Jack and the Giants Read online

  At least there seemed to be a human leg jamming into my midriff. I fumbled in the darkness, putting both hands on it and squeezing. Yes, there was definitely a knee, enclosed in a jean. Male or female? I groped my way upward along the thickening thigh and came to its juncture with its companion leg. Female.

  A hand slapped my face. “Let go of me, you lecher!” an irate feminine voice said.

  I let go instantly. It was a woman! I had just royally goosed her. “I, uh, didn’t see you,” I mumbled, embarrassed.

  “Well, you certainly felt me, you pervert!”

  “I’m—I’m sorry. I just got captured by a giant and dumped in here, and I wanted to be sure I wasn’t in with a hungry tiger or something. I never would have done it if I’d known.” That was the truth but in this context it sounded unutterably stupid.

  There was a pause. Then she spoke again, faintly. “Jack?”

  What? Had I misheard? How could she possibly know me? “That is my name,” I said. “But I’ve never been here before. In fact I’m not sure I’m even awake.”

  “You’re not, I think. I’m Harriet. The receptionist at Jutemill Industries. You know—the redhead?”

  “Harriet!” I exclaimed. “How can you be here?”

  “It’s simple story,” she said. “I’m a simple girl. By day I work for that slave driver, the only job I could get. I know I qualified only because I have a pretty face, nice hair, and a cleavage to impress visitors who lean over my desk. I hate that, but without that job I’ll starve, so I smile and flash it all day, hoping that none of the visiting men’s drool soils me. By night I dream of glory, maybe as a musician. I once aspired to be a professional harpist in a huge orchestra. But I couldn’t afford a real harp, and anyway I wasn’t that good. Only in my dreams. So I dream a lot. This time I was in a really huge forest, on a path going somewhere, maybe somewhere nice. Only something went wrong, and my dream became a nightmare, and here I am, bagged by a giant who means to cook me and eat me. He—he said I have nice fat thighs like frogs’ legs. I tried to wake up, but I can’t. It’s horrible! I don’t know what to do!” She dissolved into tears.

  I found her shoulders and put my arm around them. “I guess it is a dream. A communal dream. I climbed a beanstalk to Giantland, then got caught in a snare and dumped in here. I agree it’s awful, but less so now that I’m with you. Maybe I can figure something out.”

  “Can you?” she asked eagerly. “I feel better too, now that I’m no longer alone.”

  “Well, I like to think of myself as a wit. Of course you know what they say about that.”

  “What do they say?”

  “That a man who fancies himself a wit is half right.”

  She laughed. “Oh, that’s funny!”

  “I’m thinking that here in Giantland, everything is about four times its real size, so maybe our abilities are similarly larger. That’s probably nonsense.”

  “No, go on,” she said.

  “So maybe I really can be more clever here than I am in real life. And maybe you can play the harp as well as you want to.”

  “Maybe,” she said dubiously. “But how will that get us out of the giant’s satchel without getting dumped into his cookpot?”

  “We’ll tell him that you can be a good slave, playing beautiful music.”

  “But what about you? What do you aspire to do?”

  “Well, once I thought I’d like to be an Irish jig dancer. You know, like Michael Flatley in Lord of the Dance. But it turned out I couldn’t even break dance without breaking my bones. I came across more like a fool. That’s not so good.”

  “But maybe it is, Jack,” she said. “If the giants like music, maybe they’ll like dancing too. Maybe you can do it.”

  I laughed without humor. “No, my dancing is a joke. In fact in school I made it as a class clown.”

  “That’s the thing! Be a dancing fool! The old kings always had jokers to entertain them. I could play music and you could dance to it, your way.”

  I began to see it. “Maybe it’s worth a try. At least until we can escape.”

  “It’s better than getting cooked for our legs.” I could feel her frowning. “Frogs’ legs indeed!”

  “That’s certainly true,” I agreed. But I feared it was an uncomfortably long shot. It would be better simply to wake up and be clear of this whole business.

  Then I wondered: if they dumped us in boiling water, would the pain make us wake? Was that our most likely escape? Assuming that we really were asleep.

  And suppose we weren’t?

  Suddenly the satchel, which had been bouncing more or less comfortably as the giant walked, swung wildly. The drawstring loosened, and Harriet and I tumbled out to land in a tangle on a straw mat in a giant baby pen. We scrambled to get to our feet.

  There was the giant peering down at us. Beside him was a monstrous woman, evidently his wife.

  “They look delicious,” the giantess said. “I’ll heat the pot.”

  It was show time. “Wait!” I cried. “We’ll make better slaves than meals! We’re talented. We can entertain you. So you won’t be bored.”

  That got their interest. Evidently a giant’s life was sort of boring.

  “What can you do?” the giant asked.

  “She’s a harpist,” I said.

  “A harpy!” the giantess said. “We haven’t seen one of those in a long time.”

  “Not a harpy,” I said. “A harpist. She plays the harp, beautifully.”

  But the giantess was locked onto her confusion. She was evidently not phenomenally smart. “Harpies have breasts. Let’s see.” Before either of us could protest, she reached down and picked Harriet up by the scruff of her blouse. Harriet had the sense not to scream; any fuss we made was likely to nudge us closer to the pot. The giantess reached out with huge fingers and pinched the front of Harriet’s blouse. She ripped it away, along with the bra, exposing the breasts. “Sure enough,” she said, satisfied. “A harpy.”

  “She’s not a harpy!” I protested. “She’s a human being.”

  “Harpies have tails,” the giantess said.

  “She has no tail!” I said, before realizing that this could be worse mischief.

  She pondered. “Let’s see.” She hooked a sword-like fingernail into the top of Harriet’s jeans and ripped them apart. In a moment both jeans and panties dropped to the mat. The giantess inspected Harriet’s bare bottom. “No tail. Not a harpy.” Annoyed, she dropped Harriet back on the mat.

  The giant squinted at the spread bare legs. “Nice little body.”

  “Oh no you don’t!” the giantess snapped. “Into the pot with her!” She was not a complete idiot.

  “She’s a harpist!” I repeated. “Fetch her a harp! She’ll show you her beautiful music!”

  Now the giantess listened. “Let me check the toy box.” She went across the monstrous room to rummage in a big box.

  “We save things from prior tidbits,” the giant explained. “Sometimes they come in handy.”

  And lo: the giantess returned with a large standing harp. She set it into the pen. “Play.” It was a command, on pain of the pot.

  “You can do it,” I whispered encouragingly to Harriet. My dream of the nude harpist was about to come true, amazingly.

  “I’ll have to,” she agreed nervously. She set herself on the built-in seat, extended her hands, and strummed.

  A foul discordance assaulted their ears. I winced. Harriet was way out of practice. “It needs tuning,” she said.

  But the giants applauded. “Lovely!” the giantess said.

  “Yeah,” the giant agreed.

  She smacked him hard across the mouth. “The music, idiot!”

  “Yeah, sure, that’s what I meant, dear,” he agreed.

  Then the giantess focused on me. “And what can you do, morsel?”

  Show time, again. I had pulled it off for Harriet, but I still needed to rescue myself. “I’m a dancer,” I said.

  The giants exchanged a large
glance. “He’ll do,” the giant said.

  “Right,” the giantess agreed. “It’s the pot for him.”

  “But I said I could dance!” I cried desperately.

  “Yeah,” the giant agreed. “We don’t care about dancing. Tromping is better.”

  Oops. The giantess was already heading for the pot.

  “I mean I’m a joke dancer!” I cried. If they liked dissonance, they should like crazy dancing, right? “A dancing fool!”

  The giant was uncertain. “Show me.”

  I glanced at Harriet. “Start the music.”

  She strummed again, this time getting more of a semblance of a tune, though it was impossible to tell which one.

  I went into my class clown routine, flinging my arms wildly about, jerking like a marionette. There was absolutely nothing artistic about it, or even coordinated.

  And the giants loved it. The giantess put away the pot, saving it for another day. They dumped some food into our pen. Harriet hugged me. She was, of course, still naked.

  I had saved my donkey. But for how long?

  Chapter 4:

  Escape

  The giant leaned his round face into the playpen. “You live for now, morsel. That is, until I tire of your dancing, wonderful as it might be. And as for you,” he said to Harriet, lowering his voice. “I’ve got big plans for you. Or, better yet, small plans.” I saw the hungry, filthy lust in his eyes. “You might be small...but not too small.”

  “You can piss off!” shouted Harriet, and gave the big oaf the finger.

  Although I admired her spunk, I was worried that her defiant gesture just might be her last gesture. The giant’s face reddened so fast, that I literally saw the capillaries beneath his skin explode. He was about to reach for her—and I had just jumped before his mighty paw to stand in front of her—when a massive hand clapped the big guy across his ear.

  “Leave the food alone,” grunted the giantess. “Now, help me with this damnable itch I have. It’s been bothering me all day.”

  The giant gave us one last poisonous glare, then reluctantly turned to his wife, and the two slipped out of the kitchen and into the far corner of the open house, which was filled with oversized furniture. Well, oversized to me. Just right, no doubt, for them.

  “There?” asked the giant.

  “No, lower.”

  “There?”

  “No, you big oaf. Lower.”

  They did this for some time, when I felt a gentle touch on my shoulder. I turned to find a very naked Harriet looking at me with the kind of look in her eye that, well, I had always dreamed she would look at me with.

  “Thank you, Jack.”

  “For what? I didn’t do—”

  “For trying to protect me.”

  “I was just...well, I couldn’t let him hurt you.”

  She stood on her tiptoes and kissed me lightly on the cheek. And if I were to die soon—cooked up by these wretched beasts—at least I would die happy.

  Except, of course, I wasn’t ready to die yet. No way. I liked Harriet’s kiss. I wanted more such kisses. And for that to happen, I most certainly couldn’t end up in a giant soup bowl.

  “We have to get out of here,” I said.

  She smiled at me, a smile I had seen many times as she greeted me each morning. A smile I had come to love...and the rest of her, too. “You think?” she said sarcastically.

  “Yes, I do think. After all, the big buffoon might actually find her itch...and I don’t want to still be here when they come looking for something else to do...or eat.”

  “So what’s your plan, Mr. Hero?”

  “I’m no hero.”

  She looked at me sideways with that same smile. “I’m not so sure about that.”

  I felt myself blushing. I looked away and swallowed. She was, of course, still naked. Gloriously naked. “My plan is simple: we look for a way out of this playpen. And fast. But first—” I pulled my tee-shirt off and handed it to her. “Wear this.”

  She took it without protest, and when she had it on, it mostly hid her nudity. Most, but not all. Some of her cheeks hung beneath the hem. Dammit, if the tee-shirt didn’t have the effect of making her look even more sexy.

  Now we searched the play pen, checking each wooden pole, which were as wide as Corinthian columns to a plantation mansion. Sadly, they were spaced so close together that neither of us could squeeze through.

  The giants, I saw, were now busy picking sticks and debris out from each others’ toes. The sight of it was nauseating, but encouraging as well. After all, there was a lot of junk and debris under their nails.

  I paused before the massive wooden pylons, which might as well have been made out of steel. I was growing frustrated. The damnable playpen was airtight.

  I wrapped my arms around one of the posts...maybe I could shimmy up. No good. I couldn’t wrap my arms all the way around. I studied the height of the wooden pole. I judged it to be maybe ten feet high. Too high to jump up and grab the top—

  That was it. I literally snapped my fingers.

  Too loudly. The giants quit picking at their feet and looked in our direction. Harriet squeaked, and I might have too. The giantess moved to get up, but then spotted something big under her middle toe and got distracted.

  “What was that all about?” whispered Harriet into my ear.

  I turned to her, and briefly admired my old tee shirt on her slim figure. “If everything is four times as big here, and our skills are four times as strong--”

  “I don’t know about that, Jack. My harp playing was rusty at best, and I think I’ve seen better dancing from a wounded grizzly.”

  “Ouch,” I said. “All I can say is, you should have seen me before.”

  “Even worse?”

  “So much worse.”

  She thought about that. “Well, I guess my harp playing was coming around rather quickly, near the end of the song.”

  “Faster than it should have been?” I asked.

  “Yeah, probably. I’m sure I would have needed four or five tries at the song to get as good as that one try.”

  “You see?” I said. “Four times better.”

  “But how does that help us now, Jack? We can’t dance our way out of here.”

  “No,” I said. “But we can jump our way out of here.”

  “What do you mean? We can’t jump—”

  She paused, and studied the top of the crib. “We can jump four times higher.”

  “I think so,” I said. “All we can do is try.”

  Which is exactly what we did. When both giants seemed suitably distracted, I jumped first—and surprised myself by just how high I could jump. Easily a foot or so higher than what I was used to. Harriet tried it, too, and seemed to jump higher yet. We jumped again and again, until we each had managed to grab to the wooden crossbar. We both dangled briefly, and then used what I suspected was four times our strength to scramble up and over the top of the pen. There, we sat briefly. I was surprised to discover we were holding hands.

  “I think we have to jump,” I said.

  “Aim for her slippers,” said Harriet, pointing.

  We did, each landing in one of them. The drop to the floor should have hurt both of us. In the least we should have been hobbled with turned ankles. But we both came up rolling and running.

  Which was a good thing. Because the giantess had just looked up from her disgusting feet, and saw us on the floor.

  “They’re escaping, you big oaf. Get them, get them!”

  The giant snorted and roared and Harriet and I were running across the wooden floor. We stumbled as the giant’s footsteps shook the floorboards beneath us.

  Somehow, I was still holding Harriet’s hand, and pulled her toward the kitchen door, whose iron handle was also at least ten feet high. Higher than a basketball rim surely.

  As we neared it—and as the floor shook harder and harder—I leaped as high as I could, and caught hold of the flat iron handle. I kicked and swung my feet, until the han
dle pulled down...and the door clicked open.

  I dropped down, and together Harriet and I pulled the door open...and dashed out into the sunshine as the giant bellowed behind us.

  Birds erupted from the surrounding trees. Giant birds—all as big as eagles. And still we kept running.

  Chapter 5:

  Henrietta

  One of the birds swooped down to inspect us. It didn’t look aggressive despite its size. Its breast was red, and it looked like nothing so much as a monstrous robin.

  I knocked the heel of my hand against my head, figuratively. Of course it was a robin! With everything quadruple normal size, a ten inch long robin would be forty inches eagle-sized, and sixty-four times the mass, because of the cubing entailed. So it was big, but robins were not predators of mammals. Bugs maybe, or seeds, possibly worms, but that was the limit.

  Harriet saw the bird and screamed in terror.

  “It’s a robin!” I cried. “A big one! Harmless!” I hoped.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, realizing it was true.

  Indeed, the robin flew on by, satisfied that we weren’t bugs or seeds or worms. The other birds ignored us. It was a great relief.

  The giants burst out of the house. “Hide behind a tree!” I cried.

  We headed for the nearest tree as the giants spied us. We got there first and cowered behind its massive trunk as the two giants circled it on either side—and crashed into each other just beyond us. Obviously they weren’t the smartest hunters. It would have been funny, if our peril were not so great.

  We scooted back around the trunk while they cussed each other out, then we ran for another tree, as the giants picked themselves up, caught their breaths, and came after us again. But this time they didn’t know which tree we had reached. They had to check each one, clumsily.

  I got a bright idea. I knew where the giants would never think to look for us. I really was getting smarter here, though why the giants weren’t similarly smart I couldn’t say. Maybe all their extra power went into just being large. I pointed wordlessly to the house.

  Harriet nodded, understanding; she was smarter too. We ran for the house and got past the door before the giants had checked more than three or four trees. They continued checking trees, never looking our way; it never dawned on the them that we would re-enter their lair.