The Giant-Slayer (7 page)

When the water was up to his armpits and getting deeper with every step, Collosso found the Swamp Witch. She had a little round house, like a beaver lodge, of sticks and mud, with a smoke hole at the top, and a little round door in the front. Collosso tapped on the top of the house, and the ducks and the alligators slipped away among the reeds.

The witch came oozing from the mud behind her house. She was clotted with filth. Her hair was long, her face all wrinkles. She had the eyes of a lizard and the hands of a frog—each finger webbed at the base, tipped at the end by a fleshy knob. Her throat bulged as she breathed, and her voice was a croak.

“I knew you were coming,” she said. Her neck filled like a red balloon.

“You sensed it?” asked Collosso.

“I
heard
it.” She was looking up at the face of the giant, into the caverns of his nostrils. “You wake the dead with your splashing.”

Her voice drifted off across the marshes, through the bulrushes and the grasses. The birds were silent, the frogs as well, and the water beetles stood as still as possible on their trembly legs.

“I had a dream,” said Collosso. “A horrible dream.”

“Of what?”

“A giant-slayer.”

The witch pulled herself from the mud and sat in a chair
of woven reeds. She felt nearly sorry for the giant because he looked so scared and worried. He didn’t seem to notice that he was sinking into the swamp, a little deeper every minute. The water now was nearly at his shoulders.

“I had a dream. Or a vision,” said Collosso. “I saw the giant-slayer born of thunder. Oh, witch, is it true?”

“It is true,” said the witch.

“How do you know this?”

“Because you dreamed it.”

“Oh, curse my powers!” The giant looked up at the sky. His great fists came out of the water and he held them high above his head, as though trying to shake the clouds. “Curse me!” he roared again.

Alligators swung their tails and backed away, their round eyes blinking. Snakes slithered off through the grass, and the crayfish scuttled deeper in the mud.

“Help me, witch!” said Collosso. He settled more deeply in the mud. The black water closed over his shoulders, and his huge head seemed to float there in its red hat. “Please,” he said. “What do I do?”

“Go home to your castle,” she told him in her croaky voice. “Wait for the slayer to come.”

“Will he kill me?” asked the giant.

“He will try,” said the witch. “But remember this: as long as you are living, you cannot be killed.”

This gave the giant a strange comfort. For the first time in a fortnight, a smile came to his face. The deep lines of worry smoothed away from his eyes, and he muttered to himself: “As long as I am living, I cannot be killed.”

“Now go,” said the Swamp Witch. “Hurry home to your castle.”

She was sliding feet first from her chair, vanishing into the swamp. But Collosso cried out, “Wait! There’s more. That wasn’t the end of my dream.”

“What else did you see?” she asked.

“He came to find you. I saw him with you in the swamp, and in my dream he spoke to you.” Collosso tried to shift his feet. The water crept higher up his neck. “He bade you to point the way to my castle. He said, ‘I mean to kill Collosso. I will do him in a flash.’ Oh, witch, what does it mean?”

“Many things,” she said. “But this above all: you must protect me, for your dream must be fulfilled. The giant-slayer must come to see me.”

“What will you tell him?” asked Collosso.

“Whatever you like.”

The giant sighed a mighty sigh. His breath flattened a field of rushes, scattering ducks and blackbirds. “Send him to my castle. Tell him I am waiting,” he said. “And tell him this: before that day is done I will crush him in my fingers like a nit.” Again his hand came out of the water. He pressed his fingers together, as though already crushing. Then he turned around and waded home, with the water churning into monstrous waves until he reached the solid ground. He went full of joy, so happy that he actually skipped across the foothills, over the black ground of burned forests. He sang to himself as he crashed through the dead trees. “As long as I live, I cannot be killed.”

Straightaway, Collosso put his slaves to work. “Build me a lookout tower half a mile high,” he commanded. “Dig me
a moat half a mile deep. Fill it with pitch and tar, and build me a drawbridge to cross it.”

Collosso collected more slaves, and more after that. He put them all to the task of strengthening his castle. “Hurry,” he told them. “The giant-slayer is coming.”

In her iron lung across the room, Carolyn sighed as loudly as she could. “That’s so dumb,” she said. “It would take years to finish.”

“He knew that,” said Laurie. “Collosso figured he had twelve years before the giant-slayer would be old enough to come after him. In all that time, he never rested for an hour.”

On Jimmy’s first birthday, Fingal lit a candle and went down to the basement of the Dragon’s Tooth. He pulled the bung from a half-emptied cask of brandy and ladled water through the hole. It was a job that he’d done every morning for seventeen years, and it always made him happy. He liked the smell and the gurgling sound, the flash of his candlelight on the pouring water.

He worked in shadows, for the basement was a gloomy place, the home of rats and spiders. Every now and then he paused to sample the thinning brandy, then smacked his lips and started again. He cackled as he worked, overcome by the thought that he was turning water into gold.

The cask was nearly full when Fingal heard the Woman
shout.
“Fingal!”
The sound, though faint, took him by surprise.

“Oh, mercy, what now?” he said to himself. “I’ll never have a moment’s peace with a babby in the house.”

She shouted again.
“Fingal!”

“All right, all right, I’m coming,” said Fingal.

He slammed the bung in its hole and rolled the keg aside. Then, with a sigh, he made his way up the back stairs and through the parlor.

There were only three travelers that day at the inn. They sat in a row, close to the tiny fire: a minstrel, a shepherd, and a dealer in the fine carpets that were woven by trolls. The shepherd was poking with his crook at a pile of embers no bigger than an anthill, while the minstrel shivered beside him. Outside, the day was warm and sunny; it was fear that chilled the travelers, for all three were about to set off up the Great North Road.

“Is there trouble, innkeep?” asked the shepherd as Fingal passed behind them.

“There’s always trouble,” said Fingal. “That’s what comes with a babby.”

At the top of the inn, the Woman’s room was in darkness. The shutters were drawn and latched, and the Woman lay in her bed with the sheets pulled up to her chin.

“What’s the matter, Woman?” asked Fingal.

She didn’t say a word, but only shifted her eyes toward the window. Jimmy’s crib—standing there—was empty.

“The babby?” said Fingal hopefully. “Has it wandered off?”

“No, you fool.” The Woman shifted the blankets so that
Fingal could see Jimmy sleeping beneath them. “There’s someone outside.”

“Who is it?” asked Fingal.

“How should I know?” She shook her head, as though he was stupid. “Why don’t you look and see?”

Fingal’s ears turned a bright red. But he tried to keep his temper. “I was in the basement, Woman,” he said slowly. “Did you have to bring me all the way up here so that I could look out your window?”

“Well, how else could you look out of it?” she asked with a cluck of her tongue.

Fingal fumed. Sixteen years he’d been married. He’d done the Woman’s bidding night and day. But, suddenly, he’d had enough.

“Woman, you’re a layabout,” he told her.

Her mouth fell open. She stared at him, aghast. Flat on her back, covered from chin to toes, she lay there and looked at him. The only sound in the room was her breathing, hard and steady.

“All day you lie there,” said Fingal. “Well, if you want to know who’s outside, get up and look. Shift yourself, Woman. I’m sick of the sight of you.”

“Hardy har har. That’s so funny I forgot to laugh,” said Carolyn.

She lay like Fingal’s wife, staring up from a hard bed as rubber bellows whooshed and wheezed. “You think I’m lazy? ’Cause I asked you what was outside?”

Laurie felt rotten. She’d forgotten that that was how everything had started, with Carolyn asking what she could see from the window. All she had wanted to do was make Dickie forget where he was for an hour or two, to free him from his iron lung. Instead, she had sealed them all more tightly.

In the tilted mirrors she could see the three faces. Dickie had his eyes closed, but his skin was pulled into wrinkles by the things he was thinking. Chip had turned his head to the left, and only Carolyn was staring right back. “He’s polio, isn’t he?” said the girl in the iron lung. “Your dumb giant.”

Dickie’s eyes opened now. Chip rolled his head to look at Caroline.

“Well, guess what?” said Carolyn. “He can’t be killed. You can never beat polio.”

“I didn’t mean that,” said Laurie.

“Just get out of here.” Carolyn looked away from the mirror. Her long braid swished like the tail of an angry cat.

Laurie imagined how frustrating it would be if you couldn’t wave your arms when you were angry, if you couldn’t run away from anything. Without another word, she left the room. Though Dickie called out to stop her, she didn’t look back. She ran for the elevator.

She heard the chime as she rounded the last bend in the hall. She saw the doors open and Miss Freeman come out.

“Laurie,” said the nurse, surprised. But with one look, she somehow understood. “Did Carolyn tell you to leave?”

Laurie nodded.

“That happens a lot. It’s not your fault.”

The elevator doors were wide open. Laurie wanted to push her way past the nurse.

“Carolyn likes people to think that she’s strong and brave,” said Miss Freeman. “But inside, she’s a frightened girl. Just a sad and lonely girl with not very much to look forward to.”

“You said she’s getting better,” said Laurie.

“Oh, there’s lots of ways she can make improvements.” The doors closed and the elevator hummed as it started down. “If wishing was medicine, Carolyn would have been home a long, long time ago. What she needs right now is a little understanding. She craves that, though she’d never admit it. Not many people come to visit Carolyn.”

“No wonder,” said Laurie.

Miss Freeman smiled. “If you showed some interest, it might surprise you what could happen.”

“I think I should go home now,” said Laurie.

“Of course,” said Miss Freeman. “But if you want to come back and see Dickie again, I think I could allow it.”

“I’d like to,” said Laurie. “Sometime.”

“Saturday would be terrific.”