It wasn't so bad, you know; living with a giant and his wife. I liked it, actually, despite a few minor problems; like finding a soup dish that wasn't the size of a horse, for example. But the stories always blow things out of proportion. Like the giant and giantess; they weren't huge. They were quite large, about four times my height. Their proportions were normal too.
Living in the sky with George and Martha was better than being a princess in any case. I was the oldest in my family, expected to marry and ugly, immature prince before the age of fifteen. I ran away. I am sure my parents made a commotion about it, there being a giant in the next kingdom and all. Well, that giant wasn't my giant. I found George a few days later, and asked if he needed someone to help his wife with the cooking. I didn't say I was a princess. He accepted my offer. He said he had trouble sleeping because of the storms that often rumbled across the sky underneath his home. I offered him my voice, and a little golden harp that I'd brought with me from home.
"Martha, I can't reach the sugar," I called from the kitchen. I was standing on a stack of various kitchen items that were as large as I was, but the sugar always managed to get to the high shelf; which was a problem when I wanted to make cookies for George when he got home from work. She didn't answer, but I could hear her footsteps as she approached. She laughed when she was my precariously piled measuring cups and mixers, picking the sugar up with ease.
"What are you baking today?" She always took care to speak gently. The fact that she was larger than I was made her voice that much louder, and during the first week I moved in, I often found my ears ringing at the volume. The three of us had worked out a system without really mentioning it, but sometimes George still forgot, and went bellowing things like 'Fe Fi Fo Fum.' Martha said she loved her husband's poetic imagination. I thought that he could use a few lessons.
"Snicker-doodles," I said. I had looked the recipe up in one of her over-sized cook books the night before, but I didn't want her to know that. "Mom's secret recipe." I was currently engaged in measuring out the ingredients, but I was having a hard time mixing them together. Martha could see my trouble, and did it herself, asking questions along the way.
Finally, the baking sheet made it into the oven, and I sat back, covered from head to toe in cookie dough. I sat back on the counter. "Thanks for your help." I said.
"Sure dear," she said. "After all these year, you're as good as my daughter. How old are you now?"
I sighed. Here it went again. "Nearly twenty."
"That's right. I keep forgetting. It's been so long since George brought you back, bless him. Dear, when are you going to go off and fall in love? I hear there is a nice prince looking for a lady with a gorgeous voice and pretty face…" she trailed off.
"And no doubt a wicked witch to fight off so that he can get the glory of doing battle with a magical being and winning the princess. It never really is about the princess. Its just another fight to win."
Martha didn't say anything back. She knew as well as I did that all the good men were taken, and that princes didn't know the first thing about beauty. They didn't care.
"It's all well and good for you." I told her. "You have George. I think all the good men were born in your generation."
She laughed and the mood in the kitchen lightened a beat.
"Bee Bumbling Fumbling Flying Free," came George's voice from the garden. Martha pushed the kitchen window open a little farther so she could listen and I hopped down from the counter so that I wouldn't have to listen any more. A three year old could rhyme better. I made my way to the small-ish room on the left side of the house that the Giants had set aside for me. There was a bath waiting. I always set up a bath before I made dessert, because I always seemed to end up wearing it. I enjoyed the hot water, and sung a little tune to myself to block out George as he started his next line.
"Gee I'm wondering, mumbling, tumbling, always me,"
I was clean by the time George had made his way inside, discovering every rhyme for mumble along the way, and when I dressed and came back into the kitchen to my great relief, George had finished with his poem, and Martha was watching him with tears in her eyes at his poetic genius. I tried not to roll mine. The whole room smelled like cinnamon sugar. Breathing deeply, I climbed up to the table to sit with them. I didn't have to run twenty flights of stairs though. I sat cross legged and asked George about his day.
"We made it rain over the middle lands today," he said. "It was hard work. I got stuck on bucket duty after one of the hoses backed up. Two hours later, they discovered that there was no actual problem; it was just Bill who decided to sit his giant butt down on the hose. That's why I'm home early."
"Early?" said Martha? "The sun will set soon. The long golden rays were already filling the kitchen, turning the east wall orange.
"They were short on man from the night shift and I drew the short straw. But after the buckets, I told them there was no way."
"Well I for one would not have been happy if my George hadn't been able to come home for dinner." Martha told him. My mind was busy thinking about the giant's hoses. I wondered how they repaired them when they truly did break.
"George, when is the last time that something has gone wrong with one of the hoses?"
His face paled. Martha stood up to get the cookies, and didn't notice. "It was years before you were born I think, but have you heard stories of the Forever-Summer?" I nodded. "It was an awful mess. I had just started, and a lot of people quit before the problem was fixed. There was a problem with the piping that the hoses connect to, but out department doesn't have jurisdiction over that stuff."
I wanted to laugh at the business side of him. Before I had come to live here, I never would have thought that giants used words like jurisdiction. George had this habit of switching between his poetic self and his business self. The giants were very businesslike. They worked the weather, not only rain, but sleet, snow, hale, wind, and the amount of sunlight. They were also very artistic, but their taste wasn't the same as mine, or indeed, many humans. Their art galleries were filled with tick figures, and their music was atrocious. I enjoyed every second of living with Martha and George though, and as far as I was concerned, a few bad tastes weren't enough to condemn them.
Martha put a towel on the table and set the hot pan in front of us. The cookies were almost as long as my legs, but they smelled amazing.
"They're hot," she said unnecessarily.
"Hot soup in a pot," echoed George. "I forgot it was hot, ate it on the dot, and burned is what I got." Martha clapped her hands. I smiled at George much the way a mother would at an overly precocious child. It was the best reaction, a medium between laughing hysterically and saying something I might regret.
The two of them carried on like a young couple for a few minutes. I watched the last few rays of the sun sink below the clouds. The whole world still glowed orange though. It wouldn't darken here until the sun disappeared behind the earth. I missed those sunsets, watching the orange disc sink into a bow and then fall behind the mountains. They were true beauty.
Martha was dishing out the cookies before I came out of my reverie. She gave me a small piece off of hers. Of course, I wouldn't be able to eat a whole cookie without being very sick. After she had finished hers, she bustled around making dinner. She and George each had two roast pigs to themselves, plus a loaf of bread that was as long as I was. Giants loved to eat, and they would stuff themselves to the breaking point. I took a quarter of a slice of Martha's bread, and a piece of meat from one of George's pigs, and contented myself with a sandwich. I was always improvising as far as my own meals were concerned. I didn't mind.
When he was finished, George declared that he was exhausted, and asked me if I would sing for him. Martha cleaned the dishes and I sat on George's alarm clock in their room and played, letting my voice flow harmonically along with the harp-strings. He was snoring lightly by the time Martha came in. She climbed in next to him, and I played her to sleep as well, and then I retired myself, to the little room they had given me, that was probably bigger than many people's houses.
Before I fell asleep, I wondered if they even remembered me back home. It had been almost six years, after all. All of my sisters were probably contentedly married or about to be rescued. I wasn't sure, but I thought George was talking about my youngest sister having been kidnapped by an ogre. I knew that the eldest after was getting involved with the frog down by the lily pond, but I wasn't sure if he really was a prince or not. I slipped into sleep wondering if there was some arrogant prince searching for me right now. I knew no one could ever find me here, but it was still a frightening thought.