Grandma's Attic

Chapter Seven

What strangeness was this? Thredwyl stared at this new source of light. The finest magical crafting he'd ever seen, a crystal mirror with not a visible flaw. But where was his reflection? And where was the room behind him? He turned to check that it hadn't changed. No, it was still as it was. Yet that crystal mirror showed him a vast, green-laid floor lidded in blue, and that was the source of the light.

He nodded, grimly with understanding. It would seem the jawmen told it true in their tales. There was a Land of Giants, and his ill-said spell had brought him to there. Yet how could it be? Only heroes went there, and he wasn't that. He was just Thredwyl and marred to boot with his invisible scar.

He now recalled the tale told when he attended the Mother's Meeting, of Grandma's Final Act of Creation. Having created the first tribes, the Kupies, Nixies and Fernamon, from rock, water and fire, the Great Grandma then thought she might try combining the strands, thus creating more complex forms. And that's when the Giants were born. The jawmen told of their varieties, and how fast they came. Though the Great Grandma didn't always get it right, and over the eons there had been many a terrible creature made by mistake. But these she held separate from her first-made tribes for fear they'd fight. Her first-made took the lower stories, the last-made took this, the attic's attic.

This long-legged beast was likely one of Grandma's mistakes. It must have stood thrice Thredwyl's height at the shoulders. He backed away.

Youch! Granny's Drawers, now it had sighted him. It charged towards him, growling and barking. No, Thredwyl wasn't a hero. He quaked in his blue high-polished boots.

"No-no, please," he pleaded when the giant Jace opened the crystal mirror – what, a door in the mirror – and in leapt the barking beast.

That beast was all over everything, leaping on furniture, knocking over hollow crystals of smelly stalked stars. Water splashed him despite he'd hidden himself behind the cloth hangings. He watched, disgusted, amazed and awed, as the beast licked – aye, licked, not bit – the two giants. And they laughed. Aye, laughed.

"Helas, Helas, quieten," Jace the giant told it.

"Sit!" Neat Fleur added. And incredibly Helas the beast sat, though on its haunches, not as he and the giants might sit.

But Helas didn't sit for long. It began with a sniff at the air. Thredwyl guessed what that was about. He'd heard of it, once, in one of the jawmen's stories. The beast was scenting the air. Thredwyl particularly remembered how the Nixies had laughed at that term, 'scenting the air'. "Scenting it with what? Rotting weed?" "Nay, with ancient dead fish that haven't been eaten." "Mmm, delicious," they had agreed.

Thredwyl thought he'd like to pee now, before the beast ate him.

"Helas, here," Neat Fleur commanded.

Phew. With glum expression, Helas the beast returned to her side where it slunk to the floor.

"He won't hurt you," Neat Fleur assured him. "Though he does like to chase cats. Have you not seen a Great Dane before?"

"Don't be a loopy, Fleur," said the giant Jace. "He's told us, he's not from this land."

"Yea, but," she said, "they have Great Danes in France, don't they? Are you from France? Parlez-vous français? Allemand? Italien? Polanais?"

Thredwyl stared back in incomprehension, the deep-textured cloth hanging clutched in his terrified hands.

"So where are you from?" the giant Jace asked.

"Home," he said. "Our land." He knew no other name for it. He knew stories that told of other lands, but always when the hero returned, he returned to 'Home'. Though, he supposed, this Jace might have meant which part of his land. There were three parts to the land. Dols, they were called. Dolnixen, Dolfernan, and Dolstone. "Dolstone," he offered.

"Is that in Cornwall?" Neat Fleur asked which earned her a clip round her head from Jace.

In the short time spent in their company, Thredwyl had discovered this pair of giants were 'unrelated sibs', that's what Neat Fleur had called them. They were of the same age – twenty, though twenty-what she didn't say – and born almost on the same day. "But don't think us twins, cos we're not." That's when she'd said of being 'unrelated sibs'. And "We're not usually together. We're usually at Uni. But this being the hols..."

"So, little fellow," the giant Jace said, "what are we to do with you?"

Thredwyl thought to feed him might be a good idea and please to show him where he might pee. The need was increasingly pressing.

"Then he's not one of your—"

"Oh, for crying out!" Jace answered his 'unrelated sib'. "We've been through all this."

Aye, they had, at least as far as Jace had insisted that, no, Thredwyl wasn't one of his computerised manikins, adding that he didn't know how to construct one anyway. "Not with skin and hair and things."

"I think it best we take him to Anthropology," Jace said. "Let them study him. Maybe he's a Hobbit like those they found on Flores."

"Oh yea," Neat Fleur flopped down on the floor beside Helas. "Like they're extinct these past thousand years. Nothing but bones now, aren't they."

"Yea but the School of Anthropology has to be best," Jace insisted. "Let them have the problem. After all, did we invite him into our home? And best be rid of him before Pops and Curly Tops come home."

Thredwyl could see the same thing happening to him as happened to the attractive if rather dead pebble that he had found when young and brought home. Moved from here to there to there and back again, with no one wanting to have it around. Oh, the fuss that did cause. Where was he to put it? Who was to mind it? Nay, Threddy, it cannot stay there, it'll be tripping our feet. In the end, it had become such a trouble he'd had to return it to where he'd found it. Aye, and that was fine if the same happened to him. So perhaps Jace was right, and the School of Anthropology would solve it for him.

"Off you go then," Neat Fleur commanded Jace in the same tone as she'd used for Helas to sit.

Jace remained where he was, slouched on a huge, highly slouchable sofa. Thredwyl assumed it was a sofa, though it wasn't exactly as described in the jawmen's stories. Jace mimed pulling the pockets out from his trousers. Honestly, Thredwyl so wanted to ask if he'd no better clothes to wear? Work-wear trousers and an undervest? He hadn't even donned his shoes.

"Curly Tops has the keys," Jace said. "Hers is in the garage for its M.O.T. Remember? Your call."

"I'm not going," said Neat Fleur, suddenly sullen. "I don't know the geeks there. I'm at Leeds, remember, not here at Cambs. No, your Uni, you go."

"Don't reckon we'll either be going," Jace said. "Look at that weather. Coming on to a storm."

Thredwyl followed the giant's eyeline to the crystal and beyond. What with his concern about Helas, and then all the hoo-hah of what the giants were to do with him, he hadn't noticed how much the light out there had dimmed. Drastically, he'd say. Now beyond that crystal all looked dark and heavy.

"It's going to pelt," Jace said.

"Well, I'm not going out in a storm," Neat Fleur said, clearly not open to further argument. "Come on, Willy, my sweetie, let's go up to my room."

Willy? Well, Thredwyl supposed it an acceptable abbreviation of his name. And perhaps she'd have food up there. And maybe he'd also find somewhere where he could pee. Though what else did she intend them to do? He hoped she'd tell him more about those Hobbits and the geeks at Anthropology. Would those geeks be able to send him home? Only, he was beginning to remember a particularly scary tale told by a jawman, of The Giantess and the Stone.

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed. If you did, please consider pressing that sweet little star.

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