Even with her own generous height, this man stood head and shoulders taller than she. When he did not move, it was like facing an impenetrable wall of fieldstone and granite. Only this stone wall had a pulse. She watched a vein throb in his neck.
She sidestepped to walk around him. He moved into her path. “In due time, girl. All in due time. Now, what did you say your name was?”
“I did not say.” Lorena swallowed despite the lump of trepidation wedged in her throat.
As she glanced about the lonely, deserted shipyard, her gaze traveled straight through the exposed ribs of a small sloop to an enormous completed ship in the distance. Between them, no smoke emitted from the brick boiler’s chimney, no steam from the long wooden steam box. The area she was accustomed to seeing ablaze with activity lay quiet in the gray light of dawn.
Her heart raced. She was alone with this stranger.
“I wish to return home,” she repeated, this time more forcefully. “My family will be expecting me. I must insist again that you remove yourself from my path.”
Andrew Benjamin Huntley crouched low in the marsh grass. He was quiet. Quiet as a mouse. It was easy to be a mouse when you were only five years old and too small to reach the cranberry tarts cooling on the summer kitchen’s breadboard table without standing on tiptoe.
Lorena liked to bake him tarts and he liked to eat them. She said he was every mother’s dream with his angel’s halo of fat buttercream curls and two glowing cherub cheeks, the pearly pink of a seashell. He didn’t have a real mama, but Lorena was as real as a mama could be, when she scolded in a loud voice that his behavior did not match his angelic appearance.
Drew—everyone called him Drew, because it had the same d-d-d sound as David, like in King David—was glad for the times he did not behave as an angel. Sometimes a man needed to be a man. He viewed the world shrewdly through eyes the peacock blue of cloudless August skies, and what they saw this morning made him angry.
He must save Lorena from the giant.
He could see she was frightened and clenched a pudgy fist around the smooth stone in his right hand. He thought about what he would do and slowly unclenched the fist. His palm was sweaty.
He looked at the stone. It was his finest, saved for an occasion such as this. He set it in his sling. Lorena had gifted him with the sling and taught him how to use it. Drew had learned well.
When Lorena was nowhere to be found this morning, Drew made certain to carry them with him when he went looking for her. He knew, of course, where to find her, but he never expected a giant.
He recalled again King David, who also carried a sling. If David could slay a giant when he was just a boy, then so could Drew. Drew twirled the sling round and round, forcing the weapon to gather speed and force. He took aim and let the stone fly, watching as it sailed through the air, waiting for it to hit its target, for the giant to fall upon his face to the earth.
The man began to chuckle softly. “All of a sudden you’re anxious to return to your duties, are you? My apologies, for it seems I’ve frightened you.”
When Lorena refused to share in his amusement, he presented her with an exaggerated frown. “What? Not even a smile will you grant me? Ah, very well then, girl, since you won’t tell me your name, and you’re obviously not in any sort of distress, I suppose I shall have to let you pass, but first it is my desire—”
The squared jaw dropped. Those sharp blue eyes lost their focus as they rolled back in his head. He swayed on his feet, and Lorena shrieked, sprinting from his path as he staggered, then fell facedown in the grass with a force that shook the ground beneath her feet.
Stunned, she leaned forward to inquire, “Sir? Sir, are you all right?”
He seemed not.
“Yeeooowee, I got him. Are you hurt, Lorena?”
Drew leapt out from the grasses, his rugged child’s body clothed in knee breeches dyed an emerald green to hide the grass stains, shoes but no stockings, and a striped red-and-white waistcoat as gay as the grin on his round, pink face.
As Lorena watched him advance, she struggled to understand what had just happened.
At her feet lay a mountain of a man, unconscious.
“Drew, what have you done?”
Hands planted squarely on hips, the child squinted up at her as though she were a simpleton. “I slew the giant, Lorena. Like David. Just as you showed me. I saved you.” Losing all patience with her, he turned away to search the tall grass. “I must find my stone. I might need it again someday.”