Tilda Marsh's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Three days after the giant fell, its body began to reek. Tilda meant to spend those days teaching Ned the throw. She could not. From the high ground behind the bakery she watched two more shapes cross the far hills. They walked with their heads low, sniffing. The dead one's kin had caught the scent, and they were coming to find it. "They'll reach the village by morning," Tilda said. Ned stood beside her, the whistle at his belt. His fingers had stopped shaking days ago, but they twitched now. "I can't teach you the sling with them wandering the fields. We'd be caught in the open." "Then we make them go somewhere else," Ned said. He unrolled his map and pointed. Past the last hill lay a dry ravine. "Lead them there. Away from the roofs." Tilda studied the boy. He was thinking like a fighter now. But leading two giants took more than a whistle and an old woman's arm. She needed muscle to move the bait. That was when the big woman came up the slope, a bear cub tucked under one arm. Petra Bole fixed things nobody asked her to fix. She had patched the bakery's cracked door that very week without a word. Now she looked at the giant's swollen corpse and wrinkled her nose. "You want it gone," Petra said. Not a question. She set the cub down. "I can drag it. Where to?" Tilda pointed at the ravine on Ned's map. "Their noses follow the body. If it moves, they move." Petra fetched her cart and two ropes. She looped them under the giant's arms and pulled. The wheels sank, then rolled. Tilda had never seen one person haul such weight. Ned marked the path ahead, calling out the firm ground. They worked through the night, the cub trotting behind. By dawn the body lay in the ravine, far from any home. The two giants crested the last hill and smelled it there. They lumbered down into the dry cut, away from the village. Ned blew the whistle once, sharp, to pull their heads deeper in. They did not turn back. Tilda lowered her sling. The roofs behind her were safe. The fields lay quiet. "Now I have time to teach you," she told Ned. Petra wiped her hands on her overalls and picked up the cub. "You'll want more than one whistle-blower," she said. "When you train them, I'll mend whatever they break." Tilda looked at the big woman, then at the boy with the map. She had come to these hills alone. She was not alone now. The giants had bought her nothing but a stretch of quiet days. It was enough to begin.