Amazing sight! Inconceivable shock to our normal senses! Before our
eyes, Dianne and this other girl were becoming larger. A visible
change. In a moment they were above the grass. They moved away from
it. They bent the ferns aside. Dianne trampled one now. They came out
into the little open patch of rock and pebbles where Drake and I were
standing by the embers of the camp fire. Already they were as tall as
our knees.
Dianne's voice, now more familiar than ever, said, "Don't look like
that! Move back. Don't stand so close to us!"
For a moment neither Drake nor I spoke. A new realization of this thing
swept me. The menacing giants along the coast had disappeared because
they had become small. I had already contemplated that. But I had
envisaged them only as small as myself. Like the midnight visitor who
had called upon Drake and father. Yet here were humans still smaller.
And I realized then that what we had called a giant could be lurking
here upon this island now. Any of these little patches of grass would
shelter him, and a thousand like him.
Dianne had been furtive with her smoke signal to us. She had made it;
and then had grown small with her companions, to hide in the grass and
await our coming. She was so obviously furtive! As tall as my waist
now, she gazed around anxiously as though, with her greater height than
before, she might now discern some near-by enemy.
The girl with her seemed equally apprehensive. An air of haste
enveloped them both.
And I saw now that the tiny figures of the men in the grass were
spreading out and vanishing. Or searching? Or guarding? Their smallness
making it possible for them to seek out any lurking tiny enemies which
to us in our gigantic size could never be found.
A minute or two only while my thoughts roved and I clung to Drake and
stared at Dianne and this strange girl growing large before us; Dianne,
every minute as she neared what to me was her normal size, becoming
more familiar of aspect.
The same Dianne--our little sister! Yet how different! The long golden
robe was of that same strange fabric as the infant dress father had
shown us in which she had been found. Her pale-gold hair flowed free to
her waist. But it did not come down into a peak on her forehead now.
It was drawn back; and there on her forehead was the silver crescent
patch. It seemed to glow. Unnatural. Uncanny. Yet it was a thing
beautiful. It blended with her beauty. And it made her seem queerly
regal.
She said abruptly, "Ahlma--enough!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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