Giant Wild, Giant Watch

Giants were here first, and they’ve never let anyone forget it. That’s why Jo Killeen expected lip when she blundered in on one feeding birds out of hand in Goodman’s Park.

“You can come closer. I won’t grind your bones.” Heather Caw’s tusks flashed in the yellow leaf-light. Heather was her age but much taller; the chickadees rolled in her palm like marbles. She wore purple hospital scrubs and matching athletic headband. You just didn’t see people wearing stuff like that outdoors.

Jo gulped. She had ran into the park to hide from Willow—the man was bad enough sober, but drunk on rum, he’d chase you for miles, trying to shoot and swear at the same time. Goodman’s Park was a maze of trees and thorns and supposedly a safe spot, but she was still scared.  “I’m Killeen.” She warned.

“So you’re wild; so what?”

Jo blinked. This was weird. Killeen were unbaptised so they could do the work no one else could or would do; they dug the graves, chiseled the tomb-stones, prepared corpses…their shoulders were those the dead leaned on as they walked to their long rest. Being a Killeen wasn’t contagious but some people acted it. She had been eight when she finally realized her last name was ‘Killeen’, not ‘Killeen-Unclean’ like the school bullies said it. Graveyard Girl, they called her now. Girl Graveyard; Girl Grave; Grave Girl…

Heather was waiting for an answer, patient as a tree that had grown settled in the loam. Giants weren’t humans, but they lived around them. Jo heard their huge, booming laughs floating above the crowds like balloons made of noise during Saturday Markets. She inched forward. It was still ‘not-illegal’ to kill Killeens and Jo accepted it…but the strangeness of not being laughed at, sneered at, or things-thrown-at kicked her curiosity into high gear.

Jo stopped under the shade of Heather’s hand and held her breath. A bird sat on her shoulder, its head rotating on its neck. Bright eyes winked as it chirped.

“They like you.” Heather took in Jo’s face. “You don’t hear that much?”

“…I’m Killeen.”

“That the only answer you know? Who cares if you ain’t baptized?”

Jo frowned. “Everyone’s baptized.” Except for Killeens.

  “Well, it’s t’other way around for Giants. We have to be baptized. It’s the law. Baptism or Expulsion.”

“Why?”

“So we won’t grow too big.” A cardinal landed on Heather’s head. She pulled Jo’s hand up and poured seed in, bending Jo’s fingers until her palm was another cup for the birds. Jo was frozen with the shock of a non-Killeen instigating contact. Her heart pounded.

# # #

“Giants were waaay bigger when we were fighting each other.” Dad said over dinner. His long arms spread wide over the table, from the soup side to the desserts. “So much bigger!” He winked and boggled his eyes and leaned sideways over Baby George, who made a yeep! Sort of sound and dropped his spoon.

Jo’s brother Big Jack frowned. “Why are they so much smaller after the Frontier Wars?”

“They adapted.”

Mom rolled her eyes up. “Just explain, sweetheart.”

 Dad grinned. “Giants may be big and look slow and stupid as rocks, but they’re adaptable. If one thing doesn’t work, they just shrug and try something else. They’re not as stubborn as humans. That made them hard to fight back in the Frontier Days.

“But, after we were all done with those stupid wars, we tried to find a way to live together. We agreed to keep some land wild for them—soil and tree, bird and fish and beast—you can’t tear a Giant away from their shacks in the woods. They’ll always have a little bit of the wild left in them, and they guard what little bits of the wild are left.

“In turn for the wildness, all the giants agreed their children would be baptized. If they’re baptized at birth they won’t grow too big. That’s why they’re the best midwives; the giantesses all do water births. It saves them the trouble of doing it later.”

“Heather’s great-aunt was my midwife.” Mom stared their surprise down. “She saw all of you into this world.” A memory tapped her and she snorted. “She once told me all babies were the same—wild things.”

Jo thought of Heather’s scrubs.

“Doesn’t seem like a fair trade.” Marie muttered. “Giving up being big and strong for land.”

“They’re not human, honey. They don’t think like we do.” Mom chuckled.

Big Jack chipped in, as he always did, by making a speech. “They love wild things because they’re older than humans and the civilization we brought. We told them to stay small, and they told us-all to keep one acre wild for every acre plowed. That’s how we got Goodman’s Park.”

Sometimes, Jo wondered how smart she was—how was she to know? Her older brother voiced her thoughts before she had a chance to try them out.

“Remember when Big Brob was Town’s Animal Control and Cull Officer?” Big Jack used all the words, the full title, out of respect.

Marie rubbed at her black eye. “He was nice. Willow’s an awful ACCO. I hate him. He’s always bragging he can kill anything.”

“He’s sick!” Baby George stabbed his potatoes. “He keeps his gun in his car so he can have the fun of killing strays with his sling.”

Mom cleared her throat. “If you even think you see him, run! He was at Market today, bragging about the things he hadn’t killed yet.” Her eyes were hard as horn on her children. “And if strays run into the cemetery, feed them till they can’t move! Your father and I will get them homes far away from here.” Mom’s long fingers un-clenched to rest on Marie’s tiny shoulder. “The dead don’t like trouble.”

Marie’s black eye was from luck and too much rum; since Willow’s promotion to ACCO he’d gotten drunker, meaner.  Brob had been Animal Control and Cull Officer until he died of old age (and hadn’t that been a large grave to dig!), but nobody had ever seen Brob kill anything. Willow, on the other hand, was called the Kill Officer. Kill was all he did. Sometimes he put a hard rubber ball in his sling, stunning his target so he could mosey up for the final kill in his own good time. Marie had been walking out of the cemetery when he aimed a ball at her throat. Just playin’ he called it.

“Heather didn’t mind me.” Jo said at last. “Why is her dad so mean? He’s almost as mean as Willow.”

“Well, they both drink…” Jack sniffed.

“He’s a Caw. They’re flesheaters.” Dad sighed. “Heather’s mother was a Morven. They’re mostly vegetarians. I’ve never seen them eat anything more bloody than a striped bass unless there was nothing else to eat.”

Mom gently stroked Marie’s head. “Heather takes after her mother, resthersoul. They were the first Giants here.  Us Killeens’d set out the dead and ask the Giants to call down the birds to pick the bones clean. Your great-grandfather would just talk-away about that. They used passenger pigeons…millions of them would fly like a gigantic pink, glimmering snake coiling and flying through the sky.

“When the last one died, the giants wept.”

# # #

“It’s true.” Heather smiled dreamily. “If there weren’t birds we’d sing up wolves…Daddy’s folks are Caws. They talked to the crows, an’ bears, an’ wild pigs. if there was a death at sea, the Killeen would ask us to call the fish. My granny was good with sharks.”

“Why stop?”

“Modern times?”

“Killeen haven’t changed.”

“Killeen ain’t adapted. Us Giants learned how, long time ago.” Heather huffed, a laugh that floated across the little fishpond the kids called Goodman’s Kettle.

“You’re lucky.”

“I’d like to help the Killeen. Maybe when I finish growing.”

Jo was glad Heather hadn’t said, ‘Maybe when I grow up’. She couldn’t imagine her being any taller. “I like helping the dead,” she said at last. “It’s important. They sing, too. When I’m really, really quiet, I hear them underground.”

“That must be nice.”

“It is. They don’t like it when people are angry. I don’t either. Mom says giants are midwives for the living, and Killeen are midwives for the dead.”

“Th’two of us, we could work together.” Heather sounded wistful. “Daddy would hate it, but he’s too progressive.”

“Mom says I can ask you over for pancake—"

“Go away!” Heather spat above Jo’s head.

Willow was at the other side of the pool. His sling spun in his hand. He had a skull’s grin against Heather’s snarl. “Your dad’s not mayor yet, Caw.”

Jo flung herself into Heather’s arms. Stupid, she thought. What could she protect, Heather’s heart? She barely came up that high!

“I,” Heather said coldly to the man, “Will grind yore bones.”

“Self-defense.” Willow laughed. “David had the right idea, Goliath. Or is it Goliatha?”

Willow’s rock struck hard on Heather’s skull. Jo shrieked as Heather staggered back, blood dripping from her face.

Willow’s smile stopped.

Heather pulled off her head-band and flipped it around. There was kevlar on the underside. “Giants adapt.” She bared her tusks. “I’m going to grind yore bones.”

Some things you don’t question. Willow saw it in Heather’s eyes. He turned and ran, straight-lined like an animal in panic. The bush-branches cracked under his pounding feet; the trees bled leaves from his passing.

“He’ll come back. He keeps a gun in his car.” Jo choked.

Heather lifted her bloody head and whistled through her tusks, once. She held the note for a long time, until every inch of Jo’s skin sat up and trembled.

The tree-shadows broke apart into tens, hundreds, thousands of birds. The sky went black with them. A coiling, twsting serpent of the air flowed across the sky.

It followed Willow.

Jo heard something from far away, like the short, sharp squeak of a rat in the jaws of her cat. “You saved my life.” She started to cry as large, warm hands patted her on the back.

“Course.” Heather said gently. “Giants watch the wild things.”