“What?” Harriet asked.
“When I arrived here, it was near a valley, a river, and a castle. But that’s not where we were.”
“Of course it’s not,” Henrietta said. “The giant is a lowly serf, working for the Lord of the Castle when there is need.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“I heard them talking. The giants don’t like their boss, but have no choice. They make their meager living by getting rewards for interesting things they find, like magic hens or little folk like you. When they found me they should have delivered me to the Lord, but got back at him by secretly keeping me. I would have been better off at the castle, I’m sure.”
I exchanged a glance with Harriet, there in the gloom. “Maybe we should go there,” Harriet said.
“Not safe,” Henrietta said. “By their account, the Lord is a piece of manure.”
I had to smile, briefly. “Chickenshit,” I murmured. “Or a turd.”
“Well, you don’t have to be vulgar,” Henrietta grumped.
“Sorry. I guess you’re right. We’d better stay away from the castle.”
“At least now we have something to orient on,” Harriet said. “The castle should be easy to find. When we do, we’ll know we’re close to the beanstalk.”
“That makes sense,” I agreed.
We looked around. Now that it was dark, I saw that many of the low plants glowed faintly, illuminating the ground. The gloom was solid up in the trees, but we could see where we were going, being land-bound. If only we knew where to go.
“I wonder whether the castle is lighted at night?” Harriet asked. “If so, Henrietta could fly up and spy it above the trees. That would give us a direction.”
“I don’t much like to fly at night,” the hen said. “But it does make sense.” She taxied to a clear aisle, then ran along the ground, treating it as a runway. When she achieved flight velocity she spread her wings and took off. We saw her flying low to the lighted land, then ascending when she came to an open section. She was a heavy bird, needing space.
“We’ll wait here for your return,” Harriet called. That made sense, because how would the hen find us if we moved away in the gloom?
But it meant we had time to waste. “Now that we’re alone,” I murmured.
“I thought you’d never ask.” She came into my embrace and kissed me. “I don’t know what I’d ever have done without you, Jack; you saved me from getting cooked or worse.”
I knew what she meant. The way the giant had looked at her was trouble. She was way too small for him to touch in that way, but he was bound to try, no matter if it killed her, which it well could. If the jealous giantess didn’t drop her into the pot first.
Our kiss seemed like only a heavenly moment, but then there was the sound of the hen coming in for a landing. We must have spent some time obliviously embraced.
Henrietta skidded to a halt at the near end of her runway and folded her wings. “The castle’s lighted!” she squawked exuberantly. “I know where it is!”
“Great!” I said.
“I hope you folk weren’t too bored waiting.”
“We managed,” Harriet said with what I was sure was an obscure smile. Women were good at obscurity too.
We walked briskly in the direction Henrietta indicated. I carried her, as she was tired from her effort. Hens normally don’t fly much, and she had been caged; she wasn’t in condition. But she had done us a signal service.
Before long we emerged from the forest. There was the valley, illuminated by its ground cover. There was the river, faintly glowing with its own colors. And there beyond was the lighted castle, splendid in the night.
I assessed the landscape. “The beanstalk should be in that general vicinity,” I said, pointing up the slope.
“Wonderful,” Harriet said. “We can climb down to your house, and now that we have these gold eggs, we won’t need stultifying jobs. We can live free.”
I loved the way she said “we.”
Then there was a sound. Tromping, as of a giant. And there was a swinging light, as of a lamp. The giant was out looking for us! And Fido was with him. Damn!
The dog winded us. He bayed. The chase was on. We were caught out in the open, with no trees to hide behind. They would surely show us no mercy. What could we do?
The monstrous canine bounded toward us, knowing exactly where we were. I focused desperately, feeling something emerging from my being.
A small ball of fire appeared between us and the dog. Fido pulled up short, lest he get singed. Great break for us—but how had it happened so conveniently?
“Your talent,” Henrietta squawked. “Pyrotechnics!”
“Generating fire,” Harriet said, awed. “Wonderful, Jack!” She kissed my ear.
But Fido was only momentarily halted. He ranged to the side, circling the burn.
I did not look this gift horse in the mouth. I focused again. Another burst of fire formed beside the first, brushing the dog back again. Then a third.
A wind came up. It fanned the flames, which blazed up and headed toward the giant and his dog. That was a really lucky break!
“Enough,” Harriet said. “Let’s get the heck out of here while they are distracted.”
We did, making our way on toward where I thought the beanstalk poked through the ground. And there it was! Our escape was at hand.
A figure rose up between us and the beanstalk. “Not quite so fast, humans,” a dulcet voice said. “I knew that if I waited, you would return to this spot, your access to the nether realm. Your discovered talents will not enable you to get past me. You will not be departing quite yet.”
We paused in place. There, outlined against the assorted glows of the ground cover, was the silhouette of a female giant. And what an outline! Flaring hair, hourglass torso, the works. This was surely the shapeliest creature extant, quite apart from her size. I was tongue-tied with more than surprise.
It was Harriet who spoke for us. “Who are you? What do you want with us?”
“I am the Sorceress Sydelle, versed in magic and related arts. I mean you no harm. We need to talk.”
I hesitated. I did not want to fall into the power of any giant, not even one as lovely as this. But she was between us and the beanstalk, and her confidence was persuasive. This was no stupid entity. But whatever she had to say, could we afford to trust her?
Did we have a choice?
Chapter 8:
Sydelle
“No,” said the Sorceress Sydelle. “You don’t.”
I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it again. I turned to Harriet, frowning. “Did I just say something right now?”
Harriet flicked her gaze at me, then flicked it back at the giantess. “You asked if we had a choice.”
“I’m confident I didn’t ask that.”
“Does it matter, Jack? We kind of have a situation here.”
I held my ground. “It does.” I looked up at the giant sorceress. “You read my mind.”
I did, human. As you two are reading mine.
“Wait,” I said. “Um, what?”
And then it hit me. The sorceress wasn’t speaking. At least, I didn’t think she was. Her lips, I was certain, hadn’t moved. But it was hard to tell at night.
You are correct, Jack. May I call you Jack?
“Sure,” I said. At least, I think I said it. I was getting confused as to when I was speaking and when I was thinking.
You will get used to it, Jack of New York.
But as I listened a little more carefully, I realized that, yes, her voice was appearing just inside my ear. Inside my head.
Very good, human.
“But I don’t understand,” I said, making it a point to use my mouth. “How can I hear your thoughts? And you mine?”
“I know!” said Harriet.
“Finally, someone comes to their senses,” said Henrietta the hen.
At least, I think she said. I hoped like crazy that I wasn’t also h
earing the thoughts of a talking hen, too.
“What do you know?” I asked. “And make it quick. I’m afraid I’m very, very close to going insane.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” said Harriet. “One of our gifts must be telepathy.”
“But I’ve never once thought I could read other people’s minds.”
“I bet you were better at it than you thought. How often did you just know that Mr. Periwinkle was in a bad mood?”
“But he was always in a bad mood. Hell, it was his job to be in a bad mood and make the rest of us miserable.”
“But didn’t you just know?”
“M-Maybe. Did you?”
“Usually. Except when he looked down my blouse. That was worse.”
“But he’s just one man—”
“I’m sure if you thought back hard enough, you would find plenty of examples of catching thoughts from people here and there...but you wrote it off as your imagination...or perhaps as one of your own thoughts.”
“I think I want to wake up now.”
“There will be no waking up, Jack of New York. At least, not yet, and perhaps never.” It was simply easier to pick up Sydelle’s thoughts as regular speech.
“I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”
“Then I suggest you come with me. There is, after all, a reason why I brought you up here.”
“You brought us up here?”
The voluptuous sorceress smiled...and I happened to finally catch perhaps her one and only flaw: she was missing an upper tooth. Still, it did little to take away from her oversized sexiness—
“Hey!” said Harriet, elbowing me.
“Simple humans,” mumbled the hen.
“Quiet!” I snapped at the bird. But she was right. Apparently, my thoughts were now wide open for all to hear. I would have to be careful with that.
“I will show both of you simple techniques to guard your thoughts. But first, you must come with me.”
“We want to go home,” I said, standing my ground, looking up, up, up at the perhaps the most curvacious—
I stopped my thoughts right there.
“Good, boy,” murmured Harriet next to me.
“I understand your desire to go home—and perhaps that can be arranged at a later date—but, remember, each of you made the choice to come here on your own free will.”
That was true. Except—
“Not quite,” I said. “We dreamed we came here. One can hardly be responsible for what one does in a dream.”
The sorceress squatted down before me, spreading her legs slightly. She was wearing a long skirt, but flashed me enough inner thigh to fuel my fantasies for years to come. The elbow in my side was sharp and piercing. I gasped.
Before me, the sorceress smiled, her mostly even white teeth catching some of the ambient light that radiated up from the phosphorus plants themselves. She was beautiful, but nowhere near as beautiful as Harriet. At least, not for my taste.
“Better,” said my new partner.
“True, you are currently in a form of lucid dreaming. Indeed, your bodies are back in your home realms, sleeping mostly contentedly, although I would bet also restlessly too. But the rest of you is very much here.”
“But...what else is left?” I asked. “Aren’t we, you know, mostly our bodies?”
“Mostly,” said the sorceress. “But you are much more than a physical body, Jack.”
“My head is hurting.”
“Then come with me, and let me explain further, for there is a reason why you are here, and why others like you are here, too.”
I looked at Harriet. She looked at me. We both shrugged. When we looked back at the sorceress, she was gone. In her place was a massive oak tree with what appeared to be a door set within its thick trunk. Indeed, the door swung slowly open. Warm light issued out.
“I guess we go in here,” I said.
“Good guess, lunkhead,” said the hen, and led the way in.
Chapter 9:
Mission
The interior was, of course, considerably larger than the exterior. We stood in what seemed to be a living room, with giant-sized furniture. Harriet and I scrambled up onto a four foot high cushioned footstool, the best seating we could manage. Sydelle did not live in the tree; this was merely an access. I was sure she could make her front door open anywhere in Giantland, as convenient.
“Yes, of course,” she agreed.
Telepathy was convenient, but I was getting increasingly antsy to learn how to shield my thoughts, if not to control them outright. Some reactions were involuntary, but nevertheless embarrassing if openly expressed. When the giantess had squatted...
“No, don’t elbow me again!” I exclaimed to Harriet. “My side can’t take any more bruising.”
She relented. “I suppose I am coming across as a jealous bitch.”
Yes she was. Then I stifled that thought, too late; some leaked out, earning me a glare.
“Before we get into the substance, the reason for our being here,” Harriet said a trifle grimly as she changed the subject, “I’d like to know more about you, Sydelle. Who are you, among the giants? Do you have a boyfriend?” A boyfriend would make the sorceress safer in one sense. Sydelle sat down opposite us, her skirt rising dangerously close to her shapely knees. “Yes, of course. I live in a local village. To my neighbors I’m just another nubile village girl. None of them know about my special powers; I learned early on to keep them secret, lest I be marked for extinction by the King, who tolerates no potential competition. He alone has magic, along with his most trusted minions. I do have a boyfriend, but he knows nothing. His interest is only in my body, not my mind. If he knew I had a mind, he’d be gone in an instant.” She sighed. “I’d love to be with a man, any man, who truly understands me, without resentment, if only briefly. But that’s not feasible with my own kind.” She glanced at me, her knees beginning to part. “I could make myself seem to be your size, for an hour or a night, if—”
“No way!” Harriet snapped.
They all laughed, and the hen cackled. It was teasing humor, of course. But as with much humor, it skirted a treacherous territory. Even the mere thought of peeking up under that huge skirt electrified me; I couldn’t help it. I really needed to be able to shield my errant thoughts.
“You’re not the only one,” Harriet said darkly. “I know you can’t help it, but your reaction lights a fuse to a bomb in my gizzard I can’t banish. I’d much rather come across as a tolerant, understanding friend.”
She really was jealous; that was what annoyed her. But, actually, I rather liked having her feel that way.
“Oh you do, do you!” she snapped.
“There do seem to be advantages to mental privacy,” I said, embarrassed.
“Yes there are,” she agreed. “It enables us to appear far more civilized than our reptile brain core allows.”
“Here is how you achieve it,” Sydelle said. “Picture an impenetrable wall, or a shell, that surrounds your emotional core. It can’t get out, and no one can see in.”
“But that’s just imaginary,” Harriet protested.
“So are your thoughts: imagination. The wall is made of the same stuff.”
“So it is,” Harried agreed, impressed.
I focused on wall building. I pictured it going up brick by brick, surrounding my inner sanctum, until I was entirely walled in. I knew Harriet was doing the same.
“But how do we see out?” I asked belatedly.
“Make a window with one-way glass.”
Oh. Of course. I made the window. Then I lined the wall with lead, and added steel bands for additional structural support. It seemed secure.
“Now shall we test it?” Sydelle inquired.
“Test it?” I asked from my shielded turret.
She stretched prodigiously so that her huge breasts swelled under her blouse. She lifted her separated knees so that for a moment her entire nether landscape flashed before me, pink panties and all.
My wicked appreciation exploded. It splatted against the wall, almost blowing it apart. But the fortress held, thanks to the steel bands.
“Only a little smoke,” Harriet said.
I glanced around. A small cloud of smoke was dissipating over my head; it must have leaked out around my neck. There was also a bit of steam floating away from Harriet. Her jealously had been contained.
“Naturally I saw nothing of interest,” I lied.
“And I had no concern,” she said with a straight face.
We all laughed again, this time with relief.
“Practice it in off moments, shielding different kinds of thoughts,” Sydelle said, becoming more decorous. “You have the essence. In time you should be able to mask the very presence of the shield, so that a mind reader thinks you are being completely open. That can be invaluable. You will also want to practice penetrating the shields of others, without seeming to. There’s an art.”
“Thank you,” I said with real gratitude. We all knew how I had reacted to the sight of that body, but now we could pretend that I had been a gentleman all the way to my core, and that Harriet had similarly been a lady. That was much more comfortable. It also helped that I was now able to hide my suspicion that the giantess rather enjoyed teasing me with peeks. Could she really make herself seem to be my size? Did she maybe see me as a potential playmate? Ludicrous! Yet I wondered.
Harriet was watching me, suspecting what she could no longer read.
“Now to business,” Sydelle said seriously. “There are several aspects, and you will have an important decision to make.”
“Why you brought us here,” Harriet said. I was glad she had answered, because I just might have thought of another decision to wrestle with.
“Yes. First some background: the realm of the Cloud is governed by a cruel king. He’s not an impostor, he’s legitimate, but power has corrupted him so that now all he wants is more of it, at the expense of the rights and welfare of the rest of us. He takes the produce of the farmers, leaving barely enough for them to survive, and any who protest are killed and their lands given to his cronies. He takes the cloth the women weave so that they can hardly clothe their families, and any who protest are chained naked in the central square to be publicly ravished by the guards. He takes the nubile girls for his transient pleasure, and they dare not protest lest they get tortured and thrown in the dungeon for the use of the degraded trolls that run it. I have escaped so far, but my turn is surely incipient, lending urgency to my quest. He has become a merciless tyrant. Everyone knows this, but no one protests, because he actually likes to make them suffer. He has telepathy but doesn’t bother to shield it; he thrives on the pain of others. Anyone who crosses him in any minor way soon regrets it. He knows their thoughts, because he can read their minds.”