The Stone Giant (8 page)

Professor Wurzle displayed a bag of gold coins, which he offered to trade Escargot for the Smithers books. But Escargot was fairly sure that the coins, once removed from the bag, would be of use to no one but Stover, who might relish the exercise involved in tramping on bugs. So he gave the books to the Professor on loan, all but
The Stone Giants
, and rode away toward Hightower, feeling that the morning air was still too full of enchantment for him to sit idle. He overtook no one on the river road, and by late afternoon he joggled along, shifting from side to side on the saddle and thinking dark thoughts.

If he rode hard enough he could be in Seaside for the harvest festival. He would find nothing there, quite likely, to solve any mysteries, but it was enough just to have a destination. He no longer had a home. That much had been made very clear to him. When he got back to Twombly Town –
if
he got back to Twombly Town –little Annie wouldn’t know who in the world he was. It had been a matter either of stealing her away or letting her go. Letting her go had been wisest. Of course it had. There was no doubting it, was there? The open road was no place for a child, a baby. And as for her becoming a creature of nature and learning to tell time by the wind, it might just as easily be true that creatures of nature were ignorant and dirty and had twigs in their hair. A child needed a school and playmates and a story before being tucked up in bed. That was the truth of it, wasn’t it?

Or was the truth of it that Escargot didn’t entirely want her? He’d never make it to Seaside in time for the festival if Annie was riding along. And where might his travels take him after Seaside? To the Wonderful Isles? Into the White Mountains? There was business to be done –
that
was the truth of it, and Annie wouldn’t be an asset to business. Escargot wished there weren’t quite so many truths. The more there were, the more boggled up things got.

So the idea of a destination had become solid, had become more substantial to him than the idea of his home on the hill above the village, which had, in the past weeks, already begun to change like goblin gold into something hazy and unfamiliar. His only real link with Twombly Town were the Smithers books he’d loaned Professor Wurzle. Someday he’d have to come back after them. And when he did, he would wear an eyepatch and a beard and be dressed in exotic rags and a cocked hat, and he’d look up Annie and see how she was getting on.

For the moment, though, it was Seaside that attracted him. There, if nothing else, he might get some glimpse of just how much of G. Smithers’ account of the festivities was accurate. He couldn’t imagine that they
really
burned witches. That sort of thing was hardly likely. But then any number of things that were hardly likely had come to pass in the past month.

Sometime after four in the afternoon the air grew chill and the shadows long and deep and a wind blew up off the river cold enough to set Escargot’s teeth chattering. A road sign announced that he was twenty miles yet outside Hightower Village, and that a mile inland, on the road to McVicker, lay an inn. ‘Lodging at The Smashed Hat’ the sign read, and below it, dangling from brass hooks, was an ill-carven broad-brimmed hat with a hatband painted around its dented-in crown. The inn it advertised was a mile out of the way. The alternative, though, was to spend the night on the ground – hungry, and with one eye open all night for goblins.

Escargot yanked on the reins and trotted away up the trail, telling himself that at the very least he’d get a bed and a bottle of ale for his trouble. When he clopped up to the inn at sunset he found that he couldn’t throw his leg over the horse to climb down. Both his legs had apparently petrified during the ride. He nodded seriously at the waiting stable boy, a pudding-faced youth in an altogether suit and with feet the size of pot lids. He had an unpleasant, frowning countenance, like he just that moment remembered the time he’d drank a glass of turpentine by mistake, thinking it was soda water.

Escargot made an effort to throw his right leg back over the horse. It was impossible. His right leg, like his left leg, had gone stiff. He leaned off over the lawn until the gravity hauled him down.

The stable boy smirked and nodded, as if he’d expected some such thing. The horse stepped forward with an eye toward a patch of clover in the lawn. Escargot sat up, feeling very foolish. ‘I wouldn’t get round behind her if I was you,’ said the boy, holding the horse by the bridle.

‘What’s that?’ asked Escargot, wondering how he was going to ‘get round’ anywhere ever again. He was stiff as yesterday’s fish and convinced that he’d have to eat supper that night standing up.

‘Don’t get round behind her, where she can kick you.’

‘Kick me? Why on earth would she want to kick me?’

‘They kick for sport, horses do.’ And with that the boy patted the horse on the side of the head, happy, perhaps, with an animal that kicked for sport. ‘She’d kick you right in the ear, and you’d be deader’n a corpse.’

Escargot crept a few feet across the grass. It felt as if he’d just bounced down a hillside on his rear end. ‘Why don’t you just lead her around to the stable then, my man, instead of across in front of me like that?’

‘There wouldn’t be nothing you could do about it neither. Can’t persecute a horse.’

‘You mean prosecute,’ said Escargot. ‘Just take the thing away. That’s what you’re paid for, isn’t it? Or are you the lad that hands out advice on the lawn?’ He stood up, shakily and out of patience, and dusted off his knees, then hauled his bags off the horse and slung them over his shoulder as the horse and the stable boy disappeared toward the back of the inn.

Escargot stepped across toward the inn itself, a tall house full of eaves and gables and balconies. It sat almost sideways on the weedy lawn, and one corner had slumped across a crumbling and sunken stone foundation. The entire house seemed to be tilting toward the river, and the windows and doors all sat askew in their frames so that the wind whistled merrily past them above and below. Tattered curtains hung across most of the windows, and even from below on the lawn they appeared to be so dirty that it seemed likely they hadn’t been washed in twenty or thirty years, probably around the time the place had gotten its last coat of paint. A faded sign hung across the front of the porch; The Smashed Hat,’ it read – an oddly appropriate name for the place.

There was something about it that ran counter to the cozy, ivy-covered inn that Escargot had pictured. If there were any other travelers at the inn they kept themselves well hidden. They certainly weren’t sitting in the willow chairs on the porch – possibly because the chairs hadn’t any seats to sit on, just a few rotten fragments of willow cane.

The bell on the front porch had no clapper in it, but the door itself was ajar, so Escargot, after shouting a hello through the crack, grabbed the rusted doorknob and gave it a push. The door was jammed against the sill and wouldn’t budge. He pushed again, rattled the knob, and shouted, then gave the door a half dozen kicks on the bottom of the stile where it had jammed, inching it forward a scrape at a time until it sprang inward with a lunge. Standing at the foot of a stairway that tilted steeply away overhead was an almost chinless man in a white apron. He wore a ragged and thin little mustache that looked as if it had been bought at a fire sale.

‘Here now,’ he said, grimacing at Escargot, ‘we don’t want none of that.’

‘Door was stuck and the bell didn’t work. I hollered, but I guess no one heard.’

‘I heard, didn’t I? Here I am, standin’ here in front of you. This ain’t the city, friend.’

‘Pardon me?’ asked Escargot, feeling embarrassed for having kicked the door.

‘I say this ain’t no rush, is it? This ain’t no bow and scrape. This is the country, isn’t it? I’m a poor man.’

‘That’s right. Sorry and all that. No rush at all. Not a bit of it.’

‘All right, then,’ said the man in the apron. ‘Want a room, do you?’

‘And some supper, if I could.’

‘Supper too, is it?’

‘Both,’ said Escargot, looking around him at the disheveled interior of the inn. Dust coated everything, including the man in the apron. On second look, the man was coated in baking flour, and he held a dough-covered spoon in his hand. Escargot looked at the spoon favorably. ‘Mixing up dough, are you? Making a pie perhaps?’ He smiled at the man. There was no use being belligerent about the whole affair. The man was right, anyway. Here they were miles from anywhere. It wasn’t like in town where a person could trot over to Beezle’s market for a new bell when the clapper fell out from rust. This was the country, the open road.

‘A pie?’

‘That’s right – with the dough and all. I thought maybe a pie ...’

‘Rats,’ said the man, looking at the spoon, then back at Escargot. ‘I’m mixing up a batch of poison flour to use as bait. I can’t stand rats.’ He shook suddenly, as if he’d had a quick chill. ‘Walls are full of rats. They ate the corner off the porch, ate my chairs. There’s nothing they don’t eat, including you and me.’

Escargot nodded slowly, looking around him once again. ‘Forget the pie. Anything at all will do for supper. Don’t have a spare bottle of ale, do you?’

‘Not a one, more’s the pity. Not a one. There’s cider, though, if you’re a cider man. Traveling far?’

‘Seaside for now. And cider is fine. I’ll just put my bags away, perhaps, before I eat.’

‘Care to deposit any valuables in the vault? It’s the safest thing. No telling who might put up at an inn like this. Lonesome road and all. You can have my affidavit on anything you put in. Safe as a baby.’

‘Thanks anyway,’ said Escargot.
‘Is
there anyone else besides me staying here? The road seems to be empty.’

‘Not another living soul. That’s just what I mean. It’s not hardly safe to travel anymore, is it, not with the goblins and all. And highwaymen. They just hung three of ‘em up at McVicker last Tuesday, but that ain’t half the gang. Who knows but what you ain’t one of ‘em? That’s why I have the vault. The way I see it, if you put your valuables in my vault, then you won’t leave with
mine
. But a man who don’t want to take advantage of such a thing, he might be one of your thieves, gone in the morning along with the silver. Do you follow me?’

‘That’s clever,’ said Escargot, nodding his head. ‘And I wish I
had
something to put in that vault of yours. I’d sleep easier if I knew I had something in a vault, but I’m not the kind of traveler they make vaults for. Give me a room and a bite to eat and I’m gone in the morning when the sun comes up. I’m happy enough to settle the bill tonight.’

‘Good,’ said the innkeeper, turning away down a narrow hall. ‘First unlocked room off the second-floor landing.’

The second-floor landing was a ruin of warped floorboards and cracked plaster, and the rooms fronting the open stairwell were in pretty much the same shape. Escargot stepped into one, then stepped back out again when an enormous rat scuttled across the corner of the floor and winked through a rathole gnawed in the floor moulding. The next room was a copy of the first, except that the floor mouldings were ungnawed, so he threw his bag onto the bed and then sat next to it, wondering if destinations weren’t just a little less grand when you arrived than they had seemed when you set out.

He bent down and peeked under the bed, then sat back up, relieved to find no rats. He stepped across to a cracked and dusty window, hung with cobweb, and looked out onto the rear yard where his horse munched grass next to a tumble-down barn. Directly behind the barn was a woods, dark and silent in the gathering evening. Cider. He might have known it. A man rides along the open road from dawn to dark until he’d kill for a bottle of ale – even a bottle of the sort of ale sold by an inn like The Smashed Hat – and what does he find, dusty and weary as he is, his throat dry as an old rock? Cider and a poison pudding for rats that live in the room next door.

He flopped back onto the bed and stretched out. He was tired enough so that if he fell asleep, there’d be no need to bother with supper at all – probably a good thing, taken all around. But somehow he wasn’t inclined to let the innkeeper get away with feeding him nothing, so he promised himself he’d just doze for a moment, then go back downstairs and choke down some cider.

It was a half hour later that he lurched awake in the darkness, jackknifing up into a sitting position, his boot thrashing out into the footboard and kicking loose the corner post, which fell to the floor with a bang. It seemed as if he’d heard something – a noise, a rattling on the doorknob. But there was nothing now. It was just as likely that he’d jostled the footboard in his sleep and rattled himself awake – a good thing, since if he hadn’t, he’d have slept till noon the next day. He instinctively felt for his pouch, where his money and his truth charm hung together in their leather bag. They were safe – far safer than they’d be in the innkeeper’s vault. An affidavit indeed. That’s all he’d have had in the morning; his truth charm would be gone along with his money, and he’d have an affidavit.

He lit the oil lamp by his bed and reached into his shirt, plucking out the truth charm. As he stared at it he began to feel like a fool. How could a carven stone, for goodness sake, tell the truth about anything? How could it
tell
anything at all? It hadn’t any mouth. But it did look like a truth charm, or some sort of charm anyway. Perhaps, he thought, in a sudden fit of inspiration, it was never expected to tell anyone anything. Perhaps it answered only specific sorts of questions – questions with yes or no answers. What had he asked it before? To elaborate on the validity of G. Smithers. Of course it hadn’t answered. What had he expected, a treatise?

He set the charm on the little deal table, under the lantern. The yellow light seemed to sink into the stone like water into a brick; the eye peered up at him, regarding him, waiting. He cleared his throat. ‘Should I have brought little Annie?’ he asked, steeling himself for an answer he didn’t half want to hear. The stone, however, sat silent in the lamplight. ‘Is Leta a witch?’ Nothing happened. Was it the eye that told the tale? Would it wink, perhaps, when he’d stumbled upon the truth? ‘What ...’ he began, when the door burst open and the innkeeper strode through, a carving knife in his hand.