We Who Are Hungry (Part 1)

The first one fell in the south, descending from the thick indigo sky only to be swallowed by the glow of the morning. The few that followed met the same fate, twinkling out of existence at the world’s end. The final one descended from the heavens and brought with it the tribulation.

Wormwood and his fiery offspring barraged the planet, casting plumes of glowing smoke so high into the air that they could be seen an ocean over. Then came the wave. It sent flying all who resided within eyesight of the impact, all who bore witness to the great bioluminescent eruption and could not seek shelter. Trees uprooted and shot across the sky and boulders so large that even the gods could not lift them skimmed across the land like pebbles thrown by the hand of a child across a lake. 

Then came the blanket. A great black shawl laid delicately over the planet, estranging the sun and smothering all in burning dust.

Those who survived the faux-night awoke in the morning to a planet of smoldering ash. A vast, shifting desert of black sand and blacker snow over the sand falling from blacker clouds. Panic was inevitable, but brief. Most of the grass eating beasts perished within the first week, and those with the means to do so feasted like kings.

By the end of the month, all were either hungry or dead. The fortunate with the unfortunate. The powerful with the meek - inheritance denied, all are siblings in hunger.

Ody was not alive to see the sky fall, but his grandfather was. He died before they could meet, but his father would tell him of what the world was like before Wormwood, when water was plentiful and the plants were green and food was always a mere few minutes away. He was not sure what the colour green looks like, but it sounded pretty. He knew he’d see it some day.

Rachel carried with her two infants nestled in the pouch across her front, and a third slung across her back. They had long since learned that crying for food was pointless, and so they lay still and silent against their mother’s warmth. The last born triplet nibbled at her hair and the first two suckled at her bosom - an exercise in futility, she’d gone dry hours ago. She was led into the vast cavity of a felled conifer not native to this land - tossed half way across the continent, evidenced by the sloped ditch in the dirt left behind by its landing. Ahead of her were Ody and Isaac, and she was followed by Korah. Paula stayed outside, taking a moment to examine the ozymandian skeleton of a creature unfortunate enough to have been caught in the path of the flung tree years ago, half sunk in cool ash. She was ushered inside by the call of her father.

Brittle bark crumbled beneath their feet as they assessed the interior of the trunk. It would do, so long as they did not lean against the walls. They set Rachel down on a bed of gathered clinker softened with pillows of dirt and they all squatted together, nude and ragged and unabashed as they made brief conversation. Ody, Paula and Isaac departed, leaving Korah behind to guard the group’s only mother. As he left, Isaac heard Korah begin to ask if he’d ever told Rachel of the time before Wormwood when he saw an animal so big that its wings eclipsed the sun when it flew over head, and the proceeded to ignore her tired “yes” in favour of continuing his story anyway. He never specified what the animal was.

Isaac looked to Paula and the pair snickered. Despite the greying of his hair and whiskers, Korah was nowhere near old enough to have seen the cataclysm. Ody’s grandfather had only been young and they knew fine well that Korah was not three, going on four generations old. He was born of the cinders, naked and starved like the rest of them. 

Still, nobody ever questioned his tales.

The gathering party split up into two groups - as ordered by Ody - the father with his daughter, and Isaac on his own. The two youngsters feigned complaint and held each other.

“Aw, you wouldn’t separate a young, lovin’ couple, sir.” Teased Isaac.

“I absolutely would. Now off wit ya.” Ody flicked his chin from Isacc to the forest, a snort caught in his nose and a half-mirthful smile on his lips. Isaac kissed Paula on the cheek and scurried off.

The place in which they found themselves was unlike most of the wasteland. It was a cluster of trees, none of which were even half the size of the felled one in which they sought refuge, each bowed with skin blackened like slumped soldiers frozen on the march. It was clear by their slender frames and unblemished trunks that they’d perished young. It would be a miracle if they could find one not only alive but also mature enough to fruit - and yet, the gatherers had no other option but to press forwards regardless. 

Father and daughter went creeping through the forest abreast, dark eyes wide and cast to the shadows. All around them, foul smelling leaves fluttered down, carried by windless air. The pair waded through a swamp of soot and softened leaves so high that the daughter could no longer see her legs. Paula wondered if the rest of whatever beast that skeleton had belonged to’s herd lay somewhere beneath her feet. Ody chose not to think of it at all. 

It was an hour before their search was rewarded. The dead forest gave way to a clearing, around which trees of ebony loomed, stooped as though in prayer to the single tree in the centre of the glade who littered the monochrome ground with armoured fruit. Tiny winged insects flitted about her darkening leaves, their wings humming and buzzing as they swooped in and out of the canopy. Secluded with only ghosts for company, it seemed to the pair that the tree had reproduced on her own. At her foot lay a neat pyramid of goliath stacked nuts.

Paula was the first to the fruit, gathering as many as she could and stuffing them into her pouch, Ody took a moment to marvel at the tree - gold and ultramarine in the dim, grey sunlight as though someone had set it ablaze - before he joined his daughter. Instead of gathering nuts, however, he took one up and inspected it. His attempts at gnawing open its spikey shell with his teeth were unsuccessful and so he looked about for a rock. Paula looked at her father and did the same until she dug one out of the ground. Ody had no such luck.

“Ya know how ta use tat?” Asked Ody.

“Just hit it, right?” Asked Paula.

Ody shook his head and took ahold of her hand, the one holding the stone, and rolled the fruit on the ground until it revealed the seam of it’s shell. He guided her to place the pointed tip of the stone on the fruit. “Here.”

“Nothin’ to make the fruit stay still with.” Paula pointed out.

“Use your oter hand.”

“What if I hit myself?”

Ody chuckled. “Well why would ya go ‘n do a silly ting like tat?” 

Paula shrugged and smiled.

“I’ll be back.” He promised, kissing Paula on her temple before he turned and departed, sinking back into the soot and shadow in search of his own stone. 

Paula got to work, she laid the first panoplied fruit against the flattest ground she could find and held it still, raising the rock and smashing it into twenty two pieces of pulp. She took the first ten pieces of pulp and ate them herself before stuffing the remains into her pouch. Extracting a second fruit from her sack, she repeated the process over and over again until the fur lined bag was half full with smashed fruits. 

She raised the stone above her head, ready to bring it down upon the eleventh nut when a shriek from the forest stilled her blood in her veins.

“Paula!”

“Isaac?” She turned her head to the forest. 

Nothing.

Abandoning the fruit, she stood and scrambled for the forest, the darkness swallowing her. Dull spots of light raced past her as her surroundings became a blur. 

“Paula.”

The voice was closer now, Paula could feel tears building in her eyes as she sped towards the sound of her lover. She was heading the right way.

“Paula.” Toneless, the voice beckoned her forth, and pliantly, she followed. A root reached for her foot and she leapt over it, her landing awkward it nearly sent her into the dirt. She stumbled and continued.

“Paula.” Just a few more feet, she could hear Isaac’s voice growing louder and- she was winded as her back was slammed against rough, decaying bark. 

“Pa-!” Ody cut her off with a hand to the mouth, his eyes wide and his chest heaving as he kept her pinned against the tree. Her brows furrowed in confusion.

“Paula.”

Isaac’s voice was closer.

Ody silently shook his head. The heat drained from Paula’s face.

“Paula.” The monotone voice echoed, now no more than twenty feet to their left. Paula’s breath began to pick up, the cup of Ody’s hand amplifying the sound. The father lowered his palm from her face and brought a finger to his lips.

“Paula… Paula.” Ash shifted behind the tree. The very tree they stood in the shadow of. Something thumped rapidly against the soot. With shaking breath, Ody slowly peered around the trunk and saw only a long, slender, stiff tail and beneath it a trail of blood. He moved to peer around the other side and beheld the Nephilim.

“Paula.” 

His daughter could feel him trembling. Glorious feathered wings brushed delicately against the ash, flecked with rows upon rows of bright, multi-coloured eyes which shifted and danced in Ody’s vision. It licked its teeth and went gurgling along the edge of the dell, its true eyes fixed in place and forever pointing directly ahead, wide with glee, its mouth turned up in a permanent grin. It spoke without moving its painted too-long maw, blood garish on its lips like the make-up of a harlot - instead it simply opened it and spoke. “Paula.” Isaac’s voice was deafening and plain in the abomination’s pale white throat. It walked on two legs and yet it did not walk correctly, its posture was stooped and its back arched unnaturally; it’s neck too long, it’s nails too sharp, it pranced and hopped about as if to play at flight, movements alternating between a slow sneak and a sprint so quick that Ody could barely even see it move as it weaved inquisitively between the trees. 

“Paula.”

The father moved his head to hide fully behind the tree, eyes still fixed on where he knew the beast was. His chest tightened with a lack of air. 

He peered out from behind the tree once again and it was sprinting directly towards them.

Quickly, he pulled his daughter around to the pine’s side and pressed them both flat against the bark, the wind whipping as the creature went skittering off past them and into the forest, its movements near silent - its departure signalled only by the light pitter patter of kicked up ash falling in its wake as the pale and grounded imitation of an angel vanished into the darkness, eloping with death to some place far away.

The father breathed. “It didn’t see us.” He turned back to Paula, her mouth was agape, opening and closing as she struggled to exorcise the words from her throat.

“It had Isaac’s voice.” She whimpered, tears streaming down her face.

“I know.” Ody murmured and pulled her into a hug. “I know.”

The pair began and concluded their sombre procession in silence, arriving back to the felled conifer with eyes far darker than they had been. 

Korah was grinning, Rachel looked tired, but upon seeing the returning exhibition the male’s smile dropped and the mother was alert.

“Where’s Isaac?” Asked Rachel

Ody could only hold her gaze for a fleeting moment before it found its way to the floor.

Rachel raised a hand to her mouth. Korah’s eyes widened. “What got him?”

“A Mimic. Don’t trust noting ya hear in tose woods, ya hear? and nobody goes out in te daylight.”

Korah nodded. Rachel shook her head and protested. “Did you see it?” 

“No.” Ody shook his head.

Rachel furrowed her brows. “Then he might still be out there.”

“He ain’t.” The father’s voice was plain.

“I’m going to go look for him.” Gently, she set the triplets down in the dirt and rose. Ody blocked the exit. 

“and if te mimic gets ya?” 

Rachel fell silent.

“Who’s gonna feed tem kids if te mimic gets ya, eh?” Ody repeated.

“Paula can.” Rachel asserted. Paula, who was present only in body, did not protest.

“Paula’s still a babe herself. I’ll go and look for him, alright?” Ody promised. “N take care of her, alright.” He gestured to his daughter. Rachel nodded and brought Paula to bed. 

Korah stood to follow Ody, but he pointed to the dirt bed. “Stay wit ‘em, just in case.”

“Aye.” Korah nodded.

Ody stepped back out into the grey and was engulfed by pseudo-fog. His gaze sharp, he snuck his way from tree to tree, twitching and ready to make a break for the conifer at the first suggestion of anything scuttling about in the bitter mist. 

Half an hour into his search, he found what remained of Isaac.

There was a clearing, identical to the one he and Paula had found, where an identical pyramid of identical fruits stood tall and proud at the centre. Right beside it, a set of massive two-toed footprints imprinted into the ground, blood pooling within them and seeping into the flakey earth. 

Ody gathered up as many of the fruits as he could and sprinted back to the conifer. 

The family feasted in Isaac’s name and spent the night in silent vigil - in equal parts out of respect for the dead and fear of being discovered in their sleep. 

Korah remembered hearing about a time where the dead would be mourned with a period of fasting and partying - though he could not remember where he heard it from or who told him. 

Paula sat silently in her corner, swallowing and glaring back tears until they came flooding out of her in violent, pathetic sobs. Ody joined her, pulled her against his side and sang to her in a language long dead to them, a song that his father had sung to him and yet never understood himself, and that his father had sung to him and kept the knowledge of its meaning hidden in his heart until the day he passed. They agreed to stay in the conifer until they were forced to continue their exodus by a lack of food, however, nobody was permitted to go out and gather more from the forest. It was Ody who organised their rations: ten a day for himself, Paula and Korah, fourteen for Rachel. 

Despite the family being in agreement with this - Paula silently so - on the third night the father awoke from a restless lumber in the middle of the night to find that four additional pieces of smashed fruit were missing. He could tell by their breaths that each and every one of them was still asleep, and he was sure he hadn’t simply lost count. Stepping outside, he found a set of tiny footprints and the hunt began - however brief it was. He found the culprit’s tiny feet poking out from a dug out groove beneath the trunk of the colossal conifer just a few metres up the tree. 

A blue eyed child, trying to eat his stolen meal as quietly as he could, too preoccupied with his food to realise he had been caught. 

Ody left him. The next night, the thief found his own rations waiting outside the make-shift den for him. 

Ody ran out of rations before the others and, after explaining to his family what had happened, Korah, Rachel and Paula shared their food with him. On the sixth night, when the family departed for the wasteland once more, Ody left a day’s worth of rations waiting in front of the conifer. Paula watched him set down each sheet of fruit with an indignant glare and when he jogged back to the group she confronted him.

“Isaac died for that food, why’d you waste it?” 

“It’s not a waste. It’s just as good in his stomach as it is in mine.” Ody answered.

Onwards on their odyssey the Ithacans went shambling. Shadows cast long and faint to their sides, they lumbered in single file across glistening dunes of shaven onyx. Under the merciless light of the sun, the family sought refuge in the darkness cast by rolling hills of black sand and spoke to one another of the Grave of Wormwood and its Shelter. They rose and marched only when the moon blanched the desert, cutting across the horizon with Ody in the front and Korah at the back. Oceans of ash shifted before them, each dune a wave crashing and swelling and rolling in that long vanished sea. They navigated by the stars and ambled forth on sandals of callouses, for the first two days and two nights fed only on the promise of something better laying ahead.

On the third day the angels sang high in the sky, circling in a great swarm a mere few inches above the wasteland’s skyline. Paula woke the rest of her family and pointed eastwards towards the heavenly host and without question or complaint, the family proceeded forwards under the baking sun eastwards. They burned their feet, Paula could smell her skin cooking against the ash - her soles the youngest and softest of the brood and yet she could not bring herself to register the pain. 

Upon cresting the final mountain of baking cinders, they found the cause of the choir’s mournful song.

There, stiff and legflung on its back, half-devoured by the ashen playa, lay a Giant slain by hunger and heat - and around it, a hoard of hungry faux-angels, great and small and silent, disassembling it. One Nephilim - a Mimic - lapped at the foam bubbling at the deceased mouth and soaking into the earth. Others were preoccupied with stripping the colossus of its magnificent armour, surely once pristine and impenetrable, now dull and falling apart at its circular seams with its great, stone club laying beside its foot. The scavengers could not care less for it. Eventually, one of the ravaging Non-Mimics opened a hole in the Giant’s relatively thin chestplate and burrowed its way inside. 

That was when the frenzy began. The Non-Mimics, unable to steal voices like their brethren, trilled and rattled and squawked in their own unholy language.

The other scavengers shoved and snapped and beat their feathers at one another, flashing the iridescent eyes on their wings, rapacious in their eagerness to violate the corpse. They poured inside, one by one, two by two, one again, three by three, the gaping visceral door of the Giant stretching and tearing to accommodate them. All hell broke loose when one Mimic summoned a sickle and slashed at another. Within moments, the feeding frenzy erupted into chaos as the ravenous beasts leapt upon one another and tore into each other. Half of the legion outside of the corpse were too busy bloodying one another to eat, the other half too busy infiltrating the dead body to realise they’d created a trap for one another. 

Those who had entered first now found themselves being crushed against the insides of the armoured Giant, curling and weeping as the increasing number of starving False-Angels within the fallen’s skin pressed them against one another. One mimic found its face being stuffed into the intestines of the Giant, suffocating it quickly, others went out panting and dazed as the heat of trapped decomposition took them. Within a few minutes, they ran out of air inside of the skin of the dead and began to choke on carbon. Desperate to escape, those still conscious pressed back against the coming hoard, but there were far more outside, eager to feast, than trapped within the carcass. Those nearest the entry point were too pre-occupied with feasting on the exposed muscle and fat that they did not register the struggle of their brethren, and slew them with their communal obliviousness. And in their carelessness, some began to eat their own in the lightless cavity.

The family absconded with their pouches and hands full of meat carved from the unarmoured thigh of the slain colossus, unnoticed by the false angels and disregarded by the true angels above. 

Paula turned back to the clumping mass of degenerate Nephilim and wasted precious water into the ash on their behalf. She wiped her mouth and followed her family.

Ody turned his soft gaze on the banquetters, then his daughter. “Tey can't be any oter way.”

“Well they ought to be.” The daughter scoffed.

“I don't tink we ought ta have a say in what tey ought ta be or ought ta act. Maybe tey tink we ought ta be different too.” 

“They’d be wrong.” 

“Tat ain't our say.”

“It ought to be.”

For another week they wandered, stomachs churning with raw flesh and uncooked blood, grateful for how the pain brought by the poison chasing away the anguish of starvation. Rachel’s children, Abida, Adah and Epher supped well at her breasts for the duration of the week, their ribs finally filling out and their spines steadily being buried beneath their skin. 

On the second day, the meat spoiled. On the eighth day, they ate the last of what they’d gathered. It was on the eighth night that Paula’s feet began to bleed and her father and Korah took turns carrying her on their backs.

On the ninth night, a storm greeted them, grey clouds rolling in from the west barely distinguishable from the rest of the sky. Parched and crumbling, the family dropped to their knees under the downpour. Ody, face solemn as though in prayer, cupped his hands under the rain and washed his face. He did it again before drinking like the others. 

Rachel began to laugh, tears mixing with the rain on her cheeks, drawing Adah from her back and Abida and Epher from the pouch on her front and cradling each in her arms as though they’d almost been taken from her. She threw her head back and cackled at the heavens. 

Sullied water mixed with ash and turned the desert into glossy mud which soaked into the cracks of their feet and soothed their aching soles.

Ody stood up - and was immediately sent tumbling back to the ground by a fat glob of muck.

“That’s one point, ody!” Rumbled Korah, eyes crinkled at their edges and a grin on his yellow teeth.

Ody stumbled to his feet with a chuckle, scooping up a glob of his own and hurling it at Korah only for Korah to catch it and send it right back into Ody’s face. “That’s two!”

Rachel set her children down on the ground, where they began to giggle and slap at the viscous dirt, before she tackled Korah to the ground. He plopped into the muck, half blinded by it, its bitter taste in his mouth, and he laughed as he rolled about and pinned Rachel beneath him so that her hair and back were coated in it. She rolled again and trapped Korah beneath her.

Ody crept up behind the mother, wrapped his arms around her and hoisted her into the air.

“Ody,” She protested, failing to hide her amusement “That isn’t fair!”. 

“Neither wos tacklin’ me when I had ma back turned!” Korah pointed out, rising only to slip and fall. Ody guffawed and Rachel took the opportunity to elbow him in the ribs, causing him to drop her.

“aww tat weren't fair!” Whined the father, feigning indignation.

“Neither was picking me up!” Rachel snapped back with a smile and scored Korah in the mouth with a glob of mud. 

Ody turned to Paula, who sat with the infants watching them play, the vacancy in her gaze exposing the distance of her thoughts.

“Paula?” Ody asked.

She looked at him.

“Wanna join us?” 

She shook her head.

“It don’t hurt notin’, I promise.” Ody smiled at her, silently nudging her to do the same.

She turned her gaze away from him.

His smile fell and he moved to sit beside her. He cupped his hands to the sky, shifted behind her, and began to wash and comb her hair. His touch grounded her, it brought her back to the moment for a few soothing minutes before her thoughts began to wander again.

For the next few days, they fed on worms and insects fleeing their flooded burrows beneath the mud - it kept them moving, it kept Rachel’s children fed, and yet they were never full and the milk was sparse. The paste upon which they walked softened their journey southwards for half a week before the storms were chased away by the sun and the earth was baked dry once more.

The travellers came upon a river formed by the storm, bracketed by two rows of Giants: some were horned, carrying with them shields decorated with colours once glorious, now muted with dust - some carried shields so tall that they wore them over their backs like capes. Some resembled the dead Giant in the desert, armoured with stone glistening with pale, precious gems, some were tall and utterly naked, with cloven hooved hands and avian feet. 

Paula, Rachel and the triplets sat in the ash behind the grumbling rally of goliaths, while Korah and Ody mounted a dune overlooking the river and its patrons and crouched at one another’s sides.

“I don't see an end ta tem.”

“Aye, me neither.” 

The river, straight as a lance, carved its way across the desert’s end from one horizon to the opposite, and equally so stretched the parallel lines of Giants, gasping and huffing and rumbling and showing no signs of departure.

“Whit dae they eat?”

“Not us.” 

“How dae ye know that?” Korah turned to look at him, brows furrowing.

Ody shrugged and descended the hill. “Only one way ta find out.”

“Ody!” The elder hissed, standing and stumbling after the young father. 

Ody stopped at the back foot of one of the Chimeric Giants - which stooped on its hooved hands to drink the frothing grey water, its nude body quivering with each pull of liquid it drew, wrinkles hanging and swaying beneath its belly - and held his palm out to Korah. Prancing in place like a shying beast, Korah held back. The father cautiously approached the head of the Giant, eyes fixed on its physique. He took in each insect infested crack in its thick skin, each pale scar littering its puckered folds. He took note of a festering wound on its shoulder, a bite mark dug so deep that bone protruded, the flesh blackened with rot. Ody furrowed his brows and focused his gaze and found it inhabited by an ecosystem of various types of maggot, some the size of his arm. He could tell that it would not heal from it, and yet the Giant seemed utterly heedless of its fate. 

Finally, he stepped into the foaming water and stood beside the dark eye of the drinking-dead - and it stared back at him with a dull, innocent interest. Its eye was so large that Ody could have stepped into its dilated pupil. He reached out to stroke the Giant’s cheek before returning to Korah.

“Well tey don’t eat us. Tat or tey’re lazy.” Ody concluded.

“You’re mad.” Korah shook his head, grinning.

“Ya won’t catch me arguin’ wit tat. Now let’s get back ta te girls. Ya're doin' it next time, tough.”

“A dinnae think I am.” 

“I think it's only fair.”

“A think ye can kiss ma ass, ye silly fucker.”

The pair circled back around to their family. Ody approached Rachel and cast his gaze to the wall of pillar-like legs. “T'ere's no better way across, but tey ain’t bite none.” 

“And the river doesn’t get any narrower?” Asked Rachel. 

“Not as far as I could see.” Answered Korah.

“Then we have no choice but to cross here.” Rachel concluded, standing up. “Take a seat.” Ody and Korah did as instructed without complaint. Rachel busied their arms with her children and stretched. 

“Where’re ya off ta?”

“I’m going to find us something to cross with. We can’t swim in that.”

“Why? It looks calm enough.” Ody tilted his head. Korah answered him, bouncing Abida in his arms. “The currents. Looks calm up top but it'll drag ye down before ye get half way across.”

Rachel nodded. Ody nodded back. Rachel turned and left.

By the time she returned, the sun had risen and many of the Giants were asleep beside the water. Ody did not notice the mother returning, watching intently as a pair of small, young, Shield-Bearing Giants wallowed in the deepest parts of the river, chasing one another about and tossing water with their shields. 

“Fellas.” Rachel greeted and Ody jumped. Korah sniffed in amusement. “Follow me.” And follow they did, Ody hauling Paula on his back.

Rachel led the party upstream to where a towering grey thorn tree stood slanted in the dampened earth beside the bank, half snapped with its top half miles downstream.

Without instruction, Korah and Ody beset it. Barbed and hairy, the diseased tree drew blood from their fingers as they scratched away its tough exterior with their elongated nails. Korah tried to bite a chunk out of its side and screamed, drawing laughter from Rachel. “I don’t tink it wants to be kissed.”

“Oh shut up.” Korah chortled through the pain. 

Steadily, the skin came away, shavings littering the moist earth around their feet, blood reddening the once monochrome plant until eventually the pair hooked their fingers into the narrow crevice they’d carved, Ody on the left side of the plant, Korah on the right, and pried one half away from the other. Gushing with clear blood, the bisected plant tipped and fell with one final cry and came crashing into the sludge. 

The clan piled into the crispy, hollowed out shell and Paula pushed them off into the water. 

“Howay then!” called Korah, beckoning Paula. She stared into the acrid river, the foam coiling around her calves and the bubbles vaguely tickling her leg-hairs.

“Paula!” Ody’s call snapped her out of her trance and she sloshed through the water and clambered hurriedly into the make-shift raft. 

Together, they followed the serpentine flow as it slithered westward, pounding the water with their hands in an awkward, rhythm-less shimmy to the other side. Twice, their journey was nearly cut short by the cloddish feet of the infant Giants, twice more were they almost crushed coming ashore by two adult Chimeras shoving against one another in sluggish competition for what they must have decided was the most ideal place to drink the exact same water as every other unfortunate present. 

The moment the water was shallow enough for them, they leapt from their raft and hurtled to the bank, hand in hand, and charged up the blackened beach, through the riparian buffer of legs and into the cool air of the open desert overlooking the channel.

Panting, Ody turned from the Giants and cast his gaze southwards to assess what lay ahead and he was left squinting at the horizon. Paula turned to her father before following his gaze to similar confusion. Perched at the edge of the world’s curve, the desert seemed to darken and lift straight upwards, brushing against the clouds. It was only after a further few days of travelling that they managed to assess what exactly they were looking at.

Two days away stood a sheer, sandstone wall stretching just as far East and as far West as the river had, with one single gap visible to them - a gateway which split the wall and dared the family into the Labyrinth. 

Southwards they went, as they would continue to go, until they reached their promised land.