When Layla, the only sister of a house full of rough hunters and trappers finds a giant washed ashore after a storm, she takes pity on it despite knowing that helping a monster might get her burned at the stake as a witch. What starts as begrudging charity turns into affection between Samuel, the giant shipwrecked scholar, and Layla, the girl that can fit in the palm of his hand.
Layla’s Spool - by peachnewt
Clouds boiled over the sea, the wind whipping air and water into a cold froth and mist flashed in the distance over the sea, the wind whipping up Layla’s black locks and throwing them back in her face as she dragged her cart along the sand, looking for driftwood and possibly trinkets. She kept her skirts hiked up to her knees, freeing her bare feet from tripping over their ragged hems. A stray thread from her bodice and used it to tie her hair back. Despite the rough winds, she would dare not let another person get at the pickings before her. Already she had gathered a few lengths of rope.
A storm had raged along the sea coast for the last few days, breaking limbs and foundering boats. As it passed, it left gifts upon the beaches, driftwood, kelp, sometimes rope and bits of metal. Layla considered herself lucky that others were too afraid to approach the beaches so soon after a storm, afraid of disturbing beached whales or monsters from the deep. No such things would come to the quiet coast of Winchel.
A piece of carved wood, maybe a part of a ship’s bow stuck out of the wet sand. A little digging and Layla unearthed it only to stand back aghast. It was not part of any ship she had ever seen. A long cylinder, as big around as her waist longer than her arm, splintered at one end like it was supposed to be longer. On one side she saw a hole in it bigger than her fist. Perhaps a wooden pipe to one of those newfangled pipe-organs?
Layla heaved her finding into the wagon and kept moving. A large outcropping of rock poked out of sand ahead, she would either have to go around in the surf, or climb. Rather than get her skirts wetter than they already were, she climbed, leaving her wagon behind. A groaning rumble echoed beyond the rocks. More thunder?
At the crest of the rocks Layla froze.
***
Samuel shivered in his long-coat, the grit from the wet sand sticking to his face and hair as he collapsed on his chest from wading into the beach. How he had survived the swim from the wreckage with the coat on was beyond him, but now it weighed cold on his back. His temple still bled from a gash given to him when the main mast had split. The pounding in his head made his vision blur in and out. He kept his left hand close to his chest. At least two of the fingers were broken, the digits curling inwards towards the palm like a flower refusing to bloom.
Out of the corner of his eye she saw a flash of muted green. The skirt of a young woman sitting on top of a outcropping of rocks far away. She seemed frightened, as if she had never seen a man shipwrecked before. He reached out his hand, hoping to get her attention, his voice rough from the saltwater he nearly inhaled during the storm.
“Help,” he rasped. “Please.”
Help splinting his hand. Help to get dry and warm. Help with his hunger. Help to get back home. Heavens above, a kind face would be a grace to him. He reached his hand further to the woman, begging.
The dark haired woman shrieked and crawled away to the other side of the rocks. Why would she fear a nearly drowned man with less strength than a kitten?
When his fingers touched the rocks that were so far away, his mind sobered from his lethargy and pain.
Samuel realized the startling difference between his still muddled perspective, and distance. The outcropping of rocks no more than a foot tall, and the young woman no bigger than his hand.
Samuel jerked back his arm with a gasp. Had he been marooned on some fairy isle? Was he suffering some delusion caused by the knock to his head? Or worse, in a land where everyone was small?
The thumping in Samuel’s head deepened until the dark edge of his vision crept inwards. The shock had finally got to him. He managed to turn over on his side, still cradling his damaged left hand.
“God, help me,” he murmured as sleep took him.
***
Layla sat shaking, muffling her mouth with her shawl. A giant. A real giant had washed up onto her shore. She glanced over the rocks again. Albeit a very tired giant. One that looked hurt. Still a giant. Probably took to raiding the countryside and eating live cows on the weekends while it took care of it’s clothes during the weekdays.
She should run to the village and get the soldiers. Get away from trouble before the trouble got her. But something stopped her. Perhaps the glint of gold off the giant’s hair, or the way his brow furrowed while dreaming.
The breeze picked up again; another storm making itself known for landfall soon. Layla gritted her teeth and went back down her wagon.
***
Samuel woke to his broken hand on fire. He jerked it back to his chest and something small hit him on the shoulder.
“You keep movin’ it like that it’s gonna heal crooked. D’ya hear me?”
Samuel opened his eyes. The tiny, dark haired woman in the green skirt stood by the sandy indent where his broken hand had lay, a pile of rope and driftwood by her. She had been splinting his fingers. Cumbersome work for a such a tiny thing, but she had managed to get three of his fingers straightened.
“Sorry,” he said, shifting his hand back to her. Any fear he might have inspired had evaporated as she went back to work. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, I should be sorry.” The woman, pulled on his ring finger, straightening the bones with quick motions before lining it up with the driftwood. “Ya asked for help, so I’m giving it.”
“Why did you take pity on me?”
“Ya called out for God.”
“I supposed I did,” said Samuel. He blinked hard, trying to get rid of the sand in his eyes. “But how did that sway your decision?”
“Figured if a man is askin’ help from God, he’s hit rock bottom and begging. And I was taught to never look down on beggars.”
“I am not a beggar,” said Samuel. The nerve of that woman, thinking him a beggar when… well, a castaway was close to a beggar. But there was still a difference. “I’m lost.”
“You could have fooled me,” said the woman with a laugh, but the pitch of the laugh was off, as if forced. “Look, I can patch up yer hand, but if we say here any longer we’ll either meet up with the storm, or soldiers on patrol, and I’d rather not have either. Can ya get to yer feet?”
“Yes.”
The young woman tied off the rope and stood back. “Good, ‘cause we need to get moving.”
With a few pauses and a careful eye to make sure he didn’t step on anything, like his new guide, Samuel made it to his feet. He followed behind the tiny woman as she led him through snarling trees as tall as him. Despite her size, the woman moved nimbly and Samuel had to actually work to catch up. Though he stumbled a few times, she kept encouraging him to move, just a little further.
Just a little further. Right. He’d heard that before when he’d been told his new teaching post was just a short trip across the sea. Overhead the clouds kept rumbling as a light rain pelted down on his scalp. He was tempted to reach out and see if the sky was closer than he thought, but the ache in his body bound him to trudge forward.
During the walk he learned the young woman’s name, Layla, and that, indeed, everyone else in the country was the same size as her. Except her brothers; large, muscled brutes that could take him down if they wanted. Samuel assumed that last bit was more of a warning pointed towards him if he tried to do anything violent to Layla. He couldn’t if he tried, he was too weak.
Perhaps by accident, if he tripped and fell on her.
Oh, how he wanted to sleep. “I’m tired,” he murmured, resting his weight on the branch of a tree that creaked at his touch.
“A little further, giant” Layla said. “I promise.”
The “little further” turned out to be a glade big enough for him to lay down, trees curving overhead creating a shelter that kept most of the rain away. To the side of the glade bubbled a rocky spring. Within minutes Samuel lay back on the ground, asleep, the promise of Layla’s return echoing in the lull between dream and awake.
Samuel woke. The rain had stopped, and the rest of his hand had been splinted. The sun shined and birds overhead sang. A semblance of normalcy in this odd new world. But when would Layla be back?
He wondered what was worse; being a giant, or being at the mercy of a small woman.
She had been right, he was a beggar.
***
As the only living, and of age, female in the Winchel family tree, Layla had more than her share of brothers and cousins and uncles looking after her, even from afar. At any one time half a dozen brothers or uncles would be taking up space in the cottage, on their way from one hunting area to another, gathering furs and trading. She would receive bear hugs, bruising nudges at coarse jokes, but all done with affection. They left her with provisions and she kept the cottage from falling into ruin and occasionally making the meals.
As Layla looked at the larder, she wondered how much a giant could eat in one day. More than what she had available, especially when her brothers could make off with all the bread and cheese in one sitting. Though technically poor, they lived comfortably, but sometimes that comfort came way of poaching when the larder ran bare.
Layla huffed a breath as one uncle ruffled her hair and took a wedge of cheese from a shelf. She had to improvise. Over the afternoon she gathered all the dandelion greens she could find and boiled the bitterness out of them. She then added onions, garlic, and a few of the potatoes in the cellar that had dried too much for human consumption. A little salt and a lot of water left her with a broth too thin for a monk on a fast. It would have to do.
She had two of her brothers haul the heavy cast iron pot to her wagon, retrieved from the beach after the storm had died down.
“What you hauling this soup for?” one asked.
“You call this soup?” said the other, lifting the lid.
“There’s a shrine up in the woods,” said Layla. It wasn’t really a lie. Father Constant had once said nature was a shrine to God. “Figured I’d bring an offering for any beggars. Get up my good deeds.”
“What you need good deeds fer?” asked the other. “You praying for a husband? We can find you one.”
“No, thank you,” said Layla with a roll of her eyes. She knew the types they would find. More like them, thick headed and full of hunger. She waved off their offer to help with the wagon, saying it was a solitary pilgrimage to feed beggars.
***
The smile the giant had given Layla when she had returned made the glade seem warmer. The weak broth she brought gratefully accepted. He had laid out his coat in the sun to dry, a swath of dark blue that covered most of the glade. She could crawl through the sleeves if she wanted.
Layla lay in the shade cast by the giant, taking a longer look at Samuel now that the sun rose high. Though huge and pale, his features were pleasing. Eyes round and attentive, nose sharp, and lips full and proportional to the rest of him. He wasn’t muscled like her brothers. He stood tall and lanky.
“I don’t know how to repay you for your kindness,” said the giant, sipping at the broth. His splinted hand lay in his lap, a testament of her handiwork.
With her experience of binding up the legs or arms of her brothers, Layla figured his hand would be fine in a few weeks, but she didn’t know if giant bones mended faster or slower.
“I could think of ways,” said Layla, sitting by the spring. “But they would all end up with either me being burned as a witch or you being hunted as an ogre.”
“Still, I might be able to pay you, meager as it may be.” The giant put down the broth and reached for a pocket in his coat and withdrew a leather pouch. From it he took out a handful of large round discs and held them to the ground next to her. “Would any of these do?”
Each disc held a profile of a man’s face larger than her own. Coins, Layla realized. They were giant coins of copper, silver, and gold. Her eyes widened at such wealth. She crawled into Samuel’s hand and held up one of the coins polishing it with the hem of her skirt. With one gold coin she could buy a carriage, hire a team of horses and a man to drive her all the way to Joston and back in style.
Her smile dropped.
“They are real, I assure you,” said Samuel.
“That isn’t the problem,” said Layla, laying down the polished coin. “I know yer honest. But if I try to spend something like this, or have it melted down to sell as raw gold or silver, people will ask questions. I won’t have a good enough answer to back it up. And ya don‘t want to know what happens to those the Soldiers catch in a lie.”
The giant grimaced. “Forgive me. I did not think this through.”
Layla shaded her eyes as the sun glinted off the giant’s hair, making it glow like a halo of honey and copper. An idea came to her. “Giant, lay down.”
“Samuel, please,” he said. “And why?”
“Just do it. And lay your head somewhere I can get to it.”
She got a hold of a lock of hair behind the giant’s ear, passing it through her fingers. While a single strand was thick and a little bit wiry, its color was magnificent. Dark amber, copper, gold. And the giant--no, Samuel--kept his hair long, far past his shoulders. At least four yards in her book.
Layla grinned and leaned towards Samuel’s ear. “I think I know how you can pay me back!”
***
The next day Layla pulled her cart, laden with more dandelion greens, and a case of empty spools.
***
While giant gold coins would have raised questions, spools of “long-haired yak” thread simply raised a few eyebrows amongst the Textile’s Guild. Until she showed them the two spools she had brought as a sample; one a single pale strand from the top of Samuel‘s head, the other a dark amber from the thinner under layer. Then their eyes lit up. The touch of gold they could create in their embroidery, their weaving, more luxurious than the pale yellow and orange they were used to.
“How did you manage to get such thread?” asked the Head Dyer as she held the spool up to the light.
Layla, after thinking over her story a hundred times, had her lies lined up and ready. It wouldn‘t do to have the Textile Guild believe she could spin straw into gold. “My uncle in Joston came back from a trip to the East Nations and he brought a shipment of this stuff with him. Sent out a few spool to his nieces and daughters to try it out before presenting it to other merchants.”
A partial truth; her uncle had sent her cases and cases of empty spools thinking she could fill them with flax. He hadn’t realized flax grew in short supply in the village.
“This isn’t thread,” said the Head Weaver, pulling the thread out to circle his finger. “It’s a single fiber. That’s impossible. And it‘s so thin and wiry it could almost be made from metal.”
Layla shrugged, a not-quite lie ready for the question. “I don’t know how them Eastern folk make thread, just what it’s called.”
“How much of this do you have?”
“I can get a whole box of it if you’d like. I don’t do much fancy embroidery or sewing anyway, so it won’t do me much good. But uncle said I shouldn’t let it go cheap.”
The Head Weaver looked skeptical, but the Head Dyer looked willing.
“We’ll pay you for these two spools. If they are satisfactory, we’ll make a deal.”
Good enough for Layla. And for more than greens to thicken Samuel’s next pot of stew.
***
“They believe my hair was long haired yak?” asked Samuel aghast.
“I could have said moose,” said Layla with a smile. “If a place is far enough away, even learned folk in a small town will believe it.”
“Well, as long as it’s keeping your out of arrears,” said Samuel, sipping his broth. It tasted thicker, more vegetables and less bitterness. “I’d imagine the foodstuffs needed for this feast you’re making cost quite a lot.”
“Not as much as you think. It’s coming out of your hide anyway.”
Samuel laughed.
***
It became routine that Layla would come in the middle of the day with her broth. During her stay she would talk with Samuel and examine his hand, feeling around to make sure the bones were still lined up and healing correctly. Sometimes her fingers lingered in the swirls of the giant’s fingerprints. Samuel wasn’t a sailor or trapper or hunter, she had learned. He was a teacher. A learned man with stories of faraway places and new ways of doing things. Things with numbers and letters and people she’d never heard of before. And Samuel was more than willing to tell her.
Her brothers at first took her trips to the “shrine” with humor.
“Really hoping for God to come through with a husband, eh?”
She would shrug them off, tell them that she had to keep up the good deeds for the rest of the family. They let her go at that, rubbing at her tangled hair as she gathered more greens and vegetables for the soup pot.
Once, after a late night mending an uncle’s leather coat, and an early morning making meal packs for four brothers that would be out on a week long hunting trip, she fell asleep right as Samuel drank his broth. Samuel finished off the broth and then laid down beside her, head as close to her as he dared. His breath ripped warm over his small body.
Layla lay curled in a ball of faded green and brown. Gently, he pushed her dark hair away from her face. Though young, lines already creased around her eyes from the sun, hard work, and worry. Her eyes too heavy lidded and her lips small. Yet to Samuel she was beautiful, harsh language and all.
Here, lost in a strange land, he found some comfort.
***
Layla’s routine could only work for so long. One of her brother’s confronted her after breakfast.
“A runner came by from the Textile Guild, asking about golden thread. What’s he talking about?”
Layla shrugged. “Just some spools Uncle Tev sent a couple years ago. I’ve been selling them.”
“I thought he sent you empty spools?”
She shrugged again, hoping her brothers’ hunger would keep them from questioning more.
She should have known better than to go out when her brothers were suspicious. Though loving, they were fierce. There was a reason she had never had any suitors from the village, the threat of a dozen brothers, cousins and uncles unleashing their wrath kept them away.
As Samuel sipped at his broth the next morning, two arrows flew from the edge of the glade and hit him in the shoulder, going through coat, shirt and skin. He dropped the pot, nearly missing Layla in the process. Layla spun about and saw three brothers and an uncle running at her, bows drawn.
“Layla, get away from that thing!”
God, they were thinking wrong. They were going to kill Samuel. This shouldn’t be happening. Layla stood front and center, as if her small body could hid anything of the giant’s.
“Stop!” she yelled as another arrow shot over her shoulder. In an instant, Samuel picked her up with his good hand, holding her to his chest, shielding her from her brothers while he kicked at them. Samuel was not a fighter, Layla knew as much, and his kicks were about as effective as beating against a wild dog.
“No! Stop it both of you!”
“Let go of our sister you freak!”
The heartbeat under Samuel’s chest beat wildly, and Layla could feel each beat like thunder against her cheek. The volley of arrows started again, her brothers dodging Samuel’s foot with ease gained from hunting under the noses of game wardens. One held out a knife, going for Samuel’s heel, hoping to hobble him by cutting the tendon.
“He’s my husband!” she shrieked.
Her brothers and Samuel froze at that.
After a few beats one brother stepped forward, hesitant. “Your… husband?”
Layla’s mind grasped at straws for something to say. Her chest clenched. She hadn’t expected to back up her lies, but her mouth ran faster than her brain.
“You were the one that said good deeds might get me a husband. Well… I guess God heard you and… well. Here he is.” She gestured up at Samuel’s slack face. “Lot of good deeds. Big husband.”
Samuel stood still, chest heaving and arrows sticking out of him. Layla didn’t think the giant capable of lying, of going with the story she had spun in desperation. But he lifted her higher, cradling her in the curve between collarbone and neck, his face cleared in tired relief.
“We were hoping for a fall wedding,” said Samuel.
The tension in Layla’s chest melted away. She pawed her hand up towards Samuel’s face, his cheek rough from his beard, and he lifted her out before him, still cradled in his hand. Bracing hers arms on either side of his face, she kissed him. It was soft, unexpected, but she could feel his lips tilt up in a smile. And they were happy.
Her brothers were another matter.
“Can he at least hunt?”
I have a ko-fi!
Story originally posted on my deviantart for a fluff contest. ^_^
