Story: From the World of Elephantine

From the World of Elephantine

By Saoirse Haran
QuailBellMagazine.com

I rewrite this, again and again with each copy, as the Giant eludes me despite his size.

He is a cleverer creature than I.

As I stand up, the sky here grazes my head. If we grow too tall, taller than I am now, taller than the bases of the mountains (as high as the sky reaches), then your head and shoulders are above it and you see only the darker world there. The silent forested peaks under the green shine of the stars swimming like fennel flowers in the ever-black.

Down here, the misty forest stretches on and back, stopping only for the Mist-River, Gioll, on its way to hell and less hateful springs, pale, virgin and silven.

I reach down to the earth, pulling away a mossy handful, leaving a shallow gouge. Beneath us, lies the Midgard, home of men. The wall betwixt us is thin and I widen the hole and breach it. The earth is gone and I see only as open space full of clouds, white and feathery, not like the magic-mists that ensnare our hills.

And then I see them: people, in cars, houses, aeroplanes. They stare up at me. I imagine what they must see, a great pair of eyes, set in old gnarled flesh, gazing up behind the sun, from a break in the heavens.

How small they are, and how distant from the roof of their world. How large I must be, to have scraped my skull against the sky for more than any reckoning of time.

Then I hear them call: "Iotunn!"
"Goliath!"
"Ettin!"
"Giant."