“How did you do that?” Goda’s voice grew louder. Her eyes spread open even more, and they were filled with fire.
It was Kanna’s turn to be surprised, because she had only seen that look on the giant’s face once before, and she didn’t even know what she had done to deserve it this time. Kanna reached for her with one hand, but as soon as her fingers brushed the naked skin of Goda’s jaw, the giant recoiled as if Kanna’s touch had been made of molten lead.
“Get away from me!” she shouted.
Goda pushed her back. Kanna’s spine tapped against the bark of the tree, and though it had been a painless collision, the energy of it was tense, and she could tell that Goda had held back most of her strength. The giant’s impulse had been to ram her—hard.
Kanna looked on in shock, but she did not fight it and she let Goda’s legs slither out of her grasp.
Goda’s expression twisted and changed with effort. The giant braced against the tree, and she turned her head to the side, and her whole body heaved, as if she were about to purge. Nothing came out, but she shook violently and went through the motions of an expulsion nonetheless.
The moment did not last long. A hard sigh flowed through her chest before she finally grew limp against the tree.
“I’m sorry,” Kanna said. “I…”
With one of her long arms, Goda took hold of the collar of Kanna’s robes. The instinct to fight was the first reaction to jerk through Kanna’s bones, but something about the touch made her soften her muscles, and the giant dragged Kanna until they were face to face.
Goda embraced her.
It felt like it was the first time. Every time felt like it was the first time. And just like every time before, Kanna surrendered to it. She let her head fall onto Goda’s shoulder and she let her mouth brush lightly on the woman’s neck. They sat there in silence for awhile as the sun grew brighter on the horizon. Light from the heavens sprinkled over them in earnest, giving a rainbow sheen to the sparse droplets that were still dribbling, though the rain had all but disappeared.
“I’m so sorry, Goda. I don’t know what to say.”
The vision Kanna had seen—with all its vivid imagery, with every explosive feeling that had churned in her gut—had already begun fading, loose like a fantasy, like a nightmare she had awoken from and could quickly forget.
She knew that Goda had no such luxury.
Their breathing flowed in sync. Kanna felt like she was floating in a vast ocean with steady waves that rose and fell and made her body dance softly above the depths.
After some time, after she had felt Goda’s body losing the rest of its tension, Kanna finally murmured, “What happened to us?” At first Goda said nothing in reply, and Kanna could only feel the muscles of the giant’s neck stretching with a smile. It gave her some relief. “This isn’t normal, is it? You haven’t told me a lot, but I’ve gathered this much.”
Goda shrugged. “Normal to whom? According to the Maharan religion, anyone who is able to grasp another’s serpents should be accused of using witchcraft. If there’s a rule like that in the first place, then it must be normal for some people.”
With a blush, Kanna reached up and touched Goda’s face boldly, and the giant did not flinch this time. “Are you trying to accuse me of being a witch?”
“I’ve accused you of nothing. It isn’t my business what you are. You already know.”
“I am no one,” Kanna replied. Goda laughed at this. “I’m serious. I don’t know if I’m more of a witch than Rem Murau, but I can be no one for you the same way you were no one for me. I can be that void and scare your snakes, the same way you scared all of mine. I can carry you, the same way you carried me. It doesn’t make you weak.”
“Be no one for yourself. It doesn’t work any other way.”
“You say that, but look at what just happened between us. Maybe I did have to untangle my own snakes with my own power in that cavern, but you whispered in my ear to help me on my way. And out here, I touched something in you. Even just touching helped. The snake isn’t gone, but it’s different; I can feel it. We both gave each other something that we couldn’t give our own selves from our own vantage points.”
Goda inclined her head and her lips brushed the side of Kanna’s cheek, which somehow felt more intimate to Kanna than any of their frenzied touching those other times. It made some more blood trickle up to her face.
But as she stared into the scenery that grew ever brighter, at the image of the trees and the rocks and the cliff that had emerged from the earlier shadows, she couldn’t help but remember everything she had seen in the visions. The dreams had slowly come together, had finally started to make sense.
“From my vantage point, I can see how much you’ve tortured yourself,” Kanna whispered, “worse than I’ve ever tortured my own self. You don’t deserve this punishment.” An uncomfortable, sour feeling had settled in Kanna’s stomach. She wondered how much she should say next, but soon decided that there was no point in keeping it to herself anymore. “Rem Murau gave me the cuff key, did you know that? She did it because she wanted you to die, but she didn’t want to be the one to kill you. Her sister manipulated you the same way. She set you up to sin in her place. She sacrificed you so that she wouldn’t have to face hell, but she left you with a hell on Earth to face instead.”
Goda was already shaking her head. “She had no ill intentions. She was merely ignorant and desperate. She didn’t realize what it would turn into—and, besides, the final decision was mine. She did not make me do it. I did it out of selfishness, to end my own pain, because back then I felt her suffering as if it were my own. I had never felt anything like that before. I went to the temple and begged the Goddess to take away every shred of empathy that had suddenly awakened in me, but She didn’t, and so I killed her.”
“From the moment she met you, that priestess ordered you to kill the pests in her yard and told you that it was your role as a layperson to sin for her. She trained you from the beginning to slaughter her like those rabbits. Why can’t you see that?”
The giant grew silent for a long time. “Because,” she finally said, “my eyes are different from yours. I will never see it the way you do. I felt things for her that will always blind me to anything but an image of her as the Goddess. This is how I know so much about idolatry and its dangers: I was speaking from experience.” The giant’s frame seemed to grow stiffer with some other rush of memory. “But that’s not the worst of it. I’m responsible for more than Taga’s death. I’ve created so much imbalance in this world with my actions, something I have to live with every day.”
“Tell me. If it’s worse, it’s worse.”
Goda sighed. She seemed to struggle finding the words. “Lots of things happened after that day—not just to me, but to everyone. All of it stemmed from that one moment, that one life I had taken.” Her eyes grew unfocused and she glanced up at the cliff, towards the shrine. “Before that moment, death had just been an idea to me…but then there she was, lying on the mattress, lifeless, all the blood drained from her. I had never seen a dead person before. It struck me all at once that it was I who had done it. I ran to the stream to wash the blood off before anyone could see. Maybe then it would be like it didn’t happen, I thought. Maybe I would wake up from the dream with a splash of cold water.”
Kanna thought back to the vision she had of the giant crouched over the creek, and the surface of the water that was too washed with light for her to see any reflection. She remembered the accusing voice that she had heard shouting through the forest, the voice that had cried, “Goda, what did you do?”
“Priestess Rem saw you,” Kanna whispered.
“Yes. She saw me and somehow she knew what I had done. She ran to Taga’s cabin, and so I fled without so much as putting my clothes back on. Even then, I knew that if the soldiers caught hold of me before the administrators arrived, that they would torture me in secret because I had killed a priestess. It made me cowardly. I went to my room and found the vial of Flower brew that I had made for Taga—the medicine that she had refused—and I swallowed as much as I could. I thought that it would just kill me, which it nearly did; but in the end, I didn’t hold down enough of it. I purged just like you saw me do now, and so it sent me on a journey instead.” Goda shifted uncomfortably in place, but her gaze still seemed far away. “Most people—those who survive to tell about it—see paradise on the other side of the Flower. I went to some other place. I saw things that I wouldn’t wish on the lowest of people. The Flower shows you your true self, a glimpse of what awaits you when you die—and I’m a killer, so that’s what I saw. I’ve spent the rest of my life fearing and avoiding that place, because that’s where I’m going in the end. To die means to look into the eyes of that snake; it’s the only thing that stands between me and the Goddess, but it is Hell. I can’t do it.”
Kanna was stunned into quiet. There was a milky quality to the giant’s eyes, as if she were fighting to rise up out of a dream.
“When I came back to this reality,” she said, “the temple hands had found me collapsed in my room. Because it was obvious that I had Flower in me, they misunderstood the situation. They told the story as if I had swallowed Flower and then lost my mind and killed a priestess in a crazed rampage. Samma Flower doesn’t work that way—it doesn’t make you go insane—but they were too shocked to believe that I had done it coldly and soberly, so they needed an exaggerated story to explain it. They made the plant out to be more dangerous than it really is. Flower was already illegal at the time, but thanks to this scandal, the more religious legislators grew hysterical, and the law quickly changed to require a death sentence for vessels and distributors.”
“You mean…?” Kanna grasped the edges of Goda’s opened robes and twisted them in her fingers. She felt the giant’s tension flowing into her. She looked away. “…It was you, then.”
“Yes. It was I who created this whole mess.” Goda swallowed. Kanna felt the tension ebb and flow from the giant’s neck, until it had reached a tentative balance again. “Who knows how many people have been executed for handling Flower since then? In this sense, I killed many more people when I killed Taga. I’m responsible for the deaths of thousands because of this singular decision.”
Kanna closed her eyes tightly. She pushed her face harder against Goda’s skin, and she felt that throat seizing with every one of the giant’s shaky breaths. Kanna listened to the pulse, a faint rushing sound that was quickly filling up the natural silence of the clearing.
“You can’t put all that on yourself,” Kanna said softly. “You were only sixteen. You were only trying to help someone.” But then Kanna paused, another connection surfacing abruptly. “And Taga was a vessel, wasn’t she? She would have been the first person you awakened, if she hadn’t resisted you.”
Goda nodded. “Though we can’t be certain now, she probably was. I didn’t fully realize it at the time because I had no experience, but looking back she had many of the symptoms. They had been accumulating most of her life, until she was in agony, and no one knew how to help her. I was drawn to the idea of giving her Flower brew. I don’t know how I knew, but I was certain that it would not kill her, that it would offer some relief that wasn’t physical death.”
“But she refused it. She chose her religion over her own life.”
“Yes. The Goddess would not save her, and I couldn’t save her in the end, either—so I delivered the death blow myself.” Goda caught Kanna’s gaze. Her eyes shined in the red of the morning light, like the surface of glass lightly tinted with blood. “And I’ve paid very much for trying my hand at playing God all those years ago. I’m paying for it to this day, and so is everyone else.”
Hearing that, Kanna gritted her teeth. She shook her head and pulled away, and after a bit of stumbling, she managed to rise up to her feet. “Stop it,” Kanna said, more determined this time. “You’re wrong. You’re just wrong. I haven’t lived your life, so I can’t pretend to know what it’s like to be you and to have gone through all this, but I do know that the guilt has clouded your mind.” She stooped down to grab Goda’s arm, which was heavy and limp. She pulled hard on it, trying to coax the giant to stand up with her. “Let’s get away from here. This place must be cursed. It makes you act strangely and I can’t take it anymore.”
But the giant didn’t move. Instead, she looked up at Kanna with faint amusement while Kanna tugged and tugged and grunted with effort. With one final jerk, Goda’s arm slipped from between Kanna’s fingers and Kanna fell backwards onto the ground with a thud.
Kanna slammed the earth with her hands in frustration. “God, why did you have to be this unmovable oaf?” she complained. “Why did you have to be the size and temperament of an ox? Back when I was younger and I imagined my first passionate embrace, I had always pictured someone elegant, someone refined, someone with a beautiful face and a graceful demeanor who would sweep me off my feet. Instead, I got you.”
Goda’s amused smirk only seemed to widen. “Reality has ripped you off, it’s true. Maybe you’ll have better luck with the next person.”
“The next person?” Kanna looked at Goda with disbelief. “There is no ‘next’ person. Are you too blind to see that, too? Who on Earth could I be with after all of this?”
“There’s nothing wrong with living a spiritual life, but don’t you think celibacy is a bit extreme?” Goda’s head had fallen back to rest against the tree trunk and her face had grown relaxed, which Kanna did not like.
“Stop teasing me like that, pretending that you don’t hear me. You know exactly what I’m saying. I’m not leaving your side, whether you want me there or not. Make no mistake, Porter: We will escape together. I don’t know how, but we will, even if I have to rip that cuff off your wrist with my bare hands.”
Goda let out a soft laugh. “I told you before that it wasn’t a good idea to get attached. Now you see why. I’m not going to be around for much longer.”
“You don’t know the future,” Kanna snapped.
“Maybe I don’t, but I can see some of it. There is a path carved out for us, even if it seems on the surface that we stumble through it on accident. And you—you saw it, too, didn’t you?”
Kanna grew quiet. That memory from the future that she had seen in the shrine—the vision of Goda surrounded by pounding boots while Kanna screamed at her—was still fresh enough that it made Kanna uncomfortable. “How do you know what I saw?” Goda merely stared at her with that same smile, so Kanna figured that the giant wasn’t going to elaborate, and she asked instead, “Then you know what that vision meant? Was it something that happens in Suda?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me!” Kanna demanded, pushing herself up from the ground, staggering onto her feet again, her legs wavering in the mud even as her gaze of expectation did not. “What was that? What were you doing? Why was I begging you to stop?”
“I can’t tell you.” The serenity on Goda’s face had not faded, and her tone was cryptic, closer to her usual self; this unnerved Kanna more than the words.
“What is it with you and all the mysteries, even now? Why can’t you just tell me?”
“Because,” the giant said, “then you’ll try to stop me.”
* * *
The sky was wide and entirely clear when they trudged back onto the gravel of the main road, even though the wind was blowing some of the dust around and making a light haze on the path. Kanna walked in front of Goda because she didn’t want to look at her, but she could still feel the giant’s presence like a rush of energy raining down over her shoulder, stronger than before.
The feeling of connection to the giant had not worn off. It had become like a pulsing cord of heat that flowed back and forth between them, and Kanna could not shake it. She could not rip herself away. She could not numb herself to it. It was raw and uncomfortable, and she found herself wishing that she didn’t have to live with it.
Kanna approached the truck with resistance still in her. The twins were smiling and sitting on the tailgate with their legs dangling over the ground and a plume of smoke encasing them. They gave her matching grins. They sucked on their cigars and waved their hands in welcome as soon as they had seen her.
“Hey, hey! You two disappeared for a long time, there. What were you up to all alone on the other side of the cliff?” Noa asked once Kanna was close enough. Her tone was suggestive; even through the language barrier, Kanna could hear the implication clearly. “Fine, don’t explain it. I already saw anyway. Last night, I got up to do my business in the bushes, and I noticed you two wrapped around each other like a pair of kittens. It all makes sense now. To think we tried to rescue you from this brute in Karo, convinced that she was abusing you, and all along it was some twisted role play. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Shut up,” Kanna said. She climbed into the passenger seat and slammed the door.
“Sheesh! Kind of grumpy this morning, aren’t you?” It was Leina who was yammering next. “Did you have a nightmare or something?”
Kanna clenched her teeth. It took all her inner strength to stop herself from spinning around to yell in the woman’s face. She could handle all the misunderstandings so far—all the creative stories about Upperland culture, all of the bureaucrats shortening her name, all the lies she had told on purpose—but for some reason, she couldn’t bear to hear stories about what had happened between her and Goda. The experience had been so far beyond any words, that she doubted even telling it herself would be any closer to the truth.
The truck wriggled when Goda climbed inside of it. She busied herself with the controls as if nothing had happened. Kanna gripped her own knees to keep from reaching out and striking Goda’s handsome, hideous face—the face that was already etched with scratches that had barely had time to begin healing, the face that Kanna wanted to take between her hands and break into pieces in an embrace of affection and malice.
“So, Giant,” Noa asked, aptly changing the subject after she seemed to read the foul mood in the air, “how long do you think we have until we get to Suda?”
But Kanna was having none of it.
“We’re not going to Suda,” Kanna answered for Goda.
Noa twisted her face, raising her eyebrows in confusion. “Hah? But I thought you said that you were—”
“We’re not going to Suda!” Kanna cried, jerking her head around and staring Noa directly in the eyes. “Ride with us if you want; we’re not going to the capital if I have anything to do with it. I don’t care if I have to grab a rock and knock the giant unconscious and drive this piece of junk off a goddamn embankment, but we’re not going anywhere near that godforsaken place! It’s cursed! It’s cursed! There’s nothing but death waiting for us there!”
Noa recoiled, looking at her with speechless astonishment. The tip of her crooked cigar burned in her pause, and the ash fell into the bed of the truck.
Adding nothing to the conversation, Goda turned the truck on and pulled back onto the road. Almost as soon as they had steadied their course, Goda veered to the left and headed down what looked like another major path.
There was absolute silence for awhile, except for the rushing of the wind. Goda’s unkempt hair flew up and danced around with the hood of her robes. The truck flashed past a wooden sign on the roadside, and it was so quick that Kanna barely had time to decipher it.
Going South, it had read.
2,000,000 paces to Suda.
The wheels crunched onward against Kanna’s will.