The Giant-Slayer

by Iain Lawrence

  “Gosh, I knew it,” said Dickie.

  “Except not quite that way.”

  The alligator dragged Jimmy into the bulrushes. It was all the boy could do just to hold on. The charm around his neck swayed and bounced so violently that he was afraid he would lose it. His belt snagged on the reeds. It nearly yanked him from the alligator’s back before it snapped in half and fell away behind him. The bracelet nearly went the same way. But Jimmy somehow held on.

  They went crashing through a wall of bushes. A flock of ducks erupted from the other side, scattering on whirring wings. The alligator shot up a hummock and over the top, and down to a pool of black water.

  It hit with a tremendous splash and carried Jimmy under. Deeper and deeper it went, trailing a stream of tiny bubbles from its nostrils. Jimmy saw the sun above him, a yellow ball that grew smaller and darker, then disappeared altogether. And down in the darkness, the gator rolled over and over in quick little turns.

  Jimmy was flung aside. Half drowned, he spun through the water, and the alligator came at him. Jimmy held out his arm to fend it off, but the gator only opened its mouth and took his whole arm inside it. Jimmy kicked its neck and tried to pull free. He would have done it too, but the bit of shell on his bracelet snagged on the gator’s front teeth.

  The great jaws were closing. Jimmy pulled again. The bit of shell tore loose from the bracelet, and Jimmy was free.

  At that instant, he felt himself buoyed up like a balloon full of air. He was rushing through the water, shooting for the surface, and he broke through it headfirst like an arrow fired from the bottom of the swamp. He flew six feet up, then plummeted down again.

  Jimmy hit the water with his feet; and it was like landing on a trampoline. The whole pool sagged to take his weight, then sprang up and launched him in the air. He could feel a warm glow from the bracelet and knew that he’d found—by chance—what the Tellsman had only guessed at: the magic in the charm.

  Jimmy twisted in the air to land again on his feet. The water bent and held him, and he bounded on across the swamp in giant leaps, three yards at a time, somersaulting over islets of grass and reeds.

  A snake uncoiled toward him. A hydra raised its many heads. Another alligator snapped its jaws. But Jimmy leapt over them all. He ran for the middle of the swamp with the water flexing underneath him. But soon his leaps began to shrink. He bounced two yards instead of three; he had trouble hurdling a hydra. The warmth of the bracelet was fading already.

  A mound of sticks and mud appeared. From a hole in the top, a thread of smoke was oozing down toward the water, where it lay like a thin blanket on the top of water black as tar. A small door opened at the bottom, and out came the Swamp Witch.

  She stood knee deep in the mud, one hand still holding the door. Her throat ballooned into a big red ball. And she watched the giant-slayer bound toward her.

  The bracelet gave up the last of its warmth as Jimmy neared the witch’s house. It turned cool, and then so bitterly cold that he knocked it away. It snapped in two and fell from his arm, and when Jimmy landed again his foot broke through the surface. He stumbled forward, sprawling on top of the water. He could see an alligator right below him, turning now toward him.

  Its legs kicked; its tail thrashed. It swam up to the surface and came right through it. It grabbed Jimmy by the waist and carried him into the air. For a moment it seemed to stand on its tail, then slowly toppled over.

  In a croaking voice, the witch called out, “Don’t eat him! Bring him here.”

  The alligator swam toward the Swamp Witch and stopped at the edge of a little garden, where bladderworts and fly catchers grew in tidy rows. It cracked its lips and whispered hisses at her.

  “Put him down by the patio,” said the witch. “You stupid thing.”

  The patio was a slab of hardened mud. In the middle was a flower box where deadly nightshade and scarlet toadstools grew. The alligator carried Jimmy to the edge and crouched in the mud to let Jimmy slide from its back.

  “Now get away,” said the witch, her throat bulging. “Go on!”

  With a swish of its tail, the gator crept away through the shallow pool around the house. It went gliding past the witch with only its eyes above the water, and those swiveled round to watch her. At the edge of the reeds it swung its head and gave Jimmy the most sly and evil look he’d ever seen.

  “Shoo!” shouted the Swamp Witch. “Scat!” She waved it away with her hands, and watched as it slithered through the reeds. “If there’s anything more thick-headed than a gator, I hope I never meet it,” she said.

  At last, the witch turned to Jimmy. She looked at the strange boy, too old to be a child, too small to be a man, and remembered from years ago the visit of the giant. She saw the charm at his neck, and reached out to touch it with a long and knobby finger. “Where did you get this?”

  “From Khan,” he said. “The hunter.”

  Her round eyes blinked once. Her throat filled and emptied. “Did you kill him for it?”

  “No, he gave it to me.” Jimmy found it hard to look the witch in the face, but he didn’t turn away. He said that his name was Jimmy, that he was the son of Fingal.

  “Yes, I know who you are,” said the witch. “In thunder and lightning you were born.”

  “That’s true,” said Jimmy.

  “You will ask me the way to the castle of Collosso.”

  Jimmy frowned. “Why will I do that?”

  “Because it is your destiny,” she told him. “You were born to kill giants.”

  Jimmy sat down. Born to kill giants. The words of the witch seemed to echo in his head. All his life he had thought he was too small to be important. A runt, his father had called him. The idea that he would kill giants made him feel huge inside. But it scared him too.

  He asked, “How big is Collosso?”

  “He has the height of twenty men,” said the witch. “The girth of seven horses.”

  “Gosh.” Jimmy tried to picture a person that size, but it was impossible. It was more than he could imagine. “Do you think …?” He had to stop and start again. “All I wanted was to be more important,” he said. “Do you think you could make me a little bit bigger?”

  “Without doubt, you are big enough already,” said the witch. “Collosso lives in terror of the day that you will come for him. When you have killed the giant you will become a giant yourself. In the hearts of the people, you will be the biggest man that ever lived.”

  “Could I be the tallest?” asked Jimmy.

  “Enough talk,” said the witch. “You must go now or never.”

  “But how do I get there?” said Jimmy. “Show me the way to the castle.”

  “Aha!” cried the witch in her croaking voice. She looked to the north and pointed at the line of blue peaks in the distance. “Below that highest mountain you will find a pass. As you reach the other side, Collosso’s castle will be above you.”

  “How do I kill him?”

  “There are many ways,” said the witch. “You could clip him like a flower, or strike him with a lash. You could do him in an hour or—”

  “I will do him in a flash,” said Jimmy very fiercely.

  The witch smiled her froggy smile, that thin line of lips and gums. “I believe you are ready,” she said. “Come, I will take you myself to the edge of the swamp.”

  “That witch is a phony,” said Chip. “Isn’t she?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Laurie.

  “She’s giving him the business.” Chip sounded a bit angry about it. “She’s making the giant’s dream come true.”

  “I guess she is,” said Laurie.

  “Poor Jimmy.”

  The witch led the boy into her house.

  A small fire was burning with a sweet smell in the middle of the floor, in a circle of red stones. A chair and a table, both built of sticks, made up the only furniture. But there were a great number of baskets woven from grasses, and beside the chair stood a spinning wheel, where the witch had be
en turning rushes into thread. On the wall hung a picture she’d drawn with red and black mud, showing Gypsy caravans drawn up in a circle.

  “That picture. Is it the red lake?” he asked.

  “It’s nothing,” she told him.

  “I stayed there with the Gypsies,” he said. “The King told me that a witch stole his heart. What do you think he meant?”

  She smiled at this, but only briefly. Then she waved her froglike hand, as though to dismiss the King. “Bah!” she said. “Who knows what Gypsies think?”

  With that, the witch turned away and led Jimmy across the room, to a door even smaller than the first one. A smell of dirt and worms came out when she opened it. “Stay close behind me,” she said, and went through.

  Beyond the door was a tunnel that dropped steeply through the ground. When it leveled off Jimmy was far beneath the swamp, in utter darkness, following the witch only by the slithery sounds of her walking or the wheezing of her breath.

  For an hour they walked and crawled through the tunnel. Then it started sloping up again, and at the top Jimmy bumped heavily into the witch’s back, not knowing that she’d come to the end of the tunnel. She grunted, and a crack of light appeared as she pushed against a door.

  “Come this way,” she said.

  She led Jimmy out of the tunnel, into the hollow trunk of a burned-out tree. At one time it might have stood hundreds of feet high, for the trunk was wide enough that the witch had set up a little summer cottage inside it. Even now, with the top shattered off, it was the highest thing around. Like a black rock on a green sea, it rose all alone from a rolling field of heather.

  Jimmy looked back toward the swamp. He could hear the dragonflies clattering over the reeds. “Years ago,” he said, “my mother set out for the swamp. Did she find you?”

  “No,” said the witch.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Since Collosso, you are the first to come. Now your destiny is over there.” The witch pointed again to the far-off mountain. “The giant swore that he will crush you like a nit. But I do not believe it is so. He lives in fear of the day that you will find him.”

  She put a webbed hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “Good luck, giant-slayer. When I see you next, I will have to look way up to recognize you.”

  Mr. Valentine was sleeping when Laurie came home. Flat on his back on the sofa, he had a book in his hands. He did this every now and then, but always denied it. He would wake embarrassed and tell anyone who’d seen him, “I wasn’t asleep. I was resting my eyes.”

  Mrs. Strawberry was still there, though dinner was set out on the table. She was sitting at a chair in her coat and gloves, as though chilled by her own frosty glare.

  “Where have you been?” she asked as Laurie came into the room. “You’re very late.”

  “I was at school,” said Laurie.

  “Oh, really. Until this time of day?” Mrs. Strawberry tapped her watch three times. “Your father was very upset when he came home and you weren’t here.”

  In the living room, Mr. Valentine shifted on the sofa. He spluttered and coughed, half awake.

  “He went looking for you.” Mrs. Strawberry stood up. “He looked everywhere.”

  Laurie was surprised to find that Nanna could still put a fright inside her. A little tingle ran up her back like a slithering snake.

  “He waited dinner for you too,” said Mrs. Strawberry, heading for the hall. “Of course it’s stone cold now.” She shouted goodbye to Mr. Valentine, then slipped out the door.

  If Mr. Valentine knew where Laurie had been, he didn’t say so. He greeted his daughter with only half a smile and told her that he was glad she was home. But he didn’t ask why she was late or where she had been. He didn’t even look at her as he tucked his tie into his trousers and sat at his place for dinner. He opened the paper and started reading, and didn’t say another word.

  He didn’t mention Bishop’s that evening, nor any day for the rest of the week.

  On Saturday morning the sky was gray and bleak. “Feels like thunder,” said Mr. Valentine as he poured his morning coffee.

  He was right. An hour later it had rained and stopped, and a hot wind was gusting through the trees. From far away came the rumbling tremor of a thunderclap. Laurie put on her green coat, though she hated wearing it. It had a big hood that she thought made her look like an enormous newt when she had it pulled up, with her glasses on. She didn’t say where was off to, but just shouted from the door, “Dad, I’m going out!”

  She could feel the thunder coming closer as she walked to Bishop’s and in through the gate. The sky was darker. The wind pushed against her. At Piper’s Pond it made the branches of the willows rustle. A duck floated in the middle of the pond, thrusting its head into the water again and again.

  Laurie rode the elevator to the fourth floor. As she passed the big room with the television and the building blocks, James Miner called for her to wait. He came trundling out on his treatment board, his hands paddling madly, like an alligator running.

  He went ahead of her along the hall, now sideways, now backward. Outside, the thunder rolled more loudly.

  The lightning started as they reached the respirator room. Dickie and Chip and Carolyn were all watching the storm in their mirrors. Great clouds were building in the sky, toppling over each other. The lightning made bright flashes that filled the window. The glass rattled with the thunderclaps.

  “Boy, it’s real close,” said Dickie. He seemed weaker than he had before. He sounded nervous too.

  But Chip and Carolyn both were smiling. “It’s kinda neat,” said Chip. “Isn’t it, Laurie?”

  It was kinda neat. It was keen, she said. “But what if the power goes out?”

  She imagined the iron lungs shutting down, the thick silence that would fill the room when the bellows stopped wheezing and huffing.

  “It’s okay,” said Chip. “There’s a generator.”

  Then Carolyn spoke. And for once she sounded friendly. “That gave out too,” she said. “One time.”

  “What happened?” asked Laurie.

  “It was the middle of the night,” said Carolyn. “In the middle of winter.” A snowstorm had knocked out the power. “There were eight people in iron lungs that year,” she said. In the respirator room they were listening to the rumble of the generator down in the basement.

  The sound was a steady, comforting hum—until someone made a mistake while transferring fuel. Then the generator suddenly faltered.

  “We heard it sputter,” said Carolyn. “The lights went dim.” In that moment, she said, the respirators stalled, as though catching their breath. But in the next instant the lights were bright again, and the sound was surging. “I turned to the girl beside me, and just as we grinned at each other, the power went off.”

  Carolyn described how the bellows on the respirators wheezed to a stop. The silence, she said, was eerie, almost frightening. “Then the alarms on the tops of the respirators started ringing. From all through the hospital we heard chimes and buzzers and people shouting.”

  Just telling the story made her seem frightened all over again. Her face turned more pale than ever; her eyes grew wider. “I wasn’t very good at frog-breathing then,” she said. “I thought I was going to suffocate.” In the dark, she had struggled for every breath, her muscles almost useless. The girl beside her could still move her arms, though she was paralyzed from the waist down. She started tapping her knuckles on the iron lung—tap, tap, tap. “It was ghostly,” said Carolyn, “in the dark like that. It made me think of a story I’d read, about a deep-sea diver and a haunted shipwreck.” From the other respirators had come a frantic ticking and clucking of tongues, the sound that riders made to hurry their horses, but that polios made to call for help.

  The beams of flashlights had swished through the corridors. Into the room had come nurses, invisible in the dark, nearly as frightened as the polios themselves. They’d shone their lights here and there, so that the beams swung through th
e room, glaring now and then in the tilted mirrors.

  “It was getting cold,” said Carolyn. There had been frost on the windows. The nurses had tried to calm the polios as they struggled with the iron lungs, and at last they started pumping with the hand bellows, grunting as they heaved on the handles. When Carolyn had felt air being drawn through her throat, her lungs filling, she thought it couldn’t possibly come hard enough or fast enough.

  “It was really scary,” she said.

  “I bet,” said Laurie.

  Carolyn’s face was drawn and weary. She lay looking straight up, blinking her eyes.

  “That girl beside you: was she Penny Nolan?” asked Chip.

  “No. Way before her.”

  “Who?”

  “I forget her name.” The bellows wheezed on the iron lungs. “She died the next week.”

  Laurie whispered. “She died?”

  “Sure,” said Carolyn.

  “How old was she?”

  “Nine?” said Carolyn, unsure. “It wasn’t because of the power failure. She was dying already. We knew she was going, ’cause the nurses closed a curtain around her.”

  “That must have been horrible,” said Laurie. “You were right next to her?”

  “I heard her kind of gurgling,” said Carolyn. “It went on for ages. Then they turned off her machine. Everyone came out from behind the curtain. A nurse walked by and tilted my mirror. She tilted all the mirrors so we couldn’t see behind us. But we heard the iron lung rolling through the room. I can still hear that. At night sometimes. That poor girl rolling out.”

  There was a rumble of thunder just then. It wasn’t horribly loud, but it went on for a long time, almost stopping then starting again. It made everyone look at each other and laugh in a nervous way.

  Down on the floor, little James Miner hadn’t spoken for a long time. Laurie leaned down and asked him, “You okay?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said, nodding happily. He was even reading his magazine; the storm meant nothing to him.

  “You’re not scared of thunder?” asked Laurie.

  “No way,” said James. “I was born in a thunderstorm.”