The Giant-Slayer (33 page)

The Swamp Witch smiled as he rode away, her mouth in a thin red line. Khan waved once, then untied his big horse and got up on its back. “Reckon I’ll be off,” he said. “The unicorns will be shedding their horns soon.” He backed the horse and turned it round. He looked up at the castle with its shattered tower, along the road at the ruined wagon, at the red cap of Collosso. Then he looked at Jimmy.

“Where will you go?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Jimmy. “It’s up to the witch, I guess.”

“If you cared to go hunting …” He let his voice fade away.

“Thank you,” said Jimmy. He had never been so pleased, nor so torn. He would have loved to go hunting with Khan, into the mountains and the snow. “I think I have to go the other way,” he said.

“Reckon you do,” said Khan. “I’ll watch for you, Jim, at the edge of the sky.” He nodded, then dragged his horse’s head around, kicked its ribs, and went loping up the road with the pony running behind. The eight hooves made a flurry of dust.

Khan never looked back. But he raised a hand, with his fingers spread, and he shouted through the mountains, “You’re a mighty big man, my friend.”

Jimmy watched the hunter fade away, vanishing into a world that was wild and empty. Then he helped his mother up to the seat of the wagon and settled beside her. He looked down at the Swamp Witch, who was wallowing happily in the mud. “Which way should we go?” he asked.

“North,” she said, her throat bulging. “Stay on the road. We go right to the end.”

Jimmy clicked his tongue. “Gee up!” he shouted, as though he were still driving a team of a hundred. The ox put its head down and plodded along the road.

Beside the giant-slayer, the Woman touched his arm. “Jimmy,” she said, “you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

He said it would have to wait, that the journey was nearly done. Then he shouted at the ox again, and he drove past the wreck of his glorious wagon, past the ninety-nine stains on the road. His mother looked around at the signs of his battle, at the gryphon hides blowing in the breeze. She looked pointedly at Jimmy but said nothing, happy to ride along primly with her hands on her lap, her back as straight as an arrow.

A mile beyond the castle, the road turned away from the edge of the world. It went steeply down the mountain in a series of switchbacks. Jimmy kept pulling on the handbrake,
but the wagon still outran the ox, shoving it down the hill. Round the sharp bends, the mud sloshed so badly that the witch got angry. “Slow down!” she said. “Do you want a knuckle sandwich?”

“It’s all wrong,” said Dickie. “She sounds like Popeye or something.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” said Carolyn. “They drove to the end of the road.”

“How long did it take?”

“Four days.”

“What did they see?”

“Well, all along the way,” said Carolyn, “were little piles of gold.”

The first pile of gold appeared in a hollow tree, a stack of small bricks very neatly arranged. The second stood beside a little pool where Jimmy stopped to water the ox. Every three or four miles was another—always a tidy stack of gold, sometimes silver as well, or little bags of emeralds.

Jimmy’s mother was delighted, and the Swamp Witch gloated. They couldn’t believe there was such a place in all the world where gold lay by the road for the taking. “How did it get here?” asked the Woman.

“It’s from the gnomes,” said Jimmy. “It’s their way of saying thank you, I think.”

By the fourth day, the wagon was laden down. The poor ox was struggling, breathing hard with every step. On a long hill, the wagon was barely moving when the Swamp Witch raised her head from the mud and said, “Listen.”

From the distance came a strange howling, a sort of hullabaloo of hoots and whines. Jimmy frowned at the Woman, who shrugged her shoulders. “What is it?” asked the Swamp Witch.

To Jimmy it sounded like cats—like dozens of cats—in a sort of feline choir. They weren’t just howling, he thought, but howling in a chorus, in a crazy sort of cat song. The sound was strangely beautiful, and it grew louder as the wagon neared the crest of the hill.

From the summit, Jimmy and the Woman and the witch looked out across a valley. Stands of trees, bright green and olive, dotted fields of yellow. Across the sky flew flocks of birds of every color, and a herd of silver unicorns grazed among the grasses. It was a beautiful, pastoral place, and in the middle was a white house and a little wooden workshop. They stood beside a quiet pond where a man was playing the bagpipes.

“I knew it!” said James. He beat his little fists happily on his metal braces. “It was Piper’s Pond, wasn’t it?”

“Well, it wasn’t Doodyville,” said Carolyn.

It was where the road came to an end. Jimmy guided the ox to the very last inch of the Great North Road, and on
another yard, to the grassy bank of the pond. Ducks and swans were swimming there.

The man with the bagpipes came toward them, playing steadily all the time. He took steps that were small and slow, and while his arm squeezed the bag of air, his fingers played the tune. Long streamers of scarlet and gold fluttered from the pipes.

He was a very old man, the oldest that Jimmy had ever seen. His hair was long and white, his beard the same—like the tail of a unicorn glued to his cheeks. He made a last little flurry of notes, then stood smiling—panting—below the wagon as the music drained out of his bagpipes in a leaky sort of whine.

“You have done it,” he said, looking up at the giant’s red hat. “You have killed Collosso.”

“Not just me,” said Jimmy.

“I know,” said the old man. “News of your deed has traveled before you.”

The Swamp Witch had hauled herself up to the top of the wagon, her long fingers hooked over the edge. Just the top of her head and her eyes showed above it, and she blinked down at the old man.

“Are you a Wishman?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Can you give us what we want?”

The old man put down his bagpipes. He arranged them carefully on a little round stool. Then he scratched his beard and said, “Wishes are expensive.”

“Come here,” said the Swamp Witch.

The man was too old to climb by himself. Jimmy had to
help him from below, and the Woman from above. They got him up to the seat, where he looked down into the tub of the wagon.

“Bah!” he said, and turned to leave, because all he saw was mud and the Swamp Witch wallowing there.

“Wait,” said Jimmy.

The gold and silver and jewels had raised the level of the mud by three or four feet. The witch dug in with her webbed hands and brought up clotted mounds of gold and emeralds. Black as they were, coated with ooze, there was no mistaking the riches there. Even the Wishman had seldom seen such wealth in one place.

“Now, there’s rules,” he said. “One wish is all you get. One each. No changing your mind later. You’re not happy, too bad.” He looked sternly at all of them. “So what is it that you want? No, no. I can guess; it’s so easy. I’ve seen this too often not to know at once.”

He sat in the shade of the giant’s red hat, crossed his legs, and scratched his ribs. He pointed at each of them in turn. “The witch wants her youth and her beauty restored. The Woman wants her husband to be generous and kind. The small boy wants to be big.”

The three looked at each other and laughed delightedly. They laughed with such mirth that the Wishman smiled. “Am I right?” he said. “Am I right?”

“You
were,”
said Jimmy.

The old man had guessed exactly what each of the three had set out to find, but what all no longer wanted.

“I think we wish for the same thing,” said Jimmy the giant-slayer. “It will be one wish for us all.”

“No, no.” The old man shook his finger. “Shared or not, it still counts as three wishes.”

“Fine with us,” said Jimmy.

It was an easy wish, simply granted. “That’s it?” asked the Wishman, and Jimmy said, “That’s it.”

The Wishman toddled into his little shop, and in a moment he was back. “There, it’s done,” he said with a wave of his hand.

Jimmy looked all around, but he didn’t see that the wish was granted. He started to complain, but the Wishman said, “It’s not like instant potatoes. You have to wait.”

He pushed a little stick into the ground and laid another one flat on the thin shadow of the sun. “In a day,” he said, “when the shadow comes round to that spot, the wish is granted.”

They passed the time pleasantly. Jimmy and the Swamp Witch splashed in the pond, while the Wishman slept in the grass. The Woman picked flowers of clover that she fed to the ducks. But in the morning of the next day, neither Jimmy, the witch, nor the Woman strayed very far from the old man’s stick.

They watched the shadow creeping round.

“L
aurie? Laurie!” said Mr. Valentine. He was on his feet now, both hands on his daughter’s head. One combed through her hair, again and again; the other ran softly across her cheeks, his fingers just touching her skin.

“Laurie,” he said again.