Jack, the giant-killer (8 page)

“You don’t see anything out there, right?”

“Right. So therefore your gnomes are real?”

“Kate!”

“Okay, okay. Tell me what to do. Do I stand on one leg and squint out of the corner of my eye, or…” She let her voice trail off at Jacky’s frown.

“Just don’t do anything for a moment,” Jacky said. Then she put on the redcap, bracing herself for the sense of vertigo that was going to come.

It wasn’t so bad this time—more like a subtle shifting underfoot—and then a gauze seemed to have dropped from her eyes so that she could see everything clearly again. The redcap alone should prove it, she thought, but looking out the window she saw him, the chrome of his machine gleaming in the streetlights, the black leather swallowing light, the featureless shadow under his visor. She stared for a long moment, shivering, then stepped back.

“Jacky,” Kate began worriedly.

Jacky shook her head and took off the redcap. She kept her balance by holding on to the windowsill, then handed the cap to Kate.

“Put it on and look out the window,” she said.

“Down there towards the house where that guy was working on his car almost every day last summer.”

Kate stepped closer to the window and looked.

“Put the cap on,” Jacky said.

Kate turned. “But there’s nothing there.”

“Please?”

“Okay, okay.”

She put the redcap on and Jacky stepped in close to steady her as she swayed dizzily.

“My God,” Kate said softly. “There
is
someone out there.” She turned from the window. “We’ve got to call the cops…” Her voice faded as she looked at Jacky.

“What’s the matter?” Jacky asked.

“I don’t know. You look different all of a sudden. It’s like I can see you better or something.”

Jacky nodded. “Look at the biker again,” she said.

“Is he still there?” she added, once Kate was looking in the right direction.

When Kate nodded, Jacky pulled the cap from her head and then steadied her again. Kate swayed, looked out the window, then back at Jacky. Without saying anything, she moved slowly to a chair and sat down.

“It’s a trick, right?” she said when she was sitting down.

Jacky shook her head. “No. It’s real. The cap lets you see into Faerie.”

“Faerie,” Kate repeated numbly. “Now they’re going to take both of us away in nice little white jackets.”

“We’re
not
crazy,” Jacky said.

Kate didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then she asked, “Where did you get that… that cap?”

“From a gnome.”

“From a… God, I’m sorry I asked.”

Jacky started to frown, but then she saw that it was just Kate’s way of dealing with it.

“Let’s go have some more tea,” she said, “and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Kate pushed herself up, using the arms of the chair for leverage, and followed her into the kitchen.

“The floor’s yours,” she said.

Kate tended to frown when she concentrated on something. By the time Jacky was finished her story, her forehead was a grid of lines.

“You shouldn’t do that,” Jacky said.

Kate looked at her. “Do what?”

“Scrunch up your face like that. My mother used to say when I was pulling a face, that if I didn’t watch out, the wind would change and leave me looking like that forever.”

“Or until the wind changed again,” Kate added. She put her index fingers in either side of her mouth and pulled it open in a gaping grin, then rolled her eyes. Jacky burst into laughter.

“Of course,” Kate said when they’d both caught their breath, “I suppose we’ve got to take all that shit seriously now, don’t we? Black cats and walking under ladders—the whole kit and kaboodle.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jacky replied. “But… you
do
believe me now, don’t you?”

Kate looked at the redcap, then at her friend’s face.

“Yeah,” she said slowly. “I guess I do. And now—like I said before. What happens? You’re not really going to this Giants’ Castle to look for the Horn, are you?”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Because of Bhruic and Finn, I suppose. Because no one else will and this is finally something I can do that’ll have meaning.”

Kate shook her head. “Will was full of it and you know it. What the hell kind of meaning do you call his way of living? I still don’t know what you ever saw in him.”

“Well, he had nice buns.”

“Woman does not live by buns alone.”

Jacky smiled.

“So how are you getting out there?” Kate asked.

“I hadn’t really thought about it. By bus, I suppose. Do you think a bus goes out there?”

“We could take Judith.” Judith was Kate’s

Volkswagen Beetle that had surprisingly survived God knew how many Ottawa winters.

Jacky shook her head. “No way.”

“Why? You don’t think she’d make it out there?”

“It’s not that. I don’t want you to come. This is something I’ve got to do, but I’m not going to drag you into it.”

“Then why did you tell me about it? Why point out that geek on his bike to me?”

Jacky sighed. “I just wanted somebody else to know. I wanted to see if somebody else could see him too. So that I wouldn’t have to keep wondering if I was just crazy, you know?”

“Well, you are crazy, but that’s got nothing to do with this. I’m going, and that’s final. A woman’s got to do what a woman’s got to do and all that.”

“But it’s not your problem.”

“It wasn’t yours either, Jacky. But you’ve made it yours— just like I’m making it mine.”

“I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you.”

“Hey, I’m not all that big on sitting around here wondering if I’ll ever see you again either, you know. We’re pals, right? So what do pals do but stick up for each other? I’m going. If you don’t want to come with me in Judith, then I’ll just meet you there.”

“But you didn’t see them kill that little hob, Kate. And the giant—he’s
so
big.”

“We’ll be like that little tailor in the fairy tale—

remember? ‘Seven with one blow.’ No! I’ll be the valiant tailor. And you… you’ll be Jack the GiantKiller.”

“It’s not funny, Kate. And I don’t want to kill anybody.”

Kate reached out to hold Jacky’s hand. She gave it a squeeze. “I know, Jacky. I’m scared too. I’m just shooting off my mouth so that I don’t have to think about it. You’re sleeping here tonight, aren’t you?”

When Jacky nodded, she added, “Well, then let’s hit the sack, okay?”

“Okay.”

Jacky lay awake for a long time after she went to bed. She kept wanting to get up to make sure that the biker hadn’t come any closer to the house, that the rest of the Hunt hadn’t joined him. She worried about Finn, and about Kate coming with her to the Giants’ Keep, and was of half a mind to sneak out right now, but she knew it was too late. Kate would just drive out to Calabogie herself and be sitting there waiting for her. She listened to the wind outside her window. It was making a funny sound—almost breathing. She thought of what Bhruic had told her, about how he heard the whispery voices of the sluagh, the restless dead, on the winds at night.

She turned her head so that she could see the window from where she lay. When she started to imagine that she could see faces pressing against the panes—horrible faces, all bloated like drowned corpses—she slipped from under the covers and went into Kate’s bedroom. Kate stirred as Jacky crept into her bed, but she didn’t wake.

Listening carefully now, all Jacky could hear was the sound of their own breathing, nothing more. She felt a little stupid for getting spooked—and what did that say about how she’d do when it came to their expedition to the Giants’ Keep?— but foolish or not, she was staying right where she was and she wasn’t going to budge until it was morning.

CHAPTER SEVEN

« ^ »

The rumour touched all of Faerie that night: there was a new hope in the Seelie Court—a small one, true, but a hope all the same—and she meant to free the Laird’s daughter and would too, except that if the bogans didn’t get to her, then surely the Wild Hunt would. But whether she was doomed or not, the rumour of her ran from the heart of Kinrowan to the Borderlands. It was heard by the fiaina sidhe in their solitary haunts, and by the Seelie Court and the Host alike.

Hidden in a tree from which he could view both Manswater and Underbridge (the Rideau Canal and Lansdowne Bridge, respectively) with equal ease, Dunrobin Finn listened to the rumours, listened hard to hear if the Unseelie Court was looking for a hob skillyman as well. It wasn’t, not so that he heard, but he frowned all the same.

“Now she’s done it,” he muttered to himself. “She won’t get five feet from whatever hidey-hole she’s found, little say recover the Laird’s daughter now—not with half the Host looking for her tonight. And the Hunt…”

He pursed his lips and studied the sky. The night was draining quickly into morning. Too late for the Hunt to ride tonight perhaps, but it would be out tomorrow night, and then Jacky Rowan would know what it meant to be afraid.

“And they’ll be looking for her today,” he added aloud. “Those that can abide the light of day.”

He could see the troll who lived in Underbridge stirring, sifting through the rubbish he called his treasure. Looking for a sword, Finn thought. Looking for something with which to cut himself a piece of Jacky Rowan before he took what was left of her to Gyre the Elder.

“Oh, Jacky Rowan. You’d better learn or steal a greatspell damn quick if you want to live out the day.”

Finn frowned again, fingers plucking nervously at his beard. Oh, she was in trouble, deep trouble, there was no doubt about that, and he’d as much as thrown her to the wolves himself. If he’d just left well enough alone. Snatched Tom’s cap from her, maybe. Never told her about the Gruagagh, surely. Minded his own business like a good hob couldn’t.

“And that’s the trick, isn’t it?” he said to the night.

“To be a good hob, you’ve got to stick your nose into a place or two and play your tricks, or what are you? Not a hob, that’s for damn sure.”

In Underbridge, the troll had found a rusty old sword and was now rubbing it on the big stone supports of the bridge. The grinding noise was loud coming across the water of the canal and it set Finn’s teeth on edge.

And they’ll all be doing that, he thought.

Sharpening their weapons—those that have weapons. He shivered, remembering all the sluagh he’d seen go by tonight. A troll’s stupid face, with its crooked teeth and mismatched eyes, nose like a big bird’s beak—that was nothing like the faces of the restless dead. They had a drowned look about them—pale and bloated. From across the canal, the troll’s grinding continued. Finn scurried down his tree at last, mind made up. He was looking for Jacky Rowan, so it was best he got back to it. Best he found her, before something else did.

“And that’s one thing for rumours,” he said as he set off at a quick run, south and east. “They tell you where to go.”

Like following the thread of one of his own hob stitcheries, he chased the threads of the rumors. They led him through Cockle Tom’s Garve, back and forth across the Manswater, then down into Crowdie Wort’s Bally, where he’d first met and then lost Jacky earlier that night. Here the rumours were too thick, the threads twisting in and out of each other, for him to locate exactly where she was.

“But she’s here,” he said as he found a perch in a comfortable old oak tree on Killbrodie Way, which is the faerie name for Sunnyside Avenue. “And close, too. I’ll bide a bit, now won’t I, Mistress Oak, snug in your arms. Then we’ll see what the morning brings.”

Three blocks east, the Big Man’s sluagh were gathered around Kate Hazel’s house, peering through windows, looking for a way in. But the latches were all latched, the doors locked, and there was no one awake that they could trick into letting them in. Then the night finally drained away and they returned to their marshes, the bogans to their sewer dens, the trolls to their bridges.

Dunrobin Finn lay fast asleep in the arms of a Mother Oak, and the black rider kicked his Harley into life outside Kate Hazel’s house. The chopper coughed loudly in the still street, a sound heard only in Faerie, and pulled away from the curb.

Another night was only hours away and he could be patient. He would have his brothers with him then. Let the hope of the Laird’s folk sleep for now, for tonight the full Hunt would ride and there would be no escape. Not any at all.

The Gruagagh of Kinrowan watched the sun come up, pinking the eastern skies. For long silent moments he stared out the window of his house, that in Faerie was his Tower, then he turned at last from the view and sighed. The rumours had touched him as well—

from the swollen lips of the sluagh, on the airy voices of those gnomes that rode the wind.

A hope? he asked the silent room. He remembered too well the power of the Unseelie Court.

That girl, he thought. She had the name—both Rowan and Jack—so there was more than luck in her arrival at the Tower tonight. But the task was hard. She would need help and friends, and with the Host’s ranks swelling more every day, where would she find either?

Better a small hope than none at all, the rumouring tongues of the wind gnomes whispered outside the Tower.

Unhappily, the Gruagagh returned to the window to watch the sunlight wash Learg Green with her light. The park glistened. The skies were a brilliant blue. But there was misfortune in the air. The Gruagagh could taste it. Like Finn, he knew he had pushed Jacky into danger, but unlike the hob, he couldn’t follow after to try to help. The Tower protected him, but it kept him a prisoner as well. He could only listen to the gossip on the wind and wonder at the fate of the hope of Kinrowan.

CHAPTER EIGHT

« ^ »

When Jacky woke, the bed beside her was empty. She had time for one blind moment of panic, then she saw the note pinned to the pillow beside her, and relaxed. Stilling the thunder of her pulse, she pulled the note free. It said, in Kate’s familiar scrawl that passed for her handwriting:

Wimped out, didja? Well, don’t panic. Mother Kate’s just gone to the store to get us some goodies. Back soon. K.