Kanna’s eyes were open. She could see the outline of the clouds rushing overhead. She felt like she was suspended in some brilliantly gray void, because the watery mud that had broken her fall had also made her weightless against the ground.
The train rushed away, its wheels scraping along not far from her feet. All of the shocks had faded. She turned her head to look at the arm that half-floated in the mud beside her, and she felt relieved to find that the cuff was still around her wrist.
Kanna sensed the giant before she even saw her. She lifted her head to peer down towards the end of the tracks, and she saw a landscape of flickering light that made the curtain of rain around her glow with life. Emerging from that veil was Goda Brahm. Her image strobed with the landscape itself—pitch dark, then blindingly bright, then pitch dark again. Kanna wondered if it was really the lightning or if her own eyes had started to falter and revive in turn.
When Goda crouched down beside her, the look on the woman’s face held no question. It seemed that she had already accepted any reason, any explanation. It seemed that Kanna didn’t have to say anything at all.
Still, Kanna cried: “Who are you?” The effort of shouting against the blowing wind made her have to turn over and cough. Her muscles hurt when she moved, though it wasn’t from the impact of the fall: She was exhausted from running, from evading—but she managed to get up onto her knees with a forced burst of energy and she held her master’s gaze with dignity.
“Who the hell are you?” Kanna shouted again, her tone accusatory. “And how can I be so happy when I’m so miserable? Tell me!” She rammed both her hands hard against Goda’s chest and Goda’s brow flicked up in confusion. “You know why, don’t you? You know why, but you’ve never told me; you’ve kept it from me like some kind of secret. Look at you! Look at that empty face! Now I know what I’ve been seeing when I stare into your eyes, and why it terrified me: You’re happy. You don’t want anything. You sleep on top of rocks, you eat food that tastes like dirt, you have to scrounge your supplies from the garbage—but you’re happy! You’re so happy to be alive that you barely even mind if you die! What kind of a lunatic are you? How do you live like this?”
Goda merely stared at her, another crazy smile coming over her eyes. The lightning flashed again and it sent colors dancing across her face. It seemed, Kanna thought, that the giant had assumed the question was rhetorical.
It wasn’t.
Kanna slammed her palms against Goda’s chest yet again. She gritted her teeth. Her gaze didn’t waver. “How do you do this? Why are you like this? Show me! I want to know. I have to know. I can’t live the rest of my life not knowing what black magic you’ve tapped into that’s turned you into this; it would eat away at me every day!” She heaved a loud, shaky breath. She hung her head towards the ground and pressed her hands to her face. “People like you don’t deserve to be happy—not when the rest of us try and try, and grasp and grasp; not when the rest of us exhaust our spirits searching for the best life, the best food, the best pleasure, more security, more freedom, more love; not when the rest of us resist and fight against all of the evil things around us, hoping that once—just once—we’ll be able to taste an ounce of contentment. You don’t even try, Goda. You won’t even give us that. You won’t even pretend to try. That’s what I hate the most about you!” She fell forward, but she caught herself with her hands, and she pressed them against the ground as she cried. “Show me why you’re like this, you bastard!”
Then, through the grit of the mud, she felt a set of long fingers snaking down to clasp against her own.
Goda’s face was framed by the dim light of the sky, water dripping down from her hair and falling into Kanna’s eyes. “I can’t show you,” Goda whispered. Goda took her by the hand and helped lift her up out of the mud, until they had both stood up to meet the freezing rain. “But you can see for yourself.”
* * *
Instead of following the well-trodden path of the tracks, Goda took Kanna into a grove of trees that scattered through a line of empty lots, and they found a trail inside that hid them from the street. Kanna could see the shapes of buildings through the holes in the thicket as they walked, but they flashed by quickly, and the space was dark enough that she doubted anyone could see them.
At first, she hadn’t been entirely certain why Goda chose the route, but then she noticed the collection of military trucks concentrated on the main road, near the trading building that Kanna had used as a landmark. She stopped to peer through a few of the trees.
The soldiers were milling around near some twisted heap in the gravel, and in spite of her recent experience, she still couldn’t help but recoil when she saw what it was. It was a woman, very clearly dead, blood and drool trickling from her mouth as she lay motionless with her eyes still open. The air about the soldiers didn’t match the gruesome sight at all: They were standing casually, some of them flashing lights at the body, some using their knees to prop up clipboards stacked with paperwork.
Wide-eyed, Kanna turned to glance at Goda, who had also slowed down to catch a glimpse of the mess. “Is that…?” Part of her didn’t want to know, but the fact that so many soldiers had come to poke and prod at the body with such keen interest made her wonder.
“Yes, probably,” Goda said. “That’s what it looks like when they discover someone who has died from Flower. Most people can’t keep it down, but those who don’t purge often end up like this when they’re not vessels. You bleed from the inside out. Your breathing slows and eventually stops. The dead body becomes a vessel itself—a corpse vessel, it’s called—so the soldiers wrap it up and hide it so that no one will eat of it.”
“People eat the body?” Kanna shouted, appalled.
“Quiet.” Goda yanked Kanna by the hand and pulled her along, so that the scene was no longer apparent through the trees. “It is said that Flower can cure any disease. Whether that’s true or not is up to interpretation, but the important thing is that people believe it, so, yes, they siphon processed Flower from anywhere they can get it because it is safer to eat.”
After stumbling across a few gnarled roots in her effort to keep up with Goda’s strides, Kanna finally ripped her hand away from the giant’s grasp. “Stop jerking me around!” she grumbled. The rain had thinned out, but the sound of droplets splashing against the leaves above still competed with her voice, so she found herself raising it louder than intended. “I’m not your slave anymore.”
At this, Goda tilted her head. A smirk came over her face. “Is that right?”
Kanna crossed her arms, refusing to take another step, though Goda hadn’t yet tried to force her. “That’s right. I could have easily escaped and I chose not to—not because of you, but because of my own reasons.” Kanna found that her mouth was suddenly coming up with justifications for what she had done. When she had been speeding down the track, away from Goda, her reasons had seemed perfectly valid, but with some distance between her and that moment, it suddenly felt too humiliating to admit that she had leapt from a moving train car simply to be with Goda. “I spared your life this time,” she continued, “but I could easily take the cuff off at any moment. Your life is in my hands. If anything, doesn’t that make you the slave now?”
Goda stared at her in silence for a long moment, her eyes intense, her expression overcome with surprise.
Then she laughed out loud. Her shoulders quivered with uncontrolled fits and she had to press her hand against a tree trunk to keep herself steady. She laughed so hard that she started wiping the corners of her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Do you want me to prove it to you?” Kanna cried, her tone becoming so hysterical that even she herself nearly broke out into a laugh once she heard it echoing back. She didn’t know why she was saying what she was saying; she couldn’t stop herself, but for once it was like she was watching herself say these things, instead of being the one who said them.
Kanna stopped.
She looked down at her body, at her cuff-covered wrist, at everything she could see around her that excluded her own face. She pointed to herself. She felt strangely headless staring at her own finger; something had quite abruptly connected in that empty space. “Is that a snake?” Kanna blurted out. She looked up at Goda. “Is that a snake that was talking just now?”
Goda’s eyes widened again, but this time it wasn’t with surprise—it was with the closest thing to excitement Kanna had ever seen on the woman’s face. “Yes!” Goda said. “You see?”
Kanna began to nod slowly, entirely bewildered. The truth was that she didn’t see—not really—but she had started to feel an inkling. If that had been just one snake inside her that was talking through her…then how many were there?
But it still sounded like half-nonsense to her—even if it was disturbing nonsense—so she tried to put it out of her mind, and she followed Goda when the woman began trudging through the thicket once again.
“Fine,” Kanna relented as they walked, though Goda had not argued with her. “Maybe I can’t be your master, then, since I don’t even hold your key. But…now that I think about it, who does hold your key?” She realized then that she had yet to consider the other end of Goda’s leash.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I remember the innkeeper telling me that your cuff was locked, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. She told me about some engineer that everyone hated who had created these stupid things.” Kanna tugged at her own cuff, even if the gesture meant nothing anymore. “Is that your master, then? The person who made these cuffs?”
Goda did not even reply.
Kanna rolled her eyes, but decided not to push it. Instead, she fixed her focus on Goda’s movements, on what she could see of the woman’s body in the bath of moonlight that had started to break through the clouds as the rain died off. She watched the muscles of that back stretching to and fro with every stride; she lowered her gaze a bit more and watched the motion of some of the more pleasing forms and flesh.
She didn’t feel ashamed of it anymore.
“I lied,” Kanna confessed after awhile.
Goda silently stalked through the trees without turning around, and Kanna couldn’t help but wryly think to herself that the monster was distracted because she was in her natural habitat.
Kanna let out a low sigh and sped up her stride and reached out to touch Goda’s back. “I lied about a lot of things,” she said, feeling the body flex beneath her fingers. “I lied about why I jumped off the train. I jumped because of you. I don’t know what that means yet, but that’s the reason why. I also lied about how I feel. I don’t hate you. I feel something strong towards you, and I don’t know what it is, but it’s not hatred.” She drew closer, until she could smell the mud that was painted in smatterings on Goda’s skin. “You were right. It’s not just your body that I want. It’s something more dangerous than that.”
Goda stopped. She turned to glance over her shoulder at Kanna, who was now nearly pressed up against her. “We can slip out through here,” Goda said, pointing towards an exit to the trail. “We’re close enough to the house now that we probably won’t draw any notice.”
They pushed out through the trees and onto the gravel, which felt jarring against Kanna’s bare feet because she had grown used to the soft dirt of the grove. Once the house was in their sights, Kanna noticed Goda’s old satchel strewn on the ground, along with the leather scroll that they had discarded in their haste. Kanna picked them both up.
“You lied, too,” she murmured. “That first night, you told me that this was a steel baton, that you were going to beat me with it.” She turned the scroll over in her hand, but kept walking because Goda had not stopped. “What is it, anyway?”
When they reached the opening in the fence, Goda still had not answered, but she looked down at the mess of footprints that littered the floor of the entrance. Kanna couldn’t be sure, but it seemed that not all of those tracks belonged to her or Goda.
Goda pressed on. She glanced over to make sure that Kanna was nearby, and it was then that Kanna finally noticed the giant’s exhaustion. Together, they slipped quietly back into the house, where Kanna found the space to be empty of anyone’s presence; it was only the Goddess that stared at them from her new spot on an altar near the door. The faint smile on Her face had a touch of mystery. It reminded her a bit of Goda’s earlier smirk.
Goda was still smiling faintly when they passed through the threshold of their shared bedroom. Distracted with dropping the satchel and scroll on the floor near the wall, Kanna didn’t notice the strange energy at first. It was only when she stretched up again and glanced at the room that spread out in front of them that she realized it had changed.
Just as before, the room was smudged with shadow, the only light coming in from the moon and stars through the window—but something was different. When she had awoken in the room at midnight, every corner in the chamber had stood out to her as some pointed barrier that confined her from her escape. Now, she hardly noticed the walls, except as vague silhouettes at the edges of her vision, as curtains that shut out the rest of the world.
She heard Goda push the door closed behind them. She heard the latch click shut. She heard Goda’s soft breathing, because the room was in total silence, because the clock had stopped ticking, because the weights that drove the clock had already touched the floor and no one had changed them over.
Kanna slowly turned to look at the naked woman who was leaning against the door next to her. Goda’s face was empty again, unconcerned, the face of someone swimming in an eternal moment that never ended.
But there was something else, too. There was a small edge of tension in those muscles—not the tension of a creature in the midst of hesitation, not the tension of a monster holding back.
It was the posture of one about to strike.
Kanna drew in a sharp breath. Primal fear washed through her, but she did not dare recoil when Goda took hold of her throat. She met Goda’s kiss with an open mouth, even as the woman roughly took a handful of Kanna’s hair with her free hand and dug her fingers sharply into Kanna’s scalp. Goda groaned into her. Kanna felt the sound shooting into her bones through her teeth.
Still, as the giant shoved her into the wall, Kanna made a production of fighting her off—because it was her job to not make things too easy. She pushed against Goda’s chest, so that she could feel the giant leaning harder, overpowering her, drawing her in against her struggles. When Goda stooped down to kiss her again, in the midst of their increasingly messy tangle of arms that were each grasping to touch and invade and caress, Kanna bit hard into the woman’s bottom lip.
Goda pulled back and pressed her hand to her own mouth. In her eyes, there was no pain, not even the ghost of a wince. She only looked serious, her eyes locked on Kanna’s face. She was mirroring Kanna’s focused stare, a stare of desire that was free from need or expectation—only a knowing.
It made Kanna feel naked, even though her robes remained slickly against her skin. Kanna gritted her teeth and gave Goda a look of disapproval. “The bed,” Kanna told her. “The bed!”
Goda seized Kanna by her collar and dragged her across the room. She threw her onto the mattress. She took hold of the bottom of Kanna’s robes and jerked the fabric up to uncover Kanna’s legs, and the sudden rush of air made Kanna shudder. As her clothes peeled wetly from her like an outer skin, Kanna was soon left bare, vulnerable, pressed hard against Goda’s own naked body.
Goda warmed Kanna’s shivers with her mouth. She pressed her lips to Kanna’s neck, to her chest, to her belly. She straddled Kanna’s hips, but Kanna took Goda’s head in her hands and forced the woman’s face back up to hers. They kissed, and Goda’s breath flowed lightly into her. Kanna’s eyes watered with some unnameable emotion.
The energy of her body was floating up again underneath her skin, but this time she didn’t resist it. She let that feeling melt into the spaces between her and Goda. She let her hand slip down along the front of the woman’s body until it snaked between those massive legs, until she finally grasped at that forbidden place.
Goda huffed against Kanna’s lips in surprise, but she bucked hard into the touch. It was as jarring as it was arousing. Kanna swallowed a nervous breath as she was met with a slick stiffness, uncertain of what to do with this contradiction of sensations. It was warm; it was soft; and…like the rest of Goda, it was hard at the same time.
Kanna was shocked. Still, the shock was short-lived and overcome with curiosity. In those few stolen glances during Goda’s shameless baths, Kanna had noticed the small differences between them—barely. But now, as she touched Goda so directly, as she squeezed and felt Goda shudder in response, those differences swelled in her hand until they were undeniable.
Her heart sent a throbbing pulse down to the same place on her own body. Desperately, she dropped her hand and instead pressed her hips directly to Goda’s own, to match her arousal, to mirror it, to feel it grinding into her. She pulled at Goda’s hair, urging her into another kiss, their ragged breaths mingling together in the otherwise silent room as their hips began to roll against each other in a languid dance of exploration.
But Kanna didn’t have time to discover much. With a loud crack, the door to the room flung open and rammed against the wall. Kanna’s hips collapsed back onto the bed. She whipped her head on reflex, and the woman on top of her convulsed similarly with surprise.
In the middle of the threshold, eyes opened wide with panic, hands digging hard into the frame of the door, stood the boy who had been on his deathbed. He was no longer shuddering in pain. His face had regained its color. Kanna could barely even recognize him.
By contrast, he didn’t seem at all shocked with the scene in front of him. Something else had fueled his urgency: Boots pounded in the distance along with the boom of deep voices. Soon after, a loud thumping rattled what sounded like the front door of the house.
The boy glanced over his shoulder once, then turned again to scream at them, “Soldiers!”