CHAPTER TWO:

Under the dominion of Aleena the giantess

   I was taken immediately to the home of the giantess, but during that interval of time, it seemed to me to be like an eternity, because I was terrified of what might happen to me. My fears soon proved to be unfounded, however, because the girl was benevolent, and meant me no harm. I was placed on a table in the main dining hall, and the girl and her mother crowded around the table to look at me. 

   "They're very rare these days..." said the mother, "where did you find him?" 

   The giant people of Asgard spoke a variation of the Dutch language spoken on my own world. I had studied the German language during my college years, as well as Dutch because of a girlfriend who had grown up on military bases in that region. My dedication to learning the Germanic languages surprised even me, because for years I had studied Spanish and failed every semester I had taken it in high-school, in spite of the fact that I am half-Mexican on my father's side of the family, so it should've come naturally for me. Astronauts who could speak German fluently were the only men considered for the mission to attack the miniaturization weapons in Earth orbit, in case that knowledge should somehow give some kind of an edge during the attack. ( I have kept a journal of my stay on Asgard, but for the consideration of whoever reads of my strange journey, I have translated the Dutch language spoken by the giants of this strange world into English.) 

   The girl's mother was very concerned that I would escape, and she dropped whatever she had been doing prior to my arrival, and set to work creating an elaborate wicker cage while her daughter questioned me extensively. I saw no evidence of any technology even remotely resembling what was available on my world in the early 21st century, or the early 20th century. Even the limited technological advances of the mid-nineteenth century would amaze the giants of this colossal alternate world. 

   The girl told me her name was Aleena, and began telling me of the duties she expected me to perform. I was expected to comply with all of her commands, and I realized that she regarded me as a kind of pet, or a living toy. She was not a mean girl, she just couldn't comprehend that I was a human-being deserving of the same freedom and equal rights that she possessed. Their were many more people the same size as me on the planet Asgard, and it was accepted by the giants of that world that we were toys, and not people, despite the fact that we were living beings with intelligence and reasoning capacity. 

   Aleena amused herself by giving me commands while her mother built the cage that would soon house me. First she told me to jump up and down, which I did, out of simple fear. She forced me to comply with many other equally ridiculous commands, such as jumping over her index finger while she looked down and observed me with amusement. During my first conversation with the giantess Aleena, I found out that little people such as myself were very rare on Asgard, and were usually found only in the homes of the very wealthy. This took away some of my initial fear, because it didn't seem likely that Aleena would hurt me if I was as rare and as valuable as she implied. 

   When my wicker cage was ready, Aleena's mother placed it in front of me, and commanded me to step inside, which I did. Aleena quickly closed the trap-door in the ceiling of my cage, and carried me to her bedroom. My diminutive stature became apparent when Aleena first grabbed the handle extending from the roof of my cage. From Aleena's perspective, I was nothing more than a tiny man within a tiny cage that could easily fit comfortably within the palm of her hand. 

   Aleena tied the cage to a rafter in the ceiling of her bedroom, to keep me contained while she completed her chores. After she left the room, when I was alone, I tried to formulate an escape plan. I tried to push the wicker bars of my cage, but the wicker was just too thick, and I didn't have a pocket knife to hack my way through. I climbed up the bars to the ceiling of my cage, but the trap-door was bolted shut. Every ounce of strength in my body couldn't budge those iron bolts. They must've weighed over 500 pounds. 

   When Aleena's father returned from work that evening, the girl showed me to him, and he decided that Aleena's mother was to take Aleena and I to the local seat of government to have me formally registered as Aleena's pet. 

   The language these giant people spoke was a variation of Dutch. I knew because I had taken German in high school, and at nineteen I met a foreign exchange student from Holland that I had dated for awhile, and she had taught me to speak Dutch, so I knew the difference. The dialect on this giant world was probably identical to the Dutch language as it was spoken on Earth in the 16th or 17th century, so I still had to spend a lot of time learning new words and phrases, but because of my prior experience with the modern variation of the language, I mastered it quickly. 

   When I was taken into town the next day, I was able to get a better look at the surrounding countryside. This world had remained unchanged for two or three hundred years. There were no automobiles or telephone poles, and no evidence of any kind of technology beyond what had existed at the dawn of the industrial revolution. Aleena's mother drove a horse carriage, and all the other inhabitants rode in similar vehicles or on horseback. The architecture was unmistakably Dutch. Everything was like Earth three-hundred years ago, with the exception of scale. 

   The horse drawn carriage we rode in arrived outside the town hall. Aleena picked up my cage in her hand, and carried me along as Aleena and her father walked into the building. I could see that the entire street was composed of immaculate cobblestones. Each individual cobblestone was almost large enough to be a basketball court back on Earth. 

   When we entered, the office was like a relic from a movie about the eighteenth or nineteenth century. I could just picture Ebenezer Scrooge chastening Bob Cratchet for putting too many coals on the fire, and this thought made me smile in spite of my hopeless situation. The massive scale of this world of giants must be about seventy-two times that of Earth. The inkwell on the table was taller than than I was high, and each article of ordinary every day use took on massive proportions compared to me. I would estimate that seveny-two Earth feet would be equal to one Asgardian foot, and seventy-two inches to me would equal one inch to this race of giants. As I pondered the massive scale of this alien world, the magistrate took a look at me, and gave Aleena's father the proper paperwork to fill out. With a crow quill pen he signed his name, and at that point I became Aleena's property, at least as far as the laws of the planet Asgard were concerned. 

   Aleena picked up my cage, and in her native language informed her father that she wanted to show me off to her friends. He gave her permission, but told her to first fill up their water jug for their horses at the water well in the town square. With my tiny (to her) cage in one hand, and the porcelain water jug in her other hand, Aleena proudly displayed me for the world to see as she sauntered over to the water well. 

   To me, the well was a massive spectacle. It looked to be many centuries old, with intricate ornate designs carved into the wrought iron faucets of the town water well. There was a line there, and several other girls were filling up their water jugs as well. Aleena recognized one of the girls, and greeted her in her own language. 

   "Inga! I've got my own tiny person!" Aleena proudly informed her friend. 

   A slightly more heavy-set girl turned to look at my cage. She wore a dress with a bodice just like Aleena's, and she was about the same age. Inga reached out to pick up the cage in her hand, and Aleena gripped it possessively, unwilling to loosen her grip. My view was obscured by Aleena's fingers as she held firmly to my cage. 

   "I'm not going to take your little man, Aleena!" the girl informed my owner, and Aleena let go of my cage. I felt myself being lifted to the eye level of the heavy-set girl. Her blue eyes analyzed me curiously, and she smiled at me. 

   "He's cute," the girl said, and handed me back to Aleena. 

   When it was Aleena's turn to fill up her jug, she asked her friend if she wanted to introduce me to her own personal tiny people. The larger girl agreed, and after Aleena's jug was returned to her father's carriage, the two girls ran to the home of Aleena's friend, and I found myself swaying back and forth as my cage was carried along in Aleena's hand. 

   Before long, we arrived at the home of the heavy-set girl named Inga. Aleena placed my cage on a table in the other girl's bedroom, and the larger girl took another cage down from a high shelf. 

   I almost felt sorry for the prisoners of this other girl; the shelf on which they were imprisoned was so high that even if the captives ever managed to escape from their cage, they would never be able to leap from the top level of the shelf down to the next level without killing themselves. The cage itself was inescapable. A black iron box with airholes cut into the sides and top, it was like a portable medieval dungeon. 

   I was grateful to have been captured by Aleena when I saw the treatment that was dealt to the other prisoners by this portly teen. She reached into the top of the metal cage after she had unlocked it, and grabbed her tiny prisoners in her fist unmercifully, ans pulled them out of their murky prison. 

   She held them for a moment in her clenched fist, probably to reassure them that she was in complete control of them before she dropped them to the surface of the table. By the look on her face, I assumed that she wasn't trying to be mean to them, she simply considered them to be nothing more than toys, undeserving of any treatment that would indicate that they were anything more. 

   Two people the same size as me fell downwards onto the top of the table, a man and a woman. Their clothing was clean, and they appeared to be in good health, so I assumed that their mistress took great care of them, in spite of her seemingly harsh treatment of them. The man was a tanned dark-haired gentleman in his early twenties, and the woman appeared to be of Middle-Eastern descent, and in her late teens or early twenties. 

   The two captives looked astonished to see me, and by the look on their faces, they were happy to receive visitors. Their happiness was short-lived, however, because Inga's fist slammed down against the surface of the table, and a look of fear appeared on their faces. 

   "Toys," Inga shouted, her voice nearly deafening, "I have allowed you to have a companion for the day. He is owned by by my friend Aleena. What do you have to say for yourselves?" 

   The man and woman bowed low to their owner, and the man spoke. "You honor us with this privilege, great one. We thank you for your kindness." 

   When Inga was satisfied with his words of praise, her eyes shifted over to Aleena. "They must continually be reminded to mind their manners. Don't let your little man get away with having bad manners, Aleena. They get spoiled and forget their place. It just isn't proper!" 

   To my surprise, Aleena responded enthusiastically, and agreed with Inga's assessment. With the attention of the two giant teens on each other, the man and woman rose to their feet and walked over to me. 

   "Hi," the man said in the ancient Dutch dialect spoken by the people of this strange planet. "My name is Wes, and this is my wife Vashti." 

   "Hi," I said, "my name is Darren." 

   As Aleena and Inga had their own conversation, they ignored us, and we were allowed to have a semi-private conversation. Wes told me that he and Vashti had been purchased as a pair, and that the tiny people of this world were sold as pairs and were expected to reproduce, so the supply of tiny people would be guaranteed to continue to meet the high demand that the Asgardians had for tiny people like Wes and Inga. 

   Wes said that he and Vashti chose to remain celibate, and refused to produce offspring in protest to the inhumane enslavement of tiny people like us, in spite of how well they were treated. He explained that Inga's harsh treatment wasn't obligatory, but served as a punishment she continually meted out to them in an effort to convince them to sire offspring. 

   I didn't dare talk about escaping, because Aleena and Inga would've heard me. I wanted to ask Wes about the chances of successfully initiating an escape attempt, but I never got the chance. Before long, Aleena scooped me up and returned me to my cage, and we were off for Aleena's house again. I felt sorry for Wes and Vashti. They would surely spend the rest of their entire lives as Inga's captives, with no hope of ever attaining freedom. 

   It was late afternoon when we returned home. Aleena's mother was cooking dinner, and Aleena helped. My cage was placed on the kitchen table, not far from all of the activity. Aleena took a paintbrush and snapped off the end of it, and gave it to me. She commanded me to sweep up the table with it. There were odds and ends of sliced vegetables that needed to be swept into a pile, and various crumbs. Although I was small compared to the Asgardians, I made a lot of progress. I couldn't help but feel that my contribution was more for entertainment purposes rather than to actually accomplish something, though. 

   At one seventy-second of the size of the Asgardians, I was slightly under an inch tall by their standard of measurement. Although I was small enough to be easily overpowered by Aleena, I was still large enough to handle clean-up jobs such as sweeping up the table or countertops. 

   As the days went by, I grew more accustomed to the Dutch language as it was spoken on Asgard. Aleena helped me with words that were unfamiliar to me, and within a couple of weeks I was very proficient at speaking Dutch. 

   My daily routine began to fall into a familiar pattern. When Aleena woke up, she carried my cage to the table, and we ate breakfast. She looked after me the way a mother looks after her own child. I was not permitted to be excused from my small table until I had eaten everything on my plate, and Aleena eagerly forced me to try new foods I had never eaten before. The table where I ate had been glued together by Aleena herself the day after I arrived. I sat on a spool of thread and used it as a chair whenever I sat at my table, but Aleena refused to allow me to have a more suitable chair. She thought it was cute to see me sitting on the spool of thread, and I wasn't in a position to argue. 

   After breakfast, Aleena liked to sew. My job was to hold and seperate the thread while she worked the needle. Although it was the early 21st century on Asgard just as it was on Earth, the society was no different than the Netherlands of the early 17th century. Because of this, Aleena was not required to attend public school, but was home-schooled instead. When it was time for her studies, I learned along with her. Sometimes, she would let me quiz her. I would read the questions from one of her books, and she would try to guess the answer without looking. 

   When it was time to prepare lunch, Aleena helped her mother in the kitchen, and I helped out in my own insignificant way. I used the paintbrush to sweep the crumbs into a pile on the table, and Aleena scooped the pile up and threw it in the trash. My place was always near Aleena's plate when she ate, and she always gave me food from her plate. My little table looked puny compared to the colossal accoutrements of these giants, but I got accustomed to this strange world before long. 

   After lunch, Aleena did her chores. She usually fed the cows and sheep, and churned butter for the following day. When she fed the animals, she kept my cage tied around her neck on a rope that she wore like a necklace. From this vantage point, I could see just about everything on the farm Aleena's parents owned. 

   After her chores were done, Aleena liked to read, and since I was her new pet, she liked to read stories to me out loud. Some of the classics were old stories I was familiar with back on Earth, but others were written by Dutch authors I had never heard of. Obviously, the altered timeline of this parallel world had changed history significantly enough that some of the books on my world had never been written, and others existed on this world that had never seen print back on Earth. 

   When Aleena was done reading, she liked to take me to her friends' homes to show me off. Usually we went to Inga's, but she had a couple of other good friends too. The second time we went to Inga's, I can remember Inga trying to talk Aleena into getting me a wife of my own stature, so I could produce offspring. Within minutes, Inga had Aleena convinced that this was the best course of action. 

   Back at Aleena's that night, Aleena tried to talk her parents into getting me a mate. I wasn't thrilled about the idea, because I still had hopes of returning to Earth. She wanted to find a wife for me the same size as me. Before too long, Aleena even had me convinced that it was a good idea. 

   The only problem was that tiny people were expensive, that's why Aleena's parents couldn't afford to get her one in the first place. Aleena asked around whenever she took me to see her friends, and someone told her about a grant program. The supply of tiny people on the planet Asgard was so low, that the government had subsidized grants that would allow the owners of a single tiny person to be able to acquire the funds necessary to purchase a mate for their little person, so their would be offspring. 

   Once again, Aleena took me to the town hall, where her father filled out the paperwork for the grant. Now it was just a matter of time before we found out what grant Aleena qualified for. 

To Be Continued!