Short Tales

Jätte

The north wind screamed through the gigantic, leafless trees and stung the boy and his father in their faces. They were swaddled in bear furs along with cloth from town, yet the boy could still feel the cold soaking through to his bones. He pulled his second coat in tighter and jogged to catch up with his father, who seemed completely impervious to the cold with his thick, blond beard. 

"Faster, boy. We have little time until the sun sets." 

The boy hefted the deer he was carrying and caught up to the burly man's side, having to take 2 steps for every one his father took. He was upset at his father's gruff tone but he would never show it; not unless he wanted some new bruises on his body. His father stopped, took the deer from his own shoulder, then his son's and placed them onto the snow. The boy stopped, confused, then he realized why his father had stopped. 

They had already approached the oh-so-familiar fork in the road; the one that the boy was so curious about. Why couldn't he follow? He wanted to go with his father so badly, but the man always said "when you are grown, boy".  Well, he was 15 winters now; an adult in the town. Even though they didn't live there, it had to count for something, right? 

His father knelt down, pulled out his hatchet and proceeded to cut the legs, heart, stew meat and loins from the final deers. He whispered a prayer over them, then a separate prayer over the pieces cut from them--two other things the boy was not allowed to know until he was "grown". He bagged the pieces, handed them off to the boy to carry with the rest, then head off on the path to the left dragging along at least 10 deer.

Now or never, the boy thought. 

"Wait!" the boy shouted over the wind. His father paused for a while, heaved a sigh, then turned around. 

"Boy. Go home. I will return soon." 

"But I-I'm 15 winters now, I think I'm old enough to co--"

"I will decide when you old enough, boy! Do not infuriate me further! GO! NOW!" 

The boy recoiled in fear and fell back into the snow. His father's fair skin was now red and new veins had appeared on his forehead. 

"GO!" he screamed at him, spittle flying from his mouth and unto his great beard. The boy flew up from the ground and sprinted into the path on the right, his heart beating from his chest. He was stricken with fear, of course, but there was also anger. Anger that wormed its way from the back of his mind to its forefront, consuming the sadness.  The anger could not eclipse the sadness present, however--for now anyways--so the boy kept running home. He saw the house, a simple log cabin covered by the massive trees that had been bent low and tied together by rope that was as thick as the boy's whole body. 

"How?", the boy wondered. How were these trees, trees taller than the tallest  in the closest city, bent and tied to cover their simple log cabin? Well, he knew this, or he thought he did, but what he didn't know was why? The boy heard the familiar sound of trees being pushed aside and thunderous footfalls and rushed to climb up to the roost that his father had made. There it was, he thought. Though he couldn't see what was pushing the trees aside, he knew that no mere man could cause those thousands-of-years-old trees to yield. He could guess where that thing was headed. 

And he would see it today.

He sprinted down from the tower and back into the forest, then he came upon the fork in the road again. He hesitated, but his resolve--rather, his curiosity conquered his hesitancy. He ran silently along the path until he could see his father's back, then he ducked behind a tree. His father, however, was too engrossed in whatever was approaching. Here it came, the boy thought. With a final, great thud, the creature came to a stop. The boy came a bit further out from his hiding spot to see what it was, then immediately wished that he hadn't.

The massive, inhuman creature's legs were all the boy could see, but their sheer size of them gave him such fear that his knees gave out. The creature's legs were half as thick as the trees and were a patchwork of blue skin, normal pale skin, mosses, mushrooms, little animals and little faeries fluttering about it. The boy saw his father run back and soon realized that the giant's hand was reaching down to pick up the deers. They were almost the same as the legs, except that they were just blue and pale skin. None of the life that occupied its legs.

It roared out and left the forest exactly the way it had found it, including the massive footprints that it had left in the fresh snow.