By the sixth morning, Xu Hao had learned three things about the giants.
They were brothers. They were better at hunting than cooking. And whatever they intended to do with him, they had not yet agreed on it.
The first two discoveries had been reassuring. The third kept him awake at night.
Big One crouched beside him and tugged at the sleeve of his lab coat. He rubbed the cloth between two fingers, made an approving noise, and said the same word he'd used twice at breakfast.
Xu Hao thought he knew that word.
Big One held up two fingers, then three, and rubbed his thumb against them.
Money.
"No," Xu Hao said.
The giant smiled, clearly taking this for a contribution to the discussion.
"Whatever price you're thinking of, it's too low. I'm a professor. I had a mortgage. People owed me money. Probably."
Big One called something to his brother.
Big Two looked up from sharpening his knife, shook his head, and returned to the blade.
"Excellent," Xu Hao muttered. "At least one of you thinks this is a terrible idea."
They might have been discussing the coat. On Earth, he'd learned how easily a wrong translation could turn a temple offering into a tax demand.
He'd never been so personally invested in a vocabulary dispute.
Big One dropped the sleeve. He pushed a bowl of roasted roots towards Xu Hao, loosened the vine around his right wrist, and waited while he ate.
The roots tasted like wet cardboard. He ate them.
Escaping required strength. It also required somewhere to go.
* * *
The rain had left the stream high and brown. The brothers wouldn't let Xu Hao out of sight, but they'd stopped tying both his wrists while he ate. Big Two even let him change Big One's bandage, under supervision.
The cut was almost closed.
Xu Hao turned the enormous hand over, examining it in the morning light. The wound had been deep enough to need stitches on Earth. Here, after only two days, it was little more than a pink line.
He pointed to it. "Better."
Big One grinned. He spoke a word and flexed his fingers so hard the tendons stood out beneath the skin.
"Yes, you're very strong. The entire forest knows."
He reached for the soiled cloth. Big One pulled his hand away.
"If you keep wearing that, it'll smell worse than you do."
The giant gave him a suspicious look.
Xu Hao sighed and tried the words he knew. Water. Cloth. Clean. He got the last one wrong; Big Two brought him a cooking stone.
After several attempts, Big Two understood. He took the bandage, sniffed it, and made such a disgusted face that Xu Hao laughed aloud.
"There. We agree on something."
They replaced the wrapping with fresh cloth. Big One inspected the result, nodded, and offered Xu Hao a piece of dried meat from his pouch.
It was the giant's first unsolicited gift.
Xu Hao accepted it carefully.
"Thank you."
He said the words in English, then repeated the closest expression he'd heard the brothers use after meals.
Big Two glanced at him. This time, he corrected the pronunciation without making a performance of it.
Xu Hao said it again.
The giant nodded.
Big One left his wrist untied until the meal was finished. When he secured the vine again, he didn't pull it quite so tight.
Xu Hao was grateful. He also memorised the knot.
* * *
On the seventh day, he tried to learn the word for home.
He drew a square in the dirt with a stick, added a little roof, then pointed to the brothers' shelter. Big One watched in silence. When Xu Hao pointed into the forest and raised his eyebrows, the giant took the stick and drew something that looked like a wounded turnip.
"A house?" Xu Hao guessed.
Big One shook his head and added two legs.
"An animal?"
Two more legs. Then a horn.
Xu Hao studied it.
"I think I liked the turnip better."
Big One jabbed a finger towards the trees and made a snorting sound.
A boar, perhaps. Or a warning about something that lived beyond the camp.
The giant wiped the drawing away with his heel and spoke quickly, pointing at Xu Hao, then at the forest, then back to the ground where he sat.
Xu Hao caught only one word. Stay.
It was a word he knew intimately by now.
"I'm staying," he said. "You have made that very clear."
The warning unsettled him. Big One hadn't smiled while drawing it.
That evening, the brothers prepared for night watch. Big Two checked his club. Big One walked the perimeter with his sword. They were relaxed about most things, including hygiene, but never about the trees after dark.
On the eighth day, Xu Hao found a smooth pebble and used it to mark the words he'd learned on a strip of bark. He had no ink and no paper, so he scratched lines beside little drawings that meant something to him, if not to anyone else.
Water. Food. Fire. Wait. Stop. Come.
He still didn't know their names. They addressed each other constantly, but the words changed with their moods. He practised what little he knew while they cleaned their weapons.
Big Two noticed his bark and examined the crude symbols. He pointed to the drawing for water. Xu Hao gave the word correctly.
Then fire. Another correct answer.
At the third mark, Big Two asked a question instead.
Xu Hao had no idea what he'd been asked. He tried the word for food.
Big Two shook his head and asked again.
Xu Hao looked at the marks, at the man's face, and finally held up the bark helplessly.
"I can label a cup," he said. "That doesn't mean I can discuss philosophy."
To his surprise, Big Two smiled.
The smile vanished almost at once. Xu Hao wondered if the brothers got lonely out here.
Then Big One came over, took one look at the markings, and used the bark to scratch his back.
Xu Hao decided not to grow sentimental.
* * *
On the ninth night, Big One fell asleep beside the fire before he'd finished chewing his last mouthful of meat.
Big Two poked him with the toe of his boot. Big One grunted, swallowed, and rolled over, dragging a fur beneath his head.
The quieter brother said something that sounded thoroughly uncomplimentary, picked up his club, and went to patrol the trees.
Xu Hao lay against his usual trunk with his wrists bound loosely in front of him. It was a small mercy. After nine days he'd developed a technique for sleeping on one shoulder without numbing both arms, and he was growing tired of being proud of that achievement.
The fire settled into embers. He heard Big One breathing, the stream rushing, and something calling three times farther up the slope.
He tried to remember the last sound he'd heard in his own bed on Earth.
Traffic, perhaps. His neighbour's television. The pipes knocking when someone upstairs showered.
He missed those noises more than he'd thought possible.
A faint movement in the grass broke the thought.
Xu Hao looked towards the fire.
A narrow green body slipped between the stems, almost invisible until it crossed a patch of bare earth. It moved without disturbing more than a few blades. An arm's length, perhaps, with scales that caught the dim red light of the coals.
A snake.
He kept still. During fieldwork he'd learned that a snake was more likely to leave you alone if you did the same. He could not identify this one, and he had no intention of giving it a reason to investigate his ankles.
It passed him.
The narrow head turned towards the sleeping giant.
The snake continued forward.
Xu Hao waited for it to veer away.
Something at the far end of its body rose from the grass.
He leaned forward a fraction.
Another head.
One at each end, both moving independently, their thin black tongues tasting the air.
"Oh, that's unpleasant," he whispered.
The creature stopped.
Xu Hao held his breath.
After a moment, it slid on, drawing closer to Big One's exposed neck.
He could shout. A sudden noise might frighten it off. Or it might make the thing strike. The giant was asleep, and Big Two was somewhere among the trees. If the snake carried venom, there might not be time for either of them to react.
He pulled gently against the vines. They held.
The snake crossed a strip of ash beside the fire.
It was close enough now that Xu Hao could see both heads lifting, one behind the other. Neither watched him. They were fixed on Big One.
The man had struck him unconscious and kept him tied to a tree for nine days. Xu Hao owed him nothing.
Then he remembered the hand held out for a clean bandage. The piece of dried meat. Big Two carrying him out of the rain.
A man could be dangerous and capable of kindness. Xu Hao wished life would stop making that distinction so inconvenient.
The nearest head drew back.
"WAKE UP!" Xu Hao shouted.
Big One jerked upright. The snake struck at the place his throat had been.
"Snake! By the fire!"
He shouted in English first, then in broken fragments of their language, pointing so hard that the vines cut into his wrists.
Big One saw it. His expression changed completely.
He seized his sword and rolled away from the flames just as the snake reared.
Both mouths opened.
Two white-hot things shot across the clearing.
One passed through the space where Big One's chest had been and punched into the trunk behind him. The other struck a tree beside Xu Hao. Bark burst outward. He ducked, covering his head as burning fragments pattered over his coat.
The smell was dreadful: scorched wood and something bitter, sharp enough to catch in his throat.
"What in God's name—"
Big One stamped his foot. A ridge of soil rose between the snake and Xu Hao, throwing him into shadow. At the same moment, Big Two burst from the trees with his club raised.
The brothers didn't exchange a word. Big Two moved to the left; Big One circled to the right, sword held low. Xu Hao couldn't see the snake behind the wall of earth, but he heard a sudden scrape, a hiss, and the hard crack of a blade meeting something solid.
Then Big One's sword flashed above the ridge.
Something small and green flew through the air.
Big Two's club came down with a thud that Xu Hao felt through the ground.
Silence followed.
A moment later, a severed snake's head rolled out from behind the mound and stopped beside Xu Hao's shoe.
Its mouth was still open.
Xu Hao stared at it.
"I hate this forest," he said.
Neither brother understood him. Big Two was inspecting the carcass with the end of his club while Big One stood above it, breathing hard. The giant looked over at Xu Hao, then at the smoking hole in the tree beside him.
He came towards the prisoner without his sword.
Xu Hao sat very still as the enormous man crouched before him. The hand he'd bandaged trembled.
Big One lowered his head.
It was only a small bow. He said something softly that Xu Hao couldn't understand.
But some things did not need translating.
"You're welcome," Xu Hao said.
Big One drew his knife.
Xu Hao looked at the blade, and his good feelings faltered.
Then the giant cut the vines around his wrists and ankles.
Xu Hao hadn't taken a step without permission in nine days.
He rubbed his wrists, stood carefully, and waited for someone to tell him to sit down again.
Nobody did.
Big One pointed towards the fire, spoke the familiar word for stay, and rested an enormous hand briefly on Xu Hao's shoulder. Then he returned to his brother.
The path beyond the shelter was open. Neither man was watching him.
He looked at the smoking holes the snake had burned through the trees.
Perhaps tomorrow.
He went back to his patch of flattened grass, lay down, and stretched both arms above his head simply because he could.
Through the canopy, the stars shone cold and bright. He searched for the Big Dipper. He tried Orion. Then he shifted his head and searched again, slowly, unwilling to accept what he wasn't seeing.
None of the constellations were where they should have been.
He lay still for a long time.
He had been trying since that first morning to find a reasonable explanation.
Xu Hao closed his eyes, feeling the raw marks around his newly freed wrists.
It was beginning to occur to him that the reasonable explanation might be the one he had least wanted to consider.