The Way of the Wandering Giant

Choose your path carefully.

Recap: Our narrator is a young maiden, unable to say her own name and cursed to wander the fairy woods until the spell on her is broken. She is followed by a talking fox (also cursed), and just as they lost their way in the forest, they met someone unexpectedly.

I had never seen a real giant until that moment.

My grandfather had told me stories of the giants he saw during his days as a lumberjack, when he traversed the far woods near the waste kingdoms and the Void looking for valuable timber.

He said the giant woodsmen would kick over trees with their feet and hoist tons of lumber in their arms to carry it home.

This giant was nearly as tall as a tree himself, bare-footed, and clothed in layers of earth-toned woolen garments. To me it appeared as though he’d wrapped himself in several tapestries, which were now shabby and frayed.

“Ho! Fellow travelers!” cried the giant, a smile draped across his face. “How do you do?”

“We do excellently,” said Fox, backpedaling from the giant’s massive feet. “We’re just passing through.”

“I mean no trouble,” said the giant with a chuckle that rattled the leaves nearby. “I, too, am just passing through the wood to get to my home in the Kingdom of the Giants. What do you call yourselves?”

“You can call me Victoria of the River,” I said, though I heard Fox’s yelping laugh, for I had made up another name for myself. “This is supposedly the Duke of the Wilder-Land, though you can call him Fox. And who might you be?”

“Ah, Victoria and Fox, a pleasure,” said the giant, leaning down to take my hand in his thumb and forefinger. “I am Gray, son of Egon, of the Harmonious Kindred.”

The word harmonious put me at ease. Perhaps this meeting was fortuitous, because Fox and I were lost.

“Gray, can you tell us where the Kingdom of the Giants is?” I asked. “We’re headed to a village just southwest of there.”

“Oh! Simply follow me, and we will arrive there,” said Gray.

My spirit revived. Fox and I followed Gray along the river and then turned down a twisted path strewn with rocks and shrubbery. Along the path, I noted a large rock that looked quite yellow compared to the others.

At the pass of an hour, I noticed another yellow rock; at the pass of another hour, I saw another. Then I recalled them both to be the same one as before.

“Oh giant!” I called, tapping Gray’s leg with a fallen tree branch. He paused and looked down at me. “I think we’ve gone this way before.” I explained the reappearance of the yellow stone.

“Huh,” said Gray. “My kingdom ought to be just north of here. That’s where we were headed.”

“North?” said Fox. “We were going north when we walked along the river. Then we turned to the west. We’ve been going west — and in circles — all this time.”

“No, no,” said Gray. He pointed ahead. “I have decided that this is north. It feels right. We are not going west.”

Fox and I looked at each other.

“What do you mean, you’ve decided?” Fox said. “North isn’t something you can decide. It simply is. The stars and the sun all abide by it. Even the woods can tell us which way is north, if we are paying attention.”

“No, no,” chuckled the giant. “I always decide what is true for me. I do not have to abide by the woods or stars or sun. If it feels like the north, it must be the north. My heart will always tell me which way to go.”

“Gray,” I said slowly, “how long have you been trying to find your kingdom?”

“Oh, it has been many moons,” Gray mused. “One day I went out to harvest berry bushes with my friends, but we were separated. I think that was quite a long time ago; but how long, I cannot say.”

Fox and I stared at one another.

“Gray, we wish you good luck in your journey,” I said, “but we must turn aside here and find the river again. I hope you don’t mind. Perhaps you could follow us this time. You might get to where you want to go.”

“Oh, I will get to where I’m going,” said Gray.

The giant departed; we found the river again and followed it. When we reached the next village by sundown, I could not sleep until late into the night.

I kept thinking of the giant going in circles, following his heart into nowhere.