Spearfinger

Coyote fished a human skull from its unceremonious burial place beneath a bush. A gouge crossed the forehead, passed between the eyes, and shattered the left cheekbone. Cracks radiated from scrapes marring the top, as if an oversized bear had made a treat of the scalp. Coyote laid his ears flat against his head. “Unknown human snack, you shall not be forgotten,” he said. “My work shall be your vengeance. My arrow will paint your name in giant’s blood. And other such poetic word vomit.”

He tossed the skull over his shoulder and pricked his ears, scanning for his brother.

Gray Fox was further up the slope, in a treeless depression that spread like a wound across the mountainside. A footprint spanned the center of it, a light impression in the hard soil, several days wind-worn. He crouched and lowered his muzzle to the ground. Black whiskers quivered and brushed against it. His unending love for the humans showed in every silent step, in every day spent tracking the monsters that enjoyed tormenting them.

This was not the kind of excitement Coyote had in mind when he offered to help. He crept up on his brother and slapped him on the shoulder. Gray Fox flinched. Coyote cupped a paw to his mouth and said, “I sure do hate giants! Hate, hate, hate! I wish a giant would show up right now, so I could give his ugly face such a pounding!”

Gray Fox groaned. “We will never take it by surprise now,” he said. “Must you antagonize the enemy before we even have a chance to find it?”

“Exactly!” Coyote said. “Now you’re catching on. I’ll make him so mad he’ll come rushing up to try to step on me. Only his rage will blind him, so it’ll be easy to dodge him. Then I’ll shoot him in the dingle-dangles, and he’ll fall to his knees. Perfect height for you to make the killing blow.”

Gray Fox frowned. “Why are you so obsessed with shooting monsters in that place?” he said.

Coyote flashed an obscene grin. “It’s fun!” he said. “Don’t tell me you never tried it.”

Gray Fox looked down at the naked branches of trees blanketing the base of the mountain. Further out the tiny form of a village could be seen on the bank of a river. “Uh, no.” he said. “Can we talk about something else now? This is making me feel weird.”

“Suit yourself,” Coyote said.

He trotted ahead, ears rotating, nose thrust into the wind. The unwashed carrion stink of the giant hung in the air. “Hey Gray Fox,” he said. “Smells like we should be right on top of this guy. What is he, half mole?”

Gray Fox paused, staring at a ridge of uneven ground rising to the right of their path. He picked his way down the slope. “That is the cleverness of giants,” he said. “You do not have to be small to be stealthy.”

Coyote jogged in place, watching his brother’s change of course. He followed, dislodging rocks and limbs and making other loud noises with each step. “Giants aren’t clever,” he said. “They’re as dumb as mud. In fact, mud has bugs in it, so giants are even dumber than mud!”

Gray Fox placed an arrow in his bow.

A brown and gray shape rose with surprising swiftness from the mountainside. The giant stood with a hunched back, chin held above the tallest trees, fists clenched tightly against her sides. She shook herself like a bison after a dust bath. Loose earth and boulders rained down on the ridge that had concealed most of her form. Yellow eyes leered from a face framed by wild, matted hair. Where it reached her shoulders the hair was pressed to her body with clods of hardened mud. Pendulous breasts swayed past the creature’s navel. They too were coated with grime mixed with rocks, which gave the giant’s skin a cracked, diseased appearance.

Coyote’s jaw dropped. “Creator’s toe crud, my eyes!” he said.

In the time it took for him to say this Gray Fox had fired three arrows at the target. They bounced off the stony armor.

The giant roared and spread her arms, uncurling her fists. The index finger on her right hand sprang into view, a spear-shaped claw as long as her forearm. She stepped onto the ridge and lifted the spear above her head.

“Coyote, shoot!” Gray Fox said, continuing his ineffective barrage.

Coyote made no move to ready his bow. He remained frozen, an expression of awe mixed with horror on his face.

Wearing a lopsided grin, the giant got down on all fours and jabbed the spear at them.

Gray Fox tackled Coyote, and they rolled down the slope. Dirt sprayed after them as the giant slashed the ground. A tree stopped their tumble.

The giant spread her limbs wide across the slope, hugging the earth like some human-shaped reptile. Her gaze was unblinking, as if she wished for them to study the vessels popping out in her bloodshot eyes. She pointed to something on the ground in the shadow of her hulking form. Gray Fox’s bow rested on a bush, knocked loose during his efforts to save Coyote. The giant curled her hand into a fist and smashed the bush.

Gray Fox tore Coyote’s bow away from him and brought it up.

The giant plucked it from his paws with the spear and flung it at a flock of birds. The birds scattered away from the spinning bow, which became a dot, and then disappeared. The giant gave a landslide-rough laugh that swept them off their feet.

Gray Fox picked himself off the ground and snorted the stench of her breath from his nostrils. He drew a heavy knife from his belt. He shot the giant a glare like a parent might give to a disobedient child who likes to break things.

Not to be outdone, Coyote reached for a stick. Long ago he carried knives, but he gave up after he could not overcome the urge to show off with fancy tricks that inevitably lost them. He caught Gray Fox’s eye with a grin and said, "Desperate times call for…"

One of Gray Fox’s ears twitched in confusion, and he replied, "Desperate measures?"

"What?” Coyote said. “Where the hell did you hear that? Desperate times call for doing whatever the hell pops into your head first. Sheesh, grow some common sense willya?"

He waved the stick over his head and leapt up the slope toward the giant. “Hey droopy-rocks, I hate you!” he said. “Smush me! Chew my guts! Suck my bones!”

With enormous willpower, Gray Fox resisted the urge to rescue his brother. He slipped into the brush and circled the giant.

Grinning with glee, the giant swiped at Coyote. The spear severed his head. It tumbled down the slope, eyes popped wide, tongue flopping in the wind. His body jerked and crumbled to the ground. She reached for it, positioning the spear to stab it through the chest.

Gray Fox sprang. He landed on her arm and leapt for the mess of hair covering her neck. He clung to it and slipped his knife into a crack in the mud beneath her jaw. Blood pulsed from the chink in her armor.

The giant wailed and slapped at him. Missed. Clawed chunks of hardened mud and rocks from her neck. She stood and vented her fury on the mountain, stamping trees and kicking boulders down the slope.

Gray Fox hid between her shoulders.

Wrapped in her armor, she could not feel him. His scent maddened her. Thrashing, raking at her back, she searched for him.

A crack widened on her neck. He plunged the knife in. He leapt aside to let her claw at the wound. Stab, swipe, jump. He paced himself to conserve energy while she flailed with fury.

Blood trickled in rivulets through cracks and over stone armor, a vertical brook of energy seeping from her. Her chest heaved with heavy, guttural breaths. She swayed. Her eyes rolled back, and then she collapsed.

Gray Fox sheathed his knife and caught the branch of a tree on the way down. The earth shook. He let go, landed on his feet, and checked the giant for signs of life. She was gone.

Relief welled in Gray Fox’s heart. He sat on a boulder with his back to her and panted. The gruesomeness of the hunt weighed on him. As much as it needed to be done, he hated being unable to give these creatures a quick and painless death.

After he was rested he located Coyote’s body and carried it to a flat stretch of ground. He stared at it. The rules governing his brother’s resurrections remained mysterious. Perhaps it would go smoother if he reunited the body with the severed head. He found it and placed it on the ground against the stump of the neck.

Gray Fox sighed and said, “Brother, if I had an arrow for every time I had to leap over you and say ‘Get up again,’ I would have enough ammunition to fight an army of giants.”

He performed the ritual, and then stared with curiosity at the jagged rip that separated Coyote’s pieces.

Bones and nerves, tendons and ligaments, muscles and blood vessels crept from the neck and pushed against the head. They made no effort to attach. The head remained lifeless. It rolled aside as skin and fur covered Coyote’s new head.

Coyote squeezed his eyes shut against the bright, cloudless sky and groaned. He laid an arm over his eyes and rested for a few minutes. When he felt well enough to move he rolled over on his side and gripped his belly, fighting waves of nausea. His eyes were still closed, and he curled his tail against his legs. “Sheez, Gray Fox,” he said, “none of this would have been necessary if you could creator-curse-it learn how to make an arrow that kills giants!”

Gray Fox thought of his brother’s pain, and resisted the urge to lecture him for using such upsetting language. “I did not predict that they would invent stone armor,” he said. “If not for that, it definitely would have worked.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Coyote said.

Squinting, he dragged himself to his paws and knees. His finger brushed something wet and sticky. His eyes popped open.

“GYAAAAA!”

Gray Fox jumped. He had never heard his brother make such a horrible sound.

A mountain ridge of fur rose on Coyote’s back. He screamed until he almost passed out. He took a deep breath, and then continued screaming. The lifeless eyes refused to withdraw their challenge. The gray tongue oozed like a slug from the bloody mouth.

Gray Fox slapped a paw over Coyote’s eyes and kicked the decapitated head down the slope.

Coyote’s scream dwindled to an exhausted close. He slapped Gray Fox’s paw away. “You are sick!” he said. “Sick, sick, sick! Now I know why they tell you to watch out for the quiet ones! You think you can out-prank me? I’ll return the favor a million times over, when you least expect it!”

Grimacing, Gray Fox backed away and said, “No, I did not-”

Coyote tried to kick him, missed, and fell on his butt. He stood and dusted himself off. “Save it, sicko,” he said.

He turned away and stormed down the mountain, inventing new curses as he went.

The racket faded, and Gray Fox was enveloped in peace and quiet for the first time since his brother came to visit. He was still processing what had just happened, but with Coyote that was often a futile exercise. All he knew for certain was that while the humans may be safe now, the worst part for him was still ahead.

He gave a weary sigh and prayed to the creator that his wife wouldn’t be around when it happened.