“Hey! Children!” Someone yelled from behind. Beth and Chris spun around to see a man tall enough to block the sun.

“Run!” Beth and Chris both spoke at the same time, and all four scattered for the grain. They had little hope they could get there, or hide once they arrived, but there seemed no other choice.

“Bert?” One of the giants turned, squinted, and shaded his eyes.

“Say something?” The other giant looked up, afraid he missed something important.

“Get them! Get the children!” Bert yelled, but by the time the other two figured out what he was yelling about, the children were hidden in the field, amongst the grain. After a short way, Beth fell to her knees and crawled in a zig-zag pattern as fast as she could. The boys came right behind her.

Bert continued to yell. “Get out! Get out of there, you morons! Get out of the grain, you’re stomping it to bits!” James, in the rear, caught sight of a sandaled foot nearly as big as himself being gently lifted into the sky. “Lady Ashtoreth isn’t a stupid demon. She doesn’t want the field destroyed.”

“But this is the field of the Kairos,” one of the giants spoke. “If he wakes up, he’ll be really mad.”

“All the more reason to stay out of it, you blinkin’ fool,” Bert responded.

“Sorry, Bert.”

The children heard a loud slap! “Stupid doofus!” Bert said, and one giant began to cry.

“What did you hit Rupert for? Why are you yelling at him?”

They heard a second slap. “I was yelling at you, pea brain.”

That got followed by a dull thud, which sounded like a punch. “I am not a pea brain. You take that back.”

“Why should I, pea brain?” Apparently, someone got pushed because the giant that was crying stopped crying and yelled.

“What ya pushing for?” He must have shoved back, because the cursing started up along with plenty of slapping, hitting, and kicking.

“I feel sorry for the one in the middle,” James mumbled as he came to a stop. Chris and Beth were whispering, and then Chris shared with David and James.

“We’re going to try and get to the trees at the back of the field. I think we can lose them in the forest.”

“But we have got to stick together,” Beth added, and they started to crawl in the direction they hoped would take them into the forest.

The fighting between the giants, and it sounded like an awful row, stopped as suddenly as it started when Bert shouted, “The children!”

“But the grain,” Rupert reminded them.

“Get around to the back,” Bert ordered. “If they get to the trees, they might get away. Come on, Knuckles, quit lying around.”

“Coming,” Knuckles answered, but his voice sounded rather shaky and uncertain.

The children stopped. The giants circled the field much faster than they could go through it. “The castle?” Chris whispered, but Beth shook her head. She was not moving until she saw what the giants did.

“But Bert. The field’s too big for the three of us,” Rupert complained.

“They could be anywhere in there by now,” Knuckles agreed with his friend, and the children heard a groan coupled with a rending in the earth. Bert pulled up a switch, in fact, a young sapling. The others did the same.

“Now, look careful-like,” Bert said, and the children heard the swishing back and forth, as the grain covered them for a second. They heard swishing down the way as well, until Bert exploded. “I said careful!” Then they heard a whoosh of wind and the stinging sound like a whip struck home, and a tremendous, “Ow!” This got followed by more whooshing and the cracking of whip-trees against shirts and bare skin, and Beth decided to take a chance.

Beth got to her feet but stayed bent over. The boys did the same, except James who did not need to bend over at all, and they ran for the forest. They were very close. Fortunately, Bert and Knuckles had their backs to the children. Knuckles turned away, because he just whipped Rupert in the eyes. Rupert, the only giant facing them had both eyes closed and he rubbed one. Bert did not notice, because he got busy bringing his small tree down on the back of Knuckle’s head.

“Doofus is right,” James mumbled as they ran deep into the trees. This time David heard and smiled in spite of himself.

After a while, the children stopped. They huffed and puffed, and Beth had to put her hands on her knees to catch her breath. Chris seemed the best off of the four. At fifteen, soon to be sixteen, he did a lot of jogging and walking around town back home when he could not catch a ride.

“Which way?” Beth asked, but she honestly wondered, because the forest turned thick with undergrowth, so their trajectory had not exactly been in a straight line. Chris judged the position of the sun and pointed in the way he imagined led to the castle. He started to walk before the others were quite ready.

“Wait a minute,” Beth said, sharply. She kept herself from yelling. “Who put you in charge? Don’t we even get a vote?”

Chris did not answer her directly. “The castle has to be this way.”

“But don’t you think that is where the Ashtoreth demon is, and the sleeping Kairos, whoever she is?” Beth spoke, even as she began to follow. David got ahead of her at that point, and he turned to walk backwards.

“But maybe Mom and Dad are there, too.” David held on to that thought as his source of comfort. He tripped over a root and fell. James laughed but tried to cover up. “Not funny!” David yelled, way too loud, and he only realized that maybe yelling was not a smart thing to do after it was too late. They heard the noise of crashing trees back the way they came, and they all hurried to catch up with Chris.