. The bars of wicker were gone. She clamped her teeth down on her blade and jumped on the side and began climbing.

“Where’d you leave it?” bawled Crake.

“Where’d I leave it?” gasped Blake. He shook his head. “The audacity. The utter audacity.”

“Settle down, thespian. Just help me look.”

“What do you think I’m doing?”

“Arguing with me.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

Kaya was half-way to the top. The giant’s blood was cooling quickly on her face. It had begun to coagulate and crack and peel off in dry flakes as she contorted her face with the effort of the climb. She flung one hand up and grasped the lip of the cage. Freedom was just a short fall away now. Her forearms ached; her fingers were bruised. She filled her lungs with the smoky, ginger-scented air and summoned the will for the final pull.

“Here it is, you buffoon!” shouted Crake. He snatched up a gnarly club that had been fashioned out of a young cypress tree.

“Took you long enough,” said Blake from the corner of his mouth.

They turned to see Kaya attempting to do a chin up on the lip of the cage. She had gotten her chin and elbows over. She just had to swing her legs and get a foot up on the edge. Through the steam and smoke of the boiling cauldron between them, Kaya locked eyes with the giant, looking from one misshapen head to the other. Nobody moved.

Tristram, with his arms spread wide like a gladiator basking in the adulation of a frenzied crowd, stepped from the shadows where he had been cowering and strolled up to the cauldron, the exact midpoint between the giant and the cage. He looked over and up at Kaya and winked, a gesture which did the opposite of inspire confidence. He spun around and addressed the giant, smiling politely at first one head, then the other. He cleared his throat. “It seems to me—”

Blake and Crake tilted their heads back and shrieked, the sound so doom-filled every wolf in the immediate area swore off howling for a fortnight. The giant exploded into motion, rushing down on Tristram like a mudslide, their gnarled club upraised and ready to knock him over the moon in one stroke.

Taken by surprise, staggering in disbelief that his attempt at diplomacy had failed so spectacularly, a line he had overheard from his mother’s SoulCycle instructor floated through his head. He took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and shouted at the top of his lungs, “I am powerful beyond measure!” He threw his pocketknife with all his might, without aiming. The folded blade whizzed through the air like the world’s bluntest shuriken, the plastic miniature Sayaka swinging at the end of her chain. With a sharp clack, the blade hit Blake square in the left temple, bounced at a perpendicular angle and hit Crake square in his right ear. It continued to bounce between their heads with a solid cadence — click-clack, click-clack, click-clack — before finally falling to the dirt followed by the massive sliding body of the giant.

Tristram hopped out of the way as the giant’s two heads split the mulch like a pair of plows. Their momentum carried them just far enough to bump the wicker cage. Kaya hopped down from the top and landed on the giant’s back. She watched Tristram scamper over and stoop to snatch up his pocketknife. He rubbed the plastic figure on his sweater vest before pocketing it like it was a smoking revolver.

“I meant to do that,” he said.

Kaya looked down at the giant under her feet, whose great bulk did not rise and fall with breath. She looked back up at Tristram. “Who are you?”

“I told you,” said Tristram. He flashed her a smile that glistened in the firelight. “I’m your biggest fan.”