The Riders Arrive

On the fifth day the giants sent their invitation, and the riders answered. All morning, trucks and trailers rolled up the narrow clifftop road, carrying jet skis and surfboards unlike any Polly had seen, long and narrow and heavy, shaped like arrows made for water. Excited dogs trotted beside the wheels, and gulls wheeled overhead, calling the news up and down the coast.

Inside the old fort, under the red lantern, there is a room where famous surfboards hang on the stone walls. Each board once rode a giant here. Some of them are cracked or snapped clean in half, and they hang there anyway, perhaps especially. Polly hopped slowly from board to board, reading the walls the way she had read the tiles in the chapel. This was the same kind of story, told in boards instead of paint.

In the afternoon, everyone came to study the water. Along the fort wall sat a silent row of seabirds, wing to wing, and at the end of the row stood the old albatross with his spyglass. Nobody spoke. Below them the sea rolled in long, slow, heavy lines, and every line said the same thing. Tomorrow.

That night Polly did not fly anywhere. She was exactly where she wanted to be. She pressed herself against the warm red metal of the lantern, listened to the deep boom of the growing swell, and slept in short, excited bursts, the way you sleep the night before something enormous.