Resplendent by Stephen Baxter

rapidly, entering realms of speculation he couldn’t begin to follow.

     
    Callisto told Asgard what she was intending to do. She wanted to climb that tall, braided tree. But she would have to take on Night to do it.

    She walked along the narrowing beach, seeking scraps of people, of newborns and others, washed up by the pitiless black sea. She picked up what looked like a human foot. It was oddly dry, cold, the flesh and even the bones crumbling at her touch.

    She collected as many of these hideous shards as she could hold, and toiled back along the barren dust.

    Then she worked her way through the forest back to the great tree, where she had encountered the creature called Night. She paused every few paces and pushed a section of corpse into the ground. She covered each fragment with ripped-up grass and bits of bark.

    ‘You’re crazy,’ Asgard said, trailing her, arms full of dried, crumbling flesh and bone.

    ‘I know,’ Callisto said. ‘I’m going anyway.’

    Asgard would not come far enough to reach the tree itself. So Callisto completed her journey alone.

    Once more she reached the base of Night’s tree. Once more, her heart thumping hard, she began to climb.

    The creature, Night, seemed to have expected her. He moved from branch to branch, far above, a massive blur, and he clambered with ferocious purpose down the trunk.

    When she was sure he had seen her she scrambled hurriedly back to the ground.

    He followed her - but not all the way to the ground. He clung to his trunk, his broad face broken by that immense, bloody mouth, hissing at her.

    She glowered back, and took a tentative step towards the tree. ‘Come get me,’ she muttered. ‘What are you waiting for?’ She took a piece of corpse (a hand - briefly her stomach turned), and she hurled it up at him.

    He ducked aside, startled. But as the severed hand came by he caught it neatly in his scoop of a mouth, crunched once and swallowed it whole. He looked down at her with new interest.

    And he took one tentative step towards the ground.

    ‘That’s it,’ she crooned. ‘Come on. Come eat the flesh. Come eat me, if that’s what you want—’

    Without warning he leapt from the trunk, immense hands splayed.

    She screamed and staggered back. He crashed to the ground perhaps an arm’s length from her. One massive fist slammed into her ankle, sending a stab of pain that made her cry out. If he’d landed on top of her he would surely have crushed her.

    The beast, winded, was already clambering to his feet.

    She got up and ran, ignoring the pain of her ankle. Night followed her, his lumbering four-legged pursuit slow but relentless. As she ran she kicked open her buried caches of body parts. He snapped them up and gobbled them down, barely slowing. The morsels seemed pathetically inadequate in the face of Night’s giant reality.

    She burst out onto the open beach, still running for her life. She reached the lip of the sea, skidding to a halt before the lapping black liquid. Her plan had been to reach the sea, to lure Night into it.

    But when she turned, she saw that Night had hesitated on the fringe of the forest, blinking in the light. Perhaps he was aware that she had deliberately drawn him here. He seemed to dismiss her calculations. He stepped forward deliberately, his immense feet sinking into the soft dust. There was no need for him to rush.

    Callisto was already exhausted, and, trapped before the sea, there was nowhere for her to run.

    Now he was out in the open she saw how far from the human form he had become, with his body a distorted slab of muscle, a mouth that had widened until it stretched around his head. And yet scraps of clothing clung to him, the remnants of a coverall of the same unidentifiable colour as her own. Once this creature, too, had been a newborn here, landing screaming on this desolate beach.

    He walked up to her. He towered over her, and she wondered how many unfortunates he had devoured to reach such