* * * * *
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
(JULY 4, 1921)
As it turned out, there _was_ some hope of re-enlarging him. There was a Japanese legend (again, according to Nakafusa) about a race of little people who had inhabited those islands even before the coming of the Ainu!* These people were referred to as the Koro-pok-kuru; "They Who Dwell Under the Butterbur Plant."
"It is thought," he had added: "...that they avoided danger by shrinking themselves through the partaking of a soup made from this plant; Fuki-misoshiru. And, when the danger had passed, they re-enlarged by eating from a mushroom now known to Occidental botanists as Cratellus cornucopoides konradii; the golden horn-of-plenty. Unfortunately, that mushroom now grows in only one place in all Japan; the Aokigihara Forest near Mount Fuji. And, that forest is said to be cursed. Making all who venture into it take their own lives!"
"Like spending the rest of my life at doll size is a more pleasant alternative?" Bob Gabriel had countered (with the bitterest sarcasm).
"Nyet!" Anna Stepwicz had then exclaimed, picking Little Bob up off the table and hugging him like a newborn infant.
"Suicide is the one sin God does not forgive," she had continued: "You must not give into despair, little one! If you do require looking after, for the rest of your life, I will do so. Alright?"
She looked him straight in the eye as she volunteered for that duty. And Little Bob, meeting that gaze, could do nothing else but smile and slowly nod his head. Which, in hindsight, was a wise decision. As it proved surprisingly difficult for Nakafusa to find that particular color mutation of the horn-of-plenty chanterelle! Although, he never stopped trying. Making regular-as-clockwork forays for the next twenty years.
During that time, Anna and Little Bob lived at Father Trent's mission back in Northgate. Helping him look after the children "Mlle. L'Enfant de Binesi" had brought him, after pre-emptively shrink-napping them en route to Camp New Hope.
But, of course, we had no way of knowing any of that at that particular moment. We simply stood on the starboard-side observation deck of the XZR-1 and watched the beauty of the Independence Day fireworks over the Hudson River. While, over the radio, the West Point Cadet glee club sang an accapella rendition of "My Country, 'Tis Of Thee."
* * * * *
PRESIDENT'S OFFICE,
MANHATTAN LODGE,
KNIGHTS OF MELION
(SEPT. 2, 1955)
I(chabod) C(rane) MacCory, of GREATLY THRILLING STORIES, looked at me with some awe on his face.
"That was incredible, Dr. Thorp! This will be the most riveting issue-length story we've published, yet!! Although,..."
He hesitated. So, I gave him some gentle prompting.
"Although, what?"
"Well, it's just that...we're bound to get some pieces of fan mail claiming that we're plagiarizing KING KONG with that scene where Meleusina gets strafed to death."
"Ah!" I replied, nodding in understanding: "Well, I'll let you in on a little secret, young man. Though the Camp New Hope affair was classified top-secret by the Pentagon, Harry Houdini was none-the-less obsessed with doing a semi-fictionalized film version of it! So, shortly after the world premiere of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's THE LOST WORLD, in June of 1925, he approached Willis O'Brien about doing another stop-motion animated film. This one, about a shipwrecked vaudeville magician who rescues a beautiful Russian princess-in-exile from sacrifice to an overgrown female python by the cannibalistic inhabitants of an uncharted South Seas island!"
"Unfortunately, the pre-production process had still not gotten past the verbal brainstorming stage, before Houdini met his tragic fate in October of 1926. It would therefore be another _eight_ years before Houdini's original story idea came to the silver screen. Albeit, in the now much better-known version executive produced by Messrs. Cooper and Schoedsack for RKO!"
"Wow!" was MacCory's only response, prior to shutting off the massive tape recorder and packing it up like a suitcase. He then turned to me and thanked me, one more time, for seeing him on such short notice.
"Don't thank me," I replied: "Thank Don Pietro Taliaferro for reminding me of it."
I pointed to the front page headline of the NEW YORK TIMES. which read:
"ORIGINAL MOUSTACHE PETE
DIES AT EIGHTY-THREE.
Smothered In Sleep By
Mercy-Killing Nurse."
THE END
Giantess World
Author's Chapter Notes:
Epilogue Three
Chapter End Notes:
*Ainu: aboriginal Caucasian natives of Japan, now restricted mostly to the northern-most island of Hokkaido.
P.S.---one final note. I would like to thank all the good sports who allowed me to use their screen names in this story, whether as characters or place-names. And, I'm especially grateful to Asukafan and Littletoy for letting me humorously rearrange the spelling of their screen names. For, without their own brilliant collaborations, I would never have been turned on to macrophile science fiction and fantasy in the first place! :-)
P.S.---one final note. I would like to thank all the good sports who allowed me to use their screen names in this story, whether as characters or place-names. And, I'm especially grateful to Asukafan and Littletoy for letting me humorously rearrange the spelling of their screen names. For, without their own brilliant collaborations, I would never have been turned on to macrophile science fiction and fantasy in the first place! :-)