The Giant-Slayer (32 page)

“Laurie showed me this. She sat on my lap when she was
just a little girl and showed me all these things.” His finger ran across the page. “The road, the castle, the crosses. I didn’t pay much attention, I’m afraid.”

Dickie spoke up from his respirator. “Can I see it, Mr. Valentine?”

“Oh, sure. I’m sorry.” Mr. Valentine stood at Dickie’s side and held up the map for him to see.

Dickie grinned as he studied it. “Boy, there’s the Great North Road,” he said. “Going up the middle like a snake. There’s the castle at the edge of the world. The road goes past it. To that pond where ducks are swimming. And the straight line, that’s the old hauling road. But what’s the red thing there?”

“This squiggle?” asked Mr. Valentine, pointing. “Near the castle?”

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Strawberry said she wondered the same thing,” said Mr. Valentine. “Laurie told her she didn’t know what it was, but thought she’d have to fight it.”

“Can I see?” said Chip.

Mr. Valentine moved down the row of respirators so Chip and Carolyn could see the map together. James came over on his crutches, held on to the legs of the iron lung, and stood looking up with his head next to Chip’s. He said, “That’s a dragon. Sure as spit. It’s one of them big red dragons that’s flying around the castle.”

Dickie said, “I know how it ends!”

At the edge of the moat, with the tigers roaring far below him, Jimmy the giant-slayer raised his little arms.

He shouted, “Collosso!”

Three times he shouted before the giant looked down at him. The huge head turned.

“I have come to slay you, Collosso!” cried Jimmy. “I will do you in a flash!”

From the giant came a roar. He hurled his box over the rampart. It spun toward Jimmy, a thing as big as a barn to him, and exploded into a thousand pieces against the wall of the moat.

Jimmy held up the charm as far as the string would let him. It swayed like a pendulum in front of his eyes. Then he took hold of the ball of bones, closed it in his fist, and ran along the lip of the moat, east toward the edge of the world.

High above him stood Collosso, glaring down from the tall turret. The giant grabbed a stone at the top of his rampart and tore it right out of the wall. To him, it was the size of a brandy keg; to Jimmy it was enormous. The giant swung his arm and hurled the stone, and it blasted into the mountain just inches from Jimmy.

Shards of rock flew into the air. Jimmy dodged and weaved between them, running on with the charm in his hand. “I will do you in a flash!” he shouted again. Down in the moat, the tigers loped along below him, staring up with greedy eyes. Dragons wheeled above him, swooping lower through the clouds.

Collosso hurled another stone, and another and another. He peeled away the rampart until he stood exposed on his platform, fierce and huge, grunting as he hurled the massive stones.

Khan snatched up his bow and arrow and went running after Jimmy. Finnegan Flanders leapt on his horse, drawing his sword as he kicked it into a gallop. They both raced along the edge of the moat, trying to catch the little giant-slayer. They didn’t know what they would do when they reached him, but they couldn’t just stand and watch.

The stones flung down from the castle smashed on the road and the ruins of the wagon, on the mountainside and the wall of the moat.

At the very edge of the world, Jimmy stopped. Again he held the charm as high as he could, and the dragon’s claw in the middle glowed like a little flame in the light. “I have come to slay you, Collosso!” he shouted again.

The giant had torn down the whole rampart. Now he stooped and snatched a stone from the floor, breaking it free from the edge. He drew back his arm.

From the sky above Jimmy, a dragon pounced. It came down like a red streak with its wings drawn back, its legs extended. It came with a shriek and a roar of fire, its long neck twisted, its tail thrashing.

Collosso threw his stone.

Inches from Jimmy, the dragon flapped its great wings. The rush of air knocked the giant-slayer flat. But he held up the charm, and it swung madly from his fingers. The dragon flapped again, hovering above the giant-slayer, its face snaking round to look at him. It grabbed on to the charm with its claws.

The string that held the charm was no thicker than wool. But the magic in the bones made it stronger than steel. The dragon screamed and pulled, its huge wings now beating at
the ground. Jimmy lay below its belly, kicking at the scales with his little feet. The dragon breathed a spume of fire.

Finnegan Flanders rode right in against the dragon. He pulled out his sword and slashed at its neck, at its wings. Khan leapt in to save Jimmy, his quiver of arrows on his back. He held on to the giant-slayer as the dragon tried to lift them both in the air.

With a thud, Collosso’s stone hit the dragon on its spine. Its back arched and its neck straightened for a moment. Fire belched from its mouth.

Stunned, the dragon fell. It landed on Jimmy and Khan, and the arrows in the hunter’s quiver pierced the scales on its belly. The wings opened again, beating furiously now. It lifted Jimmy from the ground, and Khan held onto his waist.

From the belly of the dragon came drips of black blood. They fell on Khan, on Jimmy. A drop fell on the charm, and the bones began to gleam and shine. They turned to red as a heat built up inside them, then to white and blue. With an enormous flash, that ball of bones burst open.

Khan and Jimmy tumbled together onto the ground, while the dragon shot up through the air, hurled backward into the cloud with its red neck writhing. The claw from the center of the charm fell on the road beside Jimmy. Half its length hung over the edge of the world, and slowly it tipped over. Jimmy reached out to grab it, but down the claw went, into the void.

“No!” shouted Jimmy. “No!” There seemed nothing else that could help him now, no hope of killing Collosso.

But he had forgotten the words of the Tellsman, the message scrawled in cold ashes:
Has lightning inside
.

The claw exploded with a flash that was brighter than the sun. An instant later, a clap of thunder nearly deafened the giant-slayer. Then the dark clouds of the void began to flare and flicker. They pulsed with sheets of lightning.

The giant screamed. He tore off his red cap and held it over his face as though to hide himself from the storm.

Thunder boomed again. Lightning seared in a bolt from the clouds and hit the tower where the giant stood. Another followed, crumbling the stones. A third blasted into the moat, setting the tar and pitch on fire.

Flames leapt up from below, and the lightning kept flashing above. Collosso reeled across his platform. One foot went over the edge; he tried to catch himself. For a moment he balanced there at an impossible angle, his huge arms flailing. The red cap soared from his hand. It spiraled higher on the draft of wind and fire. Then—with a scream—the giant slipped from his tower and plummeted down, past the edge of the world.

The lightning stopped. The thunder faded away in echoing booms. And the red cap fluttered down to land on the road near Jimmy and Flanders and Khan.

In her iron lung, Laurie stirred. She didn’t wake, exactly, but she almost did. Her eyes came open, and her head turned slightly, and then she slipped away again.

Mr. Valentine, at her side, saw it happen. He shouted her name. “She’s awake!” he cried.

James called out for the nurse. He lurched toward the
door on his braces, hobbling as fast as he could. “Miss Freeman!” he shouted. “She woke up!”

The nurse came running. By the time they got into the respirator room, Laurie was back in her coma, in her own strange silence and blackness. Mr. Valentine held his hands on his daughter’s face and begged her to open her eyes.

Collosso was dead, but the story wasn’t finished. There was not a person in the room, including Mr. Valentine, who didn’t want it to carry on.

Carolyn was the one who started again.

She said that Finnegan Flanders jumped down from his horse, that he and Khan raised the little giant-slayer between them, up onto their shoulders, and paraded him down the road. They carried him to the wagon, where the Swamp Witch pulled herself from the mud and looked down from the top. And they all shouted three cheers for Jimmy.

In the castle, across the moat, a rumble of metal began. The giant-slayer and his friends had heard the sound before and knew what it meant. They looked up at the drawbridge and saw it slowly open.

The chain clanked. The drawbridge dropped into place. The iron portcullis rose from the floor.

Through the gap below it came the servants of Collosso, the giant’s slaves and toys. They crawled on their bellies when the gap looked pencil thin. They came in a crouch when it was a little bigger, and then running—in a flood—as the portcullis rattled up into the castle walls.

There were hundreds of people, many holding hands, most skipping along, all laughing and cheering. They streamed across the drawbridge and onto the road, and they gathered in a huge crowd around the strange-looking wagon and the even-stranger-looking giant-slayer. They shouted out that Jimmy was a hero. They made him stand up on the wagon so that they could see him that much better, and they cheered and cheered and cheered.

It was a wonderful thing for Jimmy to have men looking up at him. He heard them praise and bless him; he heard women shout out that they loved him. And then a voice cried above all the others. “He’s my boy! That’s Jimmy.”

The Woman was the last to leave the castle, and she was just then nearing the end of the drawbridge. Jimmy tried to get down, to run and meet her, but there wasn’t enough room on the ground for Jimmy to stand. And there was no need. Men lifted the Woman high, and she came running to Jimmy on the shoulders and heads and hands of the crowd. She vaulted across to the wagon and hugged little Jimmy more tightly than he had ever been hugged before.

The crowd whistled, laughed, and cheered. A little group of men brought the giant’s red hat, carrying it on long poles that they balanced on their shoulders. A mass of people closed around them in a babble of voices. For a moment it seemed the crowd would tear the hat to shreds, but instead it was hoisted up above the wagon, mounted on the poles as a sunshade for the Swamp Witch. Then all those hundreds of people stood back in a quiet group, and the men took off their hats, and they all began to clap for Jimmy the giant-slayer.

They would gladly have carried him down from the
mountain; they would gladly have carried them all. They would have carried Flanders on his horse and the Swamp Witch in her wagon all the way to the village in the valley. They would have made kings of the men, a queen of the witch.

But that wasn’t fitting for Khan. It wasn’t what Jimmy was after. And the witch wanted something else altogether.

Only Finnegan Flanders was happy amid the crowd. He let the people hoist him up, as he had hoisted Jimmy, and his fringes flashed as he waved his sword above them. When the cheering died down—and that took a long time—Flanders mounted his horse. He found room on its back for six young ladies, and he pranced along at the front of the crowd, leading all the hundreds of people down from the valley, free from Collosso’s castle.