Last of the Mountain Giants

The sun was going down as Magda sat down for another evening on the mountain. Idly she turned the two yaks she had caught that day, roasting them over the fire. She looked up at the mountain peaks that rose in the centre of the range, their pinnacles craved into elaborate eyries where once generations of her kind had feasted and cavorted. Magda's own father had ruled from there. But now she was the last giant among the mountains and the eyries had too many memories for her.

She spotted something coming up the mountain. At first she thought it was an ill-fated mountain goat, but she saw that it was a man.

The village elder struggled him way up the flinty slopes towards Magda's cave. He was an old man -- he was the same elder who had served her father for a time. Behind him were two heavily laden donkeys being led stubbornly up the slope.

'Lady Magda!' shouted the elder breathlessly. 'Magda the Enormous, daughter of Sven the Angry! I bring you tribute!'

Magda sighed. 'What have you brought me?' she said, turning her yaks again.

The elder hauled the donkeys up onto the ledge outside Magda's cave. He took the bundles from their backs and opened them. 'See, bolts of the finest cloth from the weaver's house!' he said with forced pride. 'A bundle of sweetmeats, the finest the baker and the butcher have ever made! And... and also some fine baskets, and a carving. The village children were supposed to sing a song about your many qualities, Lady Magda, but we feared the journey up the mountain would be too much for them.'

Magda inspected the offerings. In her father's day the village tributes were the foundation of the giants' relationship with the villagers of the foothills. The villagers offered what they could spare, and the giants refrained from stamping on their buildings and eating their relatives. Magda had no interest in spreading tedious destruction. Her father, he thought, would have disapproved of this.

'Leave it in the cave,' she said.

'Of course, my titanic queen,' said the elder. He wiped sweat away from his eyes and began enlisting the donkeys' help in dragging the village's tribute into the cave. She was struck by just how old he was. How long did they live down there? Fifty years? Sixty?

'It does not please you, my lady?' said the elder.

'Please me? Why would it please me? The sweetmeats will barely take away the taste of the yak, and what am I supposed to do with the cloth? Make a scarf? And I have enough baskets, thank you very much.'

'Then... what would you have us do for you, your enormousness?'

Magda stood up, and was overcome by frustration. What did she want? What would make her happy? 'Just... just a new life! Just something to do up here! I am the last of the mountain giants! What tribute can your village cart up here that can take away that sorrow? And what of these?' She clasped her enormous breasts. 'What good are these with no-one to nuzzle therein? What good these great thighs and this blonde hair if no-one will ever see them, save some ancient creature an eighth of my size?' She sat down again in a sulk.

'We did not know,' said the elder, 'that you felt such sorrow.'

'Well, I do. Begone, and do not bother me with these trinkets again.'

The elder sadly led his donkeys out of the cave and descended the slope. Magda did not bother to watch him go.

***

The next day, Magda climbed to the peak of her mountain where there was a tarn of ice-cold meltwater. She shrugged off the long tattered dress that she had made from a ship's sail, and undid the belt that she used to hold her hair back. She tested the water - ice-cold and perfectly clear.

She looked down at her breasts. Sven the Angry had always sired daughters with fine breasts. They were like mountains on their own. She had handsome child-bearing hips, too, not that she would be bearing anything soon, and between them a dense thatch of blonde hair. Her reflection in the tarn looked back at her, with its strong handsome face and full lips. She had ice-blue eyes.

Magda slid herself into the tarn. Sometimes she lay for hours up there staring up at the clouds, or when there were no clouds she looked up at the very highest mountain peaks. She had once had brothers who made a sport of scaling them -- they had all gone off to war, died in some pointless duel or fallen into the valleys below where the sun never shone. The sons and daughters of Sven the Angry had all disappeared, one by one, and now his youngest daughter was the only one left.

Again, she caught movement out of the corner of her eyes. She looked around to see a man struggling up onto the mountain peak beside her. She sat up, clasping her arms around her to hide her breasts.

It wasn't the elder. It was a younger man. He was dressed in the simple fashion of his village, and Magda was relieved to see he was not dragging more tribute-laden beasts with him.

'Who are you?' she demanded.

The man was for a moment stunned into silence by the sight of the naked giant in front of him.

'I...' he stammered, '... am Stellan.'

'Really? Are you the new elder?'

'No, my lady, 'said Stellan. 'I am the tribute.'

'The tribute?'

'Yes. The elder announced that your... needs are not being fulfilled by our efforts. So I was chosen to put that to rights.'

Magda looked him up and down. 'You?'

'Of course! I am the lustiest man in the village! Can you not see this broad chest and this handsome chin? The village wives all sigh whenever I pass by. And my stamina is renowned beyond the bounds of our village. I am a lover, my lady, the finest around!'

Magda saw that Stellan was indeed tall and broad-shouldered by the standards of the diminutive villagers. They all looked the same to her unless she really concentrated, and she had seen few of them beyond the increasingly decrepit elder. She thought that perhaps if she was significantly smaller he might have caught her eye.

'Very well,' she said. 'You say you are renowned?'

'Every husband hereabouts knows my name!' said Stellan proudly.

'Hmm.' Magda stood up, stepped out of the tarn, and laid down on the rock. In the mountain sun she would dry out quickly up there. 'You may begin,' she said.

Stellan had swallowed apprehensively as he had seen the full length of her for the first time. He had the look of a man who was watching an avalanche approaching. He steeled himself and approached Magda. 'Is there anything that in particular that you would like?'

'Just do whatever you do,' she replied. 'Is that how you start when seducing all the wives?'

'Well, no. I just take them in my arms and they usually swoon. You are something of a challenge, Lady Magda.'

'We can safely do aside with that part. I'm waiting.'

'Of course.'

Stellan clambered up onto one of Magda's thighs, then onto her belly. Many years of climbing up and down the mountain hunting yak had made her body taut, so the footing was good. He approached her right breast with reverence.

Magda glanced down to see him licking at her breast. He kissed the underside of her breast, then walked up between her breasts to get at her nipple. He licked it with some enthusiasm, until he looked sideways to see that Magda was unimpressed. He felt more like an itch than a man, or like an insect walking on her skin. Looking rather despondent, he slid down onto her belly again, and then down between her legs.

'Can you feel that?' he said after a few moments.

'Feel what?' said Magda.

'I'm trying my best. Are you sure you can't feel anything?'

Magda concentrated. She could feel something fluttering around her lips down there -- he was certainly going at it with some enthusiasm for the fluttering was very fast, but it barely drummed against her.

After some time Stellan emerged, looking bedraggled. 'I fear,' he said, 'that I may be defeated.'

'That's it?' said Magda.

'The difference in... well, in size, presents an obstacle to love that I have not encountered before,' said Stellan. 'Why, my lady's pleasure-nub alone is almost the size of...'

'Then I think it best that we let it rest. You'd better get back to the village. No doubt there is a tiny warm woman waiting for you down there.'

'Yes, my lady.' Stellan hesitated. 'Is there one thing I can ask of you?'

'Perhaps,' said Magda.

'Please let the elder know that I did my best. Some of my... my dalliances have caught up with me and the husbands demanded that I either perform this task for them or suffer punishment. I would be grateful if you could be let it known that I did my duty to the best of my ability. Otherwise they might decide to take their revenge on me after all.'

'I can't imagine the wives would be happy with that.'

'Oh, they wouldn't. The blacksmith talked of taking his tongs to me.'

'I'll tell them you tried,' said Magda. 'Goodbye, Stellan.'

'Goodbye, my lady,' said Stellan, and began the long dejected walk back down the mountain.

***

It was some days later that the elder reappeared. This time, a dozen or so women were behind him, having followed him up the mountain to Magda's cave. They were cheeks were flushed from the long walk. They were tanned, peasantish women with russet-coloured clothes, their hair wound up into buns and ponytails. Some of them were stout and matronly, others were taut and muscular with work. The younger women were rounded and pretty, or slim and boyish with bright eyes.

Magda emerged from her cave. The day was bright, and she blinked in the light, for she had been lying miserable and frustrated in the cave for some time.

'Stellan has told me of your displeasure,' said the elder with an air of apology.

'He tried his best,' said Magda.

'Well, it has been explained to me that the women of the village are sometimes similarly disappointed,' continued the elder. 'It is... well, they talk not of this to the men, but it is said that some of the men are to them as Stellan was to you, Lady magda. That is to say, less that satisfactory. The days can be long and their labours can drain a man of his vigour. So the women sometimes get together and... see to such things for themselves.'

'They do?'

'Oh, yes. Our women are most ingenious.'

'What of your wife?'

'My own wife,' said the elder, 'has been in the ground for a decade or more. This is not an area of governance with which I am greatly experienced, so I should perhaps allow the women to explain in my stead.'

'Let's get a look at you!' said one of the women, who Magda would later learn was the blacksmith's wife. She was large and good-faced, with a wide smile and blue eyes. 'What breasts!' she exclaimed. 'I never knew we lived in the shadow of two mountain ranges.'

'And her thighs!' said the moneylender's wife, who was a handsome, high-boned woman who had been ravishingly beautiful in her youth and become only more bewitching with age. 'Why, you could bring down a tree with those! You could break a boat in two!'

'I think her hair is lovely,' said the miller's wife. The miller was a young man and had married his sweetheart, a pretty rosy-cheeked thing with an air of innocence still just clinging to her.

'I should leave you be,' said the elder, and hurried back down the mountain.

'Well, lay back, dearie,' said the blacksmith's wife. 'We can't get at you from down here.

The women of the village, it seemed, gather on occasion to act as a sort of university teaching the female form. They knew all the many tricks to unlock the hidden delights of a woman's body. The younger women, after the initial shock of learning that such things were even known among the village matrons, normally took to their instruction with great enthusiasm. Magda, then, was a sort of examination, akin to the construction of an artist's masterpiece. Magda lay on her back and the women had clambered all over her with great enthusiasm, unbuckling her furs and pulling off her sandals, until she was exposed to the mountain air. The village women, too, stripped off, and Magda got the feeling that they had the chance to loll around naked rather rarely.

'Well,' said the blacksmith's wife, sitting between Magda's breasts, 'it's difficult to know where to start.'

'Oh, use your imagination,' said the moneylender's wife, who was lying on one of Magda's thighs stroking it as if it were a thoroughbred horse. 'How wonderful! How heavenly, to simply lounge about on her. I could stay here for days!'

'Me too,' said the miller's wife, who had lain down in Magda's hair and had wrapped herself up in the blonde locks as if they were a blanket. 'Oh, she's beautiful!'

'How about you?' said the seamstress, who was cuddling one of Magda's feet. 'Are you happy?'

'It is not unpleasant,' said Magda. 'I find it calming to have you all here. And I am happy that you are enjoying me so much. But in truth, there is that tension in me that is still not relieved.'

The moneylender's wife rolled over and stretched out. Her breasts were still firm, her nipples small and dark, her long hair and the tight curls between her thighs glossy black in a contrast to Magda's own colouring. 'My poor lady,' she said, 'if only you could feel as we do. Perhaps there is some... machine we could make?'

The wives of the baker and the fourth farmed to the west were embracing in Magda's nethers, lying against her groin as they kissed. It was a pleasant feeling to have them rolling around slowly down there, their hands brushing against her as ran over one another's bodies. Not powerful and thrusting, as Stellan had hoped to achieve, but tingling enough.

The fourth farmer's wife stopped kissing the baker's wife for a moment. 'I think if my lady wished to make an implement she would be better at it than any of us. She's got the strong, straight trunks of the mountain conifers and the soft hides of the yaks. She could make the mightiest pleasure-contraption this hills have ever seen!'

The women discussed the matter for many hours as they cavorted on Magda. They tried to include her in their pleasures, stroking her nipples, kissing her neck, and while it was delightful it could no more light the fires inside her than could a cloud of butterflies pattering on her skin.

Eventually the women dressed and happily left to walk back down the mountain before the sun set. Magda lay there a long time, wishing that there were giantesses left who could enrol her in their own university of the female body. But there were none -- she was the last. She would have to live with it, as her people had once endured famine, war, and all manner of strange monsters whose skeletons now lay bleaching in the valleys below. Perhaps the giants and the monsters had died out together, the one needed the other to justify existence. Or perhaps time was simply changing, and the giants had not changed with it.

Magde rolled onto her side and fell asleep. She dreamed of a flock of butterflies lifting her up and carrying her away.

***

The elder had not ascended the mountain for several months. He was emaciated and his skin was deeply lined, and tanned like battered leather. His back was bent and his walk unsteady as he picked his way up the path. His breath was heavier than ever with the exertion.

Winter was drawing in and Magda had been to gather firewood from the treeline below. She was stripping away the branches of the great conifers she had collected, and split the trunks with a chunk of blade-like flint. She had kept one particularly well-formed trunk inside, along with a pile of yak hides.

She looked round at the elder as he approached. With some disdain she watched him stop, mop his brow, and sit for a while on a rock as he got his breath back. He was wearing heavy furs against the encroaching cold. Magda was in her furs, too, a great mantle the size of a galleon's mainsail that wrapped around her neck and dragged along the ground behind her.

'Have you given up?' said Magda. 'Have I defeated you? Are you hear to plead with me not to destroy your village?' She threw another handful of split trunks onto the woodpile by the cave entrance. 'You need not bother. I am not like my fathers. I do not care one way or another that you bring me trinkets or kneel to me as your lady. I just want to wait out the winter in peace.'

'Forgive me,' said the elder, 'for I have not come to pay my respects for some time. I have been far away. I have journeyed across the great river with its rapids and cataracts, I have crossed through the densest woods and the plains with their tribes of horsemen. I went into the desert, with a band of cutthroats as my guides and no more than a few legends to lead me onwards. But I succeeded, my lady. I have brought you the last tribute of the autumn.'

'What is it? More linen and carvings? More toys made by your menfolk? Maybe the women have made me an implement from all the hides your hunters could gather.'

'No, my lady, it is more than that. I have struggled to understand what you desire, and then when I thought I knew the answer I struggled even more for a way to find it. Then in an old book of fanciful tales I found it. I have many years on my back and this may be my last winter, and I could not sit it out without doing everything I could to give you the village's tribute, as is your right.'

'Then where is it?'

'Behind me, my lady,' said the elder. 'Just a few moments more.'

Magda heard footsteps on the stone. A shape coalesced from the mists of low cloud gathered around the mountain, tall and strong and dark as the night, as tall as Magda herself -- taller, even, if such a thing could be possible.

It was a giant. A man! His skin was the colour of polished wood and his eyes were black. Beneath his cloak of wolf skins he wore segments of golden armour, tarnished with travel but ornate and lustrous, shining against his dark skin. He was broad-shouldered and muscular, as fine a figure of a man as the strongest young thane of her father's household. His face was chiselled and strong. He knelt as he saw Magda.

'My lady Magda,' he said, with a deep, accented voice as powerful as thunder. 'I have come from the desert kingdoms to fulfil this man's oath. I have crossed the desert and fended off cutthroats. I have swum over the waterfalls and rapids of the Icevein River. I have uprooted the greatest trees of the densest forest to forge my path. And looking upon you, I see that my efforts were well spent. I would make that journey a dozen times over, and carry a hundred brave and loyal men such as this elder, if you should be waiting for me at the end.'

'I think,' said the elder, 'I should return to my people.'

'You have my leave to go,' said Magda, not looking away from the desert giant as she waved the elder away.

The giant stood and took her hand. 'It is said that you are searching for something, my lady,' he said. 'Perhaps I could help you find it.'

'I believe that you can,' said Magda awkwardly. 'Would it please you, good sir, to enter my cave?'

***

He clasped her magnificent breasts. He grabbed her tremendous buttocks and stitched kisses along her taut belly and thighs. She touched the hot, dark length of him and pulled it inside her, and its heat finally ignited inside her. She felt his weight on her, heard his breath in her ear, gasped and sighed along with him. She had never felt strong arms around her, or smooth dark skin sliding between her thighs.

At first she was astonished by it, and it was all she could do to lie there as he shifted his weight over her. Then she moved with him, pushed back into him, and kissed him back. Gradually she took control, rolling him over and lying on top of him. She took him out of her and pushed his head down, feeling his tongue and lips on her, and she gripped his shoulders as the head grew unbearable and was released in a sudden rush of pleasure. She lay back and he entered her again, and soon she heard that same force rushing through her as he tensed up, gasped, and relaxed again, his chest heaving with his breath as he lay beside her.