Before They Were Giants

by James L. Sutter

  Homer came rushing up then, having lost sight of Bags when Bags dipped low, and bounced off his sturdy companion and tumbled down in a heap.

  “You should warn me when you plan to stop!” the respectable halfling cried. Poor Homer was quite unnerved, and you would be too, I should guess, if you were half a head more than three feet tall, with a belly wider than your shoulders, and caught in a strange fog on a strange mountain, expecting a dragon to swoop down at you, or a ghoul to jump in your face, or a wolf to snap at your behind, or a million other things, terrible things, that were said to happen on adventures. Even a low-flying bird could pose a threat to one of Homer’s stature!

  Again Bags let the comment pass. They were in the Wilds, after all, and should take every step with measured caution. Bags could not believe that Homer, however inexperienced, would be so reckless as to run up all of a sudden, with not a hint of a warning. Shaking his head, he hoisted Homer to his feet, placed one of Homer’s hands squarely on his hip, and told him to stay quiet and not let go for any reason.

  A short time later, the wind kicked up and the fog thinned for just a moment. Bags was indeed relieved to see that the summit of the mountain, above them on the left, had grown much closer, though the sight only reminded Homer of his aversion to places higher than his top cupboard. Bags slapped his banger-chopper-thruster across his open palm and proclaimed, “This day’ll see the end of our road!”

  Homer glanced around nervously at the echoing blasts of the adventuresome halfling’s cry. The ground was still soft, something quite out of the ordinary, or a bigger and thicker patch of moss than Homer had ever heard of. And, Homer, most respectable, as I have said, understood well enough that “out of the ordinary” inevitably signaled trouble. But Bags, undaunted, pounded on, no longer giving his unusual surroundings a second thought. He wanted to get to the summit, find the stone, and get back to Tippin (and to thousands of gold pieces!).

  When another wind gust thinned the mist again a few minutes later, though, even determined Bags began to understand clearly that something was not as it should be and took pause. The mountaintop was still on their left, and still not high above them, but it was much farther away.

  “How is this?” Homer cried, letting go of his companion and nearly swooning. He wandered right by Bags, eyes fixed on the curious sight, then caught himself after a moment and turned back, seeing the blue faerie light of Bags’s enchanted weapon and, behind it, the shadow of a burly halfling.

  ”Take ye not another step,” Bags whispered. Before Homer could begin to ask why, the end of a rope slapped into his chest and fell at his feet. “Tie it about yer waist,” Bags instructed.

  ”Where are we?” Homer demanded in a high-squeal, much like a pig that sees the farmer’s cleaver and knows that a holiday meal is not far off. Homer was thinking that Bags knew something that he did not, and trying to catch up with the reasoning, he looked helplessly back in the direction of the mountaintop. The opaque veil had returned.

  Bags walked by him then, again taking up the lead and starting out at a slow and cautious pace. He did indeed have his suspicions, but they seemed too outlandish to be taken seriously or to be shared at that time. “Keep yer steps right behind me own,” he explained to his flustered companion.

  “Steps?” Homer replied defiantly. “Confusticate your own steps.” Then he sat down, “Plop!” and crossed his soft arms over his chest, taking care to look dangerous and not to let his arms rest casually on his belly.

  “Ye mean to sit here?” Bags asked, curious and somewhat amused.

  “And if I do?”

  “Then keep the rope,” Bags said, beginning to loosen his end. “I’ll come back for ye if I can, and if I cannot, well…”

  Homer was up and moving, though grumbling with every step.

  They went on slowly for a few minutes, and then Bags had his answers. He heard Homer shriek out and then the rope went taut so suddenly that it nearly pulled him from his feet. Bags stumbled forward and knew by the dropping angle of the line that he would soon join his companion in the fall. His dwarflike, corded muscles pulled hard, and luckily he caught his balance in the nick of time. Then Bags scrambled along cautiously, following the lead to a hole in the spongy ground, or more particularly to a hole in the cloud island. Peering through the inconstant fog, he made out Homer’s frantically flailing form, dangling free, a mile or two above the flat farmlands.

  “Ahah!” Bags called at the confirmation that they were indeed on a cloud. “Now we’re getting somewhere!”

  “Getting?” Homer stuttered, barely able to breathe, let alone speak. Homer had thought adventures most unpleasant things before they had ever started out, if you remember. He had liked a soft hearth chair, or a hard kitchen chair, or the soft grass of a gentle hill beneath his bum. Now, hanging free, except for the pinching tight rope about his waist, he ... well, you can imagine his face accurately enough, I should guess—eyes popping wide, mouth opening and closing weirdly to catch gulps of air, and a general expression that would make a respectable fellow shudder just to hear described about on another, much less wear himself.

  For all of his complaining about Bagsnatcher Bracegirdle (and Homer would complain about that one till the end of his long days!), Homer was glad to have one so capable and strong beside him at that time. Bags pulled and hauled with all his strength, then caught hold of helpless Homer, who had come up upside down, by the toes and pulled him back onto the soft, but tangible ground.

  “Where are we?” Homer finally demanded again after several unsuccessful attempts to spit out any words.

  “On a cloud,” Bags replied calmly. “Haven’t ye learned that yerself?”

  Homer’s reply came out once again as an undecipherable gurgle and he toppled, and would have gone through the hole again had Bags not caught him.

  “A cloud,” Bags explained when Homer awoke many minutes later, “with holes in it.” He helped his reluctant companion, mostly by the threat of leaving him once again, unsteadily to his feet. “And drifting afar o’ the mountain.”

  “Then where are we to go?” Homer demanded in a broken, squeaky voice.

  Bags shrugged and started off. “Any way’s as good as another,” he muttered. “Just keep a firm hold on that rope!” Homer hardly needed to be reminded.

  They had just started off across the bouncy surface when the fog cleared again briefly.

  “Another mountain!” Homer cried hopefully, seeing a gigantic form rising before them. “Quickly, before the cloud drifts beyond it.”

  Bags wasn’t in so much of a hurry. He, too, had seen the mound, but he wasn’t so certain of Homer’s identification. The One Mountain was so named because it was the only thing larger than a hillock for many, many miles. Homer trotted past him and continued on, though, and for all his strength, the burly fellow could hardly hope to slow his excited, and terrified, companion. He put his banger-chopper-thruster over one shoulder, just in case, and checked the knot of the rope around his waist. With Homer rushing along blindly, building so much momentum, Bags had to wonder what useful purpose the rope might serve if his companion flew headlong into a hole.

  “Loyalties,” the adventuresome Bags muttered and secured the knot.

  The next time the wind thinned the mist, Homer skidded to an abrupt stop. Looming before him was no mountain, though certainly it was mountain-sized, but a castle, carved of smooth marble. Unable to tear his eyes from the spectacle, the stunned halfling lumbered on, coming to a stop before a door that stood fully twenty feet high.

  “Not a dwarf’s home,” Bags remarked, coming up behind Homer.

  Homer’s glare showed that he did not enjoy the sarcasm. He reached up as high as he could and jumped, but came nowhere close to the crystal doorknob. Even so, Bags slapped him on the arm for the attempt.

  “Once did a wise man note that often there be a better way to enter a giant’s home than by the front door,” Bags remarked. His simple logic reminded Homer of many things, most not
ably, the danger, and the timid fellow promptly slapped himself on the arm, just for a good measure.

  Bags started off then, around the base of the castle, pointedly giving a sharp tug on the rope as soon as the slack tightened. Halfway around the immense building, the companions found a high window.

  “A better way in,” Bags remarked with a wink and a smirk. When Homer realized his companion’s intent, he cast a doubtful gaze and started quickly away, only to be dragged back, cursing ropes with every passing foot.

  Short of stature and with plump hands, halflings are not the best of climbers. But though the blocks of the wall were well fitted by a giant’s estimation, cracks that seemed tiny to the hands of a giant proved to be ample holds, even perches, for Bags. Just a few short minutes later, though Homer was still far below, Bags peeked in the great window. He had come to a bedroom, huge but nearly filled by a gigantic canopied bed, a desk that he could have used as a lean-to, and a wardrobe large enough to serve as a gathering hall for half of Inspirit Downs. A mural-sized painting hung on the wall opposite Bags, a marvelous work depicting handsome, blue-skinned giants dancing through the mist swirls of their cloud world.

  When he was convinced that the room was empty, Bags swung in and secured the rope to a leg of the huge desk. Too amazed by the quality of the furnishings, he didn’t wait for poor Homer to catch up. He crept up to the room’s wooden door and cracked it open, looking out on a high and wide corridor of red-veined marble, lined by statues and paintings and lighted by a crystalline chandelier that glittered with a thousand candles. A second door stood across the way, a third twenty feet down the wall from that, and a fourth marked the end of the corridor, where it took a sharp bend.

  Still seeing no signs of the castle’s inhabitants, Bags crept back to the window. Homer sat frozen twenty feet below, staring down into the mist and shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Are ye coming then?” Bags called down to him.

  “No,” Homer replied evenly.

  “Yes!” Bags corrected and he heaved and tugged on the rope until his reluctant companion was pulled to the windowsill. Still Homer did not move, not, that is, until Bags pointedly untied the knot about the desk leg and dropped the rope loosely to the floor.

  “Have yerself a fine drop,” the burly fellow said, and before he finished the statement, Homer was long past him, peering out the bedroom door. Bags promptly resecured the knot of the desk, just to keep their escape route open.

  “Lots to check in here,” Bags said, but Homer, suddenly entranced (now that he had solid footing again under him), was too busy staring at the hallway’s magnificent chandelier to even hear him. Before he realized what he was doing, Homer had dropped the rope off his waist, slipped across the hallway, and put his ear to the closest door.

  Footsteps—big footsteps.

  But not from beyond the door, Homer realized, coming out of his enchantment. He looked down the corridor just as a tremendous boot appeared around the bend. Homer looked desperately back to the bedroom, but realized he couldn’t make it without being seen, and realized that Bags wasn’t close enough to help him this time. He pushed through the unknown door, hoping that no other giants waited within.

  ~ * ~

  “Homer?” Bags called softly when he looked up from the desk drawer and realized that his companion had moved away. Too curious to worry, Bags scaled the huge desk, wondering why in the Nine Hells giants would need a desk. The size of the quill pen he found made him earnestly hope he never encountered the bird from which it had been plucked! Likewise, the ink well could have held enough ale to keep even Bags content for a month!

  Other giant-sized artifacts littered the desktop and filled the central, topmost drawer, including a leather bag that seemed more suited to the hands of a man, or a halfling, than to a giant.

  “Ho, ho, thee dost indeed speaketh simply theeee most marvelous things!” squealed a high-pitched, but undeniably giant voice from the hallway. That the giant could speak was enough of a surprise to Bags, but the dignified, almost haughty tone of the statement nearly floored the halfling. Remembering his immediate predicament, though, he snatched up the bag, swung down from the desk, and rushed to the wardrobe, diving inside.

  “Wit is indeed a blessing of the gods,” a deeper voice replied. Bags held his breath when he heard the two giants enter the room and close the wooden door behind them. A single, unnerving thought came into focus then: the rope.

  He heard the bedsprings creak, and hoped that the giants would retire without noticing. He clutched his banger-chopper-thruster tightly, though, suspecting that he would soon have to put it to use. “Homer?” he asked quietly, suddenly remembering his companion.

  The thought was stolen a second later though, in the boom of a giant’s voice. “What ho!” called the deeper-voiced colossus. “Intruder!”

  “Oh, dear,” piped the higher voice—from the bed, Bags guessed. “Not now, I pray thee! Alert someone else and be done with it.”

  “That chicken-stealing. . .”

  “Goose-stealing,” the higher voice corrected.

  “That goose-stealing peasant boy!” the deeper voice boomed. Bags followed the resounding thumps of the giants footsteps to the desk and then to the window.

  “Didst he retrieve the beans?” the higher voice squealed, almost in desperation. Bags looked down curiously at the beans in the bag and scratched his hairless face, wondering what marvelous artifact he might have stumbled upon. You or I in Bags’s situation would have stayed put right then, and wisely so, and let the giants go off on their wild goose chase, or wild goose-stealer chase, as the case may be. But Bags was of a different mind-set than you or I, and most people and every halfling, too. Always was that rascal thinking of bards’ songs and cunningly trapped treasure chests and other sorts of dangerous things, and at that moment, Bags was thinking too that he owed some loyalty to fragile Homer, wherever that one might be. The last thing on Bag’s mind sitting in that dark wardrobe was sitting tight and letting events pass him by.

  Now was the time for action.

  ~ * ~

  At first, Homer thought he had jumped into a bear cave and it took his best effort not to rip out a revealing scream. As soon as he realized that the furs pressing in all about him were no longer attached to their original owners, Homer relaxed and pushed his way blindly through the long and narrow closet, and soon came to the other door on this side of the hallway. He cracked it open and looked back to the bedroom. The wooden door was closed, but Homer could still hear the giants speaking within. Should he go back and check things out? he wondered, remembering his companion. Homer realized then that he admired Bags, even if he did not particularly like him, and he boldly strengthened his resolve to go and see if he might help out. He straightened his belt, tucking his belly back under it, and almost took the first step.

  But then, singing down the far end of the corridor caught Homer’s attention, a song as sweet as a morning dove’s, though obviously much louder. Also, a sweet fragrance wafted down to titter, tantalizingly, under Homer’s nose, an aroma of springtime and newly blossomed flowers.

  “Bags can handle them,” the enchanted (and relieved) Homer told himself, and before his loyalty could argue back, his curiosity had his ear pressed against the far door in the hallway. The volume told him that the singer was probably a giant, but Homer had never heard of a lark, much less a giant, that could carry a tune so very well.

  There was a keyhole high above him and, fortunately, a stately, high-backed chair against the wall beside the door. Homer glanced all about, then scrambled up the chair. Drawing one deep breath to steady himself, he peered in through the keyhole and saw. . . nothing.

  “Confusticate it,” Homer mumbled under his breath, for apparently the key was set into the lock on the other side.

  He reached up cautiously and grasped the doorknob, meaning to use it for support as he slipped his hand inside the lock and fumbled about. Unknown to him, though, the door was not locked, and
as soon as he leaned forward, the knob turned under his weight and the door swung in.

  You can imagine the look on the giantess’s face, sitting in her claw-footed bathtub with bubbles all about her a dozen feet from the door and staring back at the helpless halfling, dangling, kicking, from her doorknob. But you cannot, I assure you, fully appreciate the expression on Homer’s face when the blue-skinned giantess, all spectacular, fresh-smelling, and abundantly curvy, eighteen feet of her, jumped up, twisting and moving her arms about in a futile attempt to cover her bigger-than-life, bigger-than-Homer’s-wildest-dreams, naked body.

  ~ * ~