The Bathing Giant

~Note: This story was originally published in ParSec Magazine #12. You can buy the issue here or read the story for free below.

I came to the village at the beginning of summer, a surveyor for the new coastal railroad, though it was not until my assignment had almost drawn to an end that I finally laid eyes on the great red sandstone stack known to the locals as the Bathing Giant.

It was a cold and blustery day, the wind casting spindrift far up onto the cliffs over which I paced carefully, carrying my theodolite and tripod, and taking special care not to make a wrong footing on the damp sedge that skirted the cliffs' edge or stumble ill-advisedly onto a gull's nest, for I knew from grim experience how ferociously those birds protect their young.

I had taken the same care when asked the purpose of my visit, first by my landlady and then several times by those I ran into on the cliffs, and at other times by voices raised over the wind and drystone walls, perplexed at both my presence and strange measuring apparatus. I am, of course, well aware of how hostile these people along the coast are to the proposed railroad, our plans to run the land through with wood and steel; their fear is palpable—landscape, after all, being a kind of memory, which can be both altered and erased; though in truth I had always been loath to entertain the fears of those averse to progress; not all memories are worth keeping, and most are worthy sacrifices to the march of the future.

On the cliff path that day, which was to be my last in the village, the Giant came into shape gradually, like a recollection from childhood, emerging inch by inch as I proceeded on my course, like a Doric column rising from the sea—a cataclysm in reverse. A little further, as I rounded the curve of the headland, it grew broader, appearing like an old standing stone, the sole vestige of an ancient and mysterious religion, wiped forever from the collective memory. And when at last I arrived at the bluff, I must have done so at just the right hour, for the shadows seemed to illuminate rather than obscure—I saw it! A bathing giant, down on one knee in the deep water, head bowed, the right arm reaching over the left shoulder, caught in the act of cupping water over his strong back; and I felt in that instant like a magician, who had conjured up this remarkable being out of nothing, and was privy, for a few heartbeats, to one of his most intimate moments...

On returning to my lodgings that evening, I inquired of my landlady about the rock.

It must have been the Bathing Giant, she said, laying down a tray of strong tea and rough biscuits on a small side table next to where I sat formalising the day's calculations. Yes, he's something of a sacred figure around here.

What did she mean, I pressed, and she explained that he brought them much comfort; that thinking of him, his strong serenity, the blissful peace in his careful, solitary action, they were able to stay calm in the face of tragedy, dignified in moments of indignity; because of him, they were always resolute in kindness and slow to anger.

How had I felt, she asked, when I walked away from him and returned along the cliff path? Had I felt sadness looking back at the form that was once him, like remembering a sweet moment of love with the bitter knowledge of betrayal? Had I felt guilt in my hindsight, seeing him now only as a standing stone, now as only a column? She herself had often wished that she could plant her feet in the thick grass of the bluff and turn into a tree so that she might gaze on him forever.

She sits down next to me. Did I know that there is a story about a woman—oh, long, long ago—who fell in love with the giant? Yes, she lived in a house on the bluff, was born there in fact; and because she was so in love with the giant, she never left that house, refused to leave the headland for any reason, because she could not bear the thought of changing him with her gaze into something inanimate—it was such anathema to her that it would be tantamount to death! And when it finally came that she was old, by which time the cliff about her house had begun to collapse, and all the villagers beseeched her: Move! Move! For your house will soon fall into the sea and you along with it! Yet she refused, saying this is my home, here with the giant, and anywhere he is not is Hell to me.

And then one day after a great storm, her house was gone, and all that remained was a sea swallow, which had on its head the markings of her greying black hair, and which nested in the face of that cliff and never left—and you will see even today that the terns that nest on these cliffs do not fly away to the warm south come winter, but remain here, their little black eyes always on their paramour, the Bathing Giant...

That night I went to bed but found sleep unwilling to take me. I tossed and turned in my sheets, the light from the glaring full moon piercing the curtains and affording me not a moment's rest. Frustrated, I sat up in my bed and dragged on my clothes, thinking perhaps a midnight stroll might induce a slumberous state.

Curious suddenly to know what the giant might look like in the moonlight, I decided to take once again the cliff path where I had spent the day working.

There was a chill in the air, and I walked slowly. Flooded in the light of the moon, the landscape seemed alien, though not of another place but of another time, devoid of colour, as if I had stepped into a room whose hangings were all faded with age.

As I approached the spot, I realised I could not see the outline of the giant against the sea, for moonlit rocks and moonlit water share an obsidian gleam, making it impossible to discern one from the other.

At first I thought little of it, but when I arrived at the bluff and still could not make out the giant's shape, I began to panic, thinking perhaps I had taken a wrong turn in the confusion brought on by the midnight landscape. To be lost on a treacherous cliff path in the dark was not a prospect that I relished. After mentally retracing my steps, however, I was sure that no, I was indeed in the correct spot, and yet the giant—?

Then, suddenly, from behind me, I felt a great tremor, as if the ground itself were rebelling beneath me, and soon a pounding, like the pacing of a stampeding elephant threatened to overturn me, and stronger and stronger, faster and faster, it approached the bluff on which I stood dumbfounded like a man about to witness the King of Hell and his pack of ghostly hounds hunting doomed souls through the clouds. But this quarry is no human soul, nor his pursuer the King of Hell: From the darkness, he comes, an enormous figure, taller than two houses, braided hair glistening with sweat, eyes alight with terror! Tripping on a hillock he falls, skidding splayed on the sedge, so that behind him I now see his pursuers, a band of wild men, not large like him but the same dimensions as myself, hurling spears and arrows bright with fire that stick in his back and legs and make him roar with pain; but up again he stands, and as soon as he regains his feet, a thunderous twang rings out and a bolt, large as a ship's anchor, fit for the siege of a great walled city, sails through the night air and embeds deep into the giant's back; and staggering now to the cliffs' edge, he tumbles headlong into the sea, to cacophonous cheers from the madding crowd, who now cluster on the precipice like a parade of cackling crows. And when at last the giant emerges from the foam, they jeer at him, shouting that this is their land now, that he and his kind will walk it no more.

Pierced by the bolt, the giant staggers out to sea, turning one last time to the shore, to lay his eyes on the land of his fathers; he falls to one knee, in part in reverence, in part exhaustion, and cries out to his gods not to let those who murdered him pillage his body, nor let the gulls and fish strip him of his flesh, for a giant's flesh is a gift from Earth, to whom it must return, not to the sea or the sky; and so he begs them to turn him to stone, to make his body a monument to his people's destruction, to be looked on for eternity by those who took everything from him.

And in the milky embrace of the moonlight, as he reaches back to pull the bolt from his shoulder blades, the giant's body turns to stone, and the crowd on the cliff fall silent, and silently, piecemeal, they return to the dark.

So did I, then, return to my lodgings, and slept an uneasy sleep until morning...

The next day I rose early, for I was due to return to the city and make my recommendations regarding the railroad to my superiors.

Did I think it would come this way, the new railroad? My landlady asked as I waited for the morning shower to pass before setting off on foot to the nearest town many hours away.

Thinking of the giant and his fate, I did not know how to answer, and after giving a non-committal word or two I set off hurriedly through the rain, the shrieking of the sea swallows hounding me for miles and miles and miles.

END