PodCastle 419: Giants at the End of the World - a podcast by Escape Artists, Inc

* Author : Leena Likitalo

* Narrator : Will Tulin

* Host : Jen R. Albert

* Audio Producer : Peter Wood

*

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First appeared in Writers of the Future Volume 30.





Themes of suicide.





Rated PG-13

Giants at the End of the World

by Leena Likitalo

It was the last caravan of the giant season. Though the United Company had already started to build the railroad toward the End of the World, the path of iron and wood reached only as far as Halvington. Unlike the other drivers, I realized that the era of salt wagons was coming to an end.



Perhaps Elai had expected the railroad to be ready to take her to find answers to all her existential questions. With pale hair and gray eyes, she looked about eighteen, definitely not a day older. She wore a full-length leather coat, buttoned all the way up to her chin, and boots that looked too new to be yet comfortable. Even so, when she glided down Halvington’s main street, the scrawny miners and shaggy railroad workers alike rushed to tip their hats, and some even bowed.

She noticed none of that.

“I want to buy a one-way ticket to the End of the World,” Elai said to me, her pleasant voice a disturbing breeze from the past I’d thought forever left behind.

My camel-oxen, Edison and Beat, stared at her just as I did. Every inch of her shouted of a pedigree long enough to make me dizzy, the way her mouth shaped words, how she expected to be listened to and obeyed.

“It’s cheaper to buy a round-trip,” I said, rubbing the snouts of my beasts. Edison calmed soon enough, but Beat kept on snorting. He’d never smelled anything as fine as Elai’s perfume, and the scent of lilies confused him. “There’s not much to see at the End of the World.”

“Like I care,” Elai said, the simple words akin to a foreign language. A flicker of emotion escaped to her face, but she tilted her head so that her hat’s wide brim prevented me from interpreting the expression.

“Fine then,” I said, as arguing with an aristocrat was an act doomed to fail. If she wanted to escape some hell of her own making, then who was I to try and stop a paying customer? “Stay with my wagon, don’t lag, and don’t try to steal extra portions of water. In the desert the word of a wagon driver is the law.”



We started the eleven-week journey the next day, my wagon full of water crates and paid parcels. Edison and Beat waddled, slow and heavy with all the water they’d absorbed from the communal mud puddles. The families and the loners hoping to find something better than what they’d abandoned pranced after the wagon, still enthusiastic about the journey.

Elai started to limp as soon the caravan left the valley where Halvington slumped under the ever-thick blanket of coal smoke. The assorted loners tried to strike up conversation with her one after another, only to be firmly dismissed:

“Where am I from? From beyond the sea.”

“Where am I going? To the End of the World.”

“Is there someone waiting for me back at home? That is not for you to worry about.”

Her evasive replies bored me, and so I stared at the scenery instead. This close to the city, the inevitable wastewater gave life to tufts of grass and twisted cacti that stuck out from amidst the dunes. The sand might have contained a few grains of salt, but not enough to warrant efforts to collect it. The wind came in gusts that were pleasant compared to the gales that often met the caravans.

As the day progressed, those who really intended to settle at the End of the ...

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