In a thatched cottage of enormous size, so vast that we might consider
it a palace, but only a cottage in the style of its building, its
timbers and the nature of its interior, there lived Plash-Goo.
Plash-Goo was of the children of the giants, whose sire was Uph. And
the lineage of Uph had dwindled in bulk for the last five hundred
years, till the giants were now no more than fifteen foot high; but
Uph ate elephants which he caught with his hands.
Now on the tops of the mountains above the house of Plash-Goo, for
Plash-Goo lived in the plains, there dwelt the dwarf whose name was
Lrippity-Kang. And the dwarf used to walk at evening on the edge of
the tops of the mountains, and would walk up and down along it, and
was squat and ugly and hairy, and was plainly seen of Plash-Goo.
And for many weeks the giant had suffered the sight of him, but at
length grew irked at the sight (as men are by little things), and
could not sleep of a night and lost his taste for pigs. And at last
there came the day, as anyone might have known, when Plash-Goo
shouldered his club and went up to look for the dwarf.
And the dwarf though briefly squat was broader than may be dreamed,
beyond all breadth of man, and stronger than men may know; strength in
its very essence dwelt in that little frame, as a spark in the heart
of a flint: but to Plash-Goo he was no more than mis-shapen, bearded
and squat, a thing that dared to defy all natural laws by being more
broad than long.
When Plash-Goo came to the mountain he cast his chimahalk down (for so
he named the club of his heart's desire) lest the dwarf should defy
him with nimbleness; and stepped towards Lrippity-Kang with gripping
hands, who stopped in his mountainous walk without a word, and swung
round his hideous breadth to confront Plash-Goo. Already then
Plash-Goo in the deeps of his mind had seen himself seize the dwarf in
one large hand and hurl him with his beard and his hated breadth sheer
down the precipice that dropped away from that very place to the land
of None's Desire. Yet it was otherwise that Fate would have it. For
the dwarf parried with his little arms the grip of those monstrous
hands, and gradually working along the enormous limbs came at length
to the giant's body where by dwarfish cunning he obtained a grip; and
turning Plash-Goo about, as a spider does some great fly, till his
little grip was suitable to his purpose, he suddenly lifted the giant
over his head. Slowly at first, by the edge of that precipice whose
base sheer distance hid, he swung his giant victim round his head, but
soon faster and faster; and at last when Plash-Goo was streaming round
the hated breadth of the dwarf and the no less hated beard was
flapping in the wind, Lrippity-Kang let go. Plash-Goo shot over the
edge and for some way further, out towards Space, like a stone; then
he began to fall. It was long before he believed and truly knew that
this was really he that fell from this mountain, for we do not
associate such dooms with ourselves; but when he had fallen for some
while through the evening and saw below him, where there had been
nothing to see, or began to see, the glimmer of tiny fields, then his
optimism departed; till later on when the fields were greener and
larger he saw that this was indeed (and growing now terribly nearer)
that very land to which he had destined the dwarf.
At last he saw it unmistakable, close, with its grim houses and its
dreadful ways, and its green fields shining in the light of the
evening. His cloak was streaming from him in whistling shreds.
So Plash-Goo came to the Land of None's Desire.