About this book

Echoes of the Smallest Giant

Create your own fairy tale.Echoes of the Smallest Giant The world ended not with a bang, but with a tremor. A colossal foot, large enough to blot out a city block, came down. And then another. The Giants had awakened. They were not the clumsy, slow behemoths of myth. They were swift, silent, and their passing was a natural disaster. Their mere footsteps, the thrum-thrum-thrum of their pace, shattered buildings and sent shockwaves through the earth. To them, we were not enemies, not even prey. We were simply dust motes dancing in the sunbeams of their path, insignificant and easily brushed aside. Humanity fled to the deepest caverns, the most inaccessible mountain crevices, living in a perpetual, terrified silence, listening to the rhythmic, earth-shattering pulse of their world’s new masters. But in a forgotten corner of the world, in a nameless valley, lived Elara. She was the smallest Giant. And the last. She was no taller than a redwood, a runt of her kind. Her skin was the colour of moss and old stone, her eyes the grey of a winter sky. She remembered the world Before, a world of soft breezes and birdsong, not the constant, low-frequency hum of her brethren's movement. Her people, in their arrogance, had seen no reason for silence, for care. They were kings of a world that had become their plaything. Elara was different. She remembered the delicate creatures that had built the now-crumbled cities. Their tiny, frantic lives held a strange fascination for her. She would watch from a distance, her breath held, marvelling at their ingenuity and their fragility. She understood, in a way the others didn’t, that power without grace was simply destruction. One evening, the ground did not just tremble; it split. A chasm, born of the careless stomp of a Giant named Korr, yawned open right next to a hidden human settlement. Through the fissure, Elara could see them: tiny, flickering lights, like panicked fireflies in the dark. Her heart, which was the size of a small cottage, hammered against her ribs. She saw a small group of them, no more than twenty, huddled on a crumbling shelf of rock that was slowly detaching from the main cliff face. If it fell, they would plummet into the abyss. She could have ignored them. It was not her mistake. It was the way of the world now. But she couldn’t. Taking a deep breath that seemed to draw in all the valley’s air, Elara knelt. She moved with the painstaking care of a mother bird retrieving a fallen egg. Her immense fingers, each the size of a small boat, descended into the chasm. She heard their terrified shrieks, sounds like the high-pitched squeal of a rusty hinge, as her shadow fell upon them. Very, very carefully, she scooped the shelf of rock, its soil and its panicking people, into her cupped palm. She could feel their tiny hearts beating, or maybe that was her own. It was the most delicate thing she had ever done. She raised her hand, her face a vision of grey and green granite, and gently placed them on a patch of stable, grassy ground a mile away. They spilled out of her hand, stumbling and collapsing, staring up at her in mute terror. She gave them what she hoped was a reassuring look, a softening of her immense features. To them, it probably looked like a mountain about to slide. She stood, the adrenaline leaving her limbs feeling like stone pillars. But then the ground shook differently. Not from her movement, but from his. Korr. He was a giant among Giants, his form a silhouette of raw power and arrogance. He saw her, her hand still extended, saw the tiny creatures she had just saved. A sound like grinding boulders erupted from him, the low, rumbling laughter of his kind. “Playing with your food, little one?” he boomed, the words a physical force. “I saved them,” she said, her voice a quiet rumble. “They are vermin,” Korr sneered. “They build their little nests and then scurry when we walk. They are a blemish. They have no purpose.” “They have life,” Elara countered, her voice growing stronger. “And we have taken it from them.” Korr’s eyes narrowed, cold as slate. “You are as small as they are,” he spat. “A runt. A freak. You have no voice among us.” He reared back, his massive fist clenched. “I am not small,” Elara whispered, “I am the smallest giant. There is a difference.” As Korr brought his fist down, a blow meant to crush her and the valley she stood in, Elara didn’t try to block it. She just pointed. Her finger, long and slender, was pointed not at Korr, but at the ground below his foot. He was so focused on her, so consumed by his rage, that he didn’t notice where he was placing his own weight. He was on the edge of the very fissure he had created. As he lunged, his immense foot came down on the unstable rock. The ground, already weakened, gave way with a sickening groan. Korr’s eyes widened in shock. With a thunderous roar that turned to a shriek of surprise, the colossal Giant toppled, his bulk vanishing into the darkness of the chasm he’d made. The earth groaned in protest, and then was still. He was gone. The other Giants, who had gathered to watch the spectacle, fell silent. They looked at the chasm, then at Elara. She hadn't even lifted a fist. She had simply used his own momentum, his own arrogance, against him. She looked at them, the assembled colossi of her race. She didn’t challenge them to fight. She simply spoke. “The world is not only for us,” she said, her voice quiet but strangely powerful in the silence. “It hums with their lives too. Listen. Can you hear it?” For a moment, there was nothing. Then, from the spot where she had placed the human survivors, a faint sound drifted up. It was a sound so small it was almost nonexistent, the sound of a single saw, a single hammer, being used to build a new shelter. It was the echo of life, defiant and small. And for the first time, the Giants did not hear the echo of their own destructive footsteps. They heard that. They heard the echoes of the smallest giant's lesson. The world, they began to understand, was big enough for even the most fragile of lives.