“That is quite a story, my lady. It is good to know that you believe in equality for the humans alongside of the giants,” Crush replied. “One thing in your story troubles me though. You said that the Queenmother attacked you with a dragon. I never saw a dragon in her mountain, though there was the one in Scalus Mountain where I was sent to retrieve this tooth,” Crush explained as he took a grave chance and revealed his purpose in travelling to Scalus. She looked at the tooth in awe, and her eyes grew large as she considered what must have taken place to gain the tooth.
“Warrior! Did you take that tooth from the dragon?!” she asked in disbelief.
“Yes, I did with the help of a lost friend. And it was no easy task,” he answered flatly.
“I have no doubt,” she said as she marveled at the tale that must belong to the finding of this tooth. “Can you tell me all that you know?” Crush paused as he thought about the dangers of revealing what he knew, but there was no real point in delaying any further. The cat was out of the bag now. Beni was a giant, and if she bore any ill will against him or his mission, it was in her power to end his journey right there in her hand.
“I was told that I must bring the tooth of a dragon . . .” he began and laid out all of the details of his journey in this world. Beni listened quietly as he relayed the kidnapping of Calvin Smith from earth, Crush and Pound’s quest through the one-way portal, their subsequent capture by the tartan guards, his own enslavement within the mines, and his rescue by the green-skinned man name Sean.
Beni flinched when she heard the mention of green skin. Her only dealings with green-skinned humans had involved the children of the Queenmother. She told him how that the Queenmother herself had fair skin like her own, and that it was a mystery to her as to why her children bore green skin. Crush then described how the little fellow Sean was a being of magic, and he compared him to a leprechaun from his own world. He explained that they could be trusted to give away select tidbits of the truth, but they were rumored to withhold certain important details in their dealings with humans, and that the omission of the details usually ended in mischief.
“Knowing the history of leprechauns, you trust that this tooth will free your people?” she asked him.
“You have arrived at one of the many conundrums that I have faced in your world. Who should I trust?” Crush admitted. “I can only believe what I see, and what I see is a little green man helping my people to endure their slavery. A good deed on the face of it. Whether there is any malcontent hidden beneath, I cannot answer. It is with the same judgment that I now trust you for your help, Beni. Sean showed me the way of escape through a tunnel leading to the forest of the giants, and I have been on the run ever since, fighting birds, escaping giants, and confronting a dragon, all for the sake of freeing my people,” he said with a pause. “The fact is that if it had not been for those experiences, you would still be a prisoner within the cameo. It is with that truth that I ask for your help. Please,” Crush reasoned with the giantess as she lowered her hand and placed him on the ground. Beni pondered Crush’s story, and then she stood to her feet and stretched her arms and legs. Wiping the dirt from her clothes, she placed Mouchard’s sword within her belt, and she shook her head gently with a smirk as she thought to herself.
“It seems to me that whether you are being manipulated or not, you have a noble purpose at heart. I will take you back to the mountain, Crush. After that, you may face your own trials with the Queenmother, but your choices are your own from there,” she replied as she looked toward the trees where Mouchard was trapped by the malcoon. “As for freeing the prisoners from the giants, I will have no part in attacking my own people. Though she ensnared me against my will, I wish no war with my sister for humans or for anyone else.”
“Is that how you see humans, then? As unequal to your people, even though you said you believed we were equals. You would not choose to help those in need. What of Joterd and the loyalty your father showed when he took what others saw as worthless and made the greatest orchard in the land? Are you not your father’s daughter?” he pleaded with her.
“You know not what you carry! That tooth will be the destruction of us all, and I will have no part in seeing my homeland destroyed again by a dragon! Take it to your own destruction!” Beni argued back as tears came to her eyes. “When we moved from Nother to the castle and my sister married the king, I swore an oath that I would protect the giants of the kingdom. And all I was able to accomplish was to save my sister and myself from the wrath of the dragon!”
“I hear you, princess,” Crush replied. “But the dragon was buried in Scalus Mountain yesterday, and I don’t believe there is any risk of retribution from him. As for the prisoners, I cannot ask you to be responsible for the least of those in your realm. That burden now lies with me. You owe your allegiance to your sister who placed you in bondage, not to those around her whom she has also bound to enslavement,” Crush reasoned. “If you will help me get near the castle of the giants, I will free them myself, and you will have no blame in the outcome. That is as long as Mouchard does not tell your sister what he knows.”
“Damn your logic, little man!” Beni remarked as she placed her open palm back down to the ground. She had heard Crush’s debate, and it seemed that he had won this round with the giantess. “I just hope you know what you’re getting us into,” she commented as Crush and Simon leaped back into her hand, and she placed them safely on her shoulders.
“I’m not altogether sure what I’m getting into,” he admitted, “but I know I can’t stand by and watch slavery happen without doing something about it. And that includes giants serving the desires of a wicked Queenmother.”
“Duly noted,” Beni replied, and she looked for some way to change the subject to a less volatile topic. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “Everyone likes food,” she thought to herself, but she waited for his reply.
“I’m starving, Beni. I haven’t had a good meal in so long that I’m wasting away,” Crush commented, and he tightened his belt to keep his pants from falling down. They were passing beneath the branches of a shorter tree with fruit hanging from the outer limbs. Being extra careful not to drop her passengers, Beni reached up and retrieved two of the hanging fruits, and after cleaning them off on her pants, she took a healthy bite out of one while offering Crush a taste. The monkey did not hesitate, and Simon leaned in first to snatch a bite himself before Crush had a chance. Seeing that it must be fit for giants and monkeys alike, Crush gave the fruit a taste and found it pleasantly sweet to the taste. “Not bad,” he said as a drop of juice dripped down his chin. Beni shared both of the fruits with them, and then she packed away several more in the bag for the long journey home. When everyone’s appetite was satisfied, Beni packed away her things and looked back the way that they had come. She frowned as if she were worried about being followed, and she let Crush know what she was thinking.
“We have hesitated long enough,” she insisted as she began to walk through the forest once more. “Once I am out of range, the spell will lose strength, and the malcoon will tire of holding Mouchard at bay. Worst of all, I am not certain of the way back.”
“If you can get us across the river to Ecklebee Forest, I can direct you back to the castle,” Crush assured her, and she nodded her assent.
“Very well,” she said as she as hiked through the forest. Within a few steps along the path, she began to chant another magical chorus, one that enchanted everything around her, and Crush found himself mesmerized in a dream world of forests and castles. There were no dragons, no warriors, and no slaves. There was only peace and contentment, and the clouds in the sky above gathered to form flowers and bees that danced in the atmosphere. As the daylight dwindled, the petals of the flowers closed, and the stars peaked out of the darkening sky. The glittering dais gathered in the skies, and the stars amassed themselves into moving clusters to create shapes. The clusters arranged themselves in suc
h a way as to simulate movement, and Crush found himself watching a story unfold within the sky. He recognized one of the sparkling shapes as that of the dragon with a rider perched proudly upon its neck. Another set of stars formed a castle, and the dragon’s fire engulfed the castle in flames. The dragon then flew away, leaving the conflagration to burn down to a smolder, and a great light came from within the flames. Two giants walked out from the midst of the fire, and Crush immediately recognized each, Beni and her sister, Queen Dowager. Queen Dowager found the few survivors and gathered them in her midst. She ordered that the castle be rebuilt and that no humans were to be allowed to roam free in the land of the giants. Once the new structure was built, Queen Dowager cast a spell upon her younger sister, and Beni was caught up within a great torrent of activity as she shrank down into a pendant that lay within her sister’s hand. Queen Dowager tossed the trinket within a treasure chest and locked the bauble away for eternity. Or so she thought. The stars dispersed, and darkness crowded the night sky as Beni’s song came to an end.
Crush awoke from the dream, and he rubbed his eyes as he looked out across the reflection of the great river that separated the mountains. Beni’s song had put him to sleep for the last part of the hike to the river, and he wondered if what he had seen in the stars was true. Was that really what happened to Beni? Was she sabotaged by her own sister? It seemed farfetched that a person’s own flesh and blood could do such a thing, though Crush had no brothers or sisters of his own with which to compare. The closest family he had was the DAM, and he could not imagine betraying them in such a way. “But Phil betrayed us,” he thought as he recalled the deceased agent’s treachery. “So I guess it’s possible,” he reasoned as he silently considered Beni’s situation. For her part, Beni was content to accept everything as it was, and she studied her surroundings for clues on crossing the river.
“Now what do we do?” Beni whispered to herself as she looked up and down the shoreline. From either direction, there did not appear to be a boat of any sort, and there was no way that Beni was going to try swimming across the river.
“All good things must come to an end,” Crush said as he searched the area with his own eyes, but there seemed to be no opportunity to get across the waters. The longer that they stood there waiting, the greater the odds that Mouchard would catch up to them, and the giant warrior would be a force to be reckoned with after Beni’s betrayal. “Can the malcoons swim?” Crush asked out of the blue.
“That is an excellent question. I do not know,” Beni replied, and she began to croon a song on the breeze. Branches snapped in the forest, and Crush watched as two malcoons lumbered out of the woodland and walked out to join them along the shore of the river. Beni placed Crush and Simon on the mane of one of the malcoons while she hopped up on the back of the other. With a whistle and a pat on the rump, the beasts marched up to the water’s edge and then stepped into the river.
“Hey, princess! It was just a thought. An idea,” Crush expounded with one hand raised in the air while he held on tight to the malcoon’s long hair with the other. “I thought that you would experiment first before actually doing it.”
“Right, of course,” she replied as the water level climbed up over her knees. “I did not think that we had the time to experiment. You can swim, correct?”
“Yeah, but . . . whatever,” he said with a sigh. “Looks like we’ll sink or swim now.” The water level rose up until it was several feet below the top of the giant beast’s back, and it seemed to level off as they moved further from shore. When Crush was certain that the beasts were successfully treading water, his tension eased a little, and he kept his eyes nervously pasted on the shoreline ahead. They were moving ahead slowly, but if they could travel steadily at this pace for at least an hour, they may be able to reach the other side before daylight. “You’ve got balls, lady,” Crush remarked to the giantess.
“And I keep them in this bag,” she said as she held up the sack of fruit.
**********
The malcoons grunted from their exhaustion as they reached the rocky beach of the shoreline, and once they were upon dry land, the beasts knelt down on their knees to find comfort on solid ground. Beni placed Crush and Simon back onto her shoulder, and then she began to stroke the malcoons’ manes and sing a relaxing song to them. After a short while, their eyes closed, and they began to snore loudly as they rested on the beach. The din from their snuffling grew to such a high level that Crush worried that their location might be discovered on the beach.
“Do not fret, warrior. The beasts need their rest, and Mouchard will have a struggle crossing the river to catch us here,” she replied. “It was not all that long ago that you yourself were snoring on my shoulder through the forest.” Crush seemed to take offense at the comparison.
“That’s different. They’re as loud as a wood chipper at a sawmill, and the sound is echoing off the rocks and travelling across the water,” he said as he defended himself. “I just purr.”
“Yes, right in my ear,” Beni commented. “The malcoons have been faithful in their work,” she said as she combed their fur with her hands. “We just need to separate ourselves from the beasts. Any giant who finds them will suspect nothing, and the loud noise should help cover our getaway,” she explained to them, and her reasoning was sound. She rose from the ground and hiked across the rocky shore to the edge of the shrubbery that lined the forest. For a moment, she hesitated as if she detected something waiting for them nearby. She then made a quick sprint for the woods, and she moved with such great speed that Crush and Simon had to hold on to her hair to keep from falling to the ground. When she reached the cover of the woods, she kept running several hundred yards into the thick underbrush where she found an evergreen tree standing tall amongst the other trees that Crush and Simon could climb. She placed them gently up onto the highest limb that she could reach before explaining her intent. “Climb up higher. Get out of sight and rest until morning. I will find a place to hide myself and come get you when I wake,” she ordered, and then with one finger pointed tightly at them, she reiterated her orders. “Do not go anywhere without me!” There was a reluctance to Crush’s agreement, but he nodded his assent. He and Simon then climbed up high into the tree as she disappeared out of sight.
“Definitely a princess,” he commented under his breath as he reached the treetop.
**********
The darkness of the night sky was perfect cover for searching the shoreline in the open. Mouchard had traveled steadily through the forest to reach the flowing river, and he could find no sign of the giantess upon the rocky shore. He could however discern a tiny cluster of shapes cutting across the river’s flow and moving steadily to the other side.
“If that is her, then how is she getting across?” he asked as he marveled at her ingenuity and grumbled in disappointment at himself.
Chapter 2
*
Headed for the Castle
*
The next morning Crush awoke to a miserable stiffness and ache from sleeping in such an awkward position the night before. He had taken off his belt, placed his arm on a nearby branch, and then strapped his arm tightly to the branch with the belt to prevent himself from tumbling out of the tree in the middle of the night. The results were a throbbing arm from the constriction and an aching back from the uncomfortable position he found himself. What was worse was the lack of sleep he had endured for the short period of the night. He had come across a serpent once before in this forest, and the stricture of his belt produced dreams of strangulation by a python. Between the fears of falling to his death and asphyxiation, Crush was tired but more happy to be awake than asleep.
He remembered Simon, and he peered around to see if the monkey was anywhere nearby, and he realized that his small friend had left sometime during the night. The primate was at home here in the forest of the giants, and Crush imagined that he had rejoined his friends and companio
ns which he had missed for so long during their adventure.
“Who could blame him,” he thought to himself as he rubbed his forearm to speed up the return of circulation. “Needles,” he rumbled as he flexed his fingers repeatedly to get the movement back in them. After waiting for thirty minutes or more, the feeling had returned completely to his arm, and he had sufficiently stretched the ache out of his back, yet during this whole exercise, he had noticed no sign of Beni. He could accept Simon’s departure, but Beni would have to return if he was going to succeed in freeing the prisoners from Queen Dowager’s prison. He needed her help, and he had confidence that she would come back.
Or would she? Beni had been trapped in a piece of jewelry for an extended period of time, and though Crush felt that she owed him some debt for her freedom, it was not a farfetched idea that she would use her newfound freedom to escape her sister forever, especially since Queen Dowager had already sent a warrior to follow Crush and to capture him in the wild along with her younger sister. The giantess had awakened to find herself caught in a dangerous struggle between Queens, and she could hardly be blamed for abandoning her new friendship with Crush so that she could get away from the troubles of this world.
After another moment had passed, Crush decided that he had lost enough daylight perched in the treetop, and he could wait no longer. He descended fifty feet down the side of the tree, and when he had reached the limb which Beni had placed him on the night before, he scouted the surrounding forest for giants. Something was definitely wrong, and he felt that he was not alone. With a sigh, he cautiously stepped down to the next branch, and a voice spoke out in his mind.
“Anxious to leave now, are you?” the lady’s voice rang out in his thoughts. Panic stricken, Crush looked every direction, but no one was in sight. “I am here, guarding you,” the voice echoed in his head though he was alone.