by T.A. Barron
“No, fledgling, I’m not going to eat you. I am Rowallon, guardian of this nest. And who are you?”
“Shim,” he replied. “I am a giant! Even though . . . I don’t really look like one.”
Rowallon clucked merrily. “If you’re a giant, then I’m a thundercloud. Except that I’m not.” Leaning closer from her perch on the rim, she asked, “Now tell me the truth. What kind of creature are you, really?”
Flustered, Shim shouted, “A giant! Just like I said.”
The greathawk merely stared at him.
Shim hung his head. “I’m just . . . a little giant. The littlest one everly.”
Kindly, she reached out a wing and brushed his shoulder. “Whatever you really are, you were nearly devoured by Slaylo.”
“Yes, but you saved me just in time.” His expression full of gratitude, he said, “Thank you so very muchly, Rowallon.”
“I was glad to do it.” Sadly, she shook her head, making the small gray feathers on her face tremble. “I only wish . . .”
“Wish what?”
She sighed. “I only wish I could have saved someone else from that serpent. Someone I loved dearly.”
Compassionately, Shim whispered, “Who?”
Rowallon clacked her beak and made a mournful sound. “My child. Just yesterday, while I was taking my morning flight across the marsh . . . he struck. Climbed up to this very nest, he did—and stole my first and only child.”
She fluffed her wings, as if trying to sweep away the sadness. For the first time, Shim noticed the richly varied colors of her feathers. Gray, brown, and white feathers formed wavy bands across her wings and tail. And the feathers on her chest, while mostly gray, showed flecks of radiant green.
All at once, Shim understood. Carefully, he reached inside his shirt and pulled out the green-spotted egg. Undamaged, it rested snugly in his hands. Offering the egg to the greathawk, he said, “Methinks this might belong to you.”
She screeched in utter surprise. Leaping into the air, she stretched out her talons, took the egg, and flew several joyful circles around the tree. At last, she lowered the egg into the downy feathers in the middle of the nest and gently sat on top to keep it warm.
Quietly, she cooed, “You are safe now, little one.”
With a new light in her golden eyes, she peered at Shim. “You may not look like a giant . . . but you can still do giant-size things.”
Bashfully, he waved away her compliment. “Really, I’m just a regular, ordinarious, run-of-the-mill—”
She clacked her beak, cutting him off. “You’re like nobody else, Shim.”
“I know,” he said sadly. “Like nobody else.”
“That isn’t a bad thing,” she insisted, opening her wings to their widest. “Listen to me now. You see this majestic tree we’re in?”
“Sure. It’s hard not to see something so . . . bigly.”
“This tree,” she explained, “is the kind humans call a lodgepole pine. That’s because when these trees grow close together in the forest, they look nearly identical. They all grow straight and narrow—very tall, but also very much alike.”
Shim crinkled his nose in puzzlement. “But this one is so massively massive, not narrow at all.”
“Exactly.” The greathawk puffed out her chest feathers, covered with vibrant green flecks. “Only when a lodgepole pine stands alone, completely free, as this one did for centuries, can it grow to its full size—and its unique self.”
Slowly, Shim nodded, weighing the meaning of her words. Once again, from a distant part of his memory, he heard the words, Bigness means more than . . .
He couldn’t remember the rest of the sentence, or even who had spoken the words. And he still wasn’t sure what they really meant. But he did feel sure they’d been said with affection, maybe even with faith in him . . . just like the words of the greathawk.
He reached over and touched the tip of her wing. “I’m so glad you and your child are back togetherly now.”
“So am I,” said Rowallon with an emphatic clack of her beak. “I can feel the life, the heartbeat, inside the shell. And I know we will have many wonderful times together.”
She cocked her head thoughtfully. “You may not fully understand this. But I am the mother of this little one—and a mother will do anything, anything at all, for her child.”
Something about her words, or maybe her attitude, seemed vaguely familiar to Shim. He wasn’t sure how, or why . . . but he felt moved in ways he couldn’t describe. Happy and sad at the same time.
“Now,” said Rowallon, “is there anything at all I can do for you?”
Shim’s eyes gleamed. “There is one thing. A most helpfulous thing.”
16.
A VOICE
After carrying him across the Haunted Marsh, Rowallon gently lowered Shim onto a grassy knoll. Standing there, he could see, stretching far into the distance, the dark fog of the swamp—just as he could still hear the wailing of ghouls and smell the odor of decay. But Shim knew now that this place held more than just danger and death.
It also held a friend.
Feeling the soft green grass under his feet, he gazed up at the huge bird hovering over him. Her powerful wings beat the air, while she flexed the talon that had so easily carried him. In her other talon, held securely, was a beautiful egg with green spots on its shell . . . for she had vowed never again to leave it unguarded.
Looking straight into the greathawk’s golden eyes, Shim said, “Thank you so muchly much, Rowallon.”
She screeched and replied in her deep, resonant voice, “And thank you so muchly much.”
She wheeled in midair, then called out, “Come back someday to meet my child. Until then, fledgling, travel with care!”
With a whhooosh of her wings, she departed. Shim watched her as she flew away, holding the gleaming egg. Soon she vanished into the rising mists of the marsh.
Turning away, the little giant surveyed his surroundings. On the side of the knoll away from the swamp, rolling green hills beckoned. Surely, amidst those groves of oak and spruce and aspen, there would be some good food to eat. Maybe nothing as tasty as those ubermushrooms he’d eaten on his last night in Varigal . . . but good nonetheless.
Those mushrooms were his last clear memory before everything got terribly vague and hard to recall. It felt as if a thick veil had fallen across his mind, obscuring much of what had happened. Though he couldn’t remember how, he knew that he’d fled the horrible attack of Stangmar’s warriors . . . and somehow ended up in the Haunted Marsh.
How did he get all that distance from Varigal, all by himself? That was a real mystery . . . though not as great a mystery as how he’d been shrunken down so cruelly.
As his stomach growled, his thoughts returned to food. One food in particular—honey. Just the idea of his most cherished treat made his mouth water.
He started to stride down the knoll—but abruptly stopped. For some reason, he turned around to look one last time at the Haunted Marsh. Why? He didn’t understand. He simply knew that something about that place called to him . . . tugged on him . . . awakened a strange yearning inside him.
He shrugged—and turned away. Probably he was just feeling pangs of hunger. How long had it been since he’d eaten? Too long, for sure.
“Honey!” he exclaimed, smacking his lips. He needed to find some, like he’d done so many times before. Suddenly remembering his much smaller size, he reminded himself, “But nowadays I need to avoid any buzzers so I won’t get stingded.”
Down the grassy slope he tramped, surprised at how much slower he covered ground than he recalled doing until very recently. Whatever strange thing had happened to him, making his legs so much smaller, his appetite seemed just as big as ever.
“Honey,” he repeated as he waded across a tumbling brook at the base of the knoll. Cold water splas
hed him, soaking his leggings and chilling him to the bone. Longingly, he recalled the days when he could have stepped over this brook with a single stride—days he’d never know again. He shivered . . . and not just from the cold.
And so Shim’s wanderings began. Hours turned into days, days into weeks, as he roamed aimlessly across the hills, forests, and plains of Fincayra.
Over and over again, whenever he encountered others, he tried to explain that he was really a giant. The response was always the same—total disbelief, usually accompanied by laughter and derision. It happened when he spoke to the girl who was milking her cinnamon-colored cow, the family of monkeys who taunted him from their home in a banyan tree, the stern centaur who galloped off in disgust, and the ancient healer who paused making her poultice to hear his tale of woe . . . and then promptly offered him an herbal remedy to stop hallucinations.
And many more times besides. Even a colony of sparrows, who had heard him lamenting out loud, tumbled out of their nests and rolled on the grass in uncontrollable laughter.
Making matters worse, he was starting to doubt himself. “Was I ever really a giant?” he grumbled as he climbed up a rocky hillside. “Or was that all just a wild, hallucinatalous dream?”
Topping the hill, he caught the unmistakable scent of honey on the breeze. He froze, sniffing so avidly that his nose trembled. Somewhere down in the ravine below him, he felt sure, was a tree full of honey. The familiar urge to gorge on honey, biting into the sticky combs and drinking all the liquid sweetness he could hold, rose up inside him.
Yet . . . something felt strangely different. The old urge vanished as quickly as it had appeared, leaving him mystified.
He scratched his head, trying to understand. But for some reason, he didn’t really feel in the mood for honey right now—something that had never happened before. Not once, in his entire life.
“Maybily,” he muttered, “it’s because my back is so sore and covered with welts from getting stingded so badly yesterday? Or maybily . . .”
He paused, almost afraid to say the words. “Or maybily loving honey was just another wild dream?”
A raindrop struck the tip of his nose. Then another, and another. Within seconds, clouds darkened overhead and thunder boomed across the hillside. A downpour began.
Shim ran down the hill, hoping to find some shelter from the storm. Spying a stream whose rocky banks held several overhanging slabs, he veered in that direction. Rain pounded down, soaking him and making the ground slippery, but he managed to find a protected hollow beneath a slab. He dived inside and rolled to a stop.
Immediately, he smelled the remains of a partly eaten fish. As well as musky, wet fur. Looking behind him, he discovered a young otter who had stopped chewing on a trout to stare at him.
“Who are you?” asked the otter, resuming his task of devouring the fish in his paws. “You don’t look like anyone I’ve seen before.”
Shim ran a hand through his wet, scraggly hair. Glumly, he said, “That’s because there’s nobodily else anywhere like me.”
“How nice,” bubbled the otter. Having finished his meal, he tossed the fish bones aside and started to lick his whiskers. “In my family, everyone looks like everyone else, and like all the other otters in the world. And we all like the same games, too. Not much variety . . . though we do have fun playing together.”
Shim replied sadly, “At leastly you know who you are and where you come from.”
The otter started, his whiskers trembling in surprise. “You don’t know that? Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
Widening his dark brown eyes, the otter said, “That’s impossible.”
“No, it’s not.” Shaking his head, Shim explained, “Once I was a giant—a bigly, strong giant. Or at least . . . I think that was true. Now, though, I don’t know what in the worldly world I am.”
The otter stared for a moment, then suddenly clapped his paws together. “Ha! You almost fooled me there! For a second, I thought you might be telling the truth. But you’re really just joking, aren’t you?”
Shim hung his head.
“Well,” the otter said cheerily, “I’ve got to go now. Off to meet my friends at the big slide downstream.” As he rushed past Shim, he added, “Nice hearing your jokes!”
Rolling his eyes, Shim muttered, “They’re not my jokes. They’re . . . my life.”
Looking beyond the overhang, he saw that the thunderstorm had stopped. Outside, sunlight sparkled on the rain-washed stones and reeds. The stream clattered past thousands of colorful pebbles that lined its borders—blue turquoise, red iron, yellow sulfur, and black obsidian, all shining in the sun.
Yet none of that was enough to cheer him up. Frowning, he clambered out to the stream, which spilled over one edge to form a crystal-clear pool. As he knelt by the pool to take a drink, he noticed a waterfall just upstream that he hadn’t seen before. Though narrow, it flowed strongly, crashing downward. After the rainstorm, so much water poured down that the waterfall looked like a rippling white curtain.
Shim turned back to the pool, which was lined with many of the bright blue pebbles. Cupping his hands to get water, he grumbled, “Back in oldentimes, I could have swallowed this whole pool in one bigly gulp! But now . . . nobodily believes me that I was once a giant.”
He sighed morosely. “Even I don’t believe me.”
Suddenly, from the far side of the pool, came a faint ringing of bells. And a tiny whispering voice that floated up to his ears.
“I believe you.”
17.
THE LEAPER
Astonished, Shim dropped his hands and stared at the pool of water. Among the sunlit blue pebbles on its rim, one shone brighter than all the rest. With a gentle ringing sound, it flew into the air and hovered right in front of his face. Like a tiny blue star, it glowed with its own shimmering light.
“Elf!” cried Shim. “It’s you!”
The luminous faery looked deep into his eyes. “Yes, it is,” she answered with a joyful shake of the bells on her antennae.
“You look even more lovelyish than before.”
“And you,” she replied, “look much, much smaller than before. Whatever happened to you?”
Shim groaned. “I really don’t know! All I remember is the attack by Stangmar’s gobsken, a reeky and bleaky swamp, and then—somehow, I got utterly shrunkelled.”
Elf gazed at him, puzzled. With a whir of her translucent wings, she quickly flew a circle around him. As she came back around to face him, she shook her golden bells regretfully. “You certainly were, as you say, shrunkelled!”
His slim shoulders sagged.
“But,” she added more brightly, “I will still call you Big Friend. After all, you’re still a whole lot bigger than me!”
For the first time in weeks, Shim laughed out loud. Elf joined him, ringing her antennae bells as she hovered.
At last, Shim’s mirth calmed enough that he could speak.
“When we said goodbye before, you told me, Go now . . . and live with light.”
“Right. But what does that have to do with you getting shrunkelled?”
“Well,” he replied with a hint of a grin, “maybily I thought you said, Go now and get very light. And so I did!”
Both of them laughed again.
Finally, Shim gave her a grateful look. “It’s been too longish since I got all chuckly like that. About anything.”
“Me too.” Her blue glow swelled. “I’m glad to see you again.”
She swooped closer and landed on his left shoulder, weighing no more than a windblown seed. “Let’s go look at that waterfall,” she suggested. “I like how it pours down into the stream.”
“So do I. Waterfalls make me feel all peacefully inside.”
Shim strode over to the white veil of water, carrying the faery on his shoulder. He sat down
on a stone right next to the falls.
After a while, Elf spoke again. “I remember the last thing you said, back when we met before. You declared, Certainly, definitely, absolutely!”
His brow furrowed. “I don’t say that anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because it sounds . . . too giantly. It just doesn’t feel right anymore.”
She rang a somber note. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Big Friend.”
Compassionately, he replied, “And I’m sorry that evilous wyvern happened to you.”
Her luminous form dimmed, making her wings seem more gray than blue. “We both know what it’s like to lose our family, our people.”
Something about her words made Shim feel again that pang, that emptiness—as if part of himself had been cruelly ripped away, stolen forever. Whatever peacefulness he’d felt from sitting next to the waterfall had now vanished.
Elf shuddered, making her bells chime discordantly. “On that day the wyvern attacked, I also lost something else.”
“What?”
“A magical crystal. One of the great Treasures of Fincayra. It’s been guarded by my people for centuries.”
“The famously Treasures,” said Shim, suddenly recalling the dismal visions of Lunahlia from that last night in Varigal. “Our evilous king is searching for them, right? Nobody knows why. I heard he’s already taken several of them, like the Flowering Harp.”
Elf’s faery light dimmed even further, leaving only the faintest blue glow along the edges of her wings. “After you left, I searched all around our destroyed cavern for the crystal. But it had disappeared.”
“Wait!” exclaimed her companion. “Was it all orange and shiny-like?”
“Yes!” Much of the faery’s radiance returned. “You saw it?”
Shim nodded grimly. “That evilous wyvern took it. I saw him grab it in his claws.”
The color of Elf’s body darkened to steely blue. “That wyvern, I found out after the attack, is called Gasher. He loves to terrorize any creatures smaller than himself—which means basically everybody else. Except, of course, a gi—”
