The Giant-Slayer (10 page)

Right away, the others stopped.

“Okay,” he said, more quietly now. “I want to hear Laurie tell her story.”

“Me too,” said Dickie.

“But no splints on the baby.”

Fingal wouldn’t think of harming his baby. Jimmy was now the most precious thing he owned, as good as a golden goose.

In the basement, Fingal had barrels full of money. He had coins of silver and coins of gold. He had round coins, square coins, coins with six or eight sides. He loved to pour them like grains of sand through his fingers. His only fear was that his new wealth wouldn’t last, because Jimmy was growing bigger.

On the day of the first snowfall, when it was bitterly cold, a stranger arrived at the inn. He was older than any traveler who had ever come before, older than the inn itself. He looked like an ancient oak in a woolen cloak, twisted and wrinkled and gnarled, his skin as rough as bark, his fingers like so many twigs.

He pushed the door with all his weight, and a frigid gust set Jimmy’s cradle rocking on the bar. It woke the embers in the fireplace and made them gleam and crackle. The last traveler had departed for the south an hour earlier, so the fire was near its end. The Woman was upstairs, cleaning the emptied rooms.

Fingal looked up from the bar. “Are you going north, sir?” he asked.

The old man didn’t speak. The cloak covered him from
head to toe, while his face was hidden in the shadows of his hood. He came into the parlor with a heavy step that sounded like the clopping of a horse.

There was snow on his shoulders, on the top of his hood, and it fell away as he crossed the parlor with that curious sound:
clop, clop, clop
. He walked right up to the bar and lifted a foot to the brass rail. He was wearing leather boots with wooden soles.

“You’ll want to tip the babby now,” said Fingal, nodding toward the cradle. He gave it a poke that set the coins sloshing inside. Jimmy made happy, muttering sounds. “It brings fortune, you see. The more you give, the more you receive, if I can offer some advice.”

“I do not seek advice,” said the old traveler. “I want only a fire, a drink, and a bowl of soup, all three as hot as you can make them.”

“Yes, sir,” said Fingal, peering into the dark shadows of the traveler’s hood. He could see a chin that was bristled with white hairs, an eyebrow as thick as rope. “You do have the means of payment?” he said.

Above them, the Woman was moving from room to room, carrying her bucket with a clatter and creak. The old traveler shook the last bits of snow from his shoulders. He reached into his sleeve and pulled out a small leather pouch. “Here is the means of my payment,” he said.

The pouch made no sound when it touched the bar. There was no jingle of silver, no rattle of gold. “Why, it’s empty!” said Fingal.

“Not at all.”

“Then what’s inside it?”

“The answer to your dreams.”

“Bah!” Fingal snatched up the little bag before the man could say another word. He crushed it in his fist. “Look there, you old fool,” he said. “I can see there’s nothing in it.”

“Your eyes deceive you,” said the traveler. The shadows moved in his hood as he shifted his head. There was a hint of hooked nose, of pox-scarred cheeks, of blackened lips. “That pouch contains anything you can imagine. Unless, of course, you imagine too much.”

“Bah!” said Fingal again. “What do you mean by that?”

“It’s a matter of fair exchange,” said the traveler patiently. “I will pay well for my meal. But if you ask too much, you get nothing.”

Fingal laughed. It seemed that no matter what he did he was going to get nothing. But as he pushed the purse across the bar, a phrase came into his mind, words spoken by his mother fifty years before.
Flat as a Wishman’s pouch
. He could hear her saying it, and the memory suddenly triggered another.
Never wish for a Wishman
. He had thought, then, that it was nonsense. And in all the time gone by, he hadn’t changed his mind.

Now he frowned. “Are you a Wishman?”

“I am,” said the traveler.

“You bestow wishes?”

“I do.”

Fingal leaned on the bar, nearly overcome by surprise. “I didn’t know that Wishmen existed,” he said.

“Once, you didn’t doubt it,” said the Wishman.

“I was a child.” Fingal looked suspiciously at the old
man, at his worn cloak and warty hands. “Can you bestow wishes on yourself?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“Aha!” Fingal held up a finger, as though he had bettered the traveler. “Then why do you walk in such rags?”

“I choose to,” said the Wishman.

“Why are you not young and handsome?”

“If you cannot explain that yourself, then your wishes are wasted, my friend.” The traveler leaned forward. “Now, please, I would like my brandy.”

There was a keg right behind the bar, but Fingal didn’t want to serve watery brandy to a Wishman. He went down to the basement instead, and brought up a glass as yellow as amber. He warmed it over the red eyes of the embers in his fireplace while the Wishman took his pouch to a chair beside the hearth. Fingal served him the brandy, then fetched an armload of wood and lit the biggest fire that he’d ever lit. The flames reached up and stroked the wood, then stretched again high into the chimney. Air roared through the fireplace. On the bar, Jimmy’s little cradle began to rock in the draft. The boy giggled and laughed.

Fingal brought soup from the kitchen. He brought a spoon, but the Wishman didn’t use it, choosing instead to drink right from the bowl, lapping it out like a dog.

When he was fed and warm, the Wishman at last pulled back his hood. Fingal watched with interest, then turned away, disgusted. The old man’s face was as ugly as a troll’s, the skin all pitted and scarred.

The traveler drank his brandy and sat for a moment staring
into the fire. Then a smile came to that terrible face. “I’ll make my payment now,” he said. “What is it you wish for?”

The question made Fingal’s heart beat faster. He could imagine a thousand wishes, but not how to choose between them. Should he ask for riches? For happiness? Should he ask for the Woman to be young and lovely? Should he ask for youth for himself?

If you ask too much, you get nothing
. But how much was too much? Was he meant to ask only for fair value, for nothing worth more than a splash of soup and watery brandy?

“Please,” said the traveler. He held up his pouch. “I would like to settle my account.”

In the fireplace, the flames shifted. On the bar, the cradle rocked. Jimmy laughed, delighted.

“Ah, the babby!” cried Fingal. He looked into the eyes of the old Wishman. “Would it be too much if I asked for the babby to stay the size that he is?”

“To grow no bigger?”

“Not an inch.”

“That is fair,” said the Wishman.

“Then do it.” Fingal looked up at the ceiling, trying to tell where the Woman was working. “Do it now.”

“I should warn you first,” said the Wishman. “It’s been my experience in this business that a wish may not always manifest itself in the manner the wisher intended.”

“What the devil do you mean?” asked Fingal.

“If you wish the boy not to grow another inch, he may not live another day. You could bring about his death.”

“Ah.” Fingal nodded.

The Wishman studied him closely.

“Well, everybody dies,” said Fingal. “Not that that’s what I’m after, mind you. If he grows up, that’s fine; that’s well and dandy, as long as he doesn’t grow big. I want him to be the size of an infant forever.”

The Wishman fiddled with his pouch. “Once done, this cannot be
un
done,” he said. “Not without a terrible price.”

“Fine. That’s fine,” said Fingal. “If you can do it, do it now.”

The Wishman opened his purse. A draft of frigid air came out, so cold that it rimmed the leather with frost. Crystals of ice formed on the Wishman’s fingers, on the tip of his nose, on his eyebrows and lashes. His breath came out in a steamy cloud that rose, swirling, to the ceiling. Then the Wishman closed his purse again and tucked it up his sleeve.

“That’s all?” said Fingal.

“It is done.” The Wishman stood up and lifted his hood. Then out he went, under the dragon’s tooth and through the door, into the cold and the snow. He turned to the north and, head down, trudged along his way.

Fingal watched the tooth swinging in its chains. Then he looked at the empty brandy glass, at the soup bowl beside it, and wondered who had cheated whom. Anyone could open an empty bag and claim it was full of wishes. Even a fool could move his hand about mysteriously, then say, “There, it’s done.” Perhaps Fingal’s mother was right.
There’s nothing flatter than a Wishman’s pouch
.

“You mean the Wishman was a cheat?” asked Chip. “He did a dine and dash?”

“No. I think he was real,” said Dickie. “He got frost on his fingers. ’Cause wishes are cold.”

“I guess there was no way to know,” said Chip.

“That’s what Fingal thought,” said Laurie. “At that moment, Jimmy was about this tall.” She held her hand above the floor, a little lower than her waist. Chip and Dickie and Carolyn turned their heads to see for themselves, and their faces tilted in the mirrors.

Dickie smiled, then closed his eyes. “Boy, I wish there was a Wishman,” he said.

“What would you wish for?” asked Laurie.

“Gee, I wonder,” said Carolyn. “What on earth could he want? A kid in an iron lung.”

Laurie blushed. She’d known right away it was a silly question. What else would he wish for, but to be healthy and happy again?

But Dickie was always surprising.

“Disneyland,” said Dickie. “Boy, I’d wish I could get to Disneyland.”

T
he sun was as high now as it would get that day. On the grass below the window, the shadow of the hospital was a dark slab on the green. The radio antenna on the roof cast a thin arrow pointing straight at Piper’s Pond.

Laurie stared out, saddened that another argument was under way behind her.

“Dickie, you’re a dope,” said Carolyn.

“I am not,” he said. “Quit saying that.”

“You are if that’s your wish,” she said.

“Oh, yeah? What would you wish for, Carolyn?”

“That I never had to come here.”

“Why?” asked Dickie. “It’s not so bad.”

“What’s to like?”

“I got to meet Chip. And you,” he said. “And Miss Freeman. And all the others. Boy, we have fun sometimes. It’s like being at camp. But you never have to go home. Like we’re lying in bunk beds talking.”

“Aw, shut up, Dumbo.”

“Don’t call me that.”

He was nearly crying now, and Laurie hated to hear that. If he had to spend his days in an iron lung, it didn’t seem right that he had be sad. “I guess it
is
a bit like camp,” she said. “If you think about it. Isn’t it, Chip?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“But you’ve been to camp.”

He shook his head. “No, I haven’t.”

“But there’s a picture.” She pointed at his iron lung, and then went up beside it. She ran her hand across the crazy mat of photographs. “I saw it here.”