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Scal the sorry, Scal the sorry, lived down by the sea, where the sky grew tall and the trees lapped against the rocks like hungry little dogs. She fished and she hunted and she apologized to the world, but not quite properly, and she did her best until she didn’t feel like it anymore.
“I am sorry,” she said to the berries in her hand, “but I’m really very hungry right now.” And then she ate them without so much as please or thank you. “I am sorry,” she said to the fish that flapped on the rocks, “but I thought you might look more tastesome dead than alive.” And she bashed it with a stone and ate it all without wiping her fingers.
Scal found it hard to keep up with all the apologizing sometimes, but she was a persistent person and so she persisted. Some things made it easier. A flock of redbirds (red, not blue – blue was a sad colour, the colour of lonesome waves and winter skies) would put a summer in her step that made spring seem feeble, and finding the proper sort of clam (cautious, with firmness in its lid that mocked mere granite) could set her chuckling for hours and days. But what she liked most of all was to sit down on the rocks at the shore and watch the icebergs float by in sprint, eight-at-a-time, two-in-a-row, three-by-three or all at once. She could sit there for weeks without remembering to apologize even once, and felt all the better for it.
It was spring now, so Scal was already ready to feel good. She took a fistful of berries and a strip of dried salmon, she hauled herself down to the coziest, most grandfatherly boulder on the beach, and she squatted on it like a comfortable crab, chewing her lunch as she waited for the ice.
She waited nine minutes, then five hours, then six days, and then a week more before she jumped up and threw her gloves down in disgust. “Up and down and all around!” she cursed, and the boulder she’d been sitting on cracked into threes and then fours in a fright. “Crickets in a thicket! Something isn’t right and that’s making me angry, and that means I have to say sorry again, and that makes me angrier!” She stomped and she shuffled up and down the shore in a huff, yelling and waving her arms. But still the icebergs wouldn’t come.
“Fine!” she said. “I’ll find out about this, I know I will. And I’m not sorry one bit!”
So Scal the sorry picked up her gloves and put on her right glove again, but kept her left glove off because that hand was her magic hand. She rubbed it and spat on it and rubbed it some more, and then she held it to her mouth, mumbled, and chewed her thumb. Once she’d done that she ran down into the water and swam north, and she swam as strong as a dolphin now, with great leaps and splashes. She swam in such a hurry that she barely had time to apologize for all the noise she was making, all the way far away up north to where the ice ate the land up and hovered over the sea like a broody bird.
There was the ice, but there wasn’t an iceberg to be found, nowhere in sight – the sea was as clean as a whisker licked by a loving mother bear. The ice-cliffs were ready, heavy with weight, but not a single child of theirs was there.
“Lazy old mothers and ill-bred fathers!” said Scal the sorry. “I am sorry for calling you that, but that’s what you are. Now stand still while I fix all of this mischief.” She took off her left glove and whispered to her hand and picked at her teeth with it and then she chewed her pointing finger. A slice of her nail popped out like a jack-in-the-box, and just like that off came a berg from the ice-shelves with a groan and a roar like thunder’s grandmother, thick and stubborn.
“I am sorry for making such a noise, but that’s more like the thing that things should be like,” said Scal the sorry.
The berg bobbed in the water like a cork for a moment, wobbling its way to finding out which side was up. It decided on down, contemplated sideways, changed its mind and decided it was up, and then it was gone, yanked clean out of the water in such a flashing haste that it barely left a ripple’s slip.
“What is that and what is this!?” yelled Scal the sorry, hopping with fury. “What’s up now, eh? What sort of tricks is someone playing with my icebergs!” She ran up and down the shore again twice as angry as before, using every swear and curse she knew until all the rocks were crossed like bric-a-brac.
A voice laughed, deep and rolling. It would sound nice, but nothing sounds nice when it’s laughing at you.
“Who’s that and who’s there?” asked Scal the sorry. “I am sorry for making such a stir, but I am extremely angry right now!”
“Up here,” said the voice. “Look up, not down! You are too small to pay attention properly. Be sorry for that instead!”
Scal the sorry looked up and up some more and up again and up and up until she saw the toes of the giant. He was standing in the trees, and he was so big that she’d missed him entirely. He was a mighty impressive giant – his fur was sleek and coal-black as a bear’s nose, his beak was clean and razor-swept, and both his heads had three eyes each – but Scal the sorry was too angry to notice that right now.
“Who are you?” she called.
“I am the largest giant in all the world,” said the giant, “or at least the largest that I have ever known, and that is good enough for me.”
“What are you doing with my icebergs?” she asked.
“They’re mine as much as yours,” said the giant, holding up the iceberg Scal had shaken loose in one paw. In his other he held a fishing pole made from a tree-trunk, with ten thousand feet of line. “And I am hungry. See how fine a meal they are!” And with that he held the iceberg to his mouth and he ate it in three bites.
“Put that back or I’ll make you sorry I’m sorry to say you sack of senseless pebbles and driftwood!” she yelled at him.
The giant laughed again, a lovely rumbling sound that could’ve come from a mountain’s gut. And he picked up Scal the sorry and threw her as far and as hard as he could until she landed right in the middle of the ocean, and it took her all week to swim back. But that left her time: a day for swearing, and a day for swimming, and the other days all for plotting and planning and scheming and thinking and seething. And when at last Scal the sorry placed her foot upon the ground, she did it with the narrowed eyes and tight-lipped mouth of a person with a plan ready to fire. And with one glove missing.
The first thing Scal the sorry did, she raised her left hand to her mouth and chewed (gently) on the index finger. And then she was a big raven, with wings larger than a man.
The second thing Scal the sorry did, she flapped up and over to the giant’s campsite. He was snoring on the ground, his fishing rod and line lying at his side.
The third thing Scal the sorry did, she nibbled at his line. She nibbled every inch of those ten thousand feet of line, picking it clean of wax and snipping it until it was a thin and reedy as a fern-stem or a sprig of moss. And when her job was through, she flapped over to where the trees ended and the ice began at the sea and did the fourth thing, and she croaked three times and watched as the ice split three bergs into the chilly sea. Then she hopped up to the tallest branch of the tallest tree nearby, and sat down to wait.
“Eh?” said the giant, waking up with a snort. “Eh? So soon? So early in the morning?” He shook his heads and ran down to the shore with three steps, stomp stomp stomp, fishing rod in his paw. The sun shone, the waves gleamed, and he cast his line into the biggest and burliest of the three bergs, where it snapped into a million pieces and sunk its hook down to the bottom of the sea, where all the crabs scurried away in fright from it.
“What?!” shouted the giant. He stomped up and down the beach in a fury for two hours, roaring and yelling and waving his arms around, kicking down trees and stomping on bushes. Finally, when his temper had cooled and his feet were sore, he’d had enough. “Fine! I don’t need my line to fish!”
He walked back to his camp and sorted through his giant pack, and he pulled out a fishing net that was ten miles on each side, with boulders the size of houses for weights. Down to the shore he walked again, so angry that it was only two strides this time, stomp stomp, and he threw the net in and swept up all three of the icebergs in a cast. He ate them raw in two short bites each, belched loudly, and settled down for another nap at his campsite – this time with one eye opened and staring at the woods.
Scal the sorry swore – but she was still a raven, so it didn’t break any rocks, it just frightened all the young rabbits for miles around and sent them to bed with the shakes. She transformed herself back to normal and spent the rest of the evening walking around the beach kicking things and hurting her toes and apologizing to them and the things she’d kicked both.
Finally, she had an idea, and so she took off her left glove again. This time she chewed upon her second-last finger, and this time she transformed herself into a small piece of wood, and fetched herself up in a tree above the giant’s campsite. She waited ‘till past midnight, then down she swooped, click-a-clack.
“Eh?” mumbled the giant, sitting up and looking around. But Scal the sorry had tumbled straight into the campfire, and the giant didn’t see her.
“Hunnff,” he said at last, and fell asleep again, one eye on the woods. And the moment he did that, Scal the sorry hopped out of the fire again and burned up all the lines that held the weights to the fishing net. Then she burnt up to ashes in the air, swooped down to the shore, and spat four times into the ocean – and down came the icebergs again, one for each drop. Then she clambered up to the tallest branch of the tallest tree nearby and settled down to wait again.
“So early in the morning again?” grumbled the giant, as he heard the creak and the crash His head still hurt from all the shouting he’d done the day before, and his eyes were blackened and tired. He jumped to his feet and jumped to the beach in one big go, STOMP, and he threw his net and watched as it left its weights behind and sailed over the horizon and floated off far away, farther than anyone could ever swim.
“What?!” shouted the giant. “What?!” He roared and hollered and stomp-stomp-stomped the earth so hard it shook like a drum, he picked up the nearest tree and threw it and knocked down every tree on the shore in that one throw, WHAM. Down tumbled Scol the sorry, and she landed on the shore with a quiet “ouch.”
“YOU!” yelled the giant.
“I am sorry,” she said, “but I enjoy icebergs.”
“If I can’t eat them,” growled the giant, “maybe I’ll eat YOU.” And he jumped at her.
Scol the sorry was quick as a weasel and swifter than a jackrabbit, but her legs were much shorter, and it was no time at all before she was almost caught. But if her legs were fast, her mind was faster, and she knew that she’d never seen the giant swim, not once. So she dashed into the water, right between the giant’s feet, and swam out half a mile.
“Come and get me!” she yelled at him. “Come-and-get-me, come-and-get-me, nah-nah, slow-foot, fat-face!”
The giant turned so black in the face that he was nearly white. “If I had my line, I’d hook you like a minnow!” he shouted.
“It’s on the bottom of the ocean, where I put it with my tricks,” she taunted. “Come-and-get-me!”
“If I had my net,” he yelled, “I’d wrap you in it ten times over like a spider’s breakfast!”
“It’s at the end of the world, where I sent it with my cleverness,” she laughed. “Come-and-get-me!”
“If I could swim,” he screamed, “I’d come right out there and strangle you myself!”
“The water’s shallow here, empty-head!” she told him. “Come-and-get-me!”
The giant looked and sure enough, the water there was shallow as a pond. He didn’t have to think twice after that – he dashed out there so quickly he didn’t seem to step at all, and he seized Scal the sorry in both his hands.
“I am going to eat you in one bite!” he said. “Or maybe I’ll strangle you like I said, or crush you underfoot, or throw you against a mountain, or into the sky, or all at once!”
“Make up your mind,” complained Scal. “But whatever you do with me, you’ll need one hand free to do it.”
The giant saw her point at this. “Then I will crush you underfoot!” he said, and he raised his one hand to throw her down. And while his one hand was missing, Scal put her littlest, most magic finger of her left hand in her mouth and chewed it once, hard. And BOOM, all the ice fell into the water at once – one, two, three, four, five hundred icebergs, all bigger than the last and the first at once. The giant barely had time to turn and yell before they were all over him, battering and knocking and bruising. He lost his grip on Scal, lost his footing on the bottom, and lost his life pinned underneath all five hundred icebergs, drowned in water that a child could’ve gone paddling in.
“I am sorry,” said Scal, as she bobbed in the water again, “but I did not like you very much.” And she meant about half of what she said, which was pretty good for Scal on a good day, like that day.
So she went home, and still had half a handful of berries left for when the bergs came by.