Chapter 1
The last thing I remembered before my world went black was the horrifying sight of the love of my life slumped over in the prison’s cage.
“Sam, you’ve got to get up, honey.”
I groaned and curled up into a ball on the narrow platform, trying my best to ignore my father’s gentle pleas.
“Sam, we can’t linger here. It’s not safe,” the wanderer Perfido added.
I fixed Perfido with a dark glare, but unfurled myself and stood slowly with my father’s help.
“I need to see him,” I croaked. “I need to say goodbye.”
Perfido frowned. “Goodbye?”
“Yes, you heartless b—“
“Sam.” My dad cut me off with a tone of finality.
I sneered at Perfido, but didn’t finish the insult.
“If you no longer wish to rescue him, you could have said something back at your camp and saved us all the trip.”
I lunged at him. “How dare you!” I screamed.
A clanging sounded behind me, stopping me mid-attack. I turned to see Joao’s cage begin to swing over the cliff of the prison.
I rushed to the edge of the landing, ignoring the footsteps of my friends as they raced to keep up.
I cried out Joao’s name and nearly collapsed again as I watched him stir in the cage, his battered body barely recognizable.
“Menina?” Joao croaked just above a whisper.
“Joao,” I cried. “How are you alive?”
“They can’t kill me that easily, Cacadora.”
“Can we get him out of there now?” Perfido teased, but his expression turned serious. “This place is full of darkness. It will eat away at your soul bit by bit until you are crazier than old Chuva down there.”
I wondered if we could save Chuva too but then thought better of it. Unlike Joao, Chuva was there for a reason and we had enough trouble on our hands.
I kept my eyes locked on Joao’s as my father gave everyone their orders. He and Perfido guarded the door to the stairs, while Maggie and Runtu, the Cucuagrada, worked together to turn the crank that brought Joao’s cage closer and closer to me.
When Joao was no longer hanging over the cliff, Runtu scurried over the pulley and down onto the top of Joao’s cage. Joao made a series of gestures up at Runtu that I could easily identify as, “Hello, my old friend.”
Runtu studied the cage for a moment then scurried down to the side and began fiddling with the lock.
Joao’s eyes left Runtu and traveled back to my own. He tried to smile, but it was more of a grimace. “Why did you return here, Cacadora? It is not safe for you.”
“Your dad sent me to fetch you,” I said with a feeble attempt at a smile.
Joao let out a pained breath of a laugh and winced, grabbing hold of his side. I jerked forward, desperate to hold Joao and heal all his wounds, but settled for placing my hand on his battered face.
Runtu let out a victorious grunt and tossed the lock over the cliff’s edge, where it made a few satisfying clanks before splashing into the raging river below.
I wasted no time swinging the door open and climbing inside the cage and onto Joao’s lap. Wounds be damned, Joao threw his arms around me and crushed me up against him. I could barely breathe, but I didn’t care. Only the echo of the pounding on the door could shake us from our reunion.
“I hate to break up your magical moment, but we’ve got company,” Perfido said. He leaned to the side to peer at Joao. “Can you stand, Giant?”
Joao extricated himself from me, setting me down on the landing. He climbed from the cage with slow movements until he was standing on the ledge next to me. He ever-so-slowly raised himself to his full height, and my breath was momentarily taken away at the size of my giant, my Bigfoot.
Braid to toes, Joao stood over seven feet tall and was a wall of solid muscle. Even in his battered state, he was an intimidating and fearsome sight.
Joao’s expression softened as he looked down at me and took my hand. He gave it a squeeze and released it.
“That’s a yes,” Perfido said, impressed. He pointed to the door that was shaking with the force of the prison guards’ pounding as they tried to break through. “Now, what are we going to do about them?”
“We gave them the release papers,” Maggie said in a small voice. “They have to let us go, right?”
Perfido gave her an indulgent yet affectionate look and put a hand on her shoulder. “It was never going to be that easy, love. No one has ever escaped from here alive. No one.”
“But the papers,” she tried again.
“Invalid,” Joao grunted.
Perfido nodded, “If we’d brought a giant to deliver them for us, maybe they would have been accepted, but we are just lowly humans who are not to be trusted.”
I watched Maggie’s eyes fill with tears as I worked to tamp down on my own fear. I had just gotten Joao back. I was never letting him go again.
Joao balled his hands into fists, ready to use them as his only weapons.
I picked up my bow, shouldered my pack and slung my quiver of arrows over my head. I pulled an arrow taut and aimed at the door.
Joao nodded to me with pride and motioned to Runtu who made his way up to the top of the cage, across the wench, and onto the roof, out of sight.
I didn’t have time to wonder what the Cucuagrada was doing as the door burst open revealing the red-headed guard from the entrance to the prison. He stood there for a moment too long, and Runtu was on him, fingers gouging the giant’s eyes. The guard flailed, trying to shake Runtu off but the Cucuagrada held fast.
I kept my arrow trained on the guard as Perfido shoved Maggie through the door. “Protect her,” I said to him.
Perfido nodded and disappeared through the door after Maggie.
The guard let out a roar that turned to a gurgle as a knife sliced through his throat. He dropped to the ground, Runtu on top of him, as my dad, Nick, stood behind him, holding the knife dripping with blood.
Joao nodded his approval and we all went through the door and down the stairs to the hall of cells where Perfido was fiddling with the lock on Chuva’s cell door. He saw us emerge, Runtu last and signed to him for help with the door.
“Is that a good idea?”
“Yes,” Perfido shot back angrily and I shut my mouth.
“Red isn’t the only guard,” Chuva said from inside his cell. “There are always three on patrol at all times, though where they’ve gone to I’ve no clue.”
“Probably sleeping,” Perfido grunted with obvious impatience.
I left them to it and turned to examine Joao’s wounds in the dim light of the hall. His broken arm had set badly, there was blood all over his tunic from his broken nose that I had set, his left eye had swollen almost completely shut, and he was covered in scrapes and bruises.
I wanted to rage and scream and cry all at once at what they had done to my giant. A small voice in the back of my mind told me that this was my fault. If we’d never fallen in love, Joao wouldn’t be here in this battered state.
Joao took both my hands in his, ignoring everything and everyone else around us. “My Igualar,” he breathed. He leaned down to put his forehead to mine.
“This is all my fault,” I said in a rush, squeezing his hands tightly. “If I’d never—“
Joao cut me off with a finger to my lips. He shook his head back and forth against my own. “I make my own choices,” he said in Portuguese. “I follow my own path, and you are a part of that now. I regret nothing. I wish for nothing and no one else.”
I shifted to kiss him, careful of his bruises, but Joao responded by lifting me off my feet to pull me closer, deepening the kiss.
My dad cleared his throat and Chuva laughed heartily. I turned my head, still in Joao’s arms to see that Chuva was now free.
“We shouldn’t linger,” Nick said. “I don’t know where the rest of the guards are, but we shouldn’t waste this opportunity.”
Joao set me down but didn’t release me. He kept an arm around my back, shook Nick and Perfido’s hands, then allowed Runtu to clean him up. He turned to Chuva, “Can you run, old man?”
Chuva shook his head and spoke in a mixture of Portuguese and the Pe Grande tongue that Perfido translated for Maggie’s benefit. “My time on this earth is nearly done, dear friends. They will not forgive the killing of Red. You can expect retaliation. I will keep them from following you. You can consider that my thank you for freeing me from my prison.”
Joao nodded and put a fist to his chest, a warrior’s gesture of appreciation and honor. Perfido hugged his old friend tight. I was surprised to see him so vulnerable. He discretely wiped away a tear and moved away from Chuva.
“Go!” Chuva shouted. “Do not waste my gift to you.”
