The mountains above the village of Greypeak were forbidden. Everyone knew that giants lived there — enormous, fearsome creatures that shook the earth when they walked.
Everyone except Marco believed this.
Marco was twelve, small for his age, and deeply unconvinced that anything large was automatically frightening. So one cold autumn morning, he climbed the mountain path with nothing but a warm coat and a basket of his mother's bread.
He found the giants in a clearing — three of them, each as tall as an oak tree, sitting in a circle. They were not roaring or stomping.
They were crying.
Giant tears, it turns out, are approximately the size of buckets.
"What's wrong?" Marco called up.
The smallest giant — who was still, to be clear, enormously large — peered down at him. "Our friend is sick," he rumbled, "and we don't know how to help."
Marco looked at the giant slumped against the mountainside, shivering beneath a blanket of pine trees. He thought of what his mother did when he was ill.
"Soup," said Marco. "And someone to sit with you."
It took three days. Marco made soup in the giant's enormous cooking pot — an entire forest's worth of vegetables. He sat with the sick giant and told stories and sang songs slightly out of tune.
On the fourth day, the giant sat up.
"Little human," he rumbled, "you are very strange and very kind."
Marco smiled. "So are you."
The giants became the quiet guardians of Greypeak after that, watching over the village through storms and cold winters. And every autumn, Marco climbed the mountain path with a basket of bread.
Because the greatest friendships, he had learned, are often the most unexpected ones.