”For the last time, put that down, you scum!” Laura shouted. However powerless she was, the rascals did scatter as she stormed out onto her porch. Four in total, the boys laughed, one of them trailing behind as he fought to get his pants back up. He’d pissed on a patch of her precious plot where yellow-purple coneflowers grew, a rare ingredient for many ointments. Laura ran up to her post fence, as usual left with the one option of watching the youngsters bounding down the hill with those nasty grins. Laura’s thirty-nine years of age didn’t help her, for she had never dabbled in any magic or witchcraft. Her expertise lay with plants and alchemy, while the seventeen-year-olds who never failed to summon her ire belonged to the Steel Temple, practiced in the ways of the monk. The four young men sped off with a power Laura could never rival.

Laura hammered her fist on the fence, snorting. “If only their accursed teachers gave a damn about code of conduct.” Like the wretches they were, they vandalized and badgered her until she responded, then ran off. Despite knowing none of their ears were available to pinch and pull and scold, for they could pick her up and toss her over her own house, Laura had to give them the beginning of a chase. At least it made them leave. All she could do was play her part in their game.

Laura turned around to observe the damage. She sighed. Patches of the emerald clovers had been kicked off, as if the tearing hooves of a horse had galloped through. A branch of the colorful glitterbush lay plucked and broken over the clovers. And to add to all of that, Laura’s left knee hurt from slamming it into the cupboard when she’d seen them through the window and rushed outside. “Gods, when will it be time for their comeuppance? They ought to be shipped off this island, to the mainland, where there’s real consequences and these fraudulent monks don’t run the whole thing.”

Laura gathered her hair again and re-tied her basic braid. It was long and brown, easily frizzled. She’d dropped one of her sandals too while running out. It stood by the steps of the porch, upside down. She returned, slipped her foot into it, dusted out her plain brown robe, and decided to get down to the village, Trellen. A visit to the village felt as futile as castigating these delinquent monks, but doing nothing was never an option.

“Let’s see if the thousandth complaint goes through,” Laura said as she closed the gate after herself. Their criminal behavior did end at her property, but besides that, they had no shortage of nicknames for her. Floppy Foot was for the hemp sandals she normally wore clicking at her heels after every step. With her broad feet and bosom, they’d call her Dumbbell, large at the ends but thinner at her waist. Brown Hill was for the birthmark she had on her left ass. How they knew of that revealed that these villainous teens were merely a symptom of the problems Laura had with the island of Ohland. The few women of Trellen, whom Laura had been naked before years earlier while bathing, had gossiped so freely that everyone knew of the birthmark. There were many variations of nicknames Laura had been given which included the word hill, and since Laura’s cottage was on the foothills towards the mountain line, they’d pretend that’s what it was about and not the birthmark on her behind.

“No allies in this godforsaken island,” she muttered, her steps bouncing and sandals slapping as it was downhill from here. The fishing village of Trellen a mile away could be seen cutting along the coast, houses of stone and planks and palisades spread throughout it. A river threaded down the slopes, slashed across Trellen and emptied into the ocean. Like wooden fingers the docks pointed away from the shore, the boats moored peacefully over the calm waters.

On the horizon over the ocean, one could espy the mainland. That was Gharn. Laura wished some of those giants would swim over here, if only to humble the Steel Temple, its monks, and truthfully, all its glib and airheaded population. If any giant explained to her why humans needed to be put in their place, why they were below and deserved less, Laura could only nod and applaud. Giant rule would be something she welcomed.

Laura wished she was one of those giants. There were passing dreams of that world. The magical rituals to turn women into giants existed on the mainland and was readily used. They were banned here, on the lone island of Ohland, and none of the giants ever cared enough about Ohland to come over and conquer it. Laura wished there was a way to send an appeal for any of their rich houses, convince them to make the effort and come. Here, humans lived away from their rule, but traded many valuable products. One of them was the invaluably enchanted produce that made it so that human-sized food would satiate a giant as if it were their size. Ohland was a leading producer of those. These were even shipped to Gintessa, a continent even farther away.

The slope leveled out, the leafy trees sparser and joined by the stumps and pyramidal heaps the lumberjacks had arranged the fallen trees in. Eight in total, a group of workers sat on a vast blanket, shirtless in the hot weather. Unfortunately, one of them noticed her, waving. “If it ain’t Brown Hill!” he called.

“She’s the one with the shitstain on her ass, isn’t she?” another added, prompting a choked chuckle from someone else.

Laura kept straight on her path. “As uncouth as ever, I see.”

“Oh, my bad.” Someone put their drink down, making a poor effort to bow. “I didn’t know Brown Hill needed a gentleman’s efforts. I shall put on a tie next time, milady.”

That was all it took for the rest to cackle into their ridiculous-sounding laughs. The monks weren’t the only ones who bedeviled her. Sometimes she’d find bottles of liquor on her property which a quick stroll downhill would reveal belonged to the lumberjacks.

“Don’t want to join us for a game, Floppy Foot? Drinks are on us.”

Laura took on the appearance of a polite neighbor as she walked on. “I’d rather chain myself and hop into the ocean, thank you.”

“Might want to rethink it, after you fail seducing one of the boys, Ms. Geyser.”

“Fail for the thousandth time,” another added, and they guffawed, loud and hearty. Laura was confused more than annoyed this time, trying to figure out where this new nickname came from. Once she left the cleared forestry, it struck her with a bolt of shame.

Steven. One of the monks, when he’d recently moved into Trellen with his father from the other side of the island, had first been friendly with Laura. Being new to the place and not accustomed to the culture of bullying the lone, ‘crazy’ woman up on the hills, his father had asked for some potions, and she’d given them to Steven. The boy was shy, sweet, and his reservedness seemed to peak around her. Sometimes she’d catch him peeping at her feet, and that notice made Laura prop them up on the table and remark how much they hurt. Asking him if he could rub them for her was met with an immediate yes. That might have been where Ms. Geyser came from, for the very act of him rubbing them eventually transitioned to him kissing her soles, and that made the pleasure crash through her, bursting out of her womanhood. When she did it herself, it would get rather wet down there. But these were intimate details, much like the birthmark on her bottom, that were only out because no one had any respect for her.

What had sealed the story between Steven and her was that she, by pressing her sole into his crotch, produced a large stain on his trousers as well, and the fact that he returned for more thereafter. They had a decent episode, she and Steven. For those few weeks, he’d come over regularly, with Laura’s feet taking a central role in the action. And then the culture of the village and the monks had afflicted him, reeling him in, to the point where Steven was one of them. Of the four boys earlier, he’d been the one who pissed on her plot. “All to become popular.” She sighed. Indeed, Laura would make quite a mess on her climaxes, so whatever version Steven divulged had likely been honest and rightfully bestowed Laura with the title of Ms. Geyser. But doubtless, he’d excluded the part where he kept complimenting her feet, where he too would have his wet experience at the dexterous manipulation of her toes.

His complements had meant something; Laura was usually a stranger to them.

“Stupid boy.” She hoped the boyish weakness for base pleasure would bring him back to her, especially his appetite for her feet, which she was certain no one else was delivering him. But it seemed he had become part of the cult.

The first houses appeared, and right there she saw three parents to two of the four boys from earlier, lounging away in front of their house. One of them was Steven’s father, and the other pair were the father and mother of the leader of those four boys, Kay, the nastiest of the bunch. “Good day.”

Only Steven’s father greeted her with a nod. The other two had that uninterested stare that pressured her to deliver what she was there for and promptly move on.

“I do hate to bear this sort of news again, but your boys have caused some damage on my property.”

“This again?” the mother said. She was a disagreeable one. The leading one of the four troublemakers, Kay, was her son, not difficult to see where he’d gotten his behavior from.

“I think the problem is that it happens so frequently,” Laura said, “not that I keep mentioning it.”

The father put a hand up, as if to offer pause. “We’re not paying for anything, let me begin there. So how much you continue on this is up to you.”

“I don’t want payment.” Laura was petulant. “I want you to keep your boys in check.”

“They’re monks in practice,” the father said, “there’s no shortage of strenuous training they go under at the temple. When they’re here, home, they want to relax, frolic about for the few times they get during the year.”

“The ‘frolicking’ can happen as much as need be, outside my property.”

The mother raised a hand towards the hills Laura had come from. “We tell them to leave it alone. They do as they’re told. You’re bringing up old problems. It could have been wildlife, but your mind is still on them.”

Laura grunted. “I saw them with my own eyes.” She pointed at Steven’s father. “Your son peed on my coneflowers, to the others’ entertainment.”

“I have a hard time imagining that,” Steven’s father said, he who was the most lenient and reasonable of them all. “Laura, aren’t you exaggerating here?”

“We’re sorry that our parenthood and the order of the Steel Monks isn’t good enough for you, Brown Hill.”

“Now, now,” Steven’s father said, a calming hand. “She’s a skilled alchemist in her own right.”

“Alchemist?” The couple snorted together. “Glorified gardener, that’s about it.”

“Well,” Laura said, voice raised, “I’ll just get on a boat and leave someday. My talents might be more appreciated on the mainland.”

“Go ahead! The Steel Monks are what give this island its good reputation. No one could care less for your products.”

Laura balled her fists together, turned around, and marched away. Just before she got out of earshot, someone else joined and asked the three what Floppy Feet was so concerned about now. On the way back, the lumberjacks once again asked if Dumbbells wanted to play.

“If my work doesn’t go anywhere special, I’m leaving. Some day, I must.” Her threat of leaving wasn’t new. The problem was that Laura wasn’t sure what this ‘special’ end place for her work was. In truth, she worked on a far-fetched substance that would grant her wish, to grow giant. An expensive smuggler had gotten her the key herb they used in the mainland for women to grow enormous, gintigrow. For several weeks, Laura had tried to reproduce the effect of those rituals through the gintigrow, but all her attempts so far had failed, and the costly herb stalk was on its last stretch of dried leaves. If she burned through those last petals and the experiments continued to lead nowhere, she’d call it there. Then it would be a boat to the mainland, to Gharn.

Laura panted as she got up the last part of the slope. A splintered plank and crumbles of wood along the road caught her eye. Another broken plank had been caught by branches above her, sagging from its weight. They were from the walls of her house. Whenever she thought she’d grown tired of this charade, a new burst of anger found her. “What the hell have those animals done now?”

Laura jogged around the path. A fluffy chunk of orange bulged out the side of her house, breaking free from the cabin like the wing of a butterfly from the cocoon. This wasn’t anything the monks could have done. Coming closer, Laura saw the chunk of orange for what it was, the head of a mushroom. It was squeezed out from the confines of the parlor it hadn’t been able to properly break, the roof having received a wounded hump. The base of the mushroom rose from the basement, where Laura kept most of her experiments locked. It didn’t obstruct the stairway there, so Laura made her way down. Most of the room was taken up by the mushroom stalk. Rounding it to investigate the broken table and shelves, Laura found a piece of dark-greenish liquid running down the slant of the wounded table, pooling around the base of the mushroom.

She tried to piece together her memory of what she’d left behind. The vial she’d worked the latest concoction in had shown signs of instability, the liquid bubbling and frothing out until she had to unscrew it. Had she forgotten to take the lid off, and it broke?

Then it struck her. The dark green was from the gintigrow. She hoped she wasn’t seeing what she wanted to see, that the conclusion wasn’t a mere wish. This had to be it. The leaked gintigrow mixture had spilled onto the mushroom and caused it to grow. Laura could feel her heart beat faster.

Was this it?