Danger in La La Land

The smell of mowed hay—at once a comforting childhood aroma and the beginning of an allergy-induced headache—wafted up at me while knives of sunlight dazzled my eyes. I was balanced precariously on a tall structure of wooden beams, topped off in areas by bits of thatched roof. The quaintness of the surroundings was overlaid with sharp tension as villagers on the ground stories below me behaved like squirrels who had spotted a hawk: stiff posture, hunched toward the ground, eyes darting this way and that looking for an escape route.

I was distractedly looking for a way to get out of this half-formed building and down to the ground when I stopped short, a large splintered gap in my way. I looked up between two completed bits of the roof and could see a nice swath of the brilliant blue sky. A pile of rubble from the damaged building met my gaze below. It was like someone split the building with the ease of a knife through layer cake.

Somehow I managed to climb down, tension building the whole time. I conferred with the villagers, what could have caused this thing? I heard two words repeated again and again: bergrisar and ispolini. Giants.

I walked toward the large chicken coop to think but was again distracted, this time by the long trailing paths of thick grass that were mowed to mere stubble. Then, as I looked over the fence into a meadow of tall prairie grass, I saw the culprit off in the distance. Przewalski's horses, at least a dozen, but these were massive beasts—bigger than any draft horse I had ever seen. They peacefully grazed in the meadow, shearing paths through the swishing blond grass.

Suddenly, from the lowland, a commotion. Deep bellowing shouts. I froze. And then everything went still again. I cautiously glanced back at the area where the villagers had gathered. Most of them had disappeared. When I turned back around: pounce, grab! I was caught.

I was carried away with all the care given a dusty turnip. Noticing my captor’s surprisingly clean fingernails, I made every effort to discover what kind of a character this giant might be. He looked like a regular sturdy Scandinavian man, only quadrupled in size. The glaring sun gave a pleasant glow to his tidy goldenrod beard and short woodsman’s haircut. So far he appeared nothing like the slobbering, pop-veined, dirt-encrusted creatures I’d associated with the term giant.

I’m not sure why, but our journey was wordless and seemed quite short. He approached a large stone building of apparent moderate means, unlatched the door and walked in without closing it. There was a fire going in the kitchen hearth, and I was still interestedly studying my surroundings on the off chance that he merely wanted me to play dinner company. It was a nearly cozy home, tidy without being unlivable. A little cool for my taste, but that doubtless wouldn’t matter long. He impersonally sat me down on a massive stone counter while he pulled out a large, worn book from below. He propped it up on a polished chestnut stand ostensibly made for that purpose. I shifted so that I could see inside.

While I was struggling to catch a glimpse of his reading material, he set a broad, shallow stone basin on the counter. It was a curious object, looking something like a cross between a matate and a mortar, neither of which held particularly comforting thoughts for me. While a little chant of I’ll grind your bones to make my bread wheedled through my mind, the book again captured my rapt attention as the page fell flat, broadcasting its contents to me.

A…cookbook. This giant was apparently quite domestic. Now was I going to be the brisket or the choice contents?

With dispassionate thoughts of the orderly giant and the irregularly shaped pouch my flattened carcass would make, I woke up.