The Stone Giant (7 page)

Escargot wondered about it for a moment, but his mind drifted back to the problem of little Annie. He could slip into the house and bundle her away. Damn his wife’s padlocks. She would be nothing to carry along downriver, and she was fond enough of his cooking to stay plump. Escargot smiled to think of how she hadn’t cared a rap when there’d been lumps in the oatmeal. And she’d grow up with calluses on her feet and an eye sharp as a hawk’s eye. She’d be able to tell time by the wind and understand elfin tongues and make sense of the gabbled laughter of goblins. What would come of her if she grew up in Twombly Town under the watchful eye of Stover the high and the mighty? Escargot didn’t want to think about it. He’d have to steal her. There were no two ways about it.

Of course it mightn’t be easy on her at first, little as she was. Some rough roads lay ahead of him, after all, and danger – no little bit of it. What would he do if halfway to Hightower Village he ran headlong into the dwarf, or perhaps into the same party of goblins that had set upon him a week past? He’d have to move quickly, and with a child in his arms it was quite likely that he wouldn’t move quickly enough. What would he do, stow her under a bush like a hedgehog? What if she fell into the hands of goblins while her father lay bleeding on the road? What then?

Escargot couldn’t fathom it. There were too many whats. He sat with his chin in his hand, looking out over the dark river. The water still flowed along toward the sea, oblivious to him, caring nothing for the troubles of the people along the bank. It was out in midstream that he ought to be, floating along with it. It was his destiny, perhaps, to be alone. A quick, breeze, cool and sharp, blew across the back of his neck. He shrugged his coat tighter around him, but the cool air seemed to pass right through it, as if it weren’t a breeze at all but the presence of something – or of someone – standing behind him in silence. He sat frozen, half expecting a touch on his shoulder, the wisp of cold breath on his cheek. ‘Aah!’ he shouted, whirling around and leaping from the log onto the slippery bank. He slid toward the river, grasping at a branch, falling down onto one knee in the mud of the bank. There was nothing there – no old milk-eyed woman with a stick. Whatever it was that had thickened the atmosphere a moment ago had disappeared.

He found that he was shaking, and when he grabbed at his cap to pull it down tighter over his forehead, he succeeded only in batting it off into the weeds. What, he wondered grimly, would have happened if there
had
been someone there – worse yet, if he’d had Annie along. In his fright, he would have pitched her into the river.

Through the fog appeared the glow of lantern light, out on the meadow. Escargot blinked, thinking at first that a fogfish had wandered over the bank. But it wasn’t a fogfish. It was bright as Christmas and coming from the Widow’s windmill, and yet no one, as far as he knew, used the abandoned windmill except himself. He watched the light for a moment, waiting for it to waver or move. Maybe it was someone walking on the meadow, looking into the windmill – looking, perhaps, for him. Could it be Uncle Helstrom, he wondered, narrowing his eyes. All things considered, Escargot hadn’t any real enthusiasm for running into the dwarf on a foggy night.

But he’d have to see, wouldn’t he? If it was a band of robbers, say, or marauding goblins, then he’d have to alert the village. He crawled across his log and crept up the grassy slope toward the windmill, hunkered down and squinting through the mist. He could hear the slow creak of the latticework windmill vanes turning aimlessly in the breeze, disconnected from the gear mechanism that had rusted and fallen to bits years earlier. The light seemed to flicker and dance, as if the lanterns had no shades, or as if it weren’t lantern light at all but was the light of about a hundred candles all guttering in the breeze blowing through the broken window.

A gust of wind scoured across the meadow, blowing the fog clear for an instant. Escargot dropped to his chest on the wet grass, partly hidden by the rise of the hill. He could see just for a moment the eastern sky, paled to morning purple, a scattering of stars winking out with the coming dawn. Slowly, before the mists settled back in and obscured the mill, he pushed himself up on his hands to have a look. There was a good chance he’s see someone through the window. If it was Uncle Helstrom, he’d ... Well, he didn’t quite know
what
he’d do. But the only thing visible in the window was the broad, glowing face of a lit jack-o’-lantern, grinning out at him through the hovering fog. The long vanes swished across in front of it, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, so that the candlelight glowing through the mouth and eyes seemed chopped to bits. Why it faced the meadow was a puzzle. Unless it was meant to attract someone. Was it a beacon, a signal? Escargot decided to keep a sharp eye out for things lurking in the night. He crept toward it, masked again by fog.

A low murmur issued from within the mill. A cackle of laughter erupted, then was hushed and the murmuring continued, now rising in volume, now falling away into silence. It was impossible to tell how many voices in all were murmuring and laughing – at least three or four. And just when Escargot was sure they were the voices of men, low and throaty and rough, he’d change his mind and decide they were the voices of women – witches, perhaps. One voice, though, was a bit higher. It was a familiar voice – very pretty, actually.

Escargot stiffened. He knew whose voice it was. He’d
have
to take a look through the window. There was another window higher up on the second floor, but there was no way to climb the slippery, shingled sides of the mill – no handholds or footholds unless he clambered up one of the vanes. The noise of it, though, would give him away. They’d catch him at it, halfway up and utterly defenseless. At least if he was discovered on the ground he could make a run for it.

He crept forward, thankful that the grass and leaves on the meadow were heavy and silent with fog. He cupped an ear to the wall below the windowsill, but all was silent save for a low and rhythmic chanting in a guttural language he had no desire to understand. When he turned up toward the window, there on the sill, next to the glowing pumpkin, a black cat sat peering out into the night. Escargot crouched below, staring up at it. It wouldn’t do to frighten it. Perhaps it wouldn’t do to be
seen
by it. The cat seemed to be watching the vanes turn in the breeze, fascinated with it as it might be fascinated by a bit of dancing yarn.

Then it leaped across the four feet that separated it from the revolving vanes, lit against the ragged lattice and scrabbled its paws through, holding on as the blade swept upward into the mist. Escargot watched the vanes whoosh back down – one, two, three, four, five, and then he was counting the same vanes over again. The cat was gone –perhaps searching the upper story for mice.

Escargot edged past beneath the window, conscious of the turning blades behind him. It wouldn’t do to have one of them crack him in the head. He pulled himself up on the sill, wafered against the damp, dark shingles, and peered in at the window. A half dozen jack-o’-lanterns burned round the walls. Three witches kneeled on the dirt inside, casting a pair of enormous ivory dice across a carven board. Leta wasn’t among them. Yet Escargot had been certain that it was her voice he had heard above the murmuring. Near the shut door of the mill an iron cauldron sat on a heap of burning kindling. The smoke from the fire mingled with steam from the cauldron, hovering in the air in a pink cloud before condensing and falling back into the cauldron like bloody raindrops. Four broomsticks leaned against the door.

One of the witches was enormously fat, with a fleshy face that nearly hid her eyes. She crouched there on the floor, an overstuffed, robed doll, her fingers working like pudgy snakes over the tumbling dice. Next to her lay a leather bag – Escargot’s leather bag. Marbles spilled out of the mouth of it.

‘Hey!’ cried Escargot in sudden surprise, astonished to see the bag and determined to get it back. The fat witch grinned up at him, as if she were happy that he’d dropped by, as if she’d been expecting him. She plucked up one of the marbles, held it up briefly in the light of a glowing jack-o’-lantern, and flipped it into the cauldron which hissed and smoked and sent a reeking cloud of vapor swirling about the little room, smelling sickeningly of blood.

Escargot lurched backward, pushing the pumpkin on the windowsill into the room. He heard it thud against the dirt just as one of the vanes swung round toward him, skiving across the back of his head, brushing his ear. The next vane, whipped round in a sudden gust of wind, snatched the back of his coat, and the ragged lattice tangled itself like fingers into his collar and hair.

Before he had time to cry out he found himself swept around in a broad arc, into the air, following the path of the cat. He clawed at the air behind him, clutching for a hold on the rickety vane. Surely his weight would stop the thing’s turning – either that or simply snap it off. He’d find himself rolling down the hill with a broken neck. He managed to hook one foot into a slat and to grab hold behind his head with his right hand. It wouldn’t be too difficult to disentangle his coat, but he wasn’t at all sure he wanted to do that, not until he was a shade closer to the ground.

So he held on, the vanes spinning faster as he dropped, then climbed again, the sound of cackling laughter ringing out from within the mill. Wood snapped. His heel broke through the spindly lattice, jammed against another, and snapped through that. His coat ripped and he slumped an inch, his stomach lurching up into his throat. Again the vane crested the top and plummeted toward the meadow. Escargot shouted involuntarily, waiting to smash into the ground. Then he sailed upward again in an increasing rush, as if the wind had turned suddenly into a gale. The fog blew round his face, thinning and evaporating as he spun faster and faster, round and round, the meadow and the woods and the hills and the red glow of dawn racing past in a blurred whirligig. Finally, dizzy and hanging, his jacket crammed up round his shoulders and neck, he swung to a stop at the top of the mill, facing the upper window.

Crouched on its haunches on the floorboards was the cat. A fat mouse cowered between its paws. The cat batted at the mouse, dropping it, snatching it up in its teeth, peering out suddenly at the dangling Escargot, who watched horrified, understanding that the jack-o’-lantern in the window below
had
been meant to attract someone – him. The cat seemed to shimmer and waver, to grow and shrink and then, in a blink, it was Leta who crouched on the floorboards, holding in her hands his signed G. Smithers, shredded and stained, the binding hanging by a half dozen stretched threads. Then she was a cat again shaking with silent laughter, the mouse in her teeth. Once again the vanes revolved, and when they came back around there was Leta, grinning at him, red dawnlight reflecting off her eyes. She shimmered once again, metamorphosing into a hunched, cat-like shadow and then into the old, bent woman with milky eyes and hair like cobweb.

The jacket ripped one last time, and Escargot jerked downward, the vane warping with his weight. He lurched sideways for a handhold, his heel skidding through brittle slats. He fell, banging against the blade below and sliding along it before tumbling down onto the meadow. Then he was up and running. He angled across toward the river road and the comfortable lights of Twombly Town aglow in the distance. He had no desire to look back, perhaps be turned to stone, but ran straight on to Smeggles’ door, pounding away on it until old Smeggles, his white hair in a frazzle and he wearing a nightshirt and cap, threw the door open with a curse.

‘It’s tomorrow,’ gasped Escargot. ‘Give me my money.’

Before his head stopped whirling, Escargot was miles down the river road, cantering along on an uncooperative horse he’d bought too hastily and for too much money. The woods on his right were solemn and dark, the ground beneath the oaks and hemlocks covered with red-brown leaves and rotted stumps. The sun drifted in the sky as if it were tired and heavy and about to plummet into the river, and slow clouds sailed across in front of it now and again, casting the afternoon into deep shadow.

Escargot was hungry. Even the pickled fish he’d tossed onto the meadow – when was it, only the night before last? – had begun to appeal to him. He stopped twice to gather berries, but it was late in the season, and most that were left were withered or small – good, perhaps, for warding off starvation, but they did little for simple hunger. There were mushrooms aplenty sprouting from the decaying vegetation of the forest floor, and if he’d had a little butter, maybe, and garlic ... But he hadn’t any butter, any more than he had the urge to nibble the funguses raw. What he wanted was steak and potatoes, or a meat pie and a bowl of gravy.

For weeks he’d thought of leaving Twombly Town for a dozen reasons. And here he was being
chased
out, or at least it seemed so, and chased out hungry to top it off. When he finally began to consider it, it made little sense. It was every bit as possible that he was being chased
into
something. That was the result of all the chasing, anyway. The witches had done a first-rate job of frightening him off, but where had he fled? – straight down the river in the wake of the dwarf and the old woman, or Leta, or both, or all three. It had become a confused mess.

Something in him couldn’t believe that Leta was a witch, that she and the old blind woman were one and the same. But what he’d seen through the window rather argued in that direction. It might quite likely be vanity, he thought, that explained his doubts. He’d obviously rather believe that he hadn’t been the victim of a hoax, that Leta’s rare but wpnderful attentions had been genuine.

He carried with him a thrown-together bundle of clothes and supplies, bought with a bit of the house money. He’d given his Smithers books to the Professor. Escargot had come across him early in the morning in town. He’d been downriver, the Professor had, collecting waterweeds for his aquaria, and had discovered clumps of homunculus grass in a little backwater two miles below the village. Not a lot of it, to be sure, but some half dozen of the sprouts had gone to seed, and through the papery walls of the seed pods could be seen the first vague outlines of polywog-like henny-penny men. Wurzle had gathered enough to study, and then, on the road, had bumped into a curious dwarf in a slouch hat. The dwarf had paid handsomely for the homunculus grass and had insisted facetiously that he intended to grind up the little men inside and smoke them in his pipe.