The City of Dreaming Books (63 page)

So I really was in the domain of a race of giants and this had been their library. It gradually dawned on me what Homuncolossus was up to. He had brought me here and left me on my own so as to kindle my imagination with these fascinating sights. Perhaps he meant me to write a story about giants when we got back to Shadowhall. Anyone intending to write on a monumental scale needed monumental material to work with. And what wonderful material this was! No legend, no fairy tale, no chimera, but the true story of a vanished race of titans to be researched with the aid of their artefacts. Perhaps I might, after all, be able to heave one of these enormous volumes off a shelf and leaf through it.

I really wasn’t scared any more, just burning with curiosity. In search of more details, I got as close to the shelves as I could. They also held objects other than books: a gold needle as long as a spear; a heap of dried skins covered with indecipherable symbols and so big that they could only have been elephant hides; a crystal the size of a boulder, possibly a paperweight.

What had these things looked like from a giant’s perspective? If I had encountered one of these ancient behemoths, would he have trampled me like a bug, perhaps without even noticing me?

It had been an excellent idea to bring me here. I was grateful to Homuncolossus for granting me this experience. He was welcome to giggle to himself in the dark like a schoolboy if it injected a little variety into his dreary existence.

Overcome with exuberance, I felt an urge to prove to him how unafraid I was: I would climb the nearest bookcase and try to extract a book. I might be able to cope with one of the smaller specimens.

So I hoisted myself on to the bottom shelf and, like a general inspecting a guard of honour, strolled along the row of books in search of a particularly slender volume. I found one no thicker than myself and barely a head taller - a mere shrimp compared to the others. That one I felt I could cope with. Putting my torch down, I climbed over the book into the space behind it and proceeded to push.

I felt a trifle uneasy all of a sudden. The cavity was so dark and smelt so musty, an outsize spider or giant earwig might easily be lurking in there! Galvanised by this unpleasant idea, I pushed the book out with little difficulty. It landed on the floor with a loud crash whose echoes reverberated round the dark library for several seconds.

Success! I patted the book dust from my cloak and looked around, but Homuncolossus still didn’t show himself, the cussed devil. He was probably skulking in the dark somewhere, marvelling at my nerve. I climbed down off the bookcase and examined the book.

I opened it eagerly. The cover creaked open like the lid of an ancient sarcophagus. The pages were as thick as my thumb and composed of some leathery grey material that bore little or no resemblance to paper. They were covered with the same little pyramidal knobs that adorned most of the books’ spines - the giants’ alphabet, probably. They afforded no clue to what the book was about.

I was proud of myself for all that. I had to be one of the very few people who had ever leafed through a Gigantotome. I was a pioneer in the field of gigantological research!

Suddenly I pricked up my ears - I thought I’d heard something. Was that me trembling with curiosity, or was the ground vibrating? Yes, the ground was definitely vibrating and so was the book. The tremor became more and more pronounced.

Rather uneasy now, I peered around anxiously in search of Homuncolossus. Perhaps it was an earthquake. Or a subterranean volcanic eruption. Perhaps a huge mud slide was speeding through the catacombs towards me.

The rumbling sound became more alarming still. Big grains of dust started to dance on the shelves. Pneumatic sounds like the squeal of a dozen bagpipes and the thunder of an organ were issuing from the darkness. The high-pitched, agitated trills were underlaid by a deep, persistent diapason.

And then, out of the darkness and into the blue light of my torch, came . . . the giant!

At first sight he looked like a mighty wave. Grey and tapering to a point, he was at least twenty or thirty times my height. Then I realised that the substance billowing towards me - and giving off an infernal stench - was living flesh. In some strange way, the giant’s conical shape reminded me of the hill on which my home, Lindworm Castle, was situated.

He was covered all over with trunklike excrescences, many of which hung limp while others flailed the air in an agitated fashion. Between these trunks were membranes the size of windows. There must have been dozens of these perforated filters of flaccid grey flesh, which expanded and contracted like gills. I could discern no eyes, nor were there any arms or legs to be seen. The gigantic, animate mass seemed to propel itself along like a snail.

The giant came to a halt. His trunks sniffed the air in all directions, his membranes pulsated with a steady rhythm. I wondered why he didn’t come straight for me and the torch, the only light source in the cave. Surely he had seen me?

And then I understood: he was blind! Like so many creatures in the catacombs, he found his way around by touch, hearing and smell, hence all those trunks and membranes. He had a hundred noses but no eyes at all. The noise of the book hitting the ground had attracted his attention. For the moment, however, I didn’t exist for him because I wasn’t making a sound.

So why all the books, I wondered. What did a blind creature want with them? Could he see after all, possibly with those curious membranes or an eye concealed in one of his trunks? Should I simply run off in the opposite direction? If he really was blind, that might be a bad idea. He might hear my footsteps, my cloak flapping, my laboured breathing.

Better to stay put, then? Better not to make a sound, to hold my breath and wait till the danger passed? That seemed the wisest course of action. Perhaps he had only paused to listen and would soon retire again. Yes, I would stay put and keep quite still, that was the best idea. Wasn’t that the thing to do when confronted by any large and dangerous creature?

Suddenly, I broke out in a sweat. I had always found it odd that I hardly perspired at all while engaged in physical exertion, whereas the sweat streamed down me as soon as I stopped. That was what happened now: I was bathed in sweat within seconds.

And believe me, dear readers, dinosaur sweat has a very special aroma. It smells considerably stronger than the sweat of any other life form because its original function was to signal our
presence.
This property of dinosaur sweat dates back to primeval times, when we were the most dangerous, most feared creatures far and wide. Our body odour was designed to paralyse our prey with fright. Other life forms camouflage themselves or assume a deterrent appearance, whereas we dinosaurs give off a stench like a compost heap in August. I might just as well have operated a fire alarm or struck a gong to attract the giant’s attention.

The colossal creature gave a contented whistle and pointed all its mobile trunks in my direction. It had discovered me! Its membranes began to throb violently and emitted a series of frightful slurping sounds. Then the mountain of flesh got under way again, heading straight for me.

I did what I would probably have done had a tidal wave been bearing down on me: nothing at all. There was no point in running away from such an elemental force, quite apart from the fact that my legs wouldn’t have obeyed me. The monster performed two or three huge, squelching undulations and came to a halt just in front of me with its numerous trunks trumpeting simultaneously. I was seized by several of these yards-long excrescences and passed from one to another until I was almost at the summit of the conical monster, where one of its pulsating membranes was situated. Still paralysed with fear, I was convulsively gripping the jellyfish torch, which bathed the giant’s upper extremity in a ghostly blue glow. Two of its trunks supported me under the arms and held me just in front of the membrane, which now expelled a blast of warm air through its numerous perforations. The smell was so appalling, dear readers, that my sole recourse was to lapse into profound unconsciousness.

I
came round to find myself at the bottom of a glass jar as tall as a house complete with chimney. The sides were so smooth, I could never have scaled them and climbed out. I saw through the glass that the jar was standing on a shelf quite high up in a rectangular room whose walls were lined with more shelves. These were laden with gigantic books and at least a hundred more glass jars. I also saw some bizarre metal instruments whose function eluded me.

My jellyfish torch, which was lying on a shelf opposite, bathed the room in dim blue luminescence. The giant appeared to have taken it from me for further examination.

What alarmed me most about my predicament was not just the fact of my captivity but the contents of the other jars. Living creatures of the most repulsive kind, they were all denizens of the catacombs known to me either from descriptions or from personal experience. One jar contained a Spinxxxx, another a huge gold millipede with massive pincers. A white-haired spider the size of a horse was scuttling around in the jar immediately beside my own. On the shelf opposite, a captive Harpyr was clawing at the sides of its glass prison. I also saw a scaly green Tunnel Python of immense length, a plumed Catamorph, a black-eyed rat with red fur and chisel teeth as big as sabres, a Crystalloscorpion and a Wolfbat with a wingspan of at least ten feet.

In short, the room seemed to contain one specimen of every dangerous species in the catacombs, the only reassuring circumstance being that each was a prisoner like me. Sporadic clicks could be heard whenever the creatures strove to escape from their glass containers and scrabbled at the smooth sides in vain. Many of the jars were open at the top, but others had grilles over them because their inmates possessed suckers or wings that would have enabled them to escape. It was a zoo of a very special kind. I now knew what Homuncolossus had meant when he told me the giant was a scientist.

I could already hear him piping and trumpeting in the distance. My fellow prisoners became so agitated on hearing those noises that I could only fear the worst. He was coming to experiment on us.

The pneumatic sounds grew rapidly louder. Moments later the giant appeared in the doorway, which was pyramidal in shape like his body. The overpowering stench emitted by his membranes assailed my nostrils, even inside the jar, and made me feel sick again. He greeted us on entering with a deep bass note that sounded like a tuba. Then, having undulated to the middle of the room, he turned on the spot several times with all his trunks extended and sniffing audibly - a blind creature’s method of surveying its surroundings. At length he emitted another contented blast on the tuba and went over to a shelf from which he removed a jar containing an insect.

I’m not much of an expert on entomology because most insects fill me with a revulsion proportionate to the number of legs they possess. Being regrettably ignorant of the precise scientific designation of the creature in question, therefore, I christened it the
Flying Tailor.

Its scorpionlike body was as big as that of a calf and its six long arms and legs terminated in pincers that gleamed metallically like scissors. It also had a long, thin tail - just as shiny and metallic - resembling an outsize bodkin. This ‘tailor’ could not only cut and sew, it could fly as well, because it was equipped with two pairs of big, whirring dragonfly’s wings.

The giant thrust one of his trunks through the grille over the jar and blew into it briefly, whereupon the Flying Tailor collapsed. Having opened the jar, he removed the unconscious insect, replaced the jar on the shelf and came straight towards me, trumpeting happily.

I shrank back against the glass in terror, but I wasn’t his intended destination. That privilege was reserved for the white-haired spider in the jar beside mine. He uncorked the jar and dropped the insect in. The white spider reacted promptly: it proceeded to cocoon its visitor in long, sticky threads of its own secretion. At that, the Flying Tailor woke up.

I will spare you an overly detailed description of what happened in the neighbouring jar, dear readers, and confine myself to the bare essentials. The Flying Tailor, which was vastly superior to the white spider, eventually transfixed it with its bodkinlike tail, then systematically dissected it with its razor-sharp pincers.

More revolting still, however, was the behaviour of the giant scientist. He listened delightedly to the gruesome noises issuing from the glass vessel and accompanied them with a veritable symphony of notes of varying pitch. From the relish and artistry with which he did this, he might almost have been improvising a musical accompaniment to the insects’ duel to the death.

Once the white-haired spider had been completely dismembered and spitted on the Flying Tailor’s bodkin, the terrible giant lost interest and turned away. He propelled his enormous stone-grey bulk over to another shelf, took down one of the huge books and opened it. Then whistling to himself, he systematically ran several of his trunks over the pages.