THE FROG PEOPLE, thousands and thousands of them, streamed out into a square beside the mud-dribble castle. They were smiling, delighted that the tide was about to come back in, and they seemed hypnotized by the incoming waves.
Not even Galump took notice of Arthur anymore. It was as if he had vanished.
Arthur hurried to catch up with Morf, who was trotting along on all four legs, his tail straight up like a furry little flag. “What will we do?” Arthur asked.
“I only have one idea at a time,” Morf purred. “And right now my idea is run for your life. Unless, of course, you’ve got a better idea.”
“I guess not,” Arthur said, and he began to jog along as fast as he could. Which wasn’t very fast at all.
The Great Bell went DINGGGGGG! DINGGGGGG! and the chime made him fear for his life.
“We’ll never make it!” he shouted to Morf.
It was true. Already the horizon was starting to ripple with distant waves. He and Morf ran, and the hard mud splatted under their feet. Before long, the city of the Frog People was behind them, spires glinting in the sun of the bright green sky.
Arthur ran until he couldn’t run anymore. Until his lungs hurt, and his legs ached, and his feet were hot. And, still, the rising water got closer and closer.
Finally he stopped and fell to his knees. He couldn’t even complain about it, because he was panting so hard.
When Morf saw that Arthur couldn’t take another step, he came back and sat down. He began to groom his tail. “Oh, well,” the little creature said. “That’s that, I guess.”
Behind them the tide made a terrible splashing noise. Arthur’s hair was ruffled by the wind that blew in front of the wall of water. Already Mud City had disappeared beneath the sea. In another moment they would disappear, too.
“I wish I could swim,” Arthur said plaintively. Last summer his mother had offered to take him for swimming lessons, but he had said no, certain that his appearance at the pool would have prompted a whole new slew of nicknames, like Whale Boy or, even worse, Leadbelly.
“Wishing won’t work,” Morf told him. “Maybe you could practice floating.”
“I can’t even float!” Arthur admitted bitterly. He knew, because he’d tried it in the bathtub and had gotten a mouth full of soapy water for his efforts.
“At least it’s warm,” Morf said. The water began to rise around their ankles.
“Aren’t you ever afraid?” Arthur asked his new friend.
“Sometimes. When I’m afraid, you’ll know we’re in real trouble.”
“Real trouble?” Arthur asked. The water now swirled up to his waist. “What do you call this?”
“A problem to be solved,” Morf said, winking one of his big brown eyes. “I think I see the solution right over there.”
The little creature pointed with his tail because his paws were already underwater. He was pointing at a white thing bobbing in the sea.
At first Arthur thought it was some kind of a sea monster. But as the thing swirled closer, Arthur saw that it was a small, battered boat.
Morf (who could swim quite nicely, thank you) paddled over to the boat, clambered up the side, and steered it in Arthur’s direction. “Climb in!” he urged. “There are more waves coming! Hurry!”
But poor Arthur could only hang on to the side of the boat. Climbing in was like doing a pull-up, and he couldn’t do pull-ups, not even one. “Not even to save my life!” he told Morf. “Sorry, but I just can’t, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Hard to believe,” said Morf, his tail flicking with agitation. “A boy who can’t even manage one pull-up. How did such a boy manage to get all the way to REM World? Hmmm? Because he gave up without trying? I don’t think so.”
“Sorry,” Arthur said. His fingers started to slip. “Go on without me,” he said bravely. “Save yourself.”
Morf sighed, his eyes gazing back at the approaching waves. “Oh, well,” he said. “I tried, even if you didn’t.”
“But I did try!” Arthur burbled as his mouth went underwater. “I—blub, blub, blub…”
“Look out!” Morf cried. “Shark! Shark!”
Before he knew what he was doing, Arthur pulled himself into the boat and lay gasping in the bottom. When he’d gotten his breath back, he said, “Now the shark will probably eat us, boat and all.”
“Don’t worry about the shark,” Morf said loftily. “I was mistaken. There wasn’t any shark.”
“What!” Arthur sat up. He was furious.
“I see you managed to do a pull-up.” Morf sniffed. “Now see if you can pull an oar. Quickly, or the waves will swamp us.”
There wasn’t time for Arthur to stay mad. He and Morf sat side by side on the only seat in the little boat, each holding an oar. Right behind them, a big wave was rising, threatening to break over the boat. The wave became larger and larger, until it seemed to fill the sky.
“Row!” Morf shouted.
“But I don’t know how to row!” Arthur yelled. Which was absolutely true. He’d never rowed a boat in his life, so how was he supposed to learn now, with a giant wave about to crash over his head?
“Don’t think about it!” Morf shouted. “Just do it!”
Arthur wasn’t thinking about rowing. The wave was so big, it filled the inside of his mind, and there wasn’t room for anything else. So he was completely surprised when Morf cried out, “Good! Keep it up!”
That’s how Arthur discovered that his arms knew how to row, even if his brain didn’t.
“Swing us around!” Morf shouted. “We have to face the wave!”
“But I don’t want to look at the stupid wave!” Arthur screamed. The wave scared him so much, his knees felt like jelly. Nevertheless, he managed to turn the little boat around. The giant wave had risen up so high that the sky had grown dark. In another moment, the water would thunder down, smashing them into a zillion pieces.
“Hang on!” Morf shouted.
“I really don’t want to see this,” Arthur said, covering his eyes.
“Suit yourself,” said Morf. He was standing on the seat, staring up at the very tip-top of the humongously huge wave. “I think it’s actually as high as the clouds. Very unusual.”
“Stupid wave!” Arthur cried, peeking through his fingers.
He heard Morf say, “Waves aren’t stupid or smart. They just are.”
And then their little boat began to rise. One moment they were at the very bottom of the wave, about to be buried under tons and tons of angry seawater, and the next moment the boat was shooting straight up into the sky.
“Elevator going up!” Morf shouted gleefully.
When Arthur had been much younger he had once ridden an elevator to the top of a very tall building. This felt like that, only much, much faster. So fast that Arthur’s stomach seemed to plummet to the bottom of the sea while the rest of him shot straight up the face of the immense wave and was thrust nearly as high as the clouds.
“I told you so!” Morf said gleefully. “Wheeeeee! Let’s do it again!”
But the giant wave passed beneath them and raced away to the other horizon, leaving a calm sea behind it. Morf was disappointed that there were no more giant waves to ride, but Arthur had almost passed out from relief, even if the experience had been sort of exciting, in a scared-to-death way.
“I’m not a boat kind of person,” Arthur said.
“Could have fooled me,” Morf chortled. “You rowed like a champ!”
“Really?”
Morf nodded. “Amazing what you can do if you don’t think about it, huh? Pull-ups, rowing. I wonder what else you can manage?”
“I don’t know,” Arthur said. “The only thing I know is I’m supposed to go back home or the universe will end. At least that is what Galump says.”
“Right,” said Morf. “I almost forgot.”
Morf settled down on the seat next to Arthur. “We’d better keep rowing,” he said, picking up his oar.
And so they rowed and
they rowed, and then they rowed some more. They rowed until the sun disappeared from the sky, and an emerald-green twilight spread like smoke across the sea, and then it was dark. Very dark.
“Where are we?” Arthur said with a sigh. “If we don’t know where we are, how can we figure out where we’re going?”
“No idea,” Morf said. “Wish I knew, kid, but I don’t.”
The plain fact was, Arthur was lost. He was a million REM World light-years from home. At least. And he had no idea how to get back to where he’d started.
“It’s no use,” Arthur said, putting down the oar. He was so exhausted, he simply wanted to sleep.
“What’s that?” Morf whispered, his ears twitching.
Arthur heard it, too. A soft, sighing sound that seemed to come from the edge of the world.
“Uh-oh,” said Morf in a very small voice. And for the first time, he sounded afraid. Really afraid.
“WIND!” MORF CRIED. “It’s coming to get us!”
Arthur listened again to the soft, sighing noise that seemed to come from the edge of the world. It didn’t sound scary to him. “Just a little wind. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that it’s a big wind,” Morf told him. “It’s the Wind of the Giants, and it knows we’re out here in a leaky little boat in the middle of the ocean.”
“Oh, baloney,” said Arthur. “You’re just tired. I get cranky when I’m tired, too.”
But by the time he’d stopped talking, the wind was whipping at his hair and his clothes, and white froth was starting to form on the water. Morf wasn’t just tired and cranky (although he had a right to be). This really was a big wind.
“Go away, you rotten old wind! You’re nothing but hot air!” Arthur shouted. Or tried to shout, but the words were blown out of his mouth before he could say them.
Their little boat began to race along, running before the wind.
Now we’re making progress, Arthur thought. At least they were going somewhere, even if they didn’t know where somewhere was.
“Give me a hand!” Morf squeaked. He was trying to steer with an oar and was having a hard time of it.
Arthur tried to help steer with the oar, but it was no use. The boat went where it wanted to, racing along at an exhilarating speed, nearly as fast as the wind itself.
Looking up, Arthur saw the unfamiliar stars start to fade from the night sky. The first pale green blush of sunlight leaked up over the edge of the world. It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
“Look!” Morf cried. He pointed a trembling paw at the horizon. There, glinting in the light of dawn, jagged cliffs rose even higher than the big wave they’d managed to escape. “We’re going to crash!”
Indeed, there was no way to avoid smashing into the base of the monstrous cliffs. They were going too fast to slow down, no matter how hard they tried to row in the opposite direction.
As the cliffs rose higher and higher above them, and as Arthur and Morf prepared to crash, Morf hid under the seat and curled up with his tail over his eyes. He began to cry. “It was n-n-nice knowing you!” he called out to Arthur, his teeth chattering.
The idea of Morf shaking with fear made Arthur even more terrified. He thought about crawling under the seat also, but there wasn’t room for both of them. In any case, Arthur felt it was his turn to act brave, even if he didn’t feel it. “Don’t worry,” he said weakly. “We’ll be okay.” But he didn’t believe it for a second.
He clutched the side of the boat and braced himself as the wind lifted them out of the water and hurled them through the air, right at the most jagged part of the terrible cliff.
This is the end, Arthur thought. He was about to close his eyes, when a dark shadow descended over them. The little boat was three feet away from being smashed into the cliff.
Then something snatched them right out of the air.
Something huge.
Something giant.
“Are we dead yet?” It was Morf’s quavering voice under the seat.
“Not quite,” said Arthur. And he nearly fainted.
· · ·
Arthur was looking up into a face as big as a harvest moon. It was an old face, an ancient face, as weathered as the cliffs that rose up from the sea. Two great, bloodshot eyes studied the little boat. Each of the eyes was bigger than Arthur, and when he stood up in the boat to get a better look—he’d never seen a giant, after all—the enormous red eyes blinked slowly.
Morf crawled out from under the seat and looked up. “I knew it,” he said softly. “I mean, it was obvious, wasn’t it?”
“What are you talking about?” Arthur asked. What could be less obvious than getting snatched up by a giant moments before being smashed to death?
“This is what always happens when the Wind of the Giants blows you ashore,” said Morf, disgusted. “He caused the whole problem! That’s the point! Why couldn’t that rotten giant just leave us alone? We could have rowed all the way home if he hadn’t made the wind blow us here.”
After the giant satisfied his curiosity about what the little boat looked like, he wanted to know what it smelled like.
Arthur looked up into a nostril as big as a mining tunnel.
The giant sniffed. Arthur and Morf had to cling to the boat or be sucked up his nose.
“This must be a good giant!” Arthur exclaimed. “He saved us, didn’t he?”
“Of course he saved us,” Morf complained indignantly. “He’s hungry!”
And that’s when the giant popped the little boat into his mouth and began to chew.
“STOP!” BELLOWED Arthur at the top of his lungs.
Teeth as big as houses had already crunched the little boat to splinters, and Arthur and Morf clung precariously to the giant’s slobbering lip.
“HUH?” the giant said.
An enormous finger cleared boat splinters from between his teeth, and Arthur and Morf found themselves dangling from the edge of a ragged fingernail.
The giant held them up for another look. After studying them for a moment he said, “FOOD!” and opened his mouth wide.
“Wait!” cried Arthur. Arthur knew what it was to be hungry, so hungry you wanted to eat everything in sight. And that reminded him of the cookies in his pocket. With all the excitement that had happened so far in REM World, he’d forgotten about his stash of Oreos.
“I’ve got something that’ll taste much better than us!” he shouted. And he held up a handful of cookies.
The giant was very hungry—his stomach was rumbling like an earthquake—but the cookies smelled interesting. Small, but interesting. “YOU ARE A HUMAN VISITOR TO REM WORLD?” he asked.
Arthur nodded.
Very delicately the giant took the cookies from Arthur’s outstretched hand and placed them on the tip of his enormous tongue.
“UUUUMMMMMMMMM! GOOOOOOOOOOD!”
And that is how Arthur Woodbury met the giant known as Grog, and came to hear the sad story of Grog’s lonely life.
· · ·
Once he had decided not to eat Arthur and Morf, Grog turned out to be a gentle soul. He lived along the cliffs by the sea, where he used his strong breath of wind to bring him little things to eat. When he lay down to sleep (which happened only once every hundred years or so), he looked very much like a range of mountains. Trees grew on him while he slept, and when he snored, hurricanes devastated the coastlines.
“I AM GROG,” he said. “LAST OF THE GIANTS. I AM ALONE. THERE IS NO OTHER.”
His words boomed off the sea cliffs, causing small avalanches. But Arthur and Morf were safe in Grog’s shirt pocket. Arthur found that the most comfortable place to sit was on top of Grog’s pocket button, with his feet braced in the buttonhole. Morf relaxed in a shirt wrinkle, with only his tail showing.
“ONCE THERE WAS DROLL, BUT SHE IS NO MORE,” Grog said sadly.
Tears rolled from his eyes and caused an unexpected rain shower far below.
“DROLL WAS THE LAST OF THE WOMEN GIANTS. I
LOVED HER EVEN MORE THAN I LOVE TO EAT,” said Grog.
“That’s saying a lot,” Morf sniffed.
“DROLL WAS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE WORLD. HER GOLDEN HAIR WAS BETTER THAN SUNLIGHT, HER DRESS WAS A PRAIRIE OF GREEN, GREEN GRASS, AND HER EYES WERE LIKE BEAUTIFUL BLUE BEACONS FROM A NOBLE LIGHTHOUSE, ALWAYS SHOWING ME THE WAY HOME.
“GROG STILL LOVES DROLL,” he told them. “THESE WERE THE FIRST WORDS EVER SPOKEN, AND IT WAS SUMMER ALL OVER THE WORLD.”
Grog asked Droll to be his wife, and she accepted the proposal and began to plan for the wedding, which was to take place in a thousand years or so. That’s right, a thousand years, for the wedding of giants takes a great deal of preparation. Just providing toothpicks means letting a forest grow to full maturity. Canyons have to be filled with champagne (the bubbles are very large) and cooled with the polar ice cap, which is an awkward task even for giants. The guest list alone fills all the books in the world, for every living creature is invited to a giant’s wedding, and is expected to celebrate the event for at least ten generations.
Grog was at the South Pole, collecting ice for the champagne bucket, when disaster struck.
Droll, who could think of nothing but Grog and the upcoming wedding, went off in search of more flowers. A billion flowers simply wasn’t enough, for there’s no such thing as too many flowers at a wedding, and besides, she loved to hold buttercups under Grog’s chin and watch his face shine.
In her search for more and better flowers, Droll traveled farther and farther from home. And one day she simply never came back.
When Grog returned with the polar ice cap—mighty proud of himself, was Grog—he expected to find Droll preparing a hot meal on the handy volcano she used for a stove. But the volcano was cold, and there was no sign of Droll.
Certain she would return any moment, Grog waited patiently for a year or so, and then he went looking. He searched high and low. He searched up above and down under. He searched inside and outside and even tried searching from the other side, but it did no good. Droll was gone.
She had vanished from the face of the planet, and he knew because he had searched every inch of it.