Late one summer morning long ago, Katharine went wandering in the Rocky Glen, to gaze up at the great boulders that stood against the sky. She wandered, and she wandered, until she came to the foot of the greatest boulder of all.
Suddenly she felt a trembling and a heaving beneath her feet. And down she looked at the ground, but saw nothing there but the tufts of grass and the sandy earth between them. Still the earth trembled and shook, just as if it contained something alive.
Thump-DUB, it went, whatever I twas, thump-DUB, lub-DUB, and the earth heaved in rhythm all around.
Now all at once Katharine heard voices about her in the sunshine, whispering things excitedly. These, she knew, belonged to the fairies of the air, who are invisible to human sight till they touch the earth, but whose voices are easy to hear, and sound shimmery, like sunshine on pools of water.
Katharine listened to the voices for a little time, then she understood what both the trembling of the earth and the excitement of the fairies of the air were all about.
The trolls had captured a giant, and had cut out his heart to eat. For it is by eating the heart of a giant that trolls acquire strength for their cruel and violent deeds. But the fairies of the air, who love the giants, had stolen the still beating heart during the night and buried it in the earth at the foot of the great boulder.
Now, whispered the fairies of the air to one another in their excitement, they must hope to keep the hiding place of the giant’s heart secret from the trolls – as well as from the crows, who are slaves of the trolls. For the trolls are deadly enemies of the giants, and must surely have sent their slaves to find the heart in its hiding place and tear it to pieces with their sharp beaks. Or perhaps the trolls themselves would come seeking it.
“Let us not wait past evening,” said the fairy queen, “for then, under cover of the dark, we can dig up the great heart, carry it across the glen to the Short Hills where the giant lies dead, and place it again within his breast.”
Now, the fairies greatly feared the trolls, for these would often come crashing through the forest to snatch them from their gossamer dwellings in the nighttime, and make off with them to have them do their evil bidding. The fairies likewise feared the crows, which the trolls would send into the forest to pluck them up in their beaks and carry them to the trolls’ towns in the Far Hills.
Hearing the fairies’ plan, Katharine willingly stayed in the glen the whole rest of the morning and all the afternoon, close to the great boulder, which itself seemed to tremble now with the beating of the giant’s heart.
Then the sun sank in the west, and the nighttime the fairies so eagerly awaited was upon them.
But suddenly there was a great commotion in the distance, to the north and to the west, and Katharine could hear a clashing and a clanging, and far cries of anger, like screeching. The trolls were coming, seeking the giant’s heart.
The fairies of the air were terrified, and fell silent. Katharine hid herself in a clump of brush, not too far from the great boulder. She hardly dared breathe, lest the trolls discover her and carry her off to their towns in the Far Hills.
“Screech!” screamed the nearest troll, as the whole clashing, clanging troop lumbered rapidly into the glen. Now in no time they were all around, dozens, hundreds of them, great, hairy, ugly, babbling creatures, screeching and striking their clubs against the ground in rage, cursing the fairies who had hidden the giant’s heart.
All around Katharine’s hiding place they lumbered and stumbled, grinning and babbling and striking the earth with their clubs.
Then night fell. The trolls fell silent and stood still. They could no longer see anything, anything at all, not even the great boulder. And they gave up looking for the giant’s heart – which now was beating softly, softly, so that Katharine and the fairies knew it must have but little life left within. And the trolls went groping and lumbering back up to the hills in the West.
Now the fairies of the air began to touch the ground, one by one, and the lacy wings of each began to shimmer violet and yellow like early moonlight, till at last the whole night around the boulder was almost as bright as day.
Katharine, too, came from her hiding place, up close to the foot of the boulder, where hundreds of tiny, shimmery creatures were now digging at the earth with their shovels and picks of twig, casting little clumps of earth as mush as a foot into the air. And in what seemed not time at all, the great, beating heart of the giant lay open to the night. Whispering to one another even more earnestly than before, a hundred fairies placed their slender arms between the strong, warm heart and the cool, moist earth, and lifted it a little way into the air. Then they carried it, from the shallow hole in which it had lain, quickly northwest toward the hills where the trolls had flung the body of the giant, and placed it, still beating, again within the giant’s breast.
And the giant opened his eyes. He looked around, then he rose up, and strode toward the river that flowed past the glen. When he reached the river he knelt, and cupped his huge hands in the water. Then he drank a long draught, and plunged his head and whole body into the river. Then he emerged from the waters, clothed himself – and strode forth to do battle with the trolls.
When the giant came among the troll towns in the Far Hills, their denizens screeched and screamed with fear and rage – but it did them little good, for some of them the giant tore in pieces and threw to their slaves the crows, while others he hurled into the valley to tumble to their deaths. Now the fairies’ whispering turned into singing, like the sound of thousands upon thousands of mosquitoes. Seven days they danced in the air and seven nights they danced on the earth, for their deadly enemy was no more.
This is why there are no longer any trolls in the Far Hills. And this is why the giants love the fairies of the air.
