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There aren't many giants left in the world these days. That's what the pilgrims say, when they come through the valley, gawk up at the great watermill, and want to know how we built it. Usually they say it in a tone like they mean there aren't any, and haven't been for an age; like they think we might be a little stupid, out here in the foothills, for saying that old Uragh tore the stones from the riverbed one by one with his bare hands to shift the flow so the water would come truer and quicker through the run. Or they ask what kind of machine we used to lift the wheel up onto the hub, and go away muttering when we say Uragh did that too. Of course our carpenters and smiths made the wheel and the gears, just as they make wagon wheels and all the rest, but it was Uragh that hung it, and that's the truth.
That was in my grandfather's time, so I suppose I can't say that I saw it with my own eyes, but I know it is true. I have his old flock book, where it's written in his faded, shaky hand that he culled five ewes for his share of Uragh's payment. And I have the story of that night, as he told it to my mother, and my mother told it to me: how he drove the ewes up into the mountains, using the dog to get them up into the highest places, where it was hard enough to climb himself without accounting for five aggrieved sheep. Uragh made his home up there, on the bare rock.
There wasn't enough iron in all the city to make a stew pot big enough for his meals, so Uragh had dug out a pit in the mountain and turned a spring to fill it, and dropped hot boulders into the water to make it boil. My grandfather butchered the ewes for him, saving their skins aside in case Uragh wanted to trade with them later, and Uragh put the meat and bone into his rock cauldron. A few of the farmers' boys must have been early with their share of the payment, because there were crates of cabbages and turnips all about, and - so my grandfather said - Uragh tipped five of the crates into the stew like a grand chef tapping strands of the rarest saffron into a pudding meant for a king. And then Uragh asked my grandfather if he'd like to stay to dinner, and my grandfather said yes, and sat up on top of the mountain and did just that.
I don't tell this story to the pilgrims, because some of them might be foolish enough to break their necks on the goat trails on the way to the peak, and because some of them might be lucky enough to find their way up despite it. Old Uragh is gone now, passed back to stone and earth years ago, but his daughter is still there, even if she's quieter and stiller than he was in the tales and never comes down to us anymore, and I won't have them bothering her with gawking and prodding and stories about how she's alone in the world. For she's not-- not alone in the world, that is. Not as long as she has us.
Every spring, after lambing's done, I drive the oldest ewe all the way up to the peak, and I leave it for her, and more often than not I see that someone or other has brought her some vegetables or a cask or two of wine already. Sometimes the great cauldron is already full of springwater, though I've never yet seen it boiling.
Someday, I'd like to stay and wait for her.