The Stone Giant (32 page)

Could you find time, she’d ask with manufactured politeness, to throw these carcasses to the cats? But when he’d agree, feeling badly that once again he’d neglected duty, she’d snatch up the fish remains and throw them to the cats herself, not in a huff, but calmly and deliberately, as if she knew that he couldn’t be depended upon for even so much as that, and that busy as she was, and overburdened with cares, she’d undertake the job herself and see that it was done right.

It was that, perhaps, that made it seem to him now that cleaning fish was such a satisfying activity. He took particular pains to clean the scarred wooden board and to keep any muck from the fish from smearing the place up. He had no cats aboard – a deficiency he’d correct once he was out of the current mess – so he’d have to pitch the bones and the head and the innards into the river. If he had more provisions he’d boil them up into broth and make fish stew, but he wasn’t equipped for that.

He squinted at the leftover debris on the board and poked at it with a knife. What the cats saw in it was something he couldn’t very easily imagine. Goblins were the men for fish innards, not cats, who in every other way were sensible creatures – testy at times, but sensible. Professor Wurzle, certainly, wouldn’t throw the guts into the river, or to the cats either for that matter. He’d investigate them first, study them, write them up in his notebook until he’d got his understanding of their mysteries honed to just the right edge. By then even the goblins wouldn’t want them.

What in the world, wondered Escargot, fiddling with the mess of little tubes and bags and glop, was there to study? A man like himself, planning to make a living by selling oceanic mysteries, ought to know just a little about the creatures he intended to sell, and he certainly ought to get over his squeamishness about such things. He peered suspiciously at the mess, noticing through a slit he’d cut in some organ or another, round, red balls, suspiciously like the marbles he’d given Uncle Helstrom. He cut the thing open entirely, and there, globbed inside, were a couple dozen of the things, so exactly the right size, shape, and color that for a moment Appleby’s tales of giant blood seemed questionable. Had he traded from the bunjo man a bag of cleverly preserved fish eggs?

It certainly seemed unlikely. And why would Captain Appleby lie? There
was
a giant in the river, wasn’t there? Then there was the yawning mouth in the mountainside – Boggy had seen that too. This was coincidence, is what it was, and, once he thought about it, not a very grand coincidence either. There were probably a dozen things in the wide world that resembled his marbles, including real marbles. He scooped up the debris, suddenly surmising that he’d learned enough about the insides of a fish to get him through the rougher trials of his career, and he set out for the companionway with the thought of pitching the mess into the river. Halfway there, however, he changed his mind for no reason he could define, and he stepped along to the library. He pulled down the jar that contained the eye of whatever fish it was that was second in minuteness to a gummidgefish, and dumped in the eggs. The eye had floated there contently enough for heaven knew how long; he could keep the eggs there too for a time, just in case.

A half hour later, dressed in dark trousers, shirt, and jacket, Escargot crept along through a long, dense stand of broad-leaf oaks, which wound uphill from the river and fronted a meadow. He had no real idea that there was anyone or anything on the meadow, but there must be
someone
about, elves anyway, since they quite clearly weren’t aboard the
Nora Dawn.
He worried vaguely about the troll he’d seen earlier. Twice he found little heaps of broken stones – all of it agate, from the look of it – which had been gnawed and chewed and then cast away. He picked up a stone to have a look at the long tooth marks in it, but the thing smelled foul, so he pitched it into the shadows and hurried on.

He was anxious not to be seen by anyone except Leta. It seemed to him that if she was so astonishingly crucial to the dwarf’s venture, then the best way to foil his schemes was simply to spirit her away. He had decided that he didn’t give a rap about his marbles – the dwarf could have them. And his desire to tweak the dwarf’s nose had diminished until he felt it just a little less strongly than his desire to be quit of the dwarf for good and all.

The sky was clear at last of clouds. An autumn wind, cold and brisk, had scoured them away and hurried them off to more urgent business elsewhere. He would have liked a sweater under his jacket, for the wind, diminished by the trees as it was, still slipped in under the collar and sleeves and made him think, with a double pang of regret and terror, of the house at Bleakstone Hollow in which the man sat before his hearth, nodding over ale and a book.

Leaves dropped from the oaks and drifted along on the wind, now swooping groundward and almost settling, then whirling aloft again and charging along past him, the wind tugging at his coat all along as if mistaking it for a leaf. He hunkered over and crossed his hands in front of his chest, stepping over a heap of deadwood and peering ahead of him in an effort to make out where the woods ended and the meadow began.

It seemed to him suddenly that he was surrounded by a sort of leafstorm. Thousands of leaves careered past, changing course, rising and falling and hovering and capering as if they were propelled like him with the desire to reach the meadow. One floated around the side of his head, and, drawing near to his nose, gave a quick flutter and shot away. Escargot leaped, and shouted in spite of himself, covering his head with his arms suddenly and ducking down into the weedy humus underfoot. Riding atop the leaf had been a henny-penny man, dressed in a black hat and the tatters of tiny clothing. He’d had the beard and eyes of a prophet, and he’d shouted something incomprehensible as his leaf rose on the wind and bore him away.

All
the leaves weren’t ridden by henny-penny men, Escargot was relieved to see, only every tenth leaf or so. Still, there must have been hundreds of them – thousands, perhaps, sometimes solitary riders, sometimes two to a leaf. He could hear singing on the wind – a high, piping song that resembled the tone of one of those silent dog whistles that’s really not silent at all. He crouched beneath a tree, watching the flotilla pass. He had no desire to get mixed up with henny-penny men who might take it into their heads to set about him with rock hammers. And he certainly didn’t want to hurt any of the little folk. He could wait; their passing wouldn’t take a minute, he told himself, starting to pull his pipe and tobacco out of his pocket and then thinking better of it and putting it back. The fall of leaves had already begun to diminish, and he could see the last dense swirl of them disappearing through the oaks. Leaves still fell, but they wafted their way groundward like sensible leaves and were ridden by nothing at all.

The woods fell silent, disturbed only by the distant humming of bees. He set out again in the direction taken by the henny-penny men. In ten minutes he stood on the edge of the meadow, looking across clover and lilies strewn with red and brown oak leaves. A stream meandered across it, spilling over a stone embankment and angling toward the edge of the woods somewhere behind him. On beyond the meadow, rising up into the misty distance, were rolling hills softened by water and time, hills which seemed to be marbled with caverns. It was easy to imagine that one hill might be the thigh and knee of a fallen giant and another might be an upturned skull, half buried and with eyesocket caverns staring down toward the woods.

Escargot waited there, not sure what to do. He had the feeling that adventure was about to be thrown at him like a stone, that he had only to wait there ready to catch it. He heard, or thought he heard, deep below him, the beating once again of a stupendous heart, mingled with the sighing breaths of a sleeping giant, or of hundreds of sleeping giants, breathing as one in an enchanted, stony slumber. It might as easily be the wind, of course, rustling the treetops.

He stood just so for minutes, listening and waiting until he was rewarded with the sight of a group of elves, a half dozen in all, that appeared two hundred yards out over the meadow, as if having marched up from the river. He smiled when he heard what was most likely Boggy’s voice, lamenting something, and then another voice, completely out of patience shouting at him to shut up.

The elves scrambled atop a rocky prominence, and one of the elves – Boggy again – was hoisted complaining into the branches of a dead and gnarled tree that stretched two bare limbs over the chattering stream. There was a shout. Boggy snatched off his hat and waved it wildly, standing up and whistling, then shouting as he tumbled from his perch, falling into the stream below. Boggy’s shipmates scampered along the meadow, rushing at the stream as if to save him, making a hash of the effort, and then rushing along again, as Boggy was borne away on the current.

Escargot stepped out from the cover of the woods, thinking to help. But there was nothing, really, that he could do for Boggy that the elves couldn’t do, and it was unlikely that the little fellow would drown in such a stream, so he paused and had a quick look up and down before stepping back into shadow.

Even as he did so two things happened. Another party of elves crested a little rise and stormed along toward the stream, shouting a warning to Boggy’s party, which had stopped the runaway elf by then and was hauling him up onto the clover. There was a scream that tore across the open meadow at that same moment, and it became suddenly clear that this second party of elves wasn’t rushing in to help save Boggy at all, but was angling down toward the woods, toward where the stream fell away into the shadowed tangle of vines and creepers and scrub.

Escargot edged into the sunlight once again, shading his eyes, hoping that the elves, all of them engaged by one tragedy or another, wouldn’t notice him. What he saw was a troll, humping fearfully along in a sort of two-legged gallop, its ape-like arms, scaled and mottled, dragging along on either side like rudders. The troll’s head came to a sort of point on top – not a horn, exactly, but like he wore a little pyramidal hat, and he seemed to be swatting at himself as if he were plagued by bees. He wore a garment of some sort that was ripped and draggled and dirty and hung in tatters. Through it shone scaly, green skin, dull as unpolished jade except here and there where the sun glinted on shiny patches – water, perhaps, or blood. Leta ran along six paces ahead of the troll.

The beast took a swipe at her with a taloned hand, but was wide of the mark by several feet. Then it stumbled, rolled, and got up – groggily, it seemed. Escargot looked around as he ran, searching for some sort of weapon. There was nothing but stones. He threw one at the creature, hollering, his shouts lost beneath the roaring of the troll itself and the calling of the elves, who brandished swords and pistols now, firing random shots into the air.

The troll fell again, crept up onto his knees, leaned on the meadow grasses, and howled one last trumpeting groan before collapsing onto its face. Leta continued to run, not looking back. The elves rushed past her, certain, perhaps, that she’d stop, and danced roundabout the fallen troll aiming their weapons and threatening. But the thing lay dead, and obviously so. Leta slowed her pace, looked back over her shoulder, and stopped, undecided. At the sight of Boggy’s party running toward her across the meadow, though, she slogged through the stream, leaped up the opposite bank, and ran straightaway for the forest.

She was in among the trees and shadows in moments. Boggy and the elves with him slowed and hesitated, perhaps wondering if there mightn’t be more trolls in the woods. They wandered across toward where Captain Appleby and the others still bent over the fallen creature. Appleby looked up, as if surprised to see Boggy’s band. ‘Where is she?’ he cried, snatching off his hat, and Boggy, soaked and bedraggled, started to answer, gesturing toward the woods. Escargot slipped in through the trees himself, leaping over a rock and scrambling through heavy brush. In the tangled woods he’d make better time than the elves. It might be simplest to start shouting for her. She was quick and clever and might easily give him the slip at the same time she was hiding from the elves. Why she was so set on avoiding the little men was a mystery, but it was very obviously the case. All of that was to his advantage, for he would seem to her the only ally among the entire odd lot of them.

Shouting, though, would alert the elves. They’d know that he hadn’t gone to Landsend at all, that he wasn’t waiting patiently in Lanternwick Street at whatever ridiculous inn it Was that Captain Appleby had recommended. And who knew what sorts of things lurked in the forest? The dwarf himself might be nigh, or the witch. This was no time to go shouting.

He stopped and cocked his head, listening. There was momentary silence, then the sound of elf voices away behind him, then silence again. He hurried on, clambering over a fallen log and stumbling out onto a trail that wound between the oaks. A whistle sounded behind him, and then the voice of Captain Appleby: ‘What!’ it said first in a sort of stage whisper, then, ‘Fool!’ followed by a flurry of muttering that Escargot couldn’t make out. After that Boggy’s voice cried out, ‘I can’t! It’s too high to jump!’ and then a string of elfin curses from Captain Appleby, out of patience with poor Boggy.

The idea of it appealed immediately to Escargot, who pulled himself up into the low branches of an oak and scrambled as high as he dared. Back when he was twelve years old he happily perched in the uppermost branches of a great alder in back of his house near Monmouth, but now, somehow, he wasn’t quite as surefooted. He climbed very carefully and held onto the trunk, appreciating Boggy’s fears. He found himself suddenly above the forest, looking down through the half-leafless oaks. Out on the edge of the woods lay the troll where it had fallen. Two elves still stood beside it, ready with their swords if the thing should attempt to get up. Boggy and Captain Appleby and the rest of the crew were hidden by layers of foliage.