Power of Three (10 page)

Ceri was equally excited. “Near a Giants' house. Come on and I'll show you.”

Chapter

6

GAIR PLOWED THROUGH SQUASHY MARSH
, among hot rustling high grasses. Whenever he came to a peaty pool he said loudly, “Anyone there?” But the only living things he saw were birds flitting among the grasses, which may or may not have been Dorig. At length, he came to one of the straight dikes by which the Giants tried to drain the Moor. It flowed so sluggishly that it almost counted as standing water, and it only had thorn trees planted along its farther bank. Gair loitered along its near side. He was hot and sticky and so miserable that, if a scaly Dorig arm had reached out of the dike to drag him under, he would have been glad to see it.

His broken promise did not trouble him at all. He was glad he had slung Ondo among the bees, and, for all he cared, the Garholters could be fighting the Otmounders till Sundown. What made him miserable was what Ondo had told him about Gest. And it made him even more unhappy that he could not understand why he should be so miserable to find that his father had cheated. It ought to have been comforting, since it meant that his ordinariness was hereditary. But it was not. Gair felt as if the roots of his life had been cut away. Nothing grand or good was left. It would not have surprised him to find that Adara was nothing like as Wise as she was said to be. And he would have given anything to have gone back miraculously to thinking Gest was a hero out of a story— instead of just an ordinary person who had cheated Og.

“No wonder he can't fight Dorig!” Gair said aloud. He felt bitter and contemptuous. Gest had accorded some unknown scaly Dorig the greatest mark of trust and friendship by changing collars with it. The degree of friendship depended on the words Gest had said on his collar, but it must have been strong, or Gest would have risked helping Orban in battle. And he had done it just to cheat Og! This so disgusted Gair that he shouted out as he walked, “
Dorig! Come and get me!
”

No Dorig came. Gair wandered on, miserable, confused and disgusted. The dike petered out and he walked through the moistness of the Moor, not even caring that he had never been so far alone in his life. He supposed that the Dorig's collar must be the splendid one Adara wore. In that case, in spite of what people said, Dorig must be able to work gold—and work it far, far better than any people could. And what of Giants? Gair felt a great surge of misery and resentment. His father had told him never to have anything to do with Giants. Gest! Gest, who had gone to the Giants and asked them to move a boulder for him!

Gair realized that he had thought of Giants because there must be Giants near. He was in a tufty field. There were trees ahead. Behind them, Gair could just make out the high, square shape of a Giants' house. He stood still. At any other time, he would have dived for the nearest cover and got himself away from that place as fast as he could. Now he said, “Who says you mustn't talk to Giants?” and walked on. If anything, Giants were more likely to kill him than Dorig were.

He reached the trees. He had not quite the courage to shout to the Giants to come and get him, much as he hated himself for it. Indeed, he found himself, purely out of habit, taking a careful look all round, particularly behind. And he was just in time to see Ceri and Ayna drop and freeze behind two tufts of grass.

That did it. Gair's pent-up misery broke in furious anger. He stormed back to the two tufts. They were very small tufts. Even a Giant could have seen Ceri and Ayna lying there. Ceri was quaking. Both he and Ayna knelt up nervously as Gair reached them. It made Gair more miserable and angry than ever to see that even Ayna was scared of him.

“What do you mean by spying on me?” he shouted.

“We weren't,” said Ceri. “I asked Ayna what you were going to do.”

“And I asked him where you were,” said Ayna. “Then we came here.”

Gair felt for a moment that the whole world was against him, and Ceri's and Ayna's Gifts in particular. He felt quite helpless against them. “I'm going to that Giants' house,” he said. “So now you know.”

“All right,” said Ayna, and Ceri nodded. Gair saw that they were both prepared for an adventure. He was furious, because it was, after all,
his
adventure. He swung round again and marched toward the trees.

He felt, rather than heard, that Ayna and Ceri were following him. It was extremely annoying, but, all the same, Gair was not as angry as he had expected to be. He was less miserable with Ayna and Ceri there and, to tell the truth, rather relieved, because he could not let Giants kill him with Ayna and Ceri looking on. He stole among the trees much more cautiously than he would have done alone. Ayna and Ceri followed him like two puffs of wind. The trees ended, and they lay in the cover of the last of them, looking at the first Giants' house any of them had seen close to.

Gair's first thought was that it was ugly. It was square and tall and dark, with clusters of tall chimneys. It was built of dark bricks, and the quantities of little panes in its windows were dark too. It looked sealed and sad. Dark bushes had been clipped square above the dark brick wall in front of the house. Dark summer trees stood on either side of it. It seemed to give off darkness into the bright misty sunlight. If you were used to round houses, it was very queer. But Gair saw that it was old and, in its way, graceful. Queerly, it was surrounded with water. There was a dike or moat under the wall with the dark bushes, and this moat had a sort of bridge over it, leading to the front door. A second dike, neither so large nor so full, ran close to the trees where they lay. In between was a stony stretch where an old dog was wandering.

“Standing water,” Ayna muttered anxiously. “And no thorn trees.”

Gair was laughing at the dog. It was so small. It stood no higher than Gest's favorite hound, and it was so stiff and mild that a puppy of Garholt could have torn it to pieces. He could not see what use the Giants could possibly have for a dog like that. At that moment, it seemed to him that the house was a beautiful, peaceful place.

The dog scented them. It did not bark, but it began to amble stiffly and peaceably toward them. All three, without thinking, said the words to make it ignore them. Looking puzzled, the dog sighed and lay heavily down.

At once, the house seemed uglier than ever to Gair.

Ceri pulled at his elbow. “Those dikes—moats. No thorn trees.”

“Who cares?” said Gair. The house was too beautiful and peaceful for the Dorig to trouble them there. It occurred to him to wonder whether Giants and Dorig were friends or enemies. No one had ever told him.

“Where are the Giants?” Ayna whispered.

Then the house seemed ugly again.

After that the house began to pulse, from beautiful to ugly and back again. It went in great, slow, pounding pulsations, and each time it was ugly it was more sinister. A huge sense of foreboding began to grow in Gair. He felt horrified, beyond reason. Pulse, pulse. Ugly, lovely, ugly. Gair's ears rang, and his heart pounded.

“What on earth's the matter, Gair?” said Ayna.

“I don't know. I don't like this house.”

“It is a bit square, isn't it?” Ceri agreed, rather amused.

Gair saw he was being stupid. It was silly to be frightened of a house, Giants' though it was, when Ceri and Ayna could look at it so calmly. “Let's explore,” he said, and got up. The pulsing stopped.

They drifted silently down the line of trees and came to a small wood just beyond the stony forecourt of the house. It was a lovely fresh place, with a stream winding among the trees. The ground was bare earth, as if it was walked on a great deal, and a number of the trees were thorn trees. They all relaxed and listened to the churring of the stream, the birds and the cool sound of the trees. There was another noise, too. They looked at one another.

“Music?” suggested Ayna.

“Sort of,” said Ceri. “Not quite.”

They stole forward to investigate. They froze. They inched behind trees and froze again. There was a Giantess. They looked at her and their eyes popped. She was huge. Never had they seen such quantities of pink flesh. She was vast. Her cheeks wobbled when she moved. Her great leg shook a tree just by moving a little on the ground. She was sitting near the stream, her great features drawn into a large-scale map of a moody frown, nodding her head in time to the noise. The noise was coming from a magic box on the ground beside her, and it was clear she took it for music.

All three children stared, fascinated both by the Giantess and her magic box. They wished she would stand up so that they could see how tall she was and, most interesting of all, how she contrived to carry that quantity of pink body even on thick legs like hers. They were so absorbed that they did not notice the ground quake.

“I told you to get out, Fatso!” said a loud voice.

In spite of all their training, all three jumped and turned round. If the Giant on the other side of the stream had not been glaring so angrily at the Giantess, he would certainly have seen them. They edged out of his sight and looked at one another's scared faces, wondering what to do. If the Giantess turned her head, she would see them now. But she was glowering at the Giant.

“That was last Easter,” she said. “Snotty!” She did something to her magic box to make it louder.

“You watch it, Brenda. You won't like it if I put you out,” rumbled the Giant. “This is our property.” He was a dark Giant, tall, thin and gloomy-featured. Beside the Giantess, he was a trifle disappointing. True, he was at least as tall as Gest, but he was not much wider than Gair. His bare arms were not much thicker than Ayna's. He walked menacingly toward the Giantess, and they wondered how he thought he could shift her an inch.

The Giantess did not seem to think he could. She sat where she was. “What are you doing here, anyway?” she said. “Why aren't you away at your school?”

“I had measl—nothing to do with you!” snapped the Giant. “I said out!” About three feet from the Giantess he stopped and breathed windily.

Gair, Ayna and Ceri seized the opportunity to slide round the trees, out of direct view. Ceri, rather half-heartedly, jerked his head back in the direction of Garholt. Both Ayna and Gair fiercely shook theirs. Ceri did not protest. This was enthralling. It was interesting enough to discover that Giants could catch measles, too. But the most astonishing thing was the way they acted as if they were bigger than they were. The tall Giant contrived to make the earth shake even when he was standing still. He breathed like the bellows at the forge. The glare he directed at the Giantess distorted his face in all directions, although his actual features were not very much larger than Gair's. As for the Giantess, her great face was one outsize pink contempt for the Giant. Her bloated hand went out to the magic box and made it louder than ever. Even the combined smithies of Garholt and Otmound did not make such a noise.

“Get out!” yelled the Giant, above the din. “I'm sick of you infesting the place with your music!”

“Get out yourself,” said the Giantess, piercingly. “You're not going to order me about, Gerald Masterfield!”

“This is our wood!” bawled the Giant, his pale face reddening. It made him look healthier—more like a person.

The Giantess turned her head and stared indifferently into the wood, beating ground-rippling time to the noise from the box. Ceri dared not move. If the Giantess had been really looking, instead of putting on an exaggerated Giant act, she would have been looking straight at him. “Get lost!” she said to the Giant.

“I love you love me love!”
sang the magic box, gigantically. It seemed to have mistaken the situation.

There was a sudden flurry of action. The children gasped, both at its speed and its tremendous violence. The Giant pounced forward and tried to seize the shouting box. The Giantess, moving even faster, snatched it into her arms. Her great leg whipped up from the ground, armed with a mighty thick-soled shoe, and caught the Giant a terrific kick on the shin. Gair winced. It must have been like being hit by a sledgehammer. He was surprised the Giant's leg did not snap like a dry stick. But the Giant, being supernaturally strong, merely roared, doubled up and hit out at the Giantess. His hand landed on her face with a huge rubbery smack, and actually bounced off again. Then he hobbled to a safe distance, white and glaring. Gair was not surprised to see very human tears of pain in his eyes.