Gather round, child, and let me tell you the tale of a great and terrible time for our tribe. When we were younger we liked to explore the ruins of the ancient giants, just like you do now. Among their collapsed stone towers, we found countless useless baubles and trinkets, just like everyone else. But sometimes, we would hit a treasure trove and find the prized ancient artefacts that all children dream of discovering. One time, we found a perfectly rectangular sheet of black plastic that we recognized to be an artefact of the giants from its perfect, alien-like geometrical precision. In awe, we started to fiddle with it when all of a sudden, the surface of the object began glowing, illuminating us with a brilliant but faint white light, with nothing but a strange not quite circular symbol in the middle. Transfixed by this sight, we didn’t move until the white light stopped, shifting instead to reveal an intricate pattern of darker symbols now. I swear upon my elders, Ross touched it then and the lights moved, as if reacting to him. Will wanted to keep playing with it to unlock its secrets, but Ross and Elsa were scared, preferring instead to bring it back to the elders as soon as possible rather than to play with a potentially dangerous artefact. I sided with the two of them, to Will’s obvious anger, and so we ran back as fast as we could to the village. But it was too late. It had reverted to its original, mundane black shape, never to glow again. I’ve kept that black sheet, and over the years, I’ve begun to wonder whether or not the glow was just a trick of the light – merely an illusion we collectively imagined in our youth.
By far our greatest discovery, though, was only a few months later, and this one was definitely a genuine active artefact from the giants. It was in a different ruin, a quarter-day walk away from our camp, that I saw a roughly oval navy-coloured shape sticking out of the rubble. I pulled it out, and it turned out to be a box with something inside, as it rattled when I shook it. I called the other three over and, with butterflies in my stomach, I pulled open the ancient box. Inside was the strangest pair of eye-rings I had ever seen. Unlike all the other eye-rings that we had seen before, these ones were not metal; they were made of a matte brown-and-beige sort of plastic that looked supernaturally clean and flawless. But even stranger than that was that it had solid, almost rectangular sheets of glass in the middle of the eye-ring holes. We had never seen anything like it. Why did the giants need a window in their eye-rings?
We decided that I should put them on first, because I had found them. I was more than a little scared, because our elders always told us to be careful around the giants’ old magical artefacts, for we could not understand their mysterious designs, but I put them on all the same. Instantly, I was plunged into an indescribable blur in which I could see nothing around me in the dark cave at all. I thought with more than a little sense of horror that the artefact had blinded me, so I flung the trinket away from my face as fast as I could. Thankfully, my normal vision returned, but I was deathly afraid of the eye-rings, and proposed that we destroy them right away.
But the others were not so easily convinced. “Oh please, Zach. They’re simply a pair of eye-rings,” the two other boys told me. “They are definitely not magical, so please stop being such a child about it.” Elsa thought that we should first bring them back to the elders before playing with them any more, but it was no use. Ross took them next and put them on. He was much calmer than me, but his experience was the same as mine. The eye-rings made everything around him disappear in a blur, so much so that he couldn’t even see his hands even standing next to the torch. He took them off, telling us he was getting dizzy from them. Next, Will tried them on and said that actually, if he focused a little bit he could see everything quite clearly. We didn’t believe him, though. We thought he was just trying to be special, but he insisted that it was true. He proposed that Elsa try them on to see. Maybe its powers only worked on some people, on special people like him. We rolled our eyes at this but agreed that Elsa should try them.
When Elsa put them on she was taken aback, obviously surprised at the effect of the eye-rings. I laughed and said, see? Elsa also can’t see anything, you’re just making it up, Will. But she started smiling strangely, and told us that everything was so clear and beautiful. We asked her what she meant and she said that she saw everything so clearly, like if everything were right next to her eyes. The effect was even stronger when we went outside the cave and into the daylight. She was moved to tears as she said she could see all around her better than she had ever seen before, although she admitted that it made her own hands a little blurry if she looked at them up close. She turned to me and asked me if she could keep them, as she knew that I had found them and so they were rightfully mine. I agreed, and she hugged me, happier than I had ever seen her before.
Interrupting her joyous revelation, Will grabbed the eye-rings off of Elsa’s face and put them on his own. “I can see everything out here much better too, you know. It’s not just you Elsa, I want them too. These would help me hunt, I’m sure, so I should be the one to have them.” Elsa was a terrible shot, and we all knew that, so it made sense. If the eye-rings really did help him hunt, maybe it would be best…
Elsa started sobbing and was really miserable when she saw that we were changing our minds about giving her the eye-rings. I felt terrible but understood both sides, and thought for a while about how best to resolve the issue once and for all. I told them that I thought that the person who could see the best with the eye-rings should keep them, and so I proposed a game. Ross and I would choose a number in secret, and I would go out alone as far as I could over the wasteland. On my way back to the other three, I would hold up that number of fingers. As soon as the person wearing the glasses told the correct number to Ross, he would tell me to stop, and I would mark the location with a stick. Whoever got the stick the furthest away would win. Everyone agreed, and Will said he would start.
Ross and I secretly agreed to the number 7, followed by the number 4, and so I ran out as far as I could over the sea of broken concrete, in between the massive ruined stone towers of the wasteland. When I could just barely see them, I started walking back, holding up seven fingers in my hands. Remarkably early, I got the signal from them that he had seen my fingers after walking only for a minute or so, and I was amazed at the power of those ancient eye-rings, because I myself could make out only small, rough shapes at this distance. I went back for the second round, Elsa’s round, and put up four fingers. I was apprehensive about this round, because secretly I really wanted Elsa to win. She seemed so happy wearing the eye-rings. And what’s more, she actually looked really pretty with them - but this is not something I had admitted to feeling yet. And so when I started walking back and didn’t hear the signal, I grew sad. I soon passed the place that I had marked as Will’s guessing point, and I put down my fingers. It seemed Will would be getting the eye-rings, and I was disappointed. I really wanted to see Elsa happy, her eyes sparkling behind the strange, magical windows of the rings.
When I got back, though, I saw that Elsa was wearing the glasses with a huge grin on her face, and Will was upset. It turns out that Elsa said “four” almost instantly when I put my fingers up, and Will was calling her a cheater. “You guys must have planned this all from the beginning. There is no way you could you see that far out, Elsa, I don’t believe you for a moment.” Rules were rules, though, and so Elsa kept the eye-rings in the end. I was secretly very happy, and I found my stare lingering on her quite often on the way back. There was something about how the ancient magic made light dance around her eyes that awakened in me a desire for her that I did not know existed.
In the following moons, she took to the eye-rings like a vulture to carrion, just like I began hovering around her hungrily. Other people in our tribe also sometimes wore eye-rings, but they were mundane artefacts – simple jewelry – compared to Elsa’s magnificent, supernatural diamonds. Elsa seemed to grow in popularity as well, becoming more and more extraverted. While she was always quiet, clumsy and not a very good archer, she developed this new confidence and athleticism under the powerful magic of the rings. She started practicing archery and in fact got so good that word spread that she would win this year’s goose shooting match. As you know, my child, winning the shooting match is the greatest honour possible and every young tribesman’s dream. It seemed that Elsa would be poised to take the title of hunt chief that year, which I thought was incredible and unbelievable at the same time. But not everyone was as happy as I was. Will, who was once the most talented sharpshooter in the tribe, grew jealous of Elsa. He resented her for having the eye-rings rather than him, and openly attacked her honour, telling everyone in the tribe that she was nothing more than a cheater and a fraud. Soon, it became clear that the issue of Elsa’s rise in popularity and possession of the eye-rings became the cause of many arguments in the tribe, with the tribe members polarized over this issue. Fights broke out between Elsa supporters and Will supporters all too often, and the placement of tents across the village reflected a growing divide between the two camps. Our elders, who saw that this rivalry threatened the very unity of the tribe, proposed a solution: if the winner of the shooting match was either Elsa or Will, the loser would be denounced as a troublemaker and exiled to the wastelands, no longer welcome in the tribe. Everyone agreed this solution was good, and a sort of tenuous peace fell over the tribe as we awaited the day the geese would swarm over our heads.
Sure enough, one morning during that same moon, the chimes were played all over the camp, signifying that the goose had come. Every tribesman, even the very old and the very young, came out with their bows in hand and started aiming towards the giant storm of feathers which nearly turned the sky white. I picked up my own bow and quiver, which was filled with arrows whose patterned fletching indicated that they belonged to me. No sooner had I walked out of my tent did I hear a shriek coming from Elsa’s tent, next to mine. I hurried to her, thinking she was hurt, but instead found her healthy but not wearing her eye-rings. This was the first time in many moons that I had seen her without them, and so I knew there must be a problem. She told me that she woke up and that they were gone, and asked me to help her look for them. We searched frantically for as long as we could, but it was no use, they were nowhere to be found. I gave her her bow and quiver and led her outside, telling her to try her best, but it was clear that her eyes were vacant and unseeing now without the magic of the eye-rings. I followed the rest of the tribe in furiously firing volleys of arrows towards the sky, but Elsa just sat down and looked nowhere in particular, like a blind woman. After the flock of birds passed us once and for all, the tribe busied itself with the task of collecting, counting, plucking and drying the meat from the geese, which would hopefully last us all winter. Every successful goose felled was counted, and the number of quarries for each tribesman tallied up. Will got the most by far, with Ross and me close behind in the top 5. Yet not a single arrow from Elsa’s quiver was counted, which was pitiful given that even children and the infirm got at least one or two each. Elsa remained seated in the same spot she was in during the hunt, and didn’t say a word all day.
At nightfall, after the great task of preparing all the birds was done, blood, guts, and feathers were splayed everywhere across the camp, permeating the atmosphere with its unmistakeable smell. Our new chief Will went to go see Elsa, and with a smirk on his face told her she was hereby banished from the tribe, saying the words loud enough for all to hear. She protested, accusing him of sneaking into her tent and making off with her eye-rings so she would lose, but Will insisted that he had nothing to do with any of that. Sobbing, she leap at him with a knife, intending to stab him, but the man saw it coming and deftly avoided the blow, redirecting her knife onto her and slashing her face from cheek to brow. With a wolfish grin on his face, he grabbed the woman and pressed the bloody knife against her throat, whispering in her ear that he had been waiting for this moment for a long time. Meanwhile, I ran up to them as fast as I can, and from behind I pressed my own knife against Will’s throat. “Stop right now,” I screamed to him. “Let her go – let us go – there is no need to spill blood between tribesmen.” He stayed still for a while, and for a while I feared that he would actually kill her, but after a few moments he relaxed and dropped the knife, while I do the same. “Very well,” he says. “You will join her in exile, fool,” as he spits on the ground in front of me.
As fast as I can, I pack our belongings and get ready to leave, all while Elsa remains in a foolish daze, blood still running all over her face. The village elders give us a ration of dried meats which will last us no more than a moon, and we head off into the wastes, banished by our own family.
This part of the story does not bear repeating, child, for it was a gruesome and difficult winter for the both of us. Suffice it so say that Elsa remained in much the same state as she was on the day we left. She would hardly speak and made no attempt at looking at things or helping me hunt for food. She developed a nervous twitch in which she would throw her knife from palm to palm back and forth all day. It was a strange compulsion which I did not understand, and I feared my poor Elsa had gone mad. Meanwhile, as I kept us alive alone, I cursed those wretched magical eye-rings, and remembered regretfully how often we had been told by the elders that giant magic is dangerous. If only we had listened to them we wouldn’t be here now, with Elsa having all but lost her sight to it. I hated the eye-rings for what they had done to her, and to us. The sole redeeming fact of this time together is that it was the first time we lay together as man and woman. These sessions were the only times when she would even attempt to look at things, squinting her eyes terribly to see me while we made love. But we soon had no energy to make love very often, as our food supplies ran out and winter gave us very little fresh game to hunt.
The next year, as goose season approached, I was carefully preparing as many arrows as I could while Elsa played with her knife, just as she had done almost continuously since our exile, when I suddenly saw a man approaching us from the wastes. I notched an arrow and pointed my bow at the figure, until I could see that it was our old tribesman Ross. We greeted each other and exchanged news, and our old friend told us that he had been missing us greatly. He brought with him a very troubling piece of news. Soon after we left, Will “found” Elsa’s eye-rings, and had begun to wear them as his own. It became clear to most people in the tribe that Elsa was right in suspecting Will of wrongdoing on the morning of the shoot-out – that he had actually stolen the rings from her that day. In fact, most people in the tribe had begun to resent him, as he was an unjust and capricious chief. But no one had the skill to challenge him. Especially not while he was wearing Elsa’s eye-rings, which made him an even more formidable marksman. He was undoubtedly the best sharpshooter in the tribe, and so was poised to remain chief for a very long time.
“And what about us?” I asked him. “Is he still adamant about our exile, or will he forgive us?” Our old friend then explained to us that it was strictly forbidden in the tribe to mention either of our names, especially in conjunction with the eye-rings. The last man who had done so had gotten a heavy beating, and it was understood that this topic was not up for discussion.
I thanked Ross and bid him farewell, but just as he was about to leave, Elsa spoke up for the first time since Ross had shown up. Putting down the knives she had been playing with, she said: “Take us with you back to the camp. I will challenge Will, and I will retake my rightful place as chief.”
We were both shocked at her words. How could she hope to challenge him? What was she thinking? But Elsa was nothing if not headstrong. No matter what I said to her, she insisted that Ross heed her words and take them back to the tribe. We reluctantly agreed, even though I was sure Elsa just had a death wish. What could she possibly do to best him? She was as good as blind, and hadn’t touched a bow in almost a year. Still she insisted, and so with a heavy heart I followed her back to the tribe.
When we walked into the camp, our old friends looked at us with a mixture of fear, surprise, and longing. We walked up to the chief’s tent, everyone completely baffled by what was happening except for Elsa who had a sort of dreadful serenity to her.
“Will,” she called out to him from outside the tent, “I have come to challenge you and to reclaim my rightful place in this tribe, one which you’ve undeservedly stolen from me.” The words were said with such utter certainty, the likes of which she had not even come close to displaying for a whole year, that I feared for my love’s sanity.
Will walked out of the tent, the familiar reflections of Elsa’s eye-rings now surrounding his eyes. The sight of it seemed so wrong to me, and I suddenly felt the full force of my old friend’s betrayal. “So our little star markswoman has come back to challenge me, is it? I hope this time you’ll actually do better than a small child.” He laughed heartily while some of the tribesman followed him, but most merely let out an awkward chuckle. “So be it, then. I will allow this challenge. But know that this time, there will be no mercy. It will be your life. Prepare the archery targets.” He twirled around back into his tent impatiently.
I was filled with despair, tears welling up in my eyes. There was no way that Elsa in her weakened and blinded state could beat him. He was stronger and bolder than ever, and he would beat her, of this I was sure. I thought about talking Else out of it, but I knew her well enough to know that she would not be convinced.
“No,” she said to everyone’s surprise before Will got back to his tent. “Do not set up the archery targets. I challenge you to a close-quarters duel.” The whole tribe held their breath and tensed up. What was she thinking? After a seemingly very long pause, she added: “Our tribe’s customs are that we can settle our dispute with either an archery challenge or a knife challenge. Is this not correct?” The tribesmen voiced their agreement and the elders nodded in terse approval. “So I choose the knife.”
After a little while, Will laughed his smug laugh again and grinned. “It doesn’t matter at all. Actually, this way is better for me, because it saves me the trouble of executing you later. Prepare the ring at once.”
The whole tribe held their breath as we stood in a circle around the two combatants. On one side was Elsa, small and scrawny. The scar on her face from the last time they fought was plainly visible, reminding everyone of her weakness just as she attempted to look menacing in front her opponent. Meanwhile, on the other side, Will stood tall and confident with his eye-rings, making cocky jokes and insulting Elsa to try and provoke her into overextension.
They began getting closer to each other, tentatively lunging at each other but ducking and dodging out of the way of each other’s blows. The whole time, Elsa swapped her knife from hand to hand erratically, trying to confuse the bigger man, although it seemed that she was incapable of getting a blow in. She would lunge to hit him, and he would just dodge and punch her with his free hand. Or she would dodge him gracefully only to be grazed by his blade, which tore up her clothes and left her with gruesome cuts. The fight seemed to be going terribly for Elsa, as she was running out of steam and Will hadn’t even broken a sweat.
It seemed that he had her cornered and was about to strike the final blow when he suddenly lost his balance slightly. Elsa took the opportunity to tackle him to the ground and began grappling with him. On top of him now, she tried to stab Will’s face, which he easily blocked a few inches away from his head by grabbing hold of her wrist. Right at that moment, though, he felt a sharp sting in his left kidney as if he had been stabbed, but he could not believe it. Her knife was in her right hand, the one he was grabbing, wasn’t it? He strained his eyes to focus on her hand only a few inches away from his eyes when he saw that he made a mistake. The hand she had used to stab him was empty, but he didn’t notice, because it was too close. She had deceived him. The eye-rings had always made his vision up close blurry, and he cursed himself for not realizing sooner that that was Elsa’s plan all along.
She pulled the bloody knife out of his hips and pressed it against his neck, asking him if he surrendered. He dropped his knife and said yes, and without skipping a beat, Elsa tore the eye-rings from his face and put them on, her world suddenly clear and vibrant for the first time in a long time. Looking at her with them on for the first time in close to a year, I remembered the incredible beauty of her eyes behind the jewels. It is as if putting them on made her whole again.
She quickly found me amidst the crowd and embraced me passionately. Our tribesmen cheered and called her chief, welcoming her back and telling her how much they missed us. Truthfully, I missed none of them more than I missed my old, confident and focused Elsa, who I thought I had lost forever. She whispered in my ear telling me for the first time about you, my darling Shirley, and about how you would be joining us soon, as she was with child. I can say with absolute certainty that looking into your mother’s vibrant eyes through her powerful eye-rings thinking about your birth was the happiest moment of my life.
Later that moon, the geese came and Elsa felled more by herself than anyone remembered getting in a single season. No one questioned, then, that she was the rightful chief. When the tribesmen asked how she managed to defeat Will, she said that she knew the eye-rings better than anyone else, and that they were not fit for his eyes, only for hers. Besides, she could see close-up things relatively well without the rings, which made the knife fight slightly in her favour.
As for Will, he recovered and went on exile alone as soon as he was healthy enough to do it. We told him he could stay in our tribe if he liked, but he wouldn’t have it. I do not know to this day where he has gone, but I hope my old friend is safe.
Your mother Elsa was a good chief, she is well remembered by the tribe and she will live on in our legends forever as Giant Eyes. But alas, she died a few years after giving birth to you, along with your unborn baby brother. Such is the way of life, sometimes.
And now, my dear Shirley, you are eight winters old and you must begin training for the coming goose season. Take your mother’s eye-rings and make her memory proud.