Jake & The Giant (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 2) (13 page)

CHAPTER EIGH
TEEN

Blockhead

E
veryone in the tunnel screamed.

The giant roared back
, his hot, stinky breath whooshing down the tunnel to riffle their hair and fleck them all with spit.

As Jake grimaced in disgust, the giant ducked his
head and charged.

Arc
hie had the good sense to fling himself behind a stalagmite jutting up from the cave floor. For once, his smaller size worked in his favor, helping him to hide. Still, Jake was desperate to reach his cousin so he could protect him. With Archie slowed down by a hurt leg, Jake knew his cousin would need his help if they were going to make a run for it.

As h
e ventured forward, he could see the white-coated scientists ahead of him in the tunnel running to and fro around the giant’s legs. They were trying to dart past the towering beast to freedom, but no one had succeeded in getting very far yet.

Their shouts of terror echoed off the stone walls of the cave as the great hulk swiped at them with
his mighty arms.

Jake looked on, aghast, as the giant scoo
ped up Professor Langesund; another scientist, thankfully, came to his aid, poking and beating the creature in the back of the leg with a large stick he had found lying near the cave’s mouth.

Distracted by the whack
s on his calf, the giant must have loosened his grip; Professor Langesund managed to pry back the massive fingers wrapped around his waist. The professor sprang away free, then the scientists started throwing rocks at the giant from all directions, confusing him.

Th
e chaos gave Jake cover as he crept up the dark tunnel to join Archie, who was still leaning with his back against the stalagmite. Having lent his pocketknife to the other men to get their cages open, he had resorted to wielding a screwdriver from his tool-bag for protection. He offered Jake a wrench for the same purpose, but Jake shook his head, staring toward the cave’s mouth. “Look! The fight is moving outside!”

Some of the scientists had reached the clearing outside
the cave’s entrance. The giant had turned to chase them. Others were still running every which way.

“C’mon, we can slip out
while they’ve got him distracted,” Jake said. “All we have to do is get to Red. Can you stand up? Here, lean on me.”

“Thanks.” Archie stood with a slight wince and slung his arm around Jake’s neck, leaning on his shoulder.

The two cousins hurried up the tunnel as fast as Archie was able to hobble, with Jake supporting him. As the boys neared the mouth of the cave, they had a clearer view of what was happening just beyond the arched stone entrance.

“Back in your cages, you brains!” the giant boomed. “Get back here, I say!”

The geniuses were running around trying to escape the giant, but none attempted to leave the scene.

“Why won’t they go?” Jake asked in worry. “Are they waiting for us?”

“I doubt it,” Archie said. “Before you arrived, some of them were discussing how to capture the creature.”

“Are you joking?”

“No! They said a real, live giant would be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the age.”

“P
erfect,” Jake muttered. Why was nothing ever easy?

At least Red had obeyed him, staying out of sight—except for his lion tail, twitching angrily from behind a nearby boulder. Thankfully, the Gryph
on continued to heed his warning.

Meanwhile, the
earth shook as the giant ran to and fro, chasing the scattered scientists. The grown men were only up to his knees, but they moved much faster than the lumbering giant.

“Just a bit farther,” Jake urged Archie. “Almost ther
e…”

The giant, f
rustrated with his inability to catch all the little scientists running around him, twisted around, waving his arms wildly to try to grab them.

T
hat was when he turned and spotted the boys, lagging behind, but nearing the mouth of the tunnel.

Jake and Arch
ie froze as his stare homed in on them.

The giant
seemed to realize that while the men might be too fast to catch, the boys, slowed by Archie’s injury, should be easy prey. He came stomping toward them down the tunnel.

T
he boys were only as tall as his shins. They backed away as the giant approached, but there was nowhere to hide.

“Where do you think you’re going?” the giant th
undered as he ducked his head, coming back into the tunnel.

“Ah, Jake?” Archie sent him a panicked glance.
“Any ideas?”

“You’re the genius!
” he retorted as they backed against the rocky wall in dread.

“I’
ve still got my tool-bag, but–
whooooa!
”

“Nooooo!”
Jake yelled in unison with him as the giant angrily grabbed the boys, catching one in each hand.

“Jake!”

“Archie!”

“Bad brains! Back in your cages!” their towering captor scolded.

Feeling the iron grip around him, Jake realized that all the giant had to do to kill them both was
squeeze
.

Archie was yelling hi
s head off in a most ungentlemanly fashion, but Jake was already plotting his next move.

“He’s taken the boys!” one of the scientists yell
ed to the others who had managed to get out.

Jake was ra
cking his brains for a solution.

His options
seemed limited as the giant marched back down the tunnel to the cavern. There, he shoved both boys into the cage where Archie had previously been trapped by himself.

“You are very, very bad!” the giant scolded them. “Stay in your cage now!”

“I don’t wanna stay in the cage!” Jake yelled back in the giant’s face. This was now possible because the cage was suspended at about the creature’s eye-level.

“No talk
ing back!” The giant squinted at him. “Wait! Who is this one? I didn’t catch you! You’re no genius! Crazy hair, but no bowtie, no spectacles! What are you doing here?”

“I came t
o rescue my cousin and the others from you, you oversized bully!” Jake held onto the bars for dear life as the cage swung back and forth from the boys being tossed into it. “You have no right to go around kidnapping people!” Even as he forced himself to look the cretin in the eyes, he could not believe he was face to face with a real Norse giant.

Archie’s kidnapper
was one terrifying individual. He had a heavy build, with a thick enormous neck, and a big round belly. He had weathered skin, as though he spent most of his time outdoors, and he wore simple brown clothes rather like a medieval peasant’s garb—a belted tunic and baggy, woolen breeches in drab, earthy colors. His huge feet were encased in a pair of the most enormous boots Jake had ever seen. Most of all, he smelled dreadful.

Jake wasn’t sure if it was his breath or a lack of bathing, but the giant smelled lik
e onions, feet, and moldy sheep. His eyes were dark and deep-set in his head, and he had a bit of an under-bite, with a pair of dull-tipped up-fangs jutting from his lower jaw.

Suddenly, Archie elbowed Jake discreetly. The other geniuses had come sneaking back into the cave, apparently to stage a rescue of the boys.

Heroic fellows, they crept back into the cavern, some carrying sticks, others stones. They tiptoed into the cavern, split up, and began surrounding the giant.

They obviously had a plan, and though Jake was not quite sure what they intended, he kept the giant talking to distract him.
If his attention stayed fixed on the boys, the big brute wouldn’t notice the men closing in.

“Where did you come from?” Jake demanded. “Why have you been abducting all these people?”

“None of your beeswax!” the giant retorted in his deep, rumbling voice.

Jake frowned. It
was hardly the terrifying sort of answer he had expected. “Well, you must have a reason!” he persisted.

“Maybe I do and maybe I don’
t,” the giant answered warily, then all of a sudden, from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed his returning captives. “Hey!”

The scientists attacked.

The giant whirled around to defend himself, accidentally bumping Jake and Archie’s cage with his shoulder. The nudge sent it swinging wildly again.

The boys shouted and held on for dear life, struggling to close the door so they would not fall out. Meanwhile, the fight that erupted below them was far more chaotic than the previous one outside.

All at once, the yelling scientists hurled their stones and charged the giant with their sticks, beating him about the knees.

The giant roared back at them and swatted away three men at once. A single backhand sent them flying.

Seeing this, Archie glanced fearfully at Jake.

The boys had only just brought their cage under control, and both were slightly queasy from all the wild swinging.
Archie yelped when he saw Dr. Wu nearly get stepped on. “Jake, do something! You’ve got to help them!”

Jake
hesitated.

“
What are you waiting for?” Archie cried.

“It’s just that Aunt Ram
ona warned me not to—”

“Jake, he’s going to k
ill someone!”

“All right, all right, never mind.” Jake closed his eyes for
a moment, settling his mind, trying to calm his seething thoughts and fears.

He gath
ered up all his mental focus, then lifted his right hand, concentrating intensely.

Blocking out all notice of the fight below, he opened his eyes and stared at the jagged rock formations hanging from the dark, dank roof of the cavern. He took a deep breath, then flung a bolt of crackling magical energy from his fingertips toward the stalactites.

A few cracked off the rocky dome and plunged down onto the giant’s head.

“Ow!”

One stuck in his scalp like a thorn for a second before it tumbled to the ground. Jake made more stalactites crash down onto the giant, though these were smaller, not as sharp.

The massive brute made sounds of pain and ducked his head, putting up his arms to try to ward off still more falling rocks.

“Take cover!” Archie shouted to his colleagues while Jake kept at it. He did feel slightly guilty making rocks fall on the giant, however. That had to hurt, and he didn’t like using his telekinesis to hurt someone.

Besides,
the giant surely could’ve killed the scientists by now if that had been his goal. Instead, he had only caged them. Still, something had to be done to get the great blockhead under control.

A
s Jake’s outstretched hand and even his arm vibrated with his concentrated effort, more chunks of stone cracked off the ceiling and fell on the giant’s thick head and shoulders, pelting him with rock.

“Take cover!” the scientists
were still yelling to each other, running toward the edges of the cavern.

“We ne
ed to get out of here! The cave is coming down!” Professor Langesund shouted.

“No, look! The boy is caus
ing it somehow!” another exclaimed. “Look up there!”

“How on
earth is he doing that?” a third asked in amazement.

Ja
ke could dimly hear the scientists’ exchange, but he refused to pay attention. He would deal with them later; for now, he kept all his focus fixed on his task of knocking the giant out.

Hi
s pulse pounded as he concentrated on a particularly bulbous chunk of stone hanging down among the rock formations.

Break off. Fa
ll,
he mentally commanded it, and it began to vibrate a little and creak. Jake could already feel a massive headache coming on from using his powers to this level of intensity, but he did not relent.

Suddenly, from above, there came
a mighty crack, followed by a grinding noise of stone on stone as it came down.

The giant looked up and saw the boulder
plummeting toward him. “Uh-oh,” he rumbled, then it landed on his head. They could almost see the stars in his eyes as he lost his balance, swaying before he crumpled.

BOOM!

When he hit the ground, out cold, all the scientists flew up into the air, literally bounced off their feet by the earth-shaking impact of his fall.

“Yes!” Archie cheered as both boys wat
ched from their suspended cage. “Jake, you did it!”

Jake sagged against the bars, drained.
“Aye,” he mumbled, his head already throbbing.
Let’s just hope I don’t soon regret it.

CHAPTER NINE
TEEN

The Oubliette Spell

The moment the
giant crashed to the floor, several scientists jumped on him at once to hold him down.

This was
quite unnecessary, as the creature was unconscious, but no one was taking any chances.

“Tie him up be
fore he comes to!” Jake yelled. “Use those vines! Hurry!”

While the others hurried to restrain the giant with as many of the rope-vines as they
could find, Professor Langesund held a sharp stick to the snoring giant’s throat.

“Don’t move, monster!” he yelled
.

“Er, w
ould somebody throw one of those vines up here before you use them all on him?” Archie requested, holding up one finger politely. “We’d like to get down.”

“Of course, Master Archie!”

“Thanks, Dr. Wu!” he called back a moment later, when the Chinese physicist hurled one end of a vine up to them.

Archie fed it q
uickly through the branch-bars. Jake nodded at him to go first, and the boy genius climbed back down the vine-rope as before.

Meanwhile,
some of the scientists were tying the giant’s ankles together using the creature’s own huge cloak coiled into a rope. Others were bravely securing his huge wrists with the lengths of vine that the giant had been using to fashion cages.

When Archie reached the
bottom, he waved up to Jake, who then followed. It was a little tricky getting onto the double strand of coiled rope from the relative safety of the cage, but he gripped it with his hands, ankles, and knees, and began inching down.

As soon as
his feet touched the cavern floor, Jake let go of the rope, dusted off his hands, turned around, and suddenly saw he was in trouble.

Having tied up
the giant, the scientists were now free to turn their attention to him. They started crowding around him with fascinated looks.

Uh-oh.

“Young man, how did you do that?”

“Huh? Do what?” he asked
innocently.

Archie sent him a nervous glance.

“
How
did you dislodge the stalactites from the roof of the cave?”

Ja
ke smiled, though his heart started pounding. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come, come, lad! We saw you!” a crazy-haired fellow in a white lab coat insisted.

“Me? I didn’t do anything,” he replied with great conviction, and indeed, anyone who knew him could confirm he was very good at being obtuse.

“You were h
olding out your hand, like so, and somehow causing those stones to dislodge from the ceiling!”

“Which was jolly good of you, by the way,” a bespectacled fellow in a bowtie added, clapping him on the back. But instead of letting go, the smiling scientist gripped his shoulder, as though sensing Jake’s growing need
to flee.

H
e did not like being grasped like that. It took him straight back to his days of dodging the bobbies. And occasionally getting arrested. Another fellow whipped out a magnifying glass and leaned nearer, studying his face.

“Excuse me!” Jake retorted, pulling back, but the man ignored his protest and went right on scrutinizing him.

“Forgive our curiosity, dear lad,” another said, “but we’d really like to know just how you did it! What’s the trick?”

“The trick?” Growing more nervous by the second, Jake realized a good lie was in order.

Thankfully, he remembered a topic he had overheard Archie and his egghead friends discussing in the parlor aboard the luxury-liner.

“Very well. I wasn’t supposed to talk about
it. But Archie’s been fiddling around with a, er, a little ray gun. Whatcha-ma-call-it? An aether gun. That’s right. That’s how I did it,” Jake said sincerely.

The gentlemen-scientist
s turned to the boy genius in surprise. “Egads, Archimedes!”

“You’ve made progress with your aether gun design and never mentioned it?”

“Let us see the device, by all means!”

Archie blanched, then sent Jake a private, panicked look.

Jake glared at him.
Say something!

“Oh, um, I,” Archie said, and Jake quickly saw the flaw in his plan. Easygoing Archie was the world’s worst liar. He froze like a rabbit in sight of a wolf. “Uh, er, rrrright…”

I am going to throttle him,
thought Jake. “Gentlemen, don’t you think we have bigger things to worry about right now?” he reminded them, hooking a thumb over his shoulder at the sleeping giant.

“Oh, never mind him, he’s out
cold,” one of the scientists assured him. “Come, let us help you find this aether gun. Did you drop it? I hope it isn’t broken. We all want to see it.”

“
Well, you can’t,” Jake countered, suddenly inspired. “The truth is, it’s…it’s implanted in my body!”

“How now?”

“Don’t be preposterous.”

“It’s very small!” he insisted.

“
Where
in your body?” another man demanded.

“My hand!” Jake said innocently, holding up his right hand.

But Professor Langesund took off his spectacles and shined them, eyeing him with a look of disapproval. “Gentlemen, I daresay these boys are having a bit of fun at our expense.”

“Never!” Archie cried,
scandalized at the thought of being caught lying to adults. “Jake?”

The Italian mathematician waved off the others’ mumblings. “Even if ze device ees implanted in you
r hand, a-can you to use it to transport ze giant a-back to ze University?”

“Why would I want to do that?” Jake shot back. “So you
all can do experiments on him?”

“Precisely,” said Professor
Langesund, putting his spectacles back on.

Jake blinked at his frank confession, but another scientist folded his arms across his chest, scowling at the boys.

“Aether gun, my foot!” he said to the others. “I don’t know what these boys are trying to pull, but enough of these tall tales. Explain yourselves! Master Archie, what is going on?”

Jake glanced desperately at Archie.

“This lad has just performed an extraordinary feat, one that we have a duty to understand!” the scientist continued. “He manipulated solid matter without even touching it! Don’t you see what this means? Not only are we standing in the presence of a real, living giant, we could be looking at the first true case of telekinesis on record!”

“
Not
on record!” Jake suddenly yelled, pulling away from them. “All of you, leave me alone!”

“H
ow did you do it?” the scientist demanded.

“I don’t know, I was born this way!”
Jake burst out.

Archie lowered his head with a groan. “Jake.”

“Then you admit it was you?”

“Can you feel the static electricity in the air?” one of them asked his colleagues excitedly. “It must be some form of electromagnetic energy that he is somehow able to harness and control.
We should tell Tesla about this…”

Indeed, the electricity in the air left over from Jake’s use of his powers had left their hair looking crazier than ever.

The geniuses pressed around him once more. As they loomed on all sides, Jake realized he was more afraid of them than he was of the giant. That large, dull-witted oaf seemed relatively harmless compared to this pack of wild-eyed geniuses, who did not seem to care that he was a person, not a lab rat.

“When we get back, you must allow us to run some tests—”

“No!”

“Everyone,
please!” Archie cried, suddenly pushing his way among them. “My cousin rescued us today. Isn’t that enough? He may have secrets, but sometimes it’s better not to know!”

“
How unscientific of you, Master Archie!”

“
Don’t you want to further the Progress of Man? Make the world a better place?”

Another nodded earnestly. “It’s f
or the good of humanity!”

“Pah, they always say that,”
Loki himself had opined, as Jake recalled.
“It’s just an excuse.”

“Get back, you barmy lot!
” he yelled. “Bunch of ingrates, you! I just freed you from captivity, and this is my thanks? Now you’d make
me
a prisoner?”

“Not a prisoner,” the magnifying-glass man said in annoyance. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

They weren’t listening.

“Right,” Jake growled
. “Archie, plug your ears.”

It was time to resort to the Oubliette spell, which Great-Great Aunt Ramona had taught him to use in case of emergencies.

At his warning, Archie realized what he meant to do. “No, Jake, you mustn’t! We daren’t risk it, not with them!”

Jake glanced at him in exasperation.

“Please! These are some of the greatest intellects on earth. If you Oubliette them, some of their discoveries could be lost forever!”

“Too bad.
They’ve left me no choice. They’re not turning me into a guinea pig.
Now,
Archie!” he warned.

Archie quit arguing
. “Very well. Twelve hours ought to do it.” With a worried frown, he lifted his hands to cover his ears.

Jake stepped back,
beginning to whisper Great-Great Aunt Ramona’s forgetfulness spell under his breath. You had to repeat the words three times.

“From
memory, unwind the spool,

And walk away a happy fool.

The past twelve hours you now forget,

Cast into the oubliette!

OBLIVIOS!”

“What’s this nonsense?” one of the scientists muttered, bu
t Jake merely repeated the chant. They started looking a little confused during the second repetition. On the third, the puzzled scientists suddenly went from scoffing to stupefied.

They st
ood around motionless, staring into space.

H
e nodded at Archie to let him know it was safe to uncover his ears. Jake turned back to the scientists, for the next step was to give them instructions of some sort. Fill in the blank space that he had just created in their overactive minds.

He cast about, first of all, to give them a simple explanation for the circumstances in which they found themselves: “You went out
on a pleasant nature walk,” he told them. “But then you became lost in the woods. It’s all right, though—you’re quite safe. You’ve even found your friends along the way. Oh, you’ve been having a grand time,” he informed them, “chatting about your work. You’re all quite happy and safe. It was just a little absentminded mishap. You lost track of the time.”

Archie looked
askance at Jake, who continued. “Now you will walk back to campus and carry on with the Invention Convention as usual,” he commanded. “You will tell the police and anyone else who asks that nothing out of the ordinary happened. Everything’s normal, everything’s fine. Have you got that?”

“Everything’s normal…fine
,” they repeated, a mumbling choir of mesmerized geniuses.

“Excellent! You’ve been enjoying yourselves, but now it’s ti
me to get back to the campus. This way, now! Everybody, follow me! Watch your step! Up the tunnel we go and back to campus.”

“Back to campus
…” they echoed.

Keeping his fingers cross
ed that this would really work, Jake led the enchanted scientists back toward the cave’s mouth. Carefully guiding them over the uneven, rocky floor of the cave, he wasn’t sure exactly how much time he had to get them pointed in the right direction. If he recalled correctly, Great-Great Aunt Ramona had said it took about five minutes for the Oubliette spell to fully ‘set,’ but it was hard to be sure. This was the first time he’d ever actually had to use it.

Archie followed,
still limping a little. He was bringing up the rear to make sure none of the mesmerized scientists wandered off alone.

Jake
glanced nervously over his shoulder as they passed the snoring giant. Though the massive creature was securely hog-tied, he did not intend to leave him unsupervised for long. He had many questions to ask the oversized lout, and he fully intended to get some answers.

When they stepped outside, all of them squinting in the sunlight, Jake stood aside, waving the scientists past. “Move along, gentlemen! Come now, careful on the rocks. Mind your footing. There’s the path you want.” He pointed toward the woods. “That will take yo
u back to campus. Just head down the mountain. You’ll find your way.”

From the corner of his eye, Jake noticed a fa
miliar lion tail twitching impatiently from behind a nearby boulder. Thankfully, the rest of the Gryphon remained hidden.