Cozy Fantasy Series, Story #4 - The Giant of Miller's Hill

The Giant of Miller's Hill, and the Unexpected Business with the Seeds

This week in Millhaven - Sorrel finds some plants, Professor Mole determines a date and the children find a new playplace.

Miller's Hill had always been an odd shape.

In fact, it was such an odd shape, and so exceptionally large, that visitors commented on it, no matter what side of town they came in on. The townsfolk, on the other hand, had lived with the odd shape of Miller’s hill for so long they no longer noticed it.

The hill was too round at the top and too steep on the north side and nothing grew well on the south face no matter what anyone tried. The water table beneath it did something complicated that the miller had been complaining about for thirty years, but that no one else understood.

Nobody had considered that there might be a reason for the hill being that shape, or the issue with the plants not growing, or the strangeness with the water table. These were simply the facts about Miller's Hill, like the fact that the sky was grey in November and the constable was useless in a crisis.

Sorrel had noticed the plants on the south face in early spring when everything else on the hill was still winter brown. Small, determined shoots were pushing through the thin soil in colorful abundance.

Sorrel had been a plant person since she reared her very own rose bush at the age of three. Her green thumb twinged any time there was a new plant in her vicinity. It hadn’t twinged this badly in years, so of course she searched for the source of the twinge with her sleeves rolled up and a determined frown, even though her mother needed her to clean out the shed.

Interesting plants didn't wait for convenient moments.

When she found the patch of plants she sat back with a deeper frown. Low-growing and dense, with leaves that shifted colour as she moved around them, and small clustered flowers in shades of purple that grew larger as she watched.

She’d wanted to press one of the flowers between the pages of a book, but there was something about the plants that suggested to her, by way of her green thumb, that plucking the flowers wouldn’t be stood for. Which was an odd feeling to have, that was for sure. Instead, the next day she brought her notebook and drew the plants from all angles, trying and failing to bring them to life.

She'd gone back up the following week with her trowel.

This decision would change the course of her life.

The day after Sorrel started removing the plants, Miller’s Hill began making noises.

Sorrel noticed first, as she was standing on the hill at the time.

“It was more like a feeling than a sound. Like I could hear through the soles of my feet,” she told her father.

Her father, who was a practical man and not one who went in for that kind of talk, just huffed.

Old Perwick, whose cottage was nearest the hill, noticed the sounds next. He stood outside his front door for a long time, trying to decide where the sounds were coming from.

“It sounded like my grandfather used to sound in the armchair after Sunday suppers.”

He was in the Crossed Stirrup, having come into town because his cottage suddenly felt very lonely, there on the outskirts of town, though he wouldn’t tell any of the other men in the bar that.

No one in the bar knew Perwick’s grandfather, so this description didn’t really tell them anything.

On Saturday morning, Old Perwick jumped out of bed, thinking he heard an intruder. His cottage was empty, but when he stood outside his door, he could tell that Miller’s hill was moaning.

Perwick decided now was the time to accept the invitation from his sister to visit.

By Sunday morning the south face of Miller's Hill was moving.

Sorrel, who was carting off the last of the iridescent purple plants, fell the last five feet when the earth pushed up and out in a way that earth is not meant to move. Rather, earth moves just like that when the plates under the crust crash into each other and push upward into mountains, but that takes time.

This happened more like a cat bunching up into a stretch under the blankets when you didn’t even know they were there.

For the third time in as many days, the town assembled around the disturbance. The townsfolk had learned things recently. They chose to watch, carefully and from a distance, before asking questions.

“Perhaps,” suggested Old Perwick to his sister. “There won’t be anything to ask questions about.” Inside, he thought it more likely that he hadn’t accepted his sister’s invitation soon enough.

The constable arrived and stood at the front of the group, which was either brave or a failure to correctly assess the situation, depending on your point of view. Professor Mole arrived and stood farther away, having found a hillock where he had an unobstructed view, and opened his notebook.

Sorrel gathered the plants she’d dropped and the trowel. She decided she was lucky that she hadn’t stabbed herself with it when she’d fallen down the hill. When she stood up, she noticed that the hill was an even stranger shape than before.

The hand came first.

This caused a significant amount of… well, I guess you’d call it pandemonium, which was understandable, because it was an extremely large hand. The townsfolk of Millhaven had seen strange things recently, but even they weren’t ready for a giant hand to appear out of the ground.

When they finally rearranged themselves, the children hastily placed in the back and the group decidedly farther away than before, they watched as the rest of the giant emerged.

Yes, it was indeed a giant. An equally large forearm followed the huge hand. Then a shoulder and finally a head. After that, the rest of the giant crawled out of the hill. A second hand, holding a cloth bag, a second arm, a massive chest, and everything in between that and the feet.

The giant proceeded to sit down upon Old Perwick’s cottage, flattening it and leaving Perwick grumbling about the nature of magical creatures.

The giant, who didn’t seem to notice the wooden structure exploding beneath it, shook dirt from its hair, which rained down. Luckily, the group had reconvened at a distance that allowed the dirt to rain down in the intervening space. This gave the townsfolk time to take in the spectacle.

The giant was vast. As large as Miller’s Hill, which made sense since Miller’s Hill had in fact been entirely comprised of dirt covered giant. Miller’s hill was now a jumbled pile of loose dirt and rocks. The giant was the colour of old stone and river clay and the brown of deep earth that hasn't seen light in centuries. His hair, when it finally fell free of the soil, was the grey of winter clouds and a similar consistency, a bit like dandelion fluff.

The giant rubbed his face, and then his eyes, stretched, blocking out the sun with one raised hand, and yawned. When he looked about, blinking like someone waking from an exceedingly long sleep, they saw that his eyes were a deep amber, with flecks of bright green.

He looked at the sky for a long time and then at the destroyed mulch that had been Miller’s hill. Finally, he noticed the townsfolk. Setting down the cloth bag, the giant leaned on one hand until his face was peering down at the group of people. The group pulled back collectively.

"What year is it?" he asked, in a voice that suggested a thundering rockslide, and which blew back the hair of the assembled people.

The constable opened his mouth.

"Approximately," the giant added, with a large wink, suggesting that a thousand-year sleep hadn’t dulled his sense of humour.

Professor Mole, who had been writing at speed since the hand appeared, looked up. "By my reckoning," he said, at a volume calibrated to carry without shouting, "approximately one thousand and seven years since the end of the Sorcerers' War. Give or take a decade. Magic has recently returned, which I expect you can feel, if you…” He shuddered to a halt when the giant turned its full attention to him.

"Yes," said the giant. He looked about. “Great magic has been here. Smaller magic is still here.” His gaze rested on Tam for a moment. Professor Mole noted this and wrote furiously. The giant patted the cloth bag that sat beside him like a large pile of old blankets.

"There was a mill,” he boomed, to no one in particular.

"Still is," said Maren when no one else responded. She had come down with Darien and was standing near the back, because Darien had refused to go home and Maren thought the back was the safest place to be. "Cotter's mill. Half a mile south of here.”

The giant stood, picked up his bag, and looked as if he were about to set off. The miller, who had moved to the front of the group, noticed the water table that was now flowing in a way he hadn’t seen in… well, ever.

"The water table," he said. He pointed with a trembling hand. “It’s never flowed like that.” He turned to his neighbours in the group. “I’ve been saying for years that the water should flow, haven’t I?” His neighbours shrugged. “Well, I have and it didn’t, but it should have. And now it is.”

The giant looked at him. There was something in that look that might, in a smaller face, have been sheepish.

"I may," the giant said, choosing his words with the care of someone aware they are on uncertain ground, "have been in the way."

The miller stared at him.

"For some time," the giant added.

The miller turned back to the channel. "Right," he said sternly. “That changes things.”  He set off without waiting to see how things would turn out with the giant.

Once the townsfolk settled down, things with the giant were much the way they’d been before the giant, only the giant was certainly more helpful than either the dragon or the mermaid had been. The constable attempted to establish authority over the creature, but eventually thought better of it, considering that the giant was three times the height of any building within the town. Plus, it wasn’t easy to boss around the creature when you had to stand shouting at it.

It was during this time that the bag became an issue.

As mentioned, the giant crawled out of Miller’s Hill carrying a cloth bag. It was dark with age and held closed with a knotted drawstring. No one really paid much attention to the bag. After the townsfolks initial shock at the emergence of the giant, and the giants shock at being awake after a thousand years, the giant decided that he needed to clean up.

The crowd followed him down to the pond, but when he started removing his clothes, they dispersed, giving him some privacy, pulling away many of the children who wanted to stay and watch.

Once the giant was clean, there was always a crowd of children following him wherever he went.

Back to the bag.

Once the giant cleaned up, he tied the bag to his belt. The hole in the bag wasn’t immediately evident, as it was a small hole. The seeds which fell from the hole were small by the giants’ standards, but large from the townsfolks perspective, so it’s surprising it took as long as it did for someone to notice them. Wherever the seeds landed, they burrowed into the earth. Dozens of them. Hundreds, maybe. Sorrel first noticed when her thumb started twitching.

Following the pull in her thumb, she found the first seed poking out of the ground. The seed wriggled, trying to burrow the rest of the way into the soil. Sorrel pulled the seed from the ground, needing both hands. It had a chestnut brown shell with a dimple in one end. Carrying the seed, Sorrel followed her thumb and the trail of seeds that led everywhere the giant had been. Many had already started growing.

“Excuse me,” she called up to the giant. The giant, who was at that moment helping to hold a fence post, didn’t immediately hear her. “Excuse me,” Sorrel yelled again, this time pulling on his pant leg.

The giant looked down at her from his considerable height. “One moment,” he boomed.

Sorrel stood patiently as he finished helping with the fence.

“What can I help you with, little lady?” he asked.

Sorrel bristled at the nickname, but then she decided that she was indeed a ‘little’ lady by his standards and that made her feel better. She held up the seed.

The giant leaned forward to get a look at what she held.

“Oh dear,” he replied. Pulling the bag from his belt, he turned it over in his hands until he found the hole. “Oh dear,” he said again. “Can you find them?” he asked.

Sorrel held up the seed again. “I found this one.”

“Good. We’ll have to put them in a garden.”

Sorrel smiled. “A new garden. Just the thing,” she said.

It was a good thing that Sorrel found the seeds when she did because the seeds did not wait.

By the following morning plants were growing in the newly created garden which were unlike anything Sorrel had ever seen before. Leaves the color of blood. Long, stretching, tangling vines. Teeny, tiny flowers that looked like eyes which even blinked if you watched them long enough. Over the next few days, Sorrel would find that many of the plants didn’t like to grow next to each other and there would be much reassembling of the rows, but for now she was happy to have corralled most of the plants.

I say most of because even Sorrel, with her especially green thumb, didn’t find all the seeds and the plants that grew in their stead made all manner of trouble and confusion. Sorrel learned to keep her ears open for signs of a stray plant and the town learned to call Sorrel when strange things started to happen around their homes.

The plants in Sorrels Garden grew with an enthusiasm Sorrel hadn’t seen before. Overnight stems. Leaves by morning. Sorrel moved through it every morning with her notebook, drawing and noting. The first time Professor Mole happened by when she was so occupied, he stood for a moment with his hand on his chest, as if staring at his own child. He didn’t say anything, but the next day he brought her an armful of notebooks.

“I can’t be the only one,” he harrumphed when she thanked him. “There’s just too much for one man to do.”

Sorrel wasn’t convinced. She smiled and cupped his cheek and then went back to work.

Every morning there was more than the day before. Some of the plants she half-recognised from old woodcuts in grandmother’s, illustrations of things that hadn't existed in living memory. Others she had no reference for at all and had to invent names for, which she did with excitement and gusto.

The day after she found the first seed, she and the giant were working in the garden. Or, more specifically, Sorrel was working in the garden and the giant was watching, the plants being too small yet for his large hands.

“There’s something about some of them,” Sorrel murmured.

“What’s that?” asked the giant.

Sorrel shook her head. She’d noticed that some of the seeds felt warm in her hands, as if she could feel the life inside. Some of the plants seemed to recognize her, turning toward her when she came near. Instead of a green thumb that twitched when growing things were nearby, she now had a complete set of green abilities. Some told her when plants needed water, or shade, or to move to another part of the garden before they did something unexpected to the fence.

“I’m thinking of opening a roadside stand,” she told her mother that evening. She didn’t tell her mother that she thought there were people in town that would benefit from her new plants.

Her mother said that was a very practical idea and asked if she'd thought about pricing.

Sorrel said she was still working out the details.

The giant stayed for two weeks, which was longer than anyone had expected based on their previous magical encounters and shorter than Professor Mole had hoped. The giant helped where he could. He cleared the old channel, his large hands scooping out years of decaying plant matter and stones that would have taken the town six months to shift. He reset two walls that had wobbled a bit when a sleeping giant moved the earth around them. Lastly, he helped remove the squashed remains of Perwick’s house. The giant offered to bring in wood for a new house.

“Or even stone. I could bring stone so your new home will be strong and, mostly, giant proof.”

Old Perwick shook his head. “Turns out, I’m partial to living near my nieces and nephews,” he admitted that day at the Crossed Stirrup. His friends, who were all uncles or grandfathers themselves, nodded into their beers. Melissa, the barmaid, smiled to herself.

The giant was grumpy in the mornings. He was better after midday. By evening, when the light went golden and the shadows long and the town smelled of bread and woodsmoke, he would sit at the edge of the south field with his great legs folded and look at the sky with an expression that suggested he was happy to be awake.

The children got brave first. Petra, the seven-year-old rock collector, went straight up to the giant one night when he sat on the edge of the south field in contemplation of the sunset and proceeded to climb into his lap. When the giant didn’t eat or squish her, the other children decided that the giant was the biggest tree house ever. They played in his pockets and swung from his beard and swarmed his lap in the evenings for story time.

The giant had all the best stories, although some of the parents didn’t think they were particularly good bedtime stories. Since none of the children ended up with nightmares, those parents kept their mouths shut. Having something that kept their children busy on the regular was more important.

One night, after sending the children to bed, Sorrel climbed up and perched on the giant’s knee.

“What were you doing in the ground?” she asked without preamble.

The giant raised his eyebrow. “You’re the first person to ask me that.” He rubbed his chin and pulled his fingers through his beard, releasing a host of strange treasures left by the children. “You have heard of the Sorcerers war?”

Sorrel nodded. “Professor Mole may have mentioned it once or twice.”

The giant snorted. He, too, had been privy to a monologue or two from the professor. “You may have noticed that I am a large and slow creature.”

Sorrel harrumphed. “I’m sure you could be quick if you wanted to be.”

“Be that as it may. Well, let’s just say, I got in the way.”

Sorrel harrumphed again. She had clearly been spending too much time with the professor. That wasn’t much of an answer, but she supposed it told her all she needed to know. Except for one thing. “What’s your name?”

“Bram. Bram Tumbleweed.”

Sorrel laughed at this. When Bram made a face, she apologized. “It’s just, you were in one place for so long that Tumbleweed is a bit ironic.”

Bram shrugged. “Maybe that is why the sorcerer put me in the ground.”

The adults tried to ignore that there was a giant wandering around town. Professor Mole, as usual, had approximately nine hundred questions and the giant answered forty of them, which only raised nine hundred more. The stationary store was more than happy to sell him several new notebooks where he noted everything he could about the giant.

The miller brought the giant a wheel of cheese the size of a cartwheel, which the giant ate in three bites and thanked the miller for in a grave, formal way. The constable pinned a ridiculously small star to the giant’s shirt.

“I hereby make you an honorary constable.”

The giant rubbed at his eyes, which had become misty.

On the morning he left, he came to find Sorrel in the garden.

She was on her knees between two plants that had developed strong opinions about each other overnight and needed mediating.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” she asked without looking up.

He held out the bag. Sorrel herself had mended the hole, which was work too small for his hands. Bram had untied the drawstring.

"There are more inside," he said. "I don't know which plants are which, but I’m guessing you’ll figure it out.” He paused. "Some are from before my time. Kept for keeping's sake." He looked at the garden around them, the impossible growth of the last two weeks. "They should be in the ground, not carried around."

Sorrel couldn’t carry the bag herself. “Would you mind putting it in the shed, please?” She gestured to the small building at the edge of her family’s property, abutting against the fence around her new garden.

The giant carefully lifted the roof off the shed, placed the bag inside, and replaced the roof. Sorrel thought it likely they would need to repair the roof, but she didn’t say as much.

"Will you come back?" she asked.

The giant looked at the sky.

"Things that sleep a thousand years," he said, "don't generally make plans." He paused. "But I know where the hill is."

Sorrel knew that he meant he knew where she was. She stepped up close and placed a kiss on the back of his hand.

He left before the town was fully awake, north along the old road. Sorrel watched as he disappeared into the distance, which took some time.

Sorrel had intended to build her plant stand that weekend. Instead, in an attempt to get back to normal, she finally got to cleaning out the shed, which she’d been meant to do before the whole kerfuffle began. In the shed, Sorrel found a small lean-to that, with the addition of a simple set of shelves, made the perfect stand for plants.

She put the first plants out on Monday morning and stood back to look at her new venture with equal parts excitement and temerity.

The first customer came before she'd finished arranging the plants. Then another. Then several more, which surprised her, because she hadn't told anyone, and then she remembered that interesting things in this town had a way of announcing themselves.

She didn't know, yet, what most of the plants did.

She would learn, mostly from the customers who came back to tell her.

Across the field, half-visible through the gap in the hedge that he'd found in his first week and used ever since because it was the quickest way between the stable yard and the south lane, Tam stopped.

He was taking the grey mare to have her shoe looked at. She had a strong opinion of the whole situation, and she was making that opinion clear to Tam. Tam had seen the stand go up over the last few days. Now, the mare stopped.

She was looking at the stand with both ears forward and she had stilled her running commentary of the failings of both Tam and the barkeep.

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘There.’

Tam looked at the stand, at the plants on the trestle table, and at the girl behind it with soil on her hands and a notebook open on the corner of the table, writing something down. She reminded him suddenly of Professor Mole, her fingers colored black by the charcoal she used for drawing as the professors’ fingers were the same from ink.

The mare's ear flicked back toward him, then forward again.

"I know," Tam said. "Come on."

He led her on toward the farrier, and didn't look back, knowing that he hadn’t seen the last of the plants and the girl.