The Muscheyowok’ Forest Giants

She followed her Grandpa into the woods behind his home. She’d never been allowed to go there, but at seven-years-old, she was a big girl now.

He had told her the name of the forest as they stepped onto the trail that lead through the tall Redwoods, but it was so hard to say, she jus’ stayed with, “I tell the truth” woods. Grandpa said that if she were to say anything, it would come true in these woods and she believed the old man.

She was trotting to keep up with his longer strides, and when he realized this he found a fallen log and sat down on it. As she scrambled up next to him, he was busy packing tobacco into his pipe and lighting it.

“Are their fairies and dwarfs in these woods?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said delighting in her childhood imagination, adding, “And giants, too.”

She looked around, “I can see a fairy over there and there are two dwarfs looking at us from under those ferns in front of us.”

He smiled.

“Are they dangerous?”

“They can be. Fairies never, dwarfs sometimes, when they’re being mischievous, and giants always.”

“What keeps them away?”

“Tobacco and tobacco smoke.”

“How does that work?”

“The Yurok Indians offer tobacco to the Spirits to keep themselves and their families safe. Sometimes they leave it in a single spot, or they let it spread on the wind or they smoke it.”

“So, is that why those three giant’s behind us won’t come any closer?”

“That’s right,” he said as she looked down at her.

It was then that he took note of her face, the terror in her eyes, the slight tremble in in her lower lip. He turned and looked behind them.

To both his shock and amazement, he saw three very tall giants standing behind them. He jumped from the log and turned to face them.

The three didn’t move.

With no time to figure out how such mythical creatures could be, he instructed the little girl, in a near whisper, “Get under the log and hide. And when the giant’s follow me, you get up and run back to the house as fast as you can. Understand?”

“Yes,” she whispered back.

He gently tapped the glowing cherry from his pipe, crushed it under foot and then yelled loudly, waving his arms frantically, “Follow me, you ugly beasts!”

The three giants sprang back at the sudden commotion.

A second later the old man took off at a sprint up the trail and the three giants followed. And though his legs carried him quickly, they were no match for the giants, who gained on him in less than half-a-minute.

One of them grabbed him up, then held him upside down, shaking him aggressively. Everything in his pockets fell to the ground, including his gold pocket watch and he even lost his glasses as they slipped from his nose.

“I’m done in,” he thought, “But hopefully she’s made it home by now.”

As the giants grunted over their upcoming morsel of food, they failed to notice the tiny figure that stood in their midst. She had her grandpa’s pipe and was filling it with tobacco and lighting it a quickly as she could.

She breathed in and then breathed out and with a violent cough, sent up a large blue cloud of smoke, then shouting and waving her arms, “Let my Grandpa go!”

The trio stood there, confounded and puzzled by this child’s behavior. Never in their hundreds of years had they seen one so young, so little, act so brazenly.

“I said, let my Grandpa go!” she hollered and stepped forward, before blowing out another cloud of tobacco smoke.

The one dangling Grandpa upside down, dropped the old man with a thud. Unhurt, but very frightened, he got to his feet and quickly walked over to his granddaughter.

Smiling, she handed him the pipe and he took a long, large drag from it’s bowl and stem, before turning on the giants and heaving a breathe of dark blue smoke in their direction. The three took several steps back before turning and running away, disappearing into the Muscheyowok’ Forest.

“You were right Grandpa, tobacco smoke does keep us safe,” the little girl announced.

“But only because you didn’t run away like I told you to do,” the old man weakly smiled.

Then with some haste, Grandpa grabbed the Granddaughter’s hand and began making for home along the trail. He had only a short while to figure out what to tell his wife and worse yet, his daughter, the girls mother about what had happened.