With a few strides of their long legs the women reached me.

One of them, who had slightly more weight than the rest and also seemed to be somewhat older, pointed her sword at me.

“Who are you?” she asked.

I was too awestruck by the appearance of the women that I could not answer at all. I was also wary of the fact that she could cut me into half with a single slash of her massive sword.

“He looks like a Dwarvian,” one of the other women said.

“But I don’t think Dwarvians have black grass on their heads,” another said, who had a tattoo on her neck.

“W-where am I?” I stuttered.

Suddenly the first woman who had spoken to me let out a laugh. She seemed rather amused seeing me speak.

“He looks scared to death,” she said to her companions. She came and squatted in front of me, so that her head was at the same level as mine. She observed me.

“I do not think I have ever seeing anything quite like you,” she said. “You seem to me like a fusion of all the different races that inhibit the world.”

All the time she was speaking, I was gawking at her giant face. My heart hammered in my chest.

“Where am I?” I asked again.

The woman laughed at my squeaky voice. But I continued to look at her fearfully and maybe she realised that I really didn’t know where I was.

“You are not far from a village of us giants,” she said. “Where did you come from?”

“Jorhat,” I answered. Jorhat was the name of my hometown. I at least hoped that such a place existed and I wasn’t imagining that I had a hometown in the first place. “Is there any way I can get back to Jorhat?”

“Well, I have never heard the name of that place,” the woman said. She turned to her companions. “Anybody knows where Jorhat is?”

They all shook their giant heads.

“You don’t remember the way you came to here from Joorhat?” the woman asked.

“No,” I said, “you… you won’t believe me, but I just woke up here with no memory of how I got here.”

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The woman made a small frown as though unsure if she should believe me. But I kept looking at her with imploring eyes, with the hope that I might be able to get her and her companions to help me get back home.

“Mother Witch might know where this place Joorhat is,” one of the other giant ladies said from behind. The woman squatting near me nodded.

“Yes, it would be best if we took you to her,” she agreed. “You want to go to our village?” The woman asked me. There was not much to think.

“Yes,” I said.

So it happened that we began our trek through the forest to the village of the giants. The giant ladies moved as slow as they could keeping me in mind, but I still had to move extra quick to keep pace with them. They carried the boar-like animal tying its legs to a strong branch. Along the way they joked that the men of their village would be left dumbfound seeing the animal, since the men had only managed to catch a few rabbits during yesterday’s hunt. In about half an hour we reached the village.

The village of the giants was a village of large houses built of stone slabs. The roofs were made of thatch and there was a very rough appearance to the houses, most of which seemed to have only one room. Entering the village, I was at once filled with fear, for even the children running about the streets of the village were of my height and they all had heads of grass instead of hair. I wondered in which part of the world I was exactly. Was I even in the world in the first place? The villagers looked at me with fascination and I felt like I was some exotic creature brought from a distant land.

And then we reached the home of the Mother Witch. It was a smaller house than most of the other homes in the village, but it definitely had more decorations. The walls of the Mother Witch’s house had beautiful tribal paintings and the house was surrounded by a bunch of intriguing trees that had fat trunks but no branches and few very small leaves.

I was ushered into the presence of the Mother Witch who was sitting on a bed. She was large like the other giants, but she was very old and she had developed a stoop which made her appear smaller. Her face was a jumble of wrinkles and the grass on her head had little colour left. She wore heavy chains of gold around her neck.

“What happened?” she asked the women who had brought me in a voice as ancient as her appearance.

“We found him in the forest while we were out to hunt,” they replied. “He says he has no idea how he came there and he wants to go back to his home… some place called Joorhat.”

The Mother Witch nodded and turned to me.

“Hmm…” she said, “I do not recall ever seeing anyone like you in my entire life that has spanned centuries. But perhaps I can help you. Come near me.”

Tentatively I went near the Mother Witch. She lifted up her old hand, which looked rather heavy what with all the fat rings she wore, and placed it on my head. The Mother Witch then closed her eyes and she began to mumble words under her breath. Her words became more and more rapid as she progressed in her strange incantation. I couldn’t help but notice a paleness overcoming her parched face. And by the time the Mother Witch finished mumbling her words, the expression that hung on her face was one of extreme horror.

The Mother Witch opened her eyes and they were all red and on the verge of tears. She lifted a shaking hand from my head that had been so calm when she had first placed it on me.

“Wh… what is the problem, Mother?” one of the women asked from behind.

“Bind him in ropes and do not let him escape!” the Mother Witch cried. Before I could make sense of what was happening, the very women who had brought me from the forest pinned me to the floor and bound my hands and feet with fat ropes that I could never hope freeing myself from.