Belena turned her head and saw a figure standing on the courthouse steps. She recognized him as Master Hillar, the town’s mayor, who often visited the palace. She didn’t know him all that well, though. Still keeping the man in the safety of her fingers, she turned around and looked down at the mayor and his attendants.

“Princess Belena!” the mayor exclaimed, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “What are you doing here? Does your mother know…”

“Yes, she does!” Belena interrupted. “Besides, Master Hillar, I am old enough to go out on my own now, and I may visit the town at any time I please. Understood?”

The people around her were stunned. They hadn’t expected so young a girl to speak in such a commanding manner, giantess or not. The mayor mumbled his acquiescence; he was just as amazed at how quickly this girl had grown up. She took another look at the man sticking out the top of her fist, and graciously decided to release him. When she stood up to her full height, she looked every bit as imposing as her mother, yet many still doubted that she would make as fine a queen.

“May I ask why you are here, my lady?” one of the mayor’s attendants asked.

“Like I said, I simply wish to learn more about you,” Belena said, pleased at being called ‘my lady’. “I don’t wish to be a nuisance, but I would appreciate it if I could simply walk around for a while. Oh, and sorry about grabbing one of you just now; I know how awful that must be for you.”

By now almost everyone had lost their fear, and the men and women of Rismark began to crowd around her feet. They all seemed to try and touch the bottom of her gown, and a few of them even began to climb, until they saw her giving them an angry look. One young girl of about sixteen began to cry out Belena’s name loudly, and also pleaded to be picked up. The people around her looked at her curiously, but Belena couldn’t pass up an opportunity to make a new friend, and carefully reached down for the girl.

As the rest of the crowd kept themselves busy at her feet, Belena regarded the young lass sitting in her palm. She was dressed in the most basic of clothes and was rather dirty as well. The girl seemed to suddenly notice this, and she lowered her face embarrassedly.

“Pleased to meet you,” the giant princess said. “I’m glad to see someone who’s interested in becoming my friend. What’s your name, miss?”

“Arily, Your Highness,” came her timid reply.

“And why were you so eager to talk to me, Arily?”

“I…I could be your guide!” the girl said expectantly. “I could show you around town, and we could talk and…only if Your Highness wishes to, I mean!”

“I would love to! Only one thing: if we’re going to be friends, you’ll have to start calling me Belena. I hear ‘Your Highness’ so many times, I’m beginning to forget what my real name is.”

She put Arily on her shoulder, where she promptly got entangled in Belena’s forty-foot long hair. She tugged on the strands that were hanging all around her, and managed to hoist herself up to Belena’s ear. Holding on as fast as she could, she began to tell her giant companion where she thought they could go first. Belena, however, wanted to visit the park first, so Arily slid down and landed on her shoulder. They reached the park in a few seconds, but Belena saw something else that caught her attention.

“Is that…a fire?” she asked, pointing to a column of smoke that was rising from the opposite end of town. Arily saw it as well, and gasped.

“Yes, it…it is! It must be one of the houses in the poor district – where I live! Maybe we could…hey!” Arily found herself being pinched by gigantic fingers, and an instant later she was down on the ground. She looked up, but the princess was already gone.

Belena ran as fast as was possible without causing any significant damage. A few large cracks appeared in the street, but that didn’t concern her: she was just glad there were no people on the giant street for her to step on. Quick as a flash, she reached the gate on the opposite edge of the town, and leapt over it. Then she was off into the fields, where there were no more little people to accidentally crush, and she could run at top speed.

The idea had popped into her head, out of the blue, and she had acted without thinking first. About two miles east of Rismark flowed a small stream, which was the size of a large river to the humans, and the nearest water source Belena could think of. She crouched down on the grassy bank of the stream, dipped her hands in the fast-flowing water, and sucked it up into her mouth. Then she was running back to the scene of the fire.

She knelt down just outside the town walls; the burning inn was right inside the walls, up against them. Closing her eyes against the smoke, she spewed out the 700 gallons of water in her mouth, drenching the flames. This nearly extinguished the fire, but parts of the lower floors were still burning. The roof had caved in, and Belena could see people still trapped on the upper floor, covered in soot. She rolled up her sleeve and stuck her arm into the smoking ruins, trying to grab whoever she could. After rescuing four people in the topmost rooms, she broke through the floor and began searching for survivors on the middle storey.

A man and a woman, trapped in one of the cupboards, were the only people left in the inn. They could see an enormous hand sticking through the ceiling and, thinking it belonged to Queen Valerie, ran towards it. Then they too were grasped tightly and lifted up into clean air.

Belena placed the choking couple down on the wall, while, below them, men and women with buckets of water were dousing the last of the flames. But most of the gathered crowd had their eyes only on Belena, who, even kneeling down as she was, loomed high above the great wall. It had taken her but a few minutes to put out most of the fire and rescue everyone trapped inside, and she was beginning to feel, for the first time in her life, as if she had done something great. The final confirmation came when the crowd began to applaud, and many of them got down on their knees to show respect. She began to blush, and wondered if she should say anything.

“I…I’m glad to have been of help,” she said, as the woman she’d rescued was embraced by her young son. “You don’t have to thank me – well, maybe I will think of something you can do for me, but that’s not important right now. I’m just happy that no-one was hurt, and I’m certain my mother shall be able to pay for the damage.”

“Oh, I think she could,” a voice behind her said. Belena turned her head, and saw the Queen standing behind her. She stood up, and Valerie smiled at her proudly.

“So, only your first day outside, and you’re already a hero,” Valerie said. “I hope this will be a recurring role for you, dear. Goodness knows I can’t do all the work around here!”

“I…I didn’t do much,” Belena admitted. It was true: what she had done had been of no effort to her, and she rather felt that she didn’t deserve much credit. But her mother simply laughed at her modesty.

“No, my darling – you simply saved the lives of six people, and stopped a dangerous fire before it could spread even further, and you’ve proven me wrong about keeping you inside the castle. Speaking of which, I we’d best head back, and later perhaps you can go and look for your brother and sister. They’re somewhere out and about, and I don’t want them running into trouble in the forest.”

Belena nodded and stepped lightly over the town wall, to look for Arily. She wasn’t going to leave her new friend, not without getting to know her first, and thought it might be a great idea to bring her over to the castle later. The people rushed to the side as she moved through them,, her gargantuan slippers adding yet more cracks to the road she’d damaged earlier. But she didn’t care about that: she knew that her mother would see to it, just like she always did.

Valdan was sitting on top of a large rock, overlooking the great river that flowed east of the castle. He knew that his sisters would think it was a small stone, on the bank of a small stream, but it all seemed so large to him. The castle was miles behind him, lost behind a forest of tall grass he’d spent hours struggling through. Ahead of him, across the river, grew another forest, this one of real, giant-sized trees. It looked very dark and dangerous out there, but Valdan still longed to reach it. If he were only half as large as Sylvie, he would wade through the stream and…

“Found you!” a high-pitched voice yelled above him, and the next moment he was dangling far above ground, caught be the back of his tunic. “I knew you weren’t sick! Just wait until Mummy hears about you!”

“Put me down!” he screamed, as little Sylvie rolled him around in her palm with her fingertip. “You…can’t…do this…to me! I’m older than you are!”

He scrambled to his feet and tried to find a way down, but she nipped him between her fingers, and he was trapped. Sylvie smiled sweetly at him, her loose golden hair hanging down in front of her face. He wished he could punch her right on the nose, but all he could do was glare at her.

“You are so in trouble,” she said, mimicking his glare. “In fact, I don’t think I’ll take you to Mummy at all. First, you’ll be my princess doll for a bit, and then, if you behave good…”

“Oh, shut up!” he yelled. “You can’t make me your stupid doll anymore, Sylvie – Mom and Dad said so! And if you try and do anything…hey! Hey wait! I’m not done talking…”

She’d stuffed him into a small pocket of her gown and was holding him down, her finger covering his mouth. Then, pleased with her superior size, she headed back home. She knew she’d be punished for this, perhaps even be locked in her room or have some of her toys confiscated, but she didn’t care. Being able to dominate her older brother like this was just too much fun.

Half an hour later, and Prince Valdan was, despite his most fervent pleas and protests, forced to wear a little doll’s dress, and pretend to be a princess in need of rescue. As he was being put into Sylvie’s miniature doll’s palace, he decided, on that day, that he was going to leave this place as soon as possible, for good.