Pirate Tales
“Wait here.” Leevana touched Karl’s arm and then straddled Twiggy, before taking a leap into the air.
Cintia gazed up wide-eyed. “Can she reason with a giant? I mean, they’re both giants, but it seems a bit ridiculous to call her a giant next to this monstrosity?”
Karl did not know the answer and did not dare look up.
They heard Leevana’s strident voice high above them. Karl could just about hear that she was using the ancient giant language, or some form of it. She and Ulva had taught it to him. Ulva had been quite fierce whenever he got the declensions mixed up.
Karl and Cintia instinctively drew together as the immense shadow of the giant loomed over them.
“Wow, she’s ugly!” This from Cintia. It really is unkind for a beautiful person to loudly point out that someone is ugly. Karl fervently hoped the giant person could not understand the language of Ostinia…
“Don’t be afraid, little people.” The voice rumbled like thunder, but it sounded feminine. Karl looked up. With the unreal feeling you get at a high temperature, he took in a huge, craggy, likeness of a girl’s face above him, that looked like it had been roughly hewn from green rock. She really was ugly. Her head was the size of a house. She was smiling, Karl hoped. At any rate, she was showing teeth, each one of which was probably as big as a man. Lee alighted beside them and put an arm around Karl who immediately felt reassured.
The colossus spoke again; “I’m Baba. I’ll take you to the King. Come.” She laid a massive hand – a hand the size of her mitten – out on the snow.
Cintia shook her head. “She wants us to step on her hand? No way!”
“She wants to give us a lift,” said Lee. “It’s a long way, and it’s bad manners to refuse help, hey?”
“You trust her?” said Cintia, curling her pink lip.
“I do as a matter of fact. I know her size is intimidating, but really, she’s just a little girl.”
“The three hundred foot little girl,” said Cintia. But she followed Lee and Karl onto the giant hand, where the night-hag firmly gripped the kids by the arms.
The hand lifted slowly into the air. Karl felt the effect of the movement upward, and it made him somewhat dizzy. He could feel Baba’s gaze on him and it made him uncomfortable. He looked away.
“Where is this creature going to take us?” said Cintia.
“It’s rude to talk about her that way, even if she can’t understand you, hey?” scolded Lee. “She’s taking us to the King. He’ll know what to do.”
Karl reckoned that Steel and that lot would have big trouble toppling a giant King.
Baba’s strides covered vast areas of land at a time, and very soon they had reached what from a distance appeared to be a mountain, but now Karl could see great gates set into it, made of the bones of some leviathan, unimaginably huge.
“The King, he’ll see you right now,” said Baba. Perhaps she was trying to speak softly, but her voice was like thunder anyway. “Don’t worry, you, night-hag, or you, pretty little people. Giant King is wise.”
“It’ll be alright, kids. Please leave the talking to me,” said Leevana, giving each of their hands a reassuring squeeze.
Cintia wrinkled her freckled nose in disgust. “What a place!”
They had entered a vast cavern, the ceiling lost in shadows. There was an acrid smell coming from great oil lamps in the corners. Craggy outlines of giants seemed to stand immobile, like living pieces of the mountain.
“Your majesty, a night-hag and nice little people ask your help,” said Baba, setting her massive hand down on a stone platform before the throne so that the three of them could clamber off.
The whole thing had been strange and exhausting for Karl already. Lee had to pick him up and carry him off Baba’s hand. He gazed fearfully up at the Giant King and then wondered if that was rude, so averted his gaze.
The Giant King was not nearly as large as Baba - He was probably twelve times the height of a human man. That would make him seventy-two foot, but Baba was three hundred foot. It was as Lee had told Karl; giants and their ilk come in all sizes with no fixed template. Their King looked like a great, grey statue, with shrewd eyes, sharp as flint.
Lee introduced them in the Giant language. “Oh Mighty Monarch, I, Leevana, spawned from the River Dream, Karl, rightful prince of Ostinia and Cintia here humbly entreat your assistance, in the name of the Primordial Father. Steel, the ghoulish usurper and dictator of Ostinia pursues us, and has recruited his kindred spirits for the task – the worst of Ostinia’s dead.”
The Giant-King replied: “Leevana, spawn of the River Dream, our kind should not concern ourselves in mortal affairs. What are they to us? Mortal rulers come and go. You should have born that in mind as well, but I can see you’ve let your love for a dethroned prince blind you.” Leevana bit her grey bottom lip, but made no reply to that. “Come sunrise, we will escort you from our realm and to the nearest human port.”
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00O00
There was a feast of some kind going on in the hall. There was a massive, stone table on which their lay the carcass of some horrible sea serpent or other creature of the deeps, as long as Baba was tall, with massive, flat glassy eyes and teeth that would have made elephant tusks seem like little splinters by comparison.
But they weren’t expected to partake of that feast. Instead, they were carried to another cave in a great basket and left in the care of another giant little girl, by the name of Melfilp. This one was probably fifty-foot tall, so built on the same scale as the Giant King, but she was a bright green colour, almost as lurid as Lee.
“Hello,” she said in the giant tongue, her great, lips forming a smile, “I’m your nursemaid. Look at my doll house! I knew it would come in useful.”
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The doll house was a rough, wooden structure standing on a stone table in the cave. It was the size of a hut big enough for human habitation. It was divided into two cabins by a wooden wall. There were windows set in the sides, but they had no glass.
To Karl’s consternation, the giant girl just stood and gazed at them through the window, continuing to smile.
“Can’t you make her go away?” Cintia demanded of Lee. “Or make her stop staring? Can’t you talk their language?”
Lee put a long finger to her greyish lips and then turned to the window. “Melfilp…”
“Call me Mel,” said the girl. Her voice resounded throughout the cavern, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as Baba’s. Mel was a lot smaller than that other giant girl, for one thing. She gave a nervous giggle and put a hand to her mouth. “Are you the Prince?”
Karl supposed that question was meant for him. “Yes, Mel. I’m the Prince. I’m very glad to meet you.” He tried to smile in a way that wasn’t nervous.
“I hope she’s not the sort of giant brat who likes torturing small animals,” said Cintia aloud in Ostinian. Lee glared at Cintia.
Mel leaned her huge, green face close to the window. Karl almost leapt back from her, but Lee had an arm around his shoulder to reassure him.
“I always wanted to meet a prince of the human world. I – “ for some reason she put a hand to her mouth again and stifled a little squeal. “I thought you might like something to eat. All three of you.”
She held a huge platter in her massive, green thumb and forefinger through the window. Leevana took it in both hands. It was piled high with a massive, roasted bird, many times larger than a turkey, garnished with what looked like a blue-green kelp.
Mel grinned at them through the window. “Eat well.”
Luckily had brought cutlery in her bag.
“Call me if you need anything,” said Mel. Karl was relieved that she didn’t keep staring at them throughout their meal.
“It’s so uncomfortable, the way she stares,” grumbled Cintia.
“She’s just a little girl,” admonished Lee. “A giant little girl.”
“I don’t want to wait around.”
“We just have to make the best of things, hey? They’ll take us to the sea when they’re good and ready.”
After dinner, Mel wanted to hear an account from Karl and Lee as to why they were on their journey. Lee did most of the telling. She was better at the Giant language.
“I hope you find your grandmother, your highness,” said Mel, grinning at Karl. He curtseyed to her. He could still remember how to do it in the royal way, after all this time. She gave a little squeal and clapped her massive hands together with a sound like a gunshot. “You’re such a perfect little person. It’s sad you have to go soon.” She stuck out her huge bottom lip. Karl was not sure how to reply to that, so just curtseyed again.
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00O00
The sun had set. The moon had arisen and could easily be seen through the hole in the cavern roof. It bathed them all in its cold radiance.
Mel thoughtfully provided iron tubs of heated water for them. Lee dipped a long, green hand into the one provided for Karl. “Hm, hot enough, but a bit deep…”
She called to Mel in the Giant language. “Mel, please look away, Karl is going to bathe.”
She turned to Cintia. “You too, Cintia. Please go in the other room.”
Cintia shrugged and went through the door.
Karl stood with the water up to his neck as Lee supervised his bathing. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but if she was anxious about the possibility of his slipping over in the big tub, he could put up with it. Abruptly his legs began to buckle and he would have fallen, but then his mother grasped him in her strong, clammy hands and lifted him bodily out of the tub. She wrapped a rough piece of cloth around him. Mel had found it from somewhere… she thought it would serve him as a towel. Oh well, at least it was clean.
“There, everything’s alright, darling,” said Lee softly, stroking his damp hair. Karl was glad Cintia hadn’t been watching. He didn’t want to look like a weakling in front of her.
Cintia was splashing about in the other room and he could hear her singing a rather rude song. Lee sighed and shook her head. “That Cintia…”
Eventually, after Lee had bathed as well, the trio sat in the main room of the hut, sharing a drink of a warm, frothy liquid that Mel had dished out into a giant thimble for them. Lee’s long red hair was still damp and hung limp around her, smelling much more pungently than Cintia’s.
“This place is definitely not a royal room. The bedbugs here had better not be as huge as everything else,” said Cintia, wrinkling her freckled nose. “It’s not like there’s anywhere to run.”
“There’s no need to worry about bedbugs,” said Lee. She brought an old paperback book from inside her bag. Karl recognised it. It was a pirate themed short story. The moonlight seemed to shine brighter around the night-hag, her long, angular face appearing quite ghostly as she turned the paperback over in her long fingers.
Cintia gazed avidly at the back of the book where the blurb was written. The blurb gives away the beginning of the story, about how the villain, the pirate captain with the pseudonym ‘Captain Bloodaxe,’ was utterly ruthless and spared no one when he attacked a merchant ship.
The story tells how the protagonist, Baldar, was a mercenary hired to guard a merchant ship. He was out of his depths though, so to speak, because the ship was boarded by ruthless pirates, led by Captain Bloodaxe, who killed all the crew, except for Baldar, whom they eventually subdued.
Captain Bloodaxe made a show of pretending to set him free, giving him a bag of salted beef and black bread for his journey, and putting his sword back in its scabbard, but then revealed it to be a twisted joke, shoving him in the water while his hands were still tied.
However, it turned out that they had been above the lost city of Atlantis. A magic city, now at the bottom of the sea. Atlantis is not like just anywhere on the ocean floor. A powerful enchantment in the place meant that Baldar did not drown. Instead, he could survive there, but only until nightfall.
Baldar found the cave of a sea-hag who taught him some elementary necromancery. There was a spell involving the use of black pearls found in Atlantis, which could conjure animated skeletons, although the pearls were mostly guarded by monsters like the Sea Dragon and the Kraken. In the story, Baldar fights the Kraken, but avoids the Sea Dragon.
Karl wondered whether his mother liked the story because it showed the hag creature in a good light. All too often, stories did not. It was oddly soothing, in this strange place, to hear a familiar story again. It put him in mind of the rainy afternoon his mother had read it to him in their cave. He felt relaxed again and leaned against Lee. Cintia sat opposite them, this time listening to the story attentively and not interrupting to make smart comments.
Baldar found the pirate ship again with the help of a friendly dolphin, and when on the deck, he conjured a quintet of animated skeletons. Their sudden appearance cowed the superstitious pirate crew so much that they surrendered without a fight. Baldar took Captain Bloodaxe to the proper authorities and allowed the other pirates to go free, running the ship from then on with the help of his animated skeletons.
“So, he had a skeleton crew then?” said Cintia. “You see what I did there? A crew of animated skeletons and the minimum number of crew members?”
Lee gave a wry smile. “That’s Aila’s kind of pun.”
“So, is this spell real? Can you teach it?”
Lee shook her head, the strands of her damp hair jiggling. “I haven’t got any black pearls, and even if I had some, I’ve never, ever heard of a human having any aptitude for this kind of magic. I think the author was taking just a bit of a creative liberty on that point?”
“Pfft. The hag in the story sounds like a really useful character. Teaching Baldar so much in such a short time.”
Lee smiled. “I really like that her solution to the pirates did not involve more fighting and bloodshed. Violence begets more violence and atrocities feed on each other. Look at the Great War and the Revolution too, just paving the way to Steel’s reign.”
“Yes, yes, good moral to shoehorn into a pirate story,” said Cintia. “But why are you so sure humans are good for nothing?”
Karl wasn’t sure why, but she was glaring at Lee, her blue eyes bright and her cheeks flushed slightly pink. She looked even more beautiful like this.
“What are you talking about?” said Lee, frowning, “I just said that only a supernatural being can do that sort of spell.”
Cintia glared for a moment. “I’m going to bed,” she said finally. She turned to Karl. “Good night, Prince.”
Lee stared, her blue eyes wide with bewilderment, as Cintia flounced off into the other room of the hut. Karl thought it best to distract her mind from Cintia and clutched at her arm to draw it around him. She put both arms around him, giving her small, contented sigh. Cuddling him put her in a good mood. “My little love,” she murmured, kissing the top of his hair. They sat in silence for a while.
But they were all three little here, in the land of Giants. Karl thought of something. “Being here where everything is the wrong size after finding out that hall was really a mitten… it’s like Alice in Wonderland.”
Lee chuckled. “It’s a bit strange, even for me. I’ve been away for a long time.”
Could the Land of Giants count as Lee’s true home? Or hadn’t she come from the River Dream? “You were born in the River Dream, Mum. Was that like your first home?”
“It’s confusing, darling. I emerged from the River fully formed, down in the Dream Caverns. I suppose the River is my mother, but when I came into being in Dream… it seems so long ago. It’s hard to remember clearly.”
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00O00
Karl was glad that he could use his mother’s fur coat as bedding. Whatever the fabric was that the giants had provided, it was as rough as sack cloth. Karl dozed fitfully. There was the noise of giants moving around in the other caverns, like the constant roll of thunder all around. A lot about their journey had been weird and unsettling. Leevana was sitting propped up against the wooden wall of the hut, her eyes closed and her long, green face still. She was lucky that she could nap even in the most uncomfortable positions.
Karl was having trouble sleeping, however. “Mum?”
Her eyelids flickered, and her wide blue eyes opened. “Yes, love?”
“The world outside our cave is all big and strange. Not just Giant Land.”
She gently touched his cheek with her long, clammy fingers. “We’ll find another place to call home.”
Karl thought of the pirate story she had read that evening and grinned. “Would you ever have considered making a home in Atlantis, like the sea-hag did?”
Lee grinned. “Perhaps. But the city is lost.”
“What if a hero of Baldar’s type came to visit? What would you have done differently?”
“Hm. Perhaps I’d persuade him to live in safety with me. I wouldn’t want him going off to fight the Kraken alone. Or Captain Bloodaxe.”
Karl sat up and gripped her shoulders pulling a face at her. “Would you lecture him about messing with giant squids, or madmen who give themselves macho pseudonyms?”
She pulled a face back. “I totally would.”
Feeling silly they rubbed their noses together.
Karl soon fell asleep in his mother’s arms as she rocked him. His dreams were untroubled by Captain Bloodaxe – Or Steel.