Achtung!

Once upon a time, there was a big giant who lived on top of a mountain. He was ten stories tall, with shoulders as wide as the ocean and arms as thick as a country. He had red hair and green eyes, and he lived at the very tippy-top of the mountain. Now, the mountaintop was hardly big enough to support him, and indeed, there were mornings when the big giant would find that he had rolled all the way down the mountain in the night, but the big giant had a teeny-tiny wife who loved living on top of the mountain, and he loved her too much to say no.

So he lived on the tippy-top of the mountain, and some mornings, he would look up the mountain from the base and see the wide swath of squashed trees and rocks and mountain goats.

Now, this didn’t happen as much as you’re thinking now: the big giant had remarkable poise, and even in his sleep, he would be able to fluidly shift and balance himself. But still, it happened enough to worry the villagers at the bottom of the mountain.

“He’s so big!”

“When he talks, a tornado is born!”

“He doesn’t look where he’s going!”

“Look at those poor goats!”

The villagers said, and some of the more gossipy village women said some particularly snarky things about the big giant who lived at the top of the mountain.

The big giant brushed it all off. He was happy balancing delicately on the very top of the mountain, if only for her. She stepdanced, and when he played the fiddle (too loud! The villagers screamed), she would dance and dance and her golden ringlets would sparkle in the light of the moon. She made him pounds upon pounds of soda bread everyday, and every bite felt like a little piece of heaven to him. She worked as a seamstress in the village, and some days, she would bring home some work, and he would watch her fingers a-clicking and clacking. He wouldn’t have traded her for all the leprechauns in the world.

One day, she didn’t come home.

He waited for her.

He waited for her until the next morning, when the sun broke out and the birds started chirping.

He waited for her until the next morning, when the sun broke out and the clouds were swept away.

He waited and waited and waited for her, his mouth still tasting the last bite of heaven that she had baked for him.

She had been crossing the main street of the little village when a mad and foaming horse had come bucking up, and when it collided with her, it had thrown its head back, and her into the village well. The villagers were busy digging a new well, and because the giant hadn’t slept and he hadn’t rolled down the hill and he hadn’t squashed trees and rocks and mountain goats and he hadn’t landed yards away from the village and he hadn’t played his fiddle because she wasn’t there to dance, they had forgotten about him.

So the giant sat on the very tippy-top of the mountain, and waited for her.

It wasn’t until a week later until a village boy had, whilst collecting stones to build a wall around the new well they had dug, suddenly shouted, voice cracking, “the big giant!”, that everyone remembered him. The villagers dropped everything (the midwife even dropped the baby she was holding), and they tiptoed to the mountain.

The village boy called out, “Mr. big giant?” He crept, then walked, then strode and finally ran up the mountain, his red hair blazing in his wake. “Mr. big giant!”

But by then, the big giant that had balanced atop the very tippy-top of the mountain for love had already waited and waited and he had turned into stone.

The village boy would live a long and fulfilling life, and he would meet a village girl, and together they would make village babies in the village at the bottom of the big giant mountain.