My fingers clasp around the broken record.
I know what to do.
Uselessness bounds towards me, twisting his staff in his hand.
My bag slips from my shoulder, onto the smoking woodpile.
He shouts. I close my eyes. Use what you have.
One.
Two.
Three.
I hurl the disc. It wobbles through the air, whistling and purring. My eyes flash open, just in time to see it spinning unevenly towards the giant.
As if guided by the wind itself, the broken record splinters into his face, gouging his ugly cheek and scraping his eye.
He screams and stops, his face contorting.
The staff clatters beneath him, one end jabbing into the earth, the other towards me. I grab my bag as the wood strikes the fire. Everything happens quickly, but it suddenly occurs to me that this is my chance. Use what you have.
The flames lick around the staff and the heat is beginning to sear my skin. With one leap, I instinctively clutch the staff and slide down it, hitting the cool earth in the giant's shadow. Smoke billows around me.
Uselessness rolls and roars.
"There!" shouts Lustfulness.
An arrow whistles through the air and jams into the earth near me. I run.
Another arrow, sleek like the wind, then a shower of soil and mud and smoke. I can't see where I'm going.
Back to the woods?
Something huge glints like the sun above me. It's Hopelessness swinging his sword.
"No!" he yells, scything the grass.
Arrow.
Run.
I spin, quickly on my heels and pelt through the giant's legs. The sword shimmers past. A giant foot shakes the ground.
Uselessness is up. I can see him. With one hand over his eye, he stumbles towards the flames.
"Loneliness!" cries one of the others. "Do it!"
I don't have time to stop. I have to get to the forest. I turn and run.
Uselessness clutches his splintered staff. One half is black and burned. His face is fury. Hopelessness bellows behind me. His hand swipes the earth, the same giant fist I had wrestled my Hope from. I dart across the grass.
Loneliness slips a burning arrow into her bow. But this time she isn't aiming at me. She's aiming at the trees.
"Now!" cries Hopelessness behind me.
She fires. The arrow streaks through the air like a comet and arcs into the wood. She lights and loads another. I stop open-mouthed, gaping at the trees ahead.
They're starting a forest fire.
Arrow after arrow buries itself into the screaming canopy of leaves. The trees explode with fire, burning gold and yellow as the flames peel around the branches. Black smoke ripples into the sky.
There is nowhere to run. Hopelessness laughs behind me.
"It's over!" he shouts.
My heart pounds in my chest and I catch my breath. I run again, perhaps instinctively towards the burning trees. They roar with flame and the heat pours toward me. Fire ahead, giants behind.
I stop. I'm trapped. The giants know.
Uselessness thunders near, his face scarred with furious anger. Loneliness stands, bow in hand, grinning. Hopelessness holds up his left hand. I can't see Lustfulness.
"Stop!" he commands. The three giants circle me. "He has nowhere to go! This is it! This is what we came for."
"What we came for! What we came for!" sings Loneliness, laughing. Her voice rattles inside my head as it did between the trees and through the darkness.
"You lose!" bellows Uselessness, one hand over his face. "I'll kill him. I'll rip his tiny eyes out."
The three giants surround me.
"Stop it, Uselessness," says Hopelessness. "We will all do it. We will do it togeth... Where is?"
Uselessness shrugs.
"You know," continues Hopelessness undeterred, "He must taste his defeat and his failure - these things must be the last things he knows. That he has lost; that she... has lost. Yes, that the Maker himself has lost! Aha! The Maker!"
Loneliness and Uselessness exchange the smallest of furtive glances.
"The Maker! Ha! Didn't make it did he?" says Uselessness. "Funny how he never makes it! Where is he when you need him? Not in the woods now? Not in that little bag you carry with you? Ha!"
"Indeed not!" chimes Loneliness. "Not with you, not in you, oh... and not for you. Then where oh where oh... where? Oh haven't you figured it out?" Her words dance on the breeze as the forest blazes.
My heart trembles and my eyes sting. Smoke? Something else? I fall to my knees. Not with me, not in me, not for... me. Then where? I don't... understand.
"He doesn't understand," says a new voice suddenly from the trees. It's a voice I know. I look up. There, walking towards me, twisting a parasol between her fingers, is the Photographer. "He doesn't... get it," she repeats brushing the ash from her dress.
What?
She daintily puts one foot in front of the other as she moves, rustling with crinoline. One boot is missing. Of course, she lost it in the woods. But why... isn't she... The giants stand motionless for a moment. Then she glances at Hopelessness and smiles. He glances back at her and nods.
"He never understood it," she declares. She leans in closer and smiles, horribly.
"He never understood..." she whispers close to my ear... "That there is... no.. Maker."
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