When There Were Giants
“There used to be giants in the hills. When they moved it looked as though the earth itself was rumbling. They were magnificent, stone titans, their bodies green from moss.”
Amelia’s mom sometimes sat outside, staring somewhere between the trees, in the forests beyond the cracked and rotting wooden fence behind their house. When Amelia asked her about it, her mom would always say something about giants. Amelia looked at the forest. It didn’t look like the place where one would find giants. Cracked, knotty trees stood sparsely, barely reaching toward the gray sky.
“Where did they go?”
“I don’t know. People don’t like to talk about it. The giants were scarce even when I was young. I saw my last one when I was just a little bit older than you.” Amelia had long since decided that this was a story like the ones grownups liked to tell, like how they rode a dinosaur to school, or how there were monsters under the bed, or how the ice cream truck played music when it was out of ice cream.
“That must have been forever ago,” Amelia decided to say.
Her mom looked down at her and smiled. “It seems like that sometimes.”
Amelia went back inside to draw as other things occupied her mind. Her mom still sat in her rocking chair on her back porch, staring off into the distance.
Amelia was drawing on the kitchen floor, lying on the cold tiles, an assortment of crayons and colored pencils all sprawled out around her. Her grandpa was sitting on the couch, reading some large book that Amelia thought looked boring; it was filled with grayed-out images and small print. He hummed to himself as he read.
Not looking up from her doodling, Amelia asked her grandfather, “Were there really giants?”
Her grandfather gently closed his book and set it down next to him on the couch. He turned towards Amelia with a soft smile. “Were you talking with your mother other about this?”
“Yeah, I don’t understand. Giants are so big, where could they hide? I think Mommy was just making it up.”
“She didn’t make it up. When I was young the forests were full of giants. But there aren’t any left. It’s been many decades since I’ve seen any.”
“But then where did they go?” She emphasized the last word with a bit of a whine as children often do.
“I don’t know. And I don’t think anyone knows, not even the giants themselves. Everyone has their pet theory. Some people think that the giants are all still here, that the hills are just sleeping giants. Some people think that the world became too advanced for giants, that all of our electricity and cars and satellites meant there wasn’t any room for them. Some think they disappeared because people stopped looking for them; that the giants needed someone to believe in them to be real. Some people think that the giants disappeared beneath the waves because that’s the last place we haven’t touched. Some people think that there might still be giants out there if anyone bothered to look But most people don’t care what happened to the giants, or even forgot that the giants existed at all; everyone moved on to other things.”
Amelia stopped drawing. Her grandpa had said a lot of things and she only understood most of them. “What do you think happened to them?”
“I want to think that they’re still out there. I remember watching tremors of giants rumble through the forests. It was a different world. I think that there’s still a place for giants, whatever happened.”
“Okay, Grandpa.” Amelia still didn’t quite believe him. But that was alright. She loved her grandpa and decided not to hold something as little as lying to children against him.
“Come on mama. hurry up!” Despite dragging her feet earlier that morning, Amelia was filled with energy as she ran down the forest path. Her mom dragged on behind. Amelia never understood why her mom was always the one to suggest these hikes when she moved so slowly.
“Slow down, Ami. You’re going to trip. And the sides are steep. Be careful.”
Amelia slowed her pace a little, but it was only perfunctory. Her mom fell still further behind. And when Amelia turned back, her mother was gone, disappeared around the last bend. She wasn’t scared, per se—she would never admit that to anyone—but she felt a hint of apprehension and decided to sit down on a small stump on the side of the trail.
The wind blew softly, rustling scattered leaves and lifting them off of the forest floor. In front of her, the side of the trail really was quite steep. Almost a dozen feet from her, the ground dropped off so much that the tree tops were at her height. And this was saying something as she considered herself quite tall for her age.
Drawn by that magnetic fascination that some people have with the beyond and the unknown, she rose from the stump and took a few careful steps forward to the edge of the cliff. She gazed at the landscape below—at the bristling trees and the winding streams like silver ribbons—and began to hum. It was beautiful, she supposed. There was a majesty to it.
She noticed a small hillock, rough stone exposed to the elements, carved by wind and rain and time. Thin blades of verdant green grass lay atop its crown. Moss and vines covered its sides, making it seem so very old to the little girl. Large chipped boulders like massive ugly toes lay in the river next to it.
And then the hill moved. It stretched.
The hill changed its form. There was a sound like snapping bones and crashing rocks as a large pillar of rock emerged from the earth. Rust reds, umber browns, and an entire menagerie of earthen tones poured across the earth as soil cascaded down the giant’s—for it was, of course, a giant—arm. The water shook, rising from the river and crashing against its banks as the giant rose to his feet.
A chipped and chiseled face with rough-hewn skin like an overcast sky stared blearily at Amelia. Dark green eyes like the forest come evening stared up at her. She held her breath and didn’t know what words she would say even if she could speak. She waved at the giant.
The giant, with large rocky hands, waved at her. The movement was accompanied by the sound of stone scraping against stone. They looked vaguely proud of themself. And then, it started humming, a low sound like the quaking earth or of far-off thunder. It was reminiscent of something as if Amelia had heard it once before, but could not remember where.
And then her mom was coming around the bend.
“Slow down for me next time. Your old mother can’t always keep up. Did you hear that?”
Amelia turned to look at her mother. When she turned back, the giant had sat down and was again laying its head upon the earth. Her mother looked out at the forest below, only just catching the last movements of the giant as it settled down and became a part of the landscape, its head a grassy knoll, its face harsh stone, its knees a gentle slope, its feet a set of boulders.
Her mother didn’t speak for a moment, still looking at the landscape even after the last vestiges of the giant’s brief movement that she had seen ceased.
“That was a giant, wasn’t it?” she asked her daughter. Her voice was tinged with doubt. She half sat, half fell, onto the ground. “I always knew they were real.”
Amelia wondered if grownups were ever honest, even with themselves.
She would never be like that, she resolved, as she hugged her mother and hummed to herself.
Those were 🔥 bars.