The Giant-Slayer (14 page)

Jimmy looked up. “That’s the dragon’s tooth, sir.” It was right above them, shining with its fresh coat of polish.

“I heard tell of this,” said Khan. “A tooth the size of a man. Never believed it myself.” He set down his bow and quiver. The feathers on his arrows were orange, yellow, and red. “They say you ought to touch it for luck. Put a coin in the box.” He made another motion with his head. “In that box there, I reckon. Is that so?”

Jimmy nodded. He had shown countless travelers exactly where to put the coins, but for some reason he couldn’t do it for Khan.

The hunter loosened his coat. He was wearing deerskins underneath, and a dozen necklaces of different lengths: a jumble of shells and bones, claws and teeth, skeins of hair like woven scalps. He dug through his pockets until he found a coin, an eight-sided silver Marcus. “Is this enough?” he asked.

Anyone else, Jimmy would have plied for more.
A Marcus?
he would have said, looking doubtful.
Well, if it’s all you’ve got …
Now he watched the hunter reaching out toward the money box, and he found no pleasure at all in the glint of light on the silver coin. It made him queasy inside to think he was robbing Khan for the touch of a wooden tooth, that he was making a fool of the man.

“Wait!” Jimmy leapt up and grabbed the hunter’s arm. “There’s no luck in this,” he said. “It’s a wooden tooth.”

The hunter looked at him, then slowly smiled. “Reckon any fool could see that, once he’s gone hand to claw with a
dragon,” he said. “But I’m tickled you told me.” He pressed the coin into the boy’s small palm.

“Thank you,” said Jimmy.

Khan took up his arrows and his bow and chose a seat near the fire. Jimmy hovered round him, as close as he could be. He couldn’t look anywhere except at the hunter’s face. The wrinkles round the man’s eyes fascinated him. He could picture Khan always squinting into sun and snow and ice.

Khan put up his feet on the fire grate, inches from the flames.

“Sir?” said Jimmy. “Have you ever been to the swamp?”

“The bottomless swamp? Never seen it, but I know of it,” said the hunter.

“Do you know the witch who lives there?”

“Not personally. Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.” Khan hooked his long bow onto an empty chair to draw it closer. “But take a seat and I’ll tell you what I know.”

Story followed story. The other travelers came down from their rooms and joined the pair at the fire. Jimmy sat with his tiny legs jutting straight out from the chair until Fingal came in and set him to work.

Warmed by the flames, Khan took off his necklaces. He called Jimmy to his side and put around the boy’s neck one of his own charms—a delicate sphere of tiny bones, enclosing the claw of a dragon. “Now,
that
will bring you luck,” he said. “It’s an old Gypsy charm. I got it myself from an old Gypsy.”

The hunter had pushed up his sleeves. Jimmy could see on each arm a blue tattoo that might have been carved with a knife: on his left a fiery dragon, on his right a moon and two stars that seemed to twinkle as his muscles twitched.

“See?” said Dickie. “See, I told you so.”

That night in the basement, when the travelers had gone to their rooms, Fingal gaped as Jimmy emptied his pockets. Out came coin after coin, more than the boy had ever collected in one day in his cradle. A greedy look came to Fingal’s face in the candlelight.

“Where’d you get all that?” he asked. “Did you nick it, boy?”

“No, it’s from the travelers,” said Jimmy. “Khan gave me this one; the mule skinner gave me that one; that tall shepherd, he—”

“For what?”

“For nothing, Father. Just for listening.”

Fingal cackled. He rubbed Jimmy’s hair. “That’s my boy,” he said. “Why, you’re made of money, aren’t you? Keep listening like that and I’ll tell you what: we’ll start your own cache. Why, we’ll start it right now.”

Fingal went into the shadows and rolled out an empty barrel. It was just a two-gallon keg, the smallest there was, but to Jimmy it seemed quite huge. Fingal knocked off the top and stood it upright. He picked up the silver Marcus that Khan had given Jimmy and, with a flick of his thumb, sent it tumbling it into the barrel. It made a lovely, hollow sound as it bounced around the staves.

“That’s for you, boy. Just for you,” he said. “From now
on, every night, you’ll get a share like that. You might say we’re partners now, me and you.”

So Jimmy the giant-slayer grew up in the parlor of the Dragon’s Tooth, hearing the tales of travelers. He tottered from table to table, his eyes just peering over the tops. He carried glasses back and forth, kept the lamps and candles burning, and made himself useful in every way he could.

The travelers would cry out to him: “Jimmy! Over here!” and “Jimmy! Come and have a word!” Round and round he’d go, hoisted now to a minstrel’s lap, now to a woodsman’s massive thigh, and at each stop another coin was pressed into his hand, until he jingled like a Gypsy with every step he took. Fingal was astounded; he began to believe that he had, after all, got the better of the Wishman.

Jimmy loved the parlor when it was full of travelers—full of smoke and talk and laughter. He never tired of the stories, even when he’d heard them six or seven times. At night he’d repeat them, word for word, in his little bed in the room that he’d shared with his mother.

When he was twelve years old, Jimmy knew the lay of the land better than most of the travelers. While each of them had seen only a part of it, Jimmy felt as though he had seen every acre—from the depths of the deepest valley to the tip of the tallest mountain. He knew the weakness of the hydra and the manticore, how to hide from a giant or go hand to hand with a troll. He knew where the swamp was—or at least where it started.

He had even heard tell of Collosso.

O
n Monday, after school, Laurie stopped at Wool worth’s.

She had found long ago that the less money she had, the longer it took to spend it, and today she had very little. For nearly an hour she wandered through the store, up and down the aisles, past the lunch counter with its row of red-topped stools.

Chip was no problem. She got him the newest
Hot Rod
magazine. And Dickie wasn’t much harder; one whole aisle was full of Davy Crockett stuff. There were Davy Crockett lunch boxes, Davy Crockett puzzles, Davy Crockett drinking glasses, Davy Crockett this and that and everything. Two little boys in coonskin caps kept pushing her aside to
get at the flintlock rifles, the knives and powder horns. It made Laurie sad to watch them, and to think of Dickie lying just then in his iron lung. She chose a set of decals with pictures of Davy Crockett in black and red, fighting a bear on the first one and an Indian on the other.

But Carolyn was hard. Laurie trekked round and round the store, past displays of five-cent earrings, through the pet section with the budgies and turtles and goldfish. But in the end she was back at the magazines, choosing the latest
Silver Screen
with Debbie Reynolds on the cover, and the teasing promise of “The Inside Story of the Ty Powers Breakup!”

Laurie took these things to the hospital on her next visit. She didn’t ask for Miss Freeman but went straight past the desk and up to the room. No one even asked where she was going.

On the fourth floor, she met the boy on the little wheeled platform, the one who had raced the wheelchair girl through the hall. This time he was alone, pushing himself in circles at the first bend in the hall.

He twisted his neck to look up as she walked toward him. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“To the respirator room,” said Laurie.

“I’ll show you the way.”

“I know where it is,” she told him. “I’ve been there.”

But that didn’t matter to the boy. He paddled along with his hands, rumbling down the hall more quickly than Laurie could walk. When she lagged too far behind, he waited for her to catch up, swiveling round to watch her, then swiveling back again. His hands made slapping sounds on the floor.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Laurie,” she told him. “What’s yours?”

“James,” he said. “James Miner.” He turned his platform around and pushed himself backward ahead of her. “Are you the one telling the story?”

“Yes.”

“Can I listen?”

“I guess so.” It made her uncomfortable to look down at the boy. She kept wanting to crouch at his level, and couldn’t understand why he didn’t seem at all embarrassed. She couldn’t imagine scuttling along the floor like a cockroach, with everyone staring down at her.

The boy knew every turn so well that he passed round the corners without looking, swinging out to the wall like a race car. His hands paddled quickly to straighten himself.

At the respirator room, Laurie stood aside while James wheeled himself through the doorway. He called hello to Dickie and the others, who greeted him as happily. “I came to hear the story,” he said.

Laurie self-consciously produced her little purchases. “I brought you stuff,” she said.

“Oh, boy!” cried Dickie.

He loved his decals. Laurie had to hold them above his head for nearly five minutes while he told the story behind each picture, how Davy Crockett had beaten the Indian, and how he’d come to be fighting a bear. Dickie called it “rasslin’ a bar.”

Chip was just as fond of his car magazine, though he wouldn’t let Laurie turn through the pages. “I want to save it for later,” he said.

But Carolyn didn’t even pretend to be pleased with the
Silver Screen
. “I guess you can’t return a magazine,” she said. “At least you didn’t spend too much. So
that’s
good.”

Laurie felt creepy inside but didn’t want to give up too easily. “It’s got a story about Debbie Reynolds,” she said.

“Big hairy deal. Why should I care?”

“You look kind of like her,” said Laurie.

It was true, but Carolyn didn’t think so. “More like Heidi Doody,” she said, which wasn’t true at all. Both had long blond hair, but Howdy Doody’s puppet sister was a bizarre-looking thing.

“I weigh sixty-five pounds,” said Carolyn. “Like a ten-year-old.”

“You still look pretty,” said Laurie.

“Yeah. Pretty ugly.”

Laurie poked her glasses higher on her nose. She didn’t know what to do with the magazine. She couldn’t very well put it on top of the iron lung, as though on a great big coffee table. So it pleased her very much when James Miner asked, “Can I have it?” She said, “Sure,” and bent down to pass it to him.

“Gee, thanks!” He tucked the magazine under his chest, then rolled himself out of the way, into a corner of the room. He spread it open on the floor and looked through the pictures.

“Can we hear the story now?” said Dickie.

“It’s a free country,” said Carolyn. “Go ahead.”

That was fine with Laurie.