The Girl and The Giant (A short Fairytale)

Once upon a time, a young maid was walking through the woods when she came upon a field full hundreds and hundreds of pure golden flowers.

“Oh there are so many golden flowers in this field that I’m sure the owner would not mind if I picked just one”, she said to herself, “They’re so lovely”.

However, the moment that she picked the flower it let out a loud shriek which woke the owner of the field, a giant that lived in a gigantic farmhouse, as big as a castle, nearby.

“Help, giant”, the flower cried out, “A thief is trying to steal me”.

Then, trembling and cowering with fear, the girl saw the giant, with enormous strides, stomping towards her. Then, just like picking a flower, it picked her up.

“Oh please, don’t eat me”, she begged, “Have mercy”.

“I’m not going to eat you”, said the giant, handling her gently, “But because you have stolen from me, you must stay in my house as my prisoner”.

Then the giant took the girl back to his house and he locked her up in a golden dolls house within a jewelled and gilded cage.

The girls family hearing about her fate came to plead for her to be let go but the giant would not listen and everyone, even the king was so frightened of the giant that they dared not intervene.

And so the girl was forced to live with the giant in his gigantic house and while he ate at a gigantic table; she ate, seated upon his table, at a normal sized table; while he bathed in an enormous bath, she bathed, behind screens to preserve her modesty, in a normal sized bath that the giant filled up with water for her and he made her beautiful clothes to wear, like dolls clothes to him but they were as lovely as those worn by any princess and she was touched by his gentleness and his kindness, soon coming to realise that he only acted like a tyrant because, being feared by everyone, he was so lonely.

One night however, the king and a large army carrying blazing torches and armed with a thousand cannons and a fleet of hot air balloons and gliders, came to rescue the girl and, at first the giant seemed to defeat the army, pricking the hot air balloons with a giant pin so that they burst just like toy balloons and swatting the gliders with a giant fly swatter but because the army was so large and its cannon balls like bullets to the giant, the giant was subdued and, over powered, came crashing to the ground.

But the girl had grown to love the giant and, standing upon the fallen giants heart to protect it from being stabbed, she pleaded with the army not to kill him.

“I love him”, she said, “Please don’t hurt him”.

And the moment that the girl said this, suddenly, the giant began to shrink; he grew smaller and smaller until he was the size of a normal human being

“The spell that was put upon me long ago, that made me into a giant has been broken by your love for me”, he said to the girl.

Now, because he was no longer a giant, the girl married the man and, with all the wealth he had accumulated as a giant; a counting house full of giant golden coins, they both lived happily ever after.