The Giant/The Littlest Goblin: Two Short Stories

By Will Kenyon

In the science fiction short story The Giant, the grief-stricken captain of an orbital shuttle discovers a strange entity floating behind the moon - a discovery that flies in the face of all the astronaut believes, but goes a long way toward explaining one of the great mysteries of the universe. In the high fantasy short story The Littlest Goblin, a determined, precocious goblin child sets out to save her father from himself. She's going to attempt something unheard of among her people. Will it work?

Atlanta-based writer Will Kenyon brings us two very different tales from two very different genres. In one story, we shiver in the gloomy, cold darkness of outer space. In the other, we visit the chaotic (and charmingly funny) warrens of the Goblin Kingdom. In both places, with both stories, we get a different look at what it takes to love, to be a parent, to lead a people, and to possibly find salvation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Will Kenyon
• Release date: Apr 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458099075

Will Kenyon

Will (AKA William, AKA Bill) Kenyon is freelance writer currently based in Atlanta. He has published a growing number of poems and short stories, and regularly works for clientele such as Martha Stewart Omnimedia, ING, Cisco, and Smithsonian Magazine. He’s not dead yet, despite the threat of car bombs, second-hand smoke, nuclear proliferation, and asteroid impacts - but we’ll have to see what 2012 brings, right?

Book preview

The Giant

The Littlest Goblin

Two Short Stories by Will Kenyon

The Giant and The Littlest Goblin

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © William Kenyon 2005, 2011

Illustrations Copyright © Jason Snape 2011

The Giant previously appeared in Lynx Eye, Volume XII Nos. 3 & 4

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

for Madeleine and Eli

Table of Contents

The Giant

The Littlest Goblin

The Giant

The moon still eclipses the sun’s light enough so that the thing is still only a shadow, only a blip on your radar.

Your equipment, sophisticated as it is, could not indicate the size of the object. But now you can see – can see by not seeing the dim surface of this side of the moon – that this thing dwarfs your ship like a full grown man might dwarf a small scale model car, a toy that he could hold in his hand.

Why did this image occur to you?

You close your eyes and imagine yourself, a full grown person, holding the tiny metal and plastic Hot Wheels racer your son sometimes played with. You can hear your young son laughing; you can hear your heart pounding inside of you. Dull thuds and whispers of joy.

And when you open your eyes again, you see that the light has changed, that the sun is now peeking around the moon, creating a brilliant arc of whiteness that blazes in your vision and casts the thing before you in gray lines and recessed blackness so that — vaguely — you can see what it is.

It takes your breath away.

The temperature in the spacecraft is usually a few degrees cooler than what you find comfortable. You