The Stone Giant (30 page)

The captain squinted at his rowboat and then winked at him again. ‘Where did you set out?’

‘Grover,’ said Escargot, smiling.

‘You
rowed
all the way upriver from Grover? Why didn’t you row to Hansen’s Island and take the steamship. You’d save about three weeks time.’

‘Steamship’s down. Hansen’s Island was flooded in the last rain and the steamship won’t be running again till Tuesday.’

‘Hah!’ cried the captain triumphantly. ‘Hansen’s Island! Damn Hansen’s Island! There
is
no such place. I trapped you with that one, lad. You’d best make a clean breast of it now. Out with it.’ And with that he looked about him, grinning at his companions and nodding in appreciation of his own cleverness. Boggy’s sniffing and mumbling undermined it, though, and the captain gave him a look.

Escargot thought about it. There was no reason, really, to pretend, to lie. They’d caught him at it already, and if he cooked up another one, they’d quite likely catch him out there too. He’d tell the truth, is what he’d do, for the most part, and he’d at least end up with two score of allies that he hadn’t had earlier in the afternoon.

‘I’m a sea captain,’ he said, eyeing the elves. ‘I’ve come upriver from Landsend and beyond. This dwarf has stolen my goods, insulted my person, and has played some sort of villainy on the girl Leta, who, I might add, I’ve taken a vow to rescue.’ With that he bowed to the captain again, thinking that he’d made a fairly pretty speech of it all the way around – the sort of affected talk that the captain would approve of.

‘Upriver from Landsend now, instead of Grover, is it? A sea captain?’ The elf slapped the fiddlehead of the rowboat with his open palm and grinned at his crew, one or two of whom cried, ‘Sea captain!’ or ‘Landsend!’ as if they, too, doubted Escargot’s tale, but the feebleness of their taunts made it seem to Escargot that their purpose was rather to support their captain than to embarrass Escargot. The captain was very satisfied with himself. ‘Where’s your ship?’ he said with a suddenness that made it very clear he was trapping Escargot into another confession.

‘In the river,’ came the answer.

‘Ho! In the river!’ shouted Boggy, restored now. The captain frowned at him.

Escargot rose, motioned to the captain, and set out around the curve of the little half-moon cove until, stepping out onto the rock and sand headland at the far end of it, he could see the submarine riding at anchor. He getsured at it and kept silent.

‘Quite a device,’ said the captain, nodding in approval. ‘I know it. It belonged to a renegade, a blackguard.’

‘Captain Perry, that would be?’

‘Yes indeed. He was a megalomaniac. There aren’t many bad ones among us, sir, but he was an exception of the first water. How did you come by this boat?’

‘He sank a trader I crewed on. Killed any number of men but took me aboard the ship. He had ransom in mind, perhaps. ...’

‘Maybe he was after your aunt’s brewery,’ said the captain, interrupting.

‘Maybe,’ said Escargot, momentarily confused over whether the aunt’s brewery lie had been exposed yet or not. That was the problem with lies, actually – they tended to tangle themselves up. ‘In a word, I overcame him and his crew and marooned them, is what I did, and now J pilot that boat, as I said, in search of the dwarf and the girl he’s mistreated.’

‘Hooray!’ shouted Boggy, won over, apparently. But his cry evaporated in the afternoon stillness as the captain stroked his chin in contemplation.

‘And with whom,’ asked Escargot in an effort to get the upper hand, ‘am I honored to be speaking?’

‘Captain Appleby and the crew of the
Nora Dawn
,’ said the captain very politely, as if a little ashamed of himself for having overlooked introductions. He led the way back up the beach to where the rowboat was moored. ‘It’s no go, I’m afraid.’

‘What is?’

‘Your meddling in this affair. It can’t stand it. It
won’t
stand it. Your foiling the efforts of my men to rescue the girl can be excused.
You
didn’t know you were caught up in affairs beyond your ken. But now you know, and it’s off down the river with you. Go home. That’s my advice. It’s more than that. It’s my order. I’m commissioned to give them, you know, to civilians as well as to my crewmembers.’

Escargot stood blinking at him. It would be a shame to lose his temper. As officious as this elf captain was, he was more humorous than irritating. ‘What about my property?’

‘I’ll compensate you for it. At once. That and more. I’m a generous man. I’ve been commissioned to be a generous man. What sort of property did the dwarf steal from you? Gold?’

‘Marbles.’

‘Marbles is it?’ Captain Appleby stared at him. ‘You’ve come upriver ... Wait a minute – Captain Perry’s device! You’ve come from where? Seaside? The Isles? You’ve come through the gate, by golly, after a bag of marbles? It can’t be so. Don’t trifle with me, lad; I’m not in a trifling mood. Send your bag of marbles to keep your drunken aunt company. How much will it cost me to see your diminishing self atop the river?’

‘A bag of very odd marbles. Red – the color of blood. And not entirely round. Even the most amateur of marble spinners could have done better. They’re enchanted marbles is what I think, and. ...’

But Escargot stopped in wonder at that point, for Captain Appleby’s mouth had dropped open, as if he’d just that instant had his jaw muscles severed. ‘Red, did you say? About as big as what, pigeon’s eggs? Where did you get these marbles?’

‘From a bunjo man. Not many months back, either. And I’m fairly sure now that they’d been giving me the most astonishing dreams.’

‘I daresay,’ muttered the captain, stroking his chin again. ‘And you say the dwarf has them now?’

‘That he does.’

‘All is explained then.’ The captain turned to the elf beside him, who had been eyeing Escargot shrewdly throughout the exchange and looked to be some sort of officer, a first mate, perhaps. ‘The earth tremors,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ came the reply.

‘It’s later than we think.’

‘It is that.’

‘But he got sloppy with it and lit the house afire.’

Escargot eyed the two, catching most of the words that passed between them. ‘The earthquake earlier today. That wasn’t one of your standard earthquakes hereabouts, I take it.’

The captain looked up at him, grinning suddenly. ‘Oh very standard, I should think,’ he said hastily. ‘Wouldn’t you say so, Collier?’

Collier admitted that he’d rarely seen an earthquake so all around standard.

‘It weren’t standard at all,’ shouted Boggy, unfortunately standing well behind the captain and so unaware that the captain had screwed his mouth into a sort of pickle frown and was winking rapidly at Collier. ‘I seen a giant head open up in the mountainside and yawn, like it had been woke up, almost, and. ...’

‘And you can shut your gob, Mr Boggy ...’ began the captain.

But Escargot, remembering the mountainside that
he’d
seen, cried, ‘I saw it too! Just like a mouth, wasn’t it? And you could swear that there were eyes above, clamped shut, but trembling, like at any moment they were going to spring open and some great stone giant was going to stand up and gape.’

‘Ha, ha, ha,’ laughed Captain Appleby, nudging Collier, who laughed too. ‘Prime lark, sir. Very prime. But we’ve important work to do, and, as I say, you’ve stumbled into something that you’d got no business stumbling into. If it’s a bag of marbles you’ve lost, you’ll have another. And elfin marbles this times, not the goblin trash you lost.’

‘Goblin!’ cried Escargot, wondering at this new development.

‘Well, in almost every sense, yes. They weren’t marbles at all, you see, they were droplets of blood – petrified blood, frozen blood, whatever you like.’

Escargot stared at him, uncomprehending yet not entirely surprised. Evening was falling. The river flowed dark and smooth behind him, and all at once he was anxious to be away. He had no real desire to go out rowing on the river at night, and less desire with each passing moment. Captain Appleby, quite clearly, wouldn’t fancy having Escargot along. The elves were on a mission, sent out by heaven knew what sort of power. And Escargot was nothing more than an interloper who had, so far, served no end but trouble. A lie, it occurred to him suddenly, would answer here, and the simpler and more bold-faced the lie, the better it would answer. He heaved a sigh, like a man tired, suddenly, with confusions that he can’t begin to penetrate. ‘This is all a bit too much for me, I’m afraid.’

‘I warned you of that—didn’t I, men?’

‘Aye!’ cried some few of the elves, nodding to one another.

‘It ain’t so complicated as
that
,’ said Boggy, shaking his head in quick little jerks, as if
he
, perhaps, if given a go at it, could explain the mystery to Escargot’s entire satisfaction.

‘No, sir,’ said Escargot, pushing his rowboat two feet closer to the water and rolling up his pantlegs. ‘I can’t fathom it. Blood, you say, and not marbles. I’ve been chasing this villain across two worlds in order to get my hands on—what? It makes me sick to think about it.’

‘Just so,’ said Appleby, ‘just so. Cut and run, that’s my advice. And as I say, I’d be in a way to advance you a bag full of elfin marbles that would make your goblin filth seem pretty rugged. Have you seen any of Mazlak’s marbles?’

‘No,’ answered Escargot truthfully.

‘Well you ought to have.
If
you’re a marble man like I am, and I think I can see that you are.’

‘It’s a tempting offer, a tempting offer.’ Escargot pulled at his nose once or twice, as if consulting that article about the puzzling choices that lay before him. ‘You’ve convinced me,’ he said finally, nodding and squinting and looking downriver as if he were suddenly anxious to be off. Boggy, peering past the captain, snorted and giggled until the elf next to him nudged him in the ribs. ‘Just to satisfy a man’s curiosity, though,’ Escargot continued, ‘tell me about this marble blood business.’

‘Giant’s blood,’ said Appleby, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Not marble blood.’ He sighed and thought for a moment, considering, perhaps, how to make a long story short. ‘There was a time when the land was overrun by giants, to whom this broad river would have seemed a trout stream. ...’

‘Stone giants?’ said Escargot.

‘That’s right. If you know about it already, why did you ask?’

‘I’ve read G. Smithers, is what I’ve done. That’s all. I’ve wondered how much of it was true.’

‘Oh, Smithers is your man for the truth. That he is. He’s an uncommonly good friend of ours, is Smithers, and what he writes in the book is what he writes in the book, and don’t let anyone tell you anything else.’

Escargot thought about Appleby’s assurances for a moment, unable, entirely, to grasp his meaning, but the captain went right along without him.

‘These giants then, they died out ages ago – long, long ages beyond the memory of any elf alive. Ten times beyond it. There was a struggle, you see – far too vast to reveal here – and the long and the short of it was that the giants fell afoul of powers greater than their own and were cast down, into the earth, where they’ve dwelt since. And not to put too fine a point on it, they weren’t dead, either, but were petrified, if you follow me. If you stroll back up into those hills there you’ll find cave mouths more particularly like mouths than the caves you’re used to seeing, and you’ll hear noises, too, like the beating of a stone heart.’

‘The earthquake, then?’

Captain Appleby shrugged and grinned. ‘You’re a good man, and have an eye for marbles. ...’

‘And you already figured it out anyway,’ shouted Boggy, grinning at the back of the ‘captain’s head. ‘That was a mouth, it were, what yawned in the mountainside. And the dwarf’s setting in to jerk it up out of there.’

‘Jerk the mouth up out of there?’ asked Escargot.

Captain Appleby turned and smiled at Boggy, blinking his eyes very rapidly as if a bug had flown into them. ‘Into the tree with him, lads!’ he shouted abruptly, and made a grab for poor Boggy, who collapsed at once in tears and said that he couldn’t bear to be put into the tree – not again; which was curious, certainly, since he hadn’t been
put
into the tree yet at all. Captain Appleby said he’d give him another chance, then said very plainly that he would stuff Boggy’s shirt into Boggy’s mouth if Boggy’s mouth wouldn’t give off and rest. He turned back to Escargot and shrugged again, as if to say that there was no accounting for a frivolous elf like Boggy. Then he continued:

‘These marbles, then, in a word, were giant’s blood, shed in the great war, blood that spilled into the Tweet, into the mountain lakes and springs and froze there, like ... like ... What is that stone, again, Mr Collier?’

‘Obsidian, sir. Troll tears.’

‘Quite right. Good man, Collier. Troll tears. Have you heard of such an article, sir?’

‘Indeed I have,’ said Escargot. ‘Molten rock, as I have it, cast from volcanoes into water and hardening there.’

‘That’s it in a nut. These stone giants, you see, are much more evidently products of the earth, of clay and stone and crystal, than are you and I, and their blood, you see, runs like liquid stone; Agate, you know, is the flesh of giants. Polish a specimen, sir, and you’ll see very clearly within it the blues and reds of veins and arteries and the fleshy brown of sinew and gristle and ... well, you understand.’

Escargot nodded, vaguely appalled at the idea, but finding it rational enough.

‘Our dwarf, I fear, would use these “marbles” to enchant the sleeping giants into wakefulness, and very nearly did so this afternoon. But he overreached himself and set the house afire. Hasty sort of a fellow. He knew we pursued him. We’ve thrown the fear into him. But he’ll try again – tomorrow afternoon, if I’m any judge of this sort of thing, which I am, and I can assure you he won’t set himself afire a second time.’

Escargot considered Appleby’s words for a moment, then said, ‘Weeks ago, on the meadow beyond Twombly Town, there were three witches melting the marbles down in a pot. Perhaps this dwarf doesn’t have the marbles after all. Perhaps he’s not the threat you take him for.’