The Ring of the Giants

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

The Gifts from the Mount

That one night the naughty Mara came to Kalesh, but that one night only. He was indeed beneath notice, after all. With strange emotions the orphan outcaste watched from his humble lean-to as the village bad-girl crept some dark nights among the silent huts and tents and used her mouth to do the thing that made the whole tribe hate her, even the men and boys who wanted her the most.

Yes, he knew that even as they shuddered and gasped and poured themselves in grateful stuttering gouts down her hungry throat, those men reviled her, almost as much as they reviled the unwanted Kalesh. She was a nothing and a no one. She was easy to have, and therefore worthless, and so she was easy to hate. But no matter what people said, she never made a response. Perhaps, like Kalesh, she knew she dared not speak. For what could come of it but more evil words, fists, sticks and sharp stones?

And yet with Mara it was different somehow. Kalesh was low, and he knew it. He had no family. He had no friends. When the wicked Haramop sneaked in to his lean-to, then he, too, had to do bad things with his mouth, and he was ashamed. He could never lift his head, never. But with Mara it was different. It was like how a man would not make a response to what a worm or a snake or a toad might think. She was lower than low, and everyone knew it, and yet in her secret way she seemed to look down from some great height. Only Kalesh sensed it, though. But he did not understand.

And Kalesh, of course, could not help wanting her, too. This strange girl, black-haired and dark-eyed like he, was dirty and shameful. She was skinny and not very clever at anything, and she had come to him that night only as an afterthought, her cunt awash in the fishy juices of her own excitement, her mouth still slippery with the c*m of so many others. She took his seed, she swallowed, and she left. That was all, he tried to tell himself—she was just a dirty w***e. He had had no reason, he knew, to clasp the c**k-grabbing hand of one such as her. He had had no reason to touch the dripping lips of one who used the soft red things the way she did. He had had no reason to speak any more than a curt, dismissive word of parting. Perhaps, he imagined, squinting sheepishly into the past, he never really had…

Helplessly, though, the poor boy rubbed at himself as he remembered what the terrible girl had done to him. He could not forget. Ah, that warm wet mouth, those huge dark eyes, and the dainty little fingers that danced and squelched and swirled through hairy, salty-sweet pink all the while! The mere thought set the guilty boy hard at once. He would touch himself then. And he would not stop—could not, could not—until he had squirted. More often than not, after he was done, he got excited again, and then he had to do it again, maybe two or even three times, until his poor wiggling little thing could take no more, no matter how hard he pinched and pulled in his frustration at that thin, stretchable skin now grown red and sore. That was the way it was with this thought.

And oh, what a mess he always made! He longed for that sweet sticky mouth that would give only pleasure and take away all care, but instead he could only spill the seed upon his belly, his chest, his face in cool, lonely glops. Usually when he had to do it so many times right in a row, he did not wipe right away—he left it all there so he could see just how much c*m he had made. It was a proud and dirty thing. And then at the end, when he saw how bad it was, he imagined what it would be like somehow to get that stupid skinny girl he hated and to force her now to take it all away.

Mm, to slap her and call her bad names, and hopefully she would struggle so that he would have to slap her more and maybe tie her little wrists behind her back with cord. He would do things to her body then, strange things. He would make her moan and whimper and writhe, and she could not stop him. Yes, and then he would grab her by her beautiful long black hair, hard, and drag that cringing face all over him, her mouth sucking and slurping like a pig over every single piece of his fluttering bare body. Oh, that would show her! Often, of course, that thought made him have to touch himself just one last time…

He turned himself inside-out with the idea of what Mara had done, what she still did to others, what she might do again. Helplessly Kalesh emptied himself, but always later there was more. Sometimes he sobbed faintly, so profound was the release. Other times at night he dreamed of what had happened, and dreamed of what could not happen, and he woke confused, with his throat choked and the corners of his eyes feeling strange…

Yet one day a thing unexpected and unbelievable happened. It changed everything—everything.

Kalesh had traveled far from the village, gathering food that he could keep for himself, hidden, so that others of the tribe would not steal it. As always, he had taken a long, twisting route so that no one might follow him to his favorite gathering-grounds. This day, actually, he had journeyed deeper into the great forest than he ever had before, lured farther into the endless dappled shade by patches of savory mushrooms that took great skill to uncover. It was a good find.

Very gradually the ground had risen, rolling in low hills that eventually climbed upon one another to form at last a great summit like a long island in a sea of green, a lost island invisible from any but the closest distance because of the great towering trunks and spreading leaves of the deep forest. Rock stuck out of the ground here and there, and Kalesh, thinking of flint for tools, went on, sharp-eyed, bending now and then to examine the stone. The climb was higher than he had thought. Once started, though, he would not turn back—even a creature such as Kalesh had pride of a certain kind. Up he went, and by the time he reached the summit, even a young man hardened by beatings and lashings, and also by the running from them, was winded.

After casting around for a moment, he found a low seat of furrowed, weathered stone. There was no shade, for there were no trees to speak of—perhaps the soil was not deep enough for their mighty roots, he supposed. He sat, wiped his brow, and looked out over the top of the forest. It spread out around him in all directions, canopies of many levels, sunlit swaying green that dipped and curved with valleys through which, apparently, ran rivers. Far, far away in the hazy distance he thought he glimpsed mountains. He had never seen such expanses, and although the fatigue of the journey and the brightness of the sun made him sleepy, the sight was exciting somehow, too. Away and away stretched lands he would never see except from the great remove of this summit. There might be strange animals, strange tribes, and strange villages without number. Lonely Kalesh, though, would glimpse them only in his mind. It was a forlorn thought.

Frowning, he happened to glance down—and his eyes widened. Sun glinted strangely upon the crumbly, furrowed stone beside him. It was… Well, it looked like a strip of metal, like one of the ornaments of copper or gold that sometimes made their way to the village, traded by strange hands across leagues without measure, one material from the frozen mines of the north or the rugged mountains of the east, and the other, it was said, from beyond of the Sea of the South, past lands of burning dry sand and perhaps even past the wet forests farther still where snow never fell. Seeing such an object always gave him a peculiar thrill of longing. And yet this—it was something stranger still. He knew it at once, and he felt his heart thump harder.

Peering, Kalesh ran his fingers over the odd thing. It was curved like the stone on which he sat, smooth overall and yet also scratched or incised with marks that somehow did not seem accidental. There was no hint of green, no brown or black, no patina or corrosion at all. The thing could not be copper, therefore. And yet neither was it gold. The color was between that of gold and that of copper, and yet somehow beneath it all there lurked an occasional shiver of blue that could not quite be pointed out—but there it was nevertheless, just at the edge of knowing, like a tiny faint star visible only when looking slightly aside, not straight on. He could not understand, but the wish to know burned suddenly within him.

The rock beneath his legs was crumbled, partially overgrown with moss and with grass, and the strange metal hoop was half buried in the earth. Thinking quickly, Kalesh jumped up. He found a heavy, solid-looking loose stone perhaps the size of his head laying a little ways away, and he picked it up and after tearing aside the sod, he began to hammer two-handed against the rock that held the mysterious thing. The sound of the blow was strange, but though the hair stood up on the back of his neck, he was too curious to stop. Stubbornly he hewed. Chips and pebbles flew. Jagged pieces began to crack and roll away. Some were hard but some like dried mud—he had never seen the like. Sweating, he knocked apart great chunks of the ancient rounded rock that held his prize.

The stone seat at which he chopped was of four rounded parts lying almost side-by-side, but spreading out a little, each about the size of his arm. On one side another shorter piece of rock sprouted sidewise from farther back. All five branches sprang from a broader, flatter table of stone that in turn stretched backward, back under a wide hummock of earth, back like an out flung arm— Suddenly Kalesh stopped. His sweat was cold, though the sun was hot. It was an arm…

Frightened, he stepped back. He looked around quickly, but he was alone. No man or animal was about, nor did any bird spy him. Only the sun looked down. Afraid to and yet knowing that he must, he lowered his eyes once more. The thing was an arm. It was. He did not want to believe it, but he could not unthink the thought, could not unsee what he knew now he saw. Swallowing hard, he looked at where he had sat unknowing, and what he had done.

The thing on which he had sat was one kind of rock upon another, he saw now—oh, how could he have missed noticing it? Below was some dark boulder mostly buried in soil, but atop this lay a huge hand of stone clutching the thing as a boy might grab a big stream-stone before throwing it. The fingers of the hand were as thick as his arm, and the back of the hand was wider than his whole body, and the great slow-swelling pillar of the brawny forearm traveled back, back into a series of long, oddly shaped ridges perhaps as high as his waist. The original contours of those ominous undulations had been lost somewhat in the weathering of wind and rain and the slow build-up of soil and grass, hardy little vines, and moss and lichens. But it was the shape of a tremendous man, he realized now in a grim sort of awe, and though for an instant he wondered foolishly who could have carved such a thing, and why, all at once he knew the truth: it was the body of one of the giants of old, long dead and turned to stone… There could be no other explanation.

Dazed, he walked slowly around the half-buried form. It was long, so long—perhaps a hundred cautious steps from what must have been the tip of its thick down-clawing finger to where the legs lay sprawled and awkward, barely pushing up the surface for only the deeply suspicious to notice. Oh, they were hesitant, small steps he took, but still, it was an enormous hulk. In life the thing once must have been five or six times the height of Kalesh. What could have laid low such a great creature? he wondered quietly. Surely only another giant, he answered himself at once.

Yes, for there had been good ones and bad ones, it was said, just as with the little men of now. Eventually the giants had quarreled and fought, and their fighting wrecked the world—made the very earth grow cold and the waters freeze and the ice pile higher and higher. Kalesh did not know whether he hoped that this giant had been good or bad. It made him sad to think of some great good man dead and forgotten on this lonely mount, unmourned and unburied, half sunk beneath the soil. And yet the thought that it could have been an evil giant filled him with an even greater dread. Why, what if the spirit still lingered somewhere? What would it think of some poor tiny man who had picked at its bones like a crow at a dead dog or a mammoth carcass? What would it do?