The first thing Niya noticed as she and Alōs wove through the sleeping streets, pressed up against towering buildings like skittering cockroaches, was the beauty.
Niya would be the first to admit that in her imaginings, the dwellings of giant cannibals would be filled with piles of picked-over bones, body odor mixed with the tang of feces. Their homes would be archaic. A wet, dripping cave would suffice, where they’d sleep curled together like wolves. What Niya witnessed now, however, was a hard lesson in her own prejudice.
The brickwork was intricate and symmetrical, built by expert hands. Doors were decorated in complex carvings, and massive torches flanked their sides, lighting the streets warmly. From where they crept, she and Alōs had shrunk to a fourth of their size, the large buildings seeming to go on endlessly.
The second thing Niya took in was the smell. The city was wrapped in floral fragrance. Glancing up to windowsills, Niya saw why. Flower boxes overflowed with dripping blooms of white plumeria or pink gilia, grown to be plucked by a much larger hand than her own.
Despite their circumstances, Niya’s excitement soared as she took in what very few ever had.
Oh, how she hoped they’d see a giant soon!
She could feel them asleep in their dwellings, hear their snores vibrating through the walls.
They must be very large indeed, she thought, for though they hardly moved, their energy still felt like a bag of bricks against her skin.
It was utterly fascinating.
How envious her sisters would be when she told the tale of how she had stolen from giants and survived.
The last bit coming true was the most important part, of course.
The farther they roamed, the more Niya gave in to the one thing that would put any Bassette on a misguided path: curiosity.
“Stick close,” hissed Alōs as Niya began to wander into the middle of the street.
“That is a sewer drain.” She pointed to a large grate set into the cobblestone street.
“Yes, I can see that.”
“That means they have plumbing here, Alōs. Plumbing.”
“Your deductive reasoning is astonishing. Now get back here,” he urged from where he pressed against the edge of a building.
“We don’t even have that yet in the Thief Kingdom.”
Alōs shushed her as they slid along more homes before turning into a large square. Storefronts were boarded up for the night, and the sliver of moon directly above cast its faint glow across the quiet space. Something winked silver in the center.
“That’s a sundial!”
“By the lost gods.” Alōs tugged Niya back against the wall. “Is this how it is to be the entire time?”
“How are you not as astonished as I? No one has spoken of the things we’ve seen here.”
“For a reason,” he reminded her. “They’re all dead. Can you focus now? We have to make it to the chief’s home before we find out if any of your fawning over giant architecture has woken anyone.”
“They do seem to be deep sleepers,” she mused, glancing to the shut doors around them.
“And thank the lost gods for that. Now come on,” said Alōs. “I think that building there must be his.” He pointed to a distant dwelling that loomed over the town, its facade twinkling with finer stone than any of the others.
“Well,” mused Niya as they crept forward. “That does not bode well for the rest of our journey.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’ve found whenever the first part of a task is easy, the second part is near impossible.”
“Better than it being near impossible the entire time.”
“But not as good as easy throughout.”
“Nothing worth having is ever easy.” Alōs’s glowing gaze seemed to consume her as he glanced back.
A flapping of wings erupted in her gut, his words from earlier flying forward in her mind.
So the courageous fire dancer will deny what burns between us because she fears repeating the past?
Niya watched Alōs duck forward, leaving her standing alone.
Niya was not fearful. She was terrified.
Because she knew if she were to trust him again and he were to break that trust, it would not be Alōs she could never forgive. It would be herself.
And that was one gamble she could never bet upon.
Shaking herself out of her thoughts, she hurried to catch up with Alōs, who was now an entire block away. As they skirted corners and hung back, waiting to see if the rumbling of giants sleeping would change to the pounding of them rising, heavy feet on stone, an entire sand fall seemed to pass. But the city slept soundly, the heavy weight of the giants in their homes still. It was obvious these creatures had no fear of unwanted visitors, for who would be fool enough to come seek beings many times bigger than they, rumored to enjoy eating them for breakfast?
Niya and Alōs, it appeared.
Breathing heavily, they finally approached the towering home that Niya hoped was the chief’s. Her gaze traveled up massive stairs, each lip as tall as she, to a soaring wooden door at the very top. Large burning bowls of fire flanked its sides, and carvings of flowers and leaves decorated the stone exterior.
Now that they were closer, she could pick up the echoing thump of music from within.
Niya’s magic stirred, nerves awakening. “It appears not all are asleep,” she said.
“No,” agreed Alōs, his gaze studying the structure before them. “And by the sounds of it, they won’t be for quite some time. It changes nothing, though. We have to get in there.”
He began to pull himself up each step.
“Wait,” grunted Niya as she followed, her arms aching with the climb. By the Fade, there must be over a dozen steps. “You can’t seriously be thinking of walking straight through the front door?”
“Of course not,” whispered Alōs as he made it to the final landing.
Niya bent over on her knees, wheezing slightly. “Then what was . . . the point . . . of that?”
“We are going to squeeze straight through the front door.” He pointed to a gap by the door’s hinge. “One advantage to our size.” He flashed a smile before stepping forward.
“Alōs,” she hissed, tugging at his coat. “Can we wait just a moment? What’s the plan once we squeeze through?”
He turned, glowing eyes meeting hers. “The plan is we come up with a plan. But we won’t know anything more standing out here.”
“I can feel them inside, Alōs,” she said, pulse quickening while she kept on his heels as he shimmied into the crack. “And I fear there are quite a lot.”
He said nothing as they pressed tight into the space. Niya could just barely make out a glimmer of light beyond Alōs’s large form. She did not like being pinched like this; in fact, her breathing grew panicked along with her swirling magic. Lost gods, what if someone tries to open the door with us in here? The thought had her scooting faster until soon she was pressed tightly behind Alōs where he’d stopped, right at the opening.
Delicate harp music mixed with the pounding of drums hit up against her, boisterous chattering and laughter along with passing shadows of large forms. But most of all, there were waves after strong waves of movement. It almost caused Niya to take a step back.
“What do you see?” she asked, angling for a better view over his shoulder.
“There’s a party going on,” Alōs whispered. “But there’s a flower bed right by the door we can duck into. Ready?”
“Yes.”
Like rodents, they scurried in and dropped into a long bed of plants. Niya clutched against a stalk, ducking under petals. They appeared to be in a flower bed that was dug down from the stone floor and lined a long entrance hallway. Niya peered left, then right, but could not see an end to the foliage where they hid. A forest of plant stems went on endlessly.
The ground shook beneath Niya’s feet as the thumps of footsteps walking down the hallway hit up against her.
Still, Niya’s heart leaped with a mix of anticipation and relief at not being seen. We made it inside! And giants roamed all around.