The Giant-Slayer Read online

  Jimmy learned no more than that. True to his word, the King wouldn’t speak of Jessamine, the Swamp Witch. And Jimmy, anxious to please, didn’t press him. There was an uncomfortable moment, until someone plucked quietly at fiddle strings. Then someone else joined in with tambourines, and soon the camp was loud with music, wild with Gypsy dancing.

  All the women, all the girls, had a dance with Jimmy. They twirled him round the fire circle, round the wagons and the horses. They flung him here and flung him there, and everyone was laughing.

  Jimmy had never been so happy. He had never imagined that such happiness was even possible. In fact, he felt more loved by the Gypsies than ever by his father.

  They gave him a bed in the King’s wagon, on a pile of woolen blankets. A Gypsy princess, with hair as black as a raven’s feathers, bent down to kiss his forehead. But when she saw the ball of bones at his neck, she pulled away.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Jimmy.

  “I don’t like that,” she said.

  “It’s a charm,” he told her.

  “No, it is more.” She crawled into her own bed at the foot of the wagon and pulled a red blanket around her. “It is two charms. One protects the other.”

  “Why?” asked Jimmy.

  “So that no one can remove it but the owner.”

  “But won’t it keep me safe?” asked Jimmy, up on one elbow now.

  “Yes. It is a good charm,” said the Gypsy girl.

  “Then why don’t you like it?” asked Jimmy.

  “Because it has evil in it. Your charm brings death.”

  It was a mystery to Jimmy how a good charm could be full of evil. He asked the Gypsy to explain, but she wouldn’t. She blew out the candle beside her bed and lay in silence as the King and all the others laughed and talked outside.

  Jimmy dreamed of nothing. His sleep was long and safe, and in the morning he bathed with the Gypsies in the cool scarlet water. He ate again, and drank again, then took his stick and bundle and sadly said he had to go.

  The King followed him out to the road. “My boy, you stay with us, why not?” he said. “From now on you live with Gypsy, yes?”

  “I wish I could,” said Jimmy. “But I have to go to the swamp.”

  “Why?” said the King. “Why must you see this witch so badly?”

  He thought he’d explained it. He had to see the witch to set things straight. He had to learn what had happened to his mother, and he hoped to grow to be big. He had to show his father that he wasn’t a runt or a squirm.

  “So many things you have to do,” said the King. “So much on your little shoulders. But one day, when you have done them all, you come home and live with Gypsy. Promise me, my boy.”

  “I would like that very much,” said Jimmy.

  Jimmy followed his tracks down the Great North Road, tapping a Gypsy tune with his stick. When he reached the fork he turned right, toward the swamp and the home of the witch.

  The road soon ended, just as the travelers had said it would. The trail that snaked into the forest was easy to follow for the first seven miles. Fresh blazes, bright as yellow paint, marked the route over three hills, each higher than the next. The trail was trodden to bare dirt, and bridges of logs had been built over rivers and creeks.

  In the eighth mile, Jimmy found a traveler’s pack abandoned beside the trail. It had been torn open, by men or animals, and nothing worth having was left. Half a mile farther on, he found an empty barrel, tossed aside, and a pair of boots with the soles worn off. He passed a thrown-away compass with no needle, an abandoned cart with one wheel shattered, a chest of drawers, the handle from an axe. There was more and more as he went along, as the trail faded slowly into the forest. It had all been left behind, he supposed: abandoned by weary travelers willing to give up their all to carry on.

  Beside a creek was the skeleton of a horse, now as flat as a white drawing on the grass, crushed by its own pack saddle. On the other bank there was no trail to follow, no mark or blaze at all. So Jimmy made his own path into the wilderness, and four hours later it brought him to another creek, where he was surprised to find the bones of another dead horse squashed below its pack. Only when he crossed the creek for a second time did he realize that he’d gone in a circle.

  The forest was too thick to let Jimmy see the sun. He stumbled along in what he hoped was a straight line, toward what he hoped was north. But every cliff and fallen tree made him veer to one side. And he knew that he was lost again when he came across a trail.

  It was a smooth rut through the forest, so deep that a woodsman might have made it by dragging a heavy log. For half a mile Jimmy followed it, until he found a patch of scaly skin snagged on a tree, and realized that he was walking down a hydra’s trail. He stood still and listened. Very faintly, he could hear it coming: the hiss of its many tongues, the slithering of its body along the rut toward him.

  Jimmy turned off the trail and fled into the forest. He bounded through clearings and smashed through the bushes. He ran and he crawled and he crept. It was chance that took him east, down a stony slope, through a grove of cottonwoods, right to the bones of a dead man.

  He was in a little meadow then, where the grass was brown and yellow. The bones made a heap at the base of a white cross, where the man had sat—long ago—to die. The legs were straight out, the arms folded across the hips. The head must have rolled away, because it was nowhere to be seen. But a clay-stemmed pipe had fallen through the bony cage of ribs and lay now on the grass. Propped against the cross—to make a backrest for the skeleton—was a slab of bark that bore a few words carved into its inner surface:

  HERE WILL LIE POOR SMOKY JACK

  BURIED HIS PARTNER TODAY

  DIED OF THIRST TOMORROW

  LOST NOW AND FOREVER MORE

  POOR OLD SMOKY JACK

  It made Jimmy feel cold and creepy to see the skeleton sitting there, the remains of a man he could remember very well, laughing in the old Dragon’s Tooth. He hurried past and ran across the meadow, only to find himself enclosed by a wall of bushes. It rose high above him, too thick for any man—or any army—to hack a way through it. He could see a few broken branches where someone had tried to carve out a path but had barely made a dent.

  Jimmy nearly lost heart. Far behind him was the last blaze of the trail, the last footprint of any man. Ahead was a black tangle that seemed to have stopped every traveler who had tried to get through.

  The little giant-slayer sank to the ground. He tapped his stick on the toes of his boots, making a sound like a heartbeat.

  Among the cottonwoods where he had run, a twig snapped with a quiet click. Jimmy was used to the woods now, and not every noise startled him. But this one made him freeze. He didn’t breathe; he didn’t blink. The stick was in his hand, hovering in the air.

  Another twig snapped. Leaves rubbed against leaves. An odor of animals came drifting through the meadow.

  Jimmy watched for movement on the ground. He knew beyond doubt that a creature was coming toward him. He could sense it and smell it and hear it. But he saw nothing until a spidery knot of old twigs sailed down from the tree-tops, somersaulting from one branch to another. Then he looked up and saw the manticores.

  There were five of them, skulking from tree to tree, between the forest and the sky. They had the bodies of lions, the wings of bats, the faces and minds of men. They were the most frightening things that Jimmy had ever seen. As he watched, they crept to the ends of the cottonwood limbs, crouched with the branches swaying, then opened their leathery wings and soared to the next tree.

  Jimmy stayed absolutely still. He knew from the travelers’ tales that manticores had the eyesight of old men and that they couldn’t see him if he didn’t move. They were so close now that he could watch their ears twitch as they listened, their faces wrinkle as they sniffed. Then they stalked along the branches, in toward the trunk.

  From behind Jimmy’s back, a rabbit hopped into view. It sat close to his side, its nose and ears qui
vering nervously. Jimmy hissed at it: “Stay still!”

  The rabbit bent its ears. It hunched down, ready to flee.

  “Don’t move,” said Jimmy in a whisper.

  But the rabbit turned and bounded off, and the manticores—with terrible cries—all looked down from the tree.

  The rabbit vanished into the bushes, its white tail bobbing like a bouncing ball. A manticore shrieked, and all five of the beasts came swooping from the tree, plunging through the branches.

  In a flash, Jimmy whirled around and scrambled after the rabbit. He dove among the tangled bushes, the stick in his hand, but his bundle forgotten.

  The manticores landed heavily. Their tails swished, and their wingtips flailed, and they snarled at the bushes with their sharp fangs showing. Then all five threw themselves at Jimmy’s bundle, roaring at each other as they tore it apart with their claws.

  Jimmy squirmed along the ground. He used the stick to poke ahead of him and find a route. The bushes seemed to close in behind him, and the manticores disappeared. For an hour or more, Jimmy slithered and crawled and crept. Then the tangle of bushes suddenly ended, and he came out into a clearing.

  He was afraid to look up, certain that he had blundered back to the same meadow, to the terrible company of Smoky Jack and the manticores. But he heard the sound of running water and the cheerful chirp of many birds, and when at last he raised his head it was to see a sight that no traveler had ever talked about. Jimmy thought that he was maybe the only person alive who had ever seen it.

  Set into the forest floor were enormous slabs of stone. They made the Devil’s Courtyard seem tiny and silly, for they were laid end to end to form a road that stretched to the east and the west for as far as Jimmy could see. It hadn’t been used for eons. Whole trees grew up through the cracks, and the stones were half hidden by moss and dirt. But once the road had carried enormous wagons. Jimmy had no doubt of that at all, because one of them was still there.

  It was that wagon, not the road, that astounded the little giant-slayer. All he saw at first was a wheel. It was twenty feet high, the spokes as thick as trees. The bed of the wagon was so high above him that Jimmy toppled backward as he tried to look up at it. Then he just lay on his back, stunned by the size of this thing. It could have carried the whole of the Dragon’s Tooth, along with the stable and garden. It could have carried all of that and the Gypsy camp with all the caravans and horses, and every traveler that Jimmy had ever met, and there would still be room enough for no one to be crowded. The driver’s seat was at the top of a tower made of struts and bars, reached by a ladder with so many rungs that Jimmy couldn’t count them. When he reached three hundred and couldn’t tell them apart anymore, he wasn’t even close to the top.

  At the front of the wagon were the tongues and bars of a harness, and yokes for a hundred oxen. The reins had rotted away so badly that they looked like old spiderwebs. But every other part of the wagon—from yokes to spokes—was made of bronze. The years had turned the metal green, but wherever Jimmy rubbed, a shine came back as bright as ever.

  Behind a rear wheel, a bit of chain dangled to the ground. Each link was longer than Jimmy was tall, but he managed to scramble up the chain to the enormous bed of the wagon. All along the edge were massive rings, threaded with miles of chain and cable. With one look around, Jimmy figured out what the wagon was for. It was big enough to carry, all at once, any of the massive trees he had seen in the forest. He could imagine a hundred woodsmen chopping away, the chips flying everywhere, and the great tree finally falling, toppling so gracefully—to land right onto the bed of the wagon. Now, with the forest cleared, the wagon was useless—abandoned.

  He couldn’t leave before he’d climbed to the driver’s seat. Though he was out of breath before he’d even reached the first platform, he kept going up the hundreds of rungs, from level to level, like a sailor up the rigging of a ship.

  When he reached the very top, Jimmy was surprised to find that the seat was just a tiny thing. He fell onto it, exhausted, and for the first time in his life his feet touched the floor. In every other chair where he’d ever sat, his legs had stuck out as straight as sticks. But this seat might have been made just for him. He lolled on it comfortably, looking out at what he thought were the ends of the earth. For mile after mile was the forest, then a range of spiky mountains that looked like the jaws of a shark. The sun was setting behind them, turning the sky to the color of oranges and plums. And to the east, not far away at all, were the pools and grasses of the swamp.

  He was pleased by the sunset, and awed by the stars. They appeared by the thousands, so bright and gleaming that they reminded him of the spangles on the Gypsies’ black clothes, and then of the twinkle of coins deep in a barrel, and that made him think of the inn, of Fingal and his mother.

  Jimmy used his belt to tie himself to the seat. He slept there, higher than an eagle in its aerie, and when the sun came up he woke to see a yellow sky, and the last of the stars disappearing. The watery channels that threaded through the swamp looked like rivers of gold, and he picked out a route to follow. Then, with this new picture in his mind, he started down as the sun was still rising. With his charms and his stick, he set off for the swamp.

  Before noon he was splashing through marsh grass, with the brown tips of bulrushes waving in a breeze high above his head. He felt as small as a bug on a lawn. At every step he thought he would find no solid ground underneath him, that he would plunge through the mud and the water. But though the bottom was soft, it was there.

  He climbed over hummocks and waded through water. Mosquitoes whined in clouds around him. Flies nipped at his skin. Huge dragonflies darted past on wings that clattered and clicked, while water beetles the size of rats scurried across the water. Jimmy clambered up to another grassy hummock, over its summit, and down to the water. In his path lay a dark log. He began to run, hoping to hurdle it. But his feet slipped in the mud, and he fell face first across the log. He groaned.

  And so did the log.

  It shifted underneath him. It rose onto four short legs. At one end, a pair of yellow eyes cracked open.

  It was an alligator, and Jimmy lay right across its back, just in front of the hind legs. Its mouth opened, showing yellow teeth with strings of meat snarled between them. Then it snapped its jaws and lunged at Jimmy, but only wheeled around in a circle as the giant-slayer clung to the knobby skin. It took another lunge that carried it again in a circle, so fast that Jimmy was nearly hurled from its back. Then it slowly turned its head nearly all the way around and looked right at him, as though trying to figure out what to do.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  THE MAGIC IN THE CHARM

  “Gee, what happened next?” asked Dickie.

  Laurie had stopped talking. She was looking out the window.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Chip.

  In the shadow of the hospital, on a bench at Piper’s Pond, sat a man who looked just like Mr. Valentine. In a gray hat that hid his face, he sat with his hands on his knees, just patiently waiting, it seemed.

  Chip asked again, “What’s the matter?” When he got no answer he said, “Lawdy, Miss Laurie.”

  Laurie smiled at the twisted lyric. “Sorry,” she said. “I think my dad’s out there.”

  “So what?” said Carolyn.

  It was Chip who answered. It took him two sentences to say it. “Bet her old man … doesn’t want her coming here.”

  “Boy, is that true?” asked Dickie.

  “Yes, I guess so,” said Laurie. “But I hope he isn’t spying on me.” She was still looking at the pond, at the man on the bench. She tried to make him lift his head by sending him thoughts: Look up. Look up. He seemed so much like her father, yet it was hardly possible. Mr. Valentine had never left work early, and he’d never gone anywhere except straight home. Why would he go to Bishop’s and sit at Piper’s Pond? But Laurie had a terrible feeling in her heart that the man really was her father, and that he had already seen her
in the window as clearly as she had seen the prince in the tower.

  Dickie was twisting his head, trying to look outside through his mirror. “What will he do if he knows you’re here?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Laurie. “He’ll be sore, that’s for sure.”

  Chip laughed. “So will you.”

  “No, he wouldn’t hit me,” said Laurie. “He’d never do that.”

  “No kidding?”

  “Of course not. He’s my dad.”

  She looked at Chip’s iron lung, at all the pictures there. She was too far away to see them clearly, and the many faces of the boy and the man made a blur in her glasses. She couldn’t imagine the smiling man in front of the garage ever raising his hand to hit the boy. But he was nearly as changeable as the boy, and the pictures showed only instants of time, the flash of a camera’s shutter. There was no way of knowing what had happened before the shutter opened, or what had followed when it closed.

  Laurie saw Chip’s face then in the mirror, floating above the iron lung, watching her watch him. Embarrassed, she turned back toward the window.

  The benches were empty around Piper’s Pond, and it took a moment for Laurie to spot the man with the gray hat. He was walking down the path, nearly at the gate already. When he reached the street he turned to the right and vanished behind the wall.

  “You know what Davy Crockett would have done with that old gator?” asked Dickie. He hadn’t stopped thinking of the story. “He would have stuck his arm right down its throat. Then he would have grabbed its tail and turned that old gator inside out. That’s what Davy would have done. Stuck his arm right down its throat.”

  “Well, that’s funny,” said Laurie. “Because that’s just what happened.”