Odds Are Good (19 page)

Lifting Ralph from his lap, he handed him back to me.

I looked at him.

“It was not necessary that I
have
the animal,” he said. “What was important was that you fulfill your responsibility to me. I am glad that you did. It will mean much for your world.”

He put his hand on my shoulder.

Ralph snuggled into the crook of my arm and went to sleep.

The stars shimmered above us.

I stared out at them, wondering how many I would visit.

Edgar Twonky had no intention of getting eaten by a giant the morning he left for Cottleston Fair.

Sometimes these things just happen.

He was ambling along, humming tunelessly while he dreamed of what he might buy for Melisande with the money he hoped to make from his eggs that day, when an enormous hand swept down from the sky, scooped him up, and deposited him in a mouth the size of a cave.

The tongue on which he landed was coarse and soggy, like a bed of rain-soaked ferns. It flung him toward the back of the mouth, where a vast bulb of red flesh dangled above the gaping black hole that would, Edgar presumed, be the last thing he ever saw. With a leap, Edgar grabbed the dangling piece of flesh. It was moist and slick, and far too wide for him to put his arms around. Digging his fingers into the soft surface, he hung on for dear life.

“
Gunnarrrgh!”
said the giant, causing Edgar's fleshy perch to swing back and forth in a dizzying way.

When the giant's mouth was open, Edgar could see. When it closed, he found himself in a darkness deeper than any he had ever known.

“Gunnarrrgh!”
repeated the giant.

Edgar's grip was loosening, and he was expecting to fall into the waiting hole at any second, when he heard a creaky voice call, “Over here! Hurry!” Twisting toward the voice, he was astonished to see a flash of light—a torch!

“Hurry!” repeated the voice.

“Gunnarrrgh!”
said the giant for a third time. Edgar flung himself forward, landing on the giant's tongue once more. The great pad of flesh rippled alarmingly as the giant tried to swallow him. Digging his hands into the tongue's surface, which consisted of pulpy red fibers thick as his wrists and long as his arms, Edgar clung to it like a barnacle to a ship's bottom.

“Come on, come on!” cried the voice behind the torch. “I can't hold this out here forever. It'll make him sneeze, which will almost certainly kill you!”

Reaching forward, Edgar grabbed another handful of tongue and pulled himself along the rough surface. Fighting the motion of the tongue (which was accompanied by disgusting gagging sounds from the giant), he dragged himself hand over hand toward the beckoning torch, which was yards away. He had just reached a wart, wider than a tree stump, when the giant made a last desperate attempt to swallow him. Edgar managed to get himself on the forward side of the wart—toward the teeth and away from the throat—and braced himself against it.

“Gak gak gak!”
hacked the giant.

Edgar leaped forward, landing within a foot of the torch. A withered hand reached out to him. He grabbed it thankfully and was pulled into the most astonishing room he had ever seen.

Well, it wasn't a room, exactly.

It was the inside of one of the giant's back teeth. But the flickering light of the torch showed that it had been hollowed out to make an area large enough to hold a table and two chairs. The back wall—back being the side toward the giant's throat—had a niche about six feet long and two feet wide carved into it. The ceiling was low—too low for Edgar to stand at full height—and everything was too close together, giving the room a cramped feeling. That feeling was made worse by the clutter of items that covered both floor and table: cups, plates, knives, pitchforks, shovels, coils of rope, chunks of wood, and an old wagon wheel, among other things.

“Salvage,” wheezed a voice behind him.

Edgar turned and received yet another surprise. His rescuer was a woman. Half a head shorter than Edgar, she had long, stringy gray hair and eyes that burned with fever brightness. Her clothing, of which she had several layers, was an odd mix, some of it coarse homespun, some costly velvet. Nearly all of it was tattered and worn. It hung heavy on her body, as if it was slightly damp.

“By salvage,” said the old woman, “I mean the stuff in the room, not you—though I suppose you might qualify as well. First time since I've been here that I've actually been able to save someone. Silly things all panic and slide down his gullet before I can do a thing to help them. That was very good, the way you managed to grab on to something. Quick thinking. I like that in a man.”

“Thank you,” said Edgar nervously. He looked around. “How long have you lived here?”

The woman shrugged. “Can't really say. It's hard to keep track of the time in here. There's no sunrise or sunset, no full moon or new, no summer or spring, winter or fall. I keep a calendar now—that's it, carved in the wall over there. But I don't know how long I had been here before I started it.” She stroked her hair. “I do know I was young when he took me.” A slightly mournful note colored her voice. “Young and pretty, some thought. And my hair was black as a raven's wing. At least, that's what all the boys said. Now come on, ducky. Sit down, sit down. I haven't had a visitor in . . . well, ever, actually.”

“Then why two chairs?” asked Edgar.

“I live on hope,” replied the woman as she thrust the torch into a bracket carved into the yellow wall. She returned to the table and cleared it with a sweep of her arm. “Sit,” she said, gesturing to the seat opposite her. “Sit.”

Edgar crossed to the table—it took only two steps to reach it—and joined her. He tried to pull the chair away from the table, but found that it was solidly joined to the floor. Only then did he realize it had been carved from the tooth itself.

“It was something to do,” said the woman with a shrug. She flipped her gray hair back over her shoulders and said, “My name is Meagan.”

“And I'm Edgar.”

“Good name,” Meagan replied, nodding in approval.

Edgar smiled. “I seem to owe you my life.”

Meagan arched an eyebrow. “I hadn't really thought about it that way. But now that you mention it, I suppose you do. Not that it's much of a life here in the giant's mouth.”

“How do you live here, anyway?” asked Edgar, glancing around the room once more. “Where do you get your food?”

Meagan shrugged. “I scavenge.”

“Scavenge what?”

“Anything that comes along that doesn't go down his gullet.” She gestured toward a pickax that leaned against the enamel wall. “I've dug bits of meat out of his teeth that would feed a family of ten.”

Edgar shuddered, and decided not to ask what she did for water. He was afraid he already knew the answer. He leaped ahead to the bigger, more important question.

“Have you ever tried to get out?”

“What do I look like?” she asked bitterly. “Of course I've tried to get out. I tried every way I could think of. Finally, when it became clear I wasn't going to make it, I gave up and accepted my fate.” She narrowed her eyes. “You, you come in here and find me waiting to help you—you have no idea what it was like for me when I first got here. No light, no one to explain, no one to talk to, weep with, hold. Just me, alone, in the dark, trying to find a way to survive. Just me in this hole, which back then was barely big enough to hold me, just big enough to keep from getting swallowed. I thought I would die of loneliness. I thought I would die of fear. More than once I considered just flinging myself down the big oaf's gullet. But that's not my way, Edgar. I cling to life—cling to it like a leech if I have to. So with every flash of light that came when the giant opened his mouth, I took stock of where I was. With every flash of light, I learned a little more. Many was the hour I spent huddled in this tooth, weeping to myself, wondering what was to become of me. But I didn't give up. I never gave up. I drank from pools of spit. I snatched passing food. And when I found my first tool, I began to dig, to make myself a home. Chip, chip, chip, I picked away at this tooth.”

She paused, and actually chuckled. “He didn't like that, I can tell you. Oh, the roars of pain! I thought I would go deaf. And the shaking of his head. First time it nearly killed me. I would have had to give up if I hadn't managed to grab a piece of leather harness that was tied to an ox he snatched up. Used it to lash myself down. Then it didn't matter how he shook his head, I was safe.”

She leaned across the table, fixing her glittering, half-mad eyes on Edgar. “Did I try to get out? Of course I tried to get out. But in the end, I made myself a home here. And I'm alive while all the others he swallowed before and after are gone. But even so, it's lonely here, Edgar. At least, it was. Now you're here, that will be different.”

“But I've got to get out!” cried Edgar.

“Well, be my guest,” she said, gesturing toward the hole through which she had dragged him. “The door is open. Don't let me stop you.”

“You don't understand,” groaned Edgar. “I'm supposed to be married next week.”

“That's very unfortunate,” said Meagan sharply. “But it doesn't really change things. This is your new home—or, at least it is as long as I choose to share it with you.” Her eyes glittered in the torchlight, and Edgar caught just a hint of menace in her tone. “Don't forget,
I
built this place. And it's barely large enough for one. You could throw me out, I suppose, and take the place for yourself. But you don't seem the type. Besides, after all the years I've survived in here, I'm about as tough and nasty as they come. So I wouldn't advise you mess with me, Mr. Edgar. You might be surprised at what a woman can do.”

Edgar, who had no intention of messing with this strange, repellent woman, put up his hands and said, “I'm not going to do anything to hurt you. I owe you my life.”

“Interesting point,” said Meagan.

 

Night inside the giant's tooth came in two stages. The first was when the giant himself lay down to rest, which changed the floor into a wall, and the rear wall into the floor. Everything not locked in place—including Edgar—tumbled to the back of the tooth when this happened.

Meagan laughed, not unkindly. “Sorry,” she said. “I should have warned you.”

Stage two came when Meagan decided to put out the torch, which she did only after first checking to make sure that she had her flint and steel for relighting it tucked securely in her pocket. Prior to this she had gathered some soggy fabric and piled it in the carved niche Edgar had noticed earlier. He understood now that this was her bed.

Edgar took his rest on the opposite side of a barrier she had erected between them, huddled on a collection of tattered pieces of damp cloth that she offered him—everything from a lace tablecloth to a single shirtsleeve. (“Almost managed to save that fellow,” she had muttered as she handed him that particular item.)

As he lay in the dark, wrapped in misery, Edgar thought of Melisande, wondering if he would ever find his way back to her, and what she would do if he did not. He had a horrible few moments when he imagined her giving up on him and marrying Martin Plellman, but beat the idea from his mind so fiercely that it was nearly ten minutes before it came creeping back.

After several hours he finally did drift into a fitful slumber—only to be jolted back into wakefulness by a deep rumble, something like a cross between a thunderstorm and an avalanche. It eventually tapered off to a high-pitched keening—which Edgar thought for a moment must be the wail of a lost soul—and ended with three short peeps.

“What was that?” cried Edgar in horror.

“What was what?” asked Meagan groggily. It was clear from the sound of her voice that she had slept through the appalling sound.

Before Edgar could answer, it started again.

“That!” he cried, once the last of the peeps was over.

“You woke me up for that?” snarled Meagan incredulously. “It's just the giant, snoring. Forget it and go back to sleep.”

The snoring started again. When it was over, Edgar wanted to ask Meagan how long it had taken her to learn to sleep through the horrible racket. But she was already snoring herself, and he dared not wake her again.

 

He was still wide awake, though completely exhausted, when Meagan lit the torch again. Only a few moments later the giant groaned and lurched to his feet, causing everything that had fallen to the wall the night before to return to the floor.

“I've been thinking,” said Meagan, as she kicked the loose fabrics against the wall, “and I've decided that you're going to have to build a home of your own. This place really is too small for the two of us. Odds are good I'd end up killing you.”

Though she sounded genuinely regretful, she was also firm on the point.

Edgar, who was still determined to think of this as a temporary situation, felt that digging out his own home would be a waste of time and energy. On the other hand, he was not the sort to impose—certainly not the type to force himself into the abode of a woman who did not want him there.

“Where do you suggest I make this home?” he asked, trying to keep both the snarl and the whine out of his voice.

“Well, he has nearly thirty more teeth to choose from!” snapped Meagan. “However, I'd suggest you stick with the molars. They're roomier.” Then, as if the idea of being pleasant was still new to her, she patted back her hair and said, “It might be nice if you built nearby. More neighborly, if you know what I mean. Best thing to do is start with a tooth that already has the beginnings of a hole. I'll help you look, if you want.”

“Thank you,” said Edgar. “I'd appreciate that.”

And so, after a breakfast so gray that Edgar decided he didn't really want to know what it consisted of, they left Meagan's home to search for a tooth where he could live. Meagan carried the torch, and they both had picks and knives and coils of rope strapped about them. Before they left, Meagan anchored another rope to one of the chairs inside her tooth and tied it around them both.