It was a cooler, calmer sort of December evening. The stars were right, the moon was bright, and the planets all spun in a row, tilting just so, and up came Tarrow from beneath the old rock cairn, a thousand years of care-worn, weather-smoothed stone thrown away like old rags. Up he came and up he came, big-backed, dirt-smeared, filth clinging to his legs from the dirt that he had tainted around him in his long imprisonment. He shook his mane and flexed his paws and grinned with each and every one of his teeth. The land had moved around a bit, and where once his barrow-prison had lain in a field, it now sat on a little island in a small lake. Short grass grew where weeds had wandered once.
“I am Tarrow!” he bellowed out to whoever might be near, and whoever might be far, too. “My father was a black night in midwinter and my mother was a cold stone! I have eaten more men than can be counted on all my fingers and theirs too! And I am awake!”
He waited.
A duck quacked at him from the pond and swam away, bill searching for little weeds.
Tarrow belched, grunted, and hauled himself out and away, wading through the lake. It came up to his hips at the deepest, and half its waters turned black from the caked muck that washed away from his body. He emerged dripping, and as yet unchallenged. Strange noises surrounded him, now that he paused to hear – a constant murmur and rumble in the air around him, a hum of many. A city, maybe?
Then Tarrow looked up. And up. And further up. Far, far above him loomed strange shapes, little mountains with steep sides and shiny walls, glowing with a thousand lights, towers he’d never imagined imagining.
A city? But a city at night. That was still good. They had lights aplenty, but they’d be busy in revelry. Safe as prey still, but strange with their castles. Maybe they’d had giants make them. Strange, such a chill in the air with no snow on the ground. Wasn’t it winter?
Tarrow pushed through brush, stamped down footpaths. The strange, spiky little grey pebbles they’d been lined with stuck in his toenails and made him itch and scrape, and he vowed to eat his first victim most painfully. The arms first, of course. Then the legs, then the belly, and then the head, because it was crunchy. Yes, that would do. Do so nicely and very well. So preoccupied did Tarrow become in his plans that he very nearly missed noticing the strange new path he’d come to, a flat hard black one that felt smooth and gritty against his horny, rock-hard feet. On the other side, humans walked in soft clothing, uncovered by armour, weak little peasants.
“Food!” roared Tarrow, stepping farther into the black path, and it was only by the sheerest of luck that the big metal roaring thing that passed along it at a speed impossible didn’t take off his toes. He lurched backwards in surprise, ears full of its calamitous wails, and was nearly taken by another that passed behind him, clipping his tail and spinning him like a giant, hairy top. Whirling, he stumbled his way to the other side of the black path and collapsed, nearly on top of two humans.
“Watch it,” snapped one, waving a bit of strange metal in his hand. To Tarrow’s nostrils, it smelt like smoke and bitterness.
“Careful there,” warned the other.
“Too late for that, isn’t it? And keep your mind on the present – hand me that wallet.”
“Fine, fine.” The human gingerly removed a bit of leathery square-cut thing from his clothing and gave it to the other.
“Thanks,” said the other, tucking it away. “Pleasure doing business with you. Don’t call the cops or I’ll turn around and shoot.” He turned and walked off, pocketing the metal thing.
“Are you all right?” asked the other human of Tarrow, who was still prone.
“I am Tarrow,” said Tarrow. “I crack ice with my breath and stone with my fist. I have bitten through iron and steel and have thrown my enemies leagues with a single heave.”
“Well, here, have some change.” The human tossed a single, shiny coin onto Tarrow’s stomach, and walked away.
Tarrow examined it. It didn’t seem to change.
He needed counsel.
“Human,” he asked of a particularly small specimen, walking by quickly, “answer or I will eat your skull: what does this change?”
It walked faster, without looking back. Tarrow’s double-take prevented him from consuming the impertinent thing.
“What does this change?” he demanded of the next passer-by.
“I don’t have any, sorry, good luck, see you later,” said the human. It didn’t look directly at him, and it didn’t look back.
Tarrow picked up the next human by the neck. “ANSWER, frost eat your bones! What does this change?!”
“Police!” screamed the human. “Help! Assault! Theft! Armed robbery!”
“Which one?” asked Tarrow.
“You have the right to waive all rights,” said a human. There was something special about that voice, a firmness, a sureness. Tarrow had heard that before, usually from humans with sharp weapons just before they tried to cut his belly out. He turned around, and saw that it was coming from a human wearing some sort of strange hat. It was holding one of the little metal smoky things.
“I am Tarrow, consumer of men!” he told it. It was probably some sort of hero, and deserved a boast. “I will crack your ribs and break your liver.”
The human’s metal smoker yelled at him, his forehead stung, and he fell asleep without meaning to. When he woke up, he was in a room made from grey, cold, smooth stone that crumbled at his touch, secured with black-painted metal bars, which bent under his hands. He wandered into an arched hall, stomping with anger, following the air current to the exit.
“Your walls cannot hold me!” he roared at the human at the desk. It too bore the strange hat.
“You’re out,” it told him. “Eighteen hours holding for your first offence and don’t try it again. Damned lucky you’re obviously not right in the head.”
Tarrow’s belly grumbled, but the human had another metal smoker at its side, and he didn’t want to waste more time sleeping.
“I will return and tear down your prison,” he said, as he left. The human rolled its eyes.
It was only when he stepped outside that Tarrow first began to realize just how strange a place he was in. The smooth grey stone was underfoot everywhere, divided by the great black-grit paths and pooling about the feet of the great metal mountains, towers and halls grown beyond all sanity and all belief. He’d just left one of the smallest, and for the first time in his life, Tarrow felt small. In answer to this, he clasped onto the first thing he had in his head, a distraction, a purpose.
“What does this change?” he asked a human sitting on the sidewalk.
“Eh?” It stirred in its blankets, squinted a shrunken eye at him. It was nearly as filthy as he was.
“This,” said Tarrow, holding out the coin. “What does it change?”
“Hmm,” said the human. “Right. Well, this is what it does. See, you have that, right? So you’re worth something.” It took the coin. “There. Now you’re not worth anything. That’s what it changes.”
“Give me my coin,” said Tarrow.
“No. You wanted to learn something, you paid for it. Now go away; this is my corner.”
Tarrow reached out with his hands ready to throttle, but the human with the strange hat was still watching him from the window, and he contented himself with spitting on the blanketed human’s feet. Its shoes bubbled.
“I am Tarrow,” he reminded himself. “I can chew boulders and split trees with a flick. I will leave and find smaller pastures, with easier flesh and no metal smokers.”
Hours later, Tarrow was lost. The endless maze of the towers blotted out the sky, and the sun was lost in a haze of grey grime that put the dirt under his nails to shame. The winds bent strangely around the buildings, and there were no trees for him to check the moss on.
And he was getting very hungry. There were no strange-hatted humans about, perhaps it would be safe to chance a quick meal. He ducked into a dark crevice between buildings, lay lurking for a time, and snatched a human into his grasp with one great paw.
“Meat!” he growled.
“Mugger!” yelled the human, and held up a little metal cylinder that shot bright agony into Tarrow’s eyes, burning them like a plague of fire ants. He dropped his prey and roared in pain, stumbled and fell against a metal box filled with refuse, which bruised his sides. A cat hissed at him.
“Food,” groaned Tarrow. “I need food. Food.” He ate something out of the refuse box that was far too salty, and promptly brought it up again. The cat, tragically, evaded his grasp.
“You okay, man?” asked a ragged human near the alley’s rear.
“Food,” said Tarrow, and ate it. The fibers of its clothing stuck in his teeth and tangled his tongue, and the meat tasted rank and strange, making his mouth feel numb and clumsy. He stumbled back into the main road in a daze, following it with his feet as his eyes wandered at random. Metal roaring things everywhere, humans everywhere, all not looking at him or at each other. He felt even smaller among them than he had against the towers that blotted him in.
Except they weren’t blotting him in anymore.
“Hah!” laughed Tarrow, legs pumping like pistons, charging him forwards to the suddenly-revealed horizon, joy in his blackened, rock-hard heart. There it was: the way out, the end of the metal and stone city that never ended, the way to trees – yes, there were trees, small and twisted and blighted but trees yes – and water and freedom.
“Hah!” laughed Tarrow, as he vaulted the black road, dodging a metal roaring thing, hearing it scream at him. He plunged into the tamed, sad thing that passed for a wilderness as humans yelled at him.
“Hah!” yelled Tarrow, tearing down saplings in his haste.
“Oh,” said Tarrow, as he came to a very familiar lake. “Oh. Oh.” The ruin of his barrow leered at him from its other side.
He stood there, staring at it, trying to think of a way out, something to stop him from doing what he was about to. Nothing presented itself, argue as fiercely as he could while his legs slogged through the mire of the lake’s waters. It was still fouled from his earlier passage.
“I am Tarrow,” said Tarrow, as he stood in front of the broken stones. They seemed much smaller than they had when he had broken free just one day ago. “My father was a black night in midwinter, but this is no winter, and the nights are bright. My mother was a cold stone, but cold stones surround me and they are not she. I have eaten more men than I can count on all my fingers and toes and theirs too, but now I cannot stomach so much as one. I am Tarrow, and I am through.”
As the last words left his lips he stepped forwards, unwilling, unwanting, and lay down. The rocks closed over his head and sank down into the earth, and the grass was left undisturbed over Tarrow’s head, without so much as a scrap of fur left behind.
Not one soul turned to mark the cairn’s passing, then or ever.