The Giant-Slayer

by Iain Lawrence

  The Gypsy King came in a swagger, greeting the Wishman with a loud shout across the pond. The gold in his teeth flashed in the sunlight. He came with his head tipped back, looking up at Collosso’s red cap roofing the strange-looking wagon. Then he saw Jimmy and grinned.

  “I never doubted you would kill the giant,” he said.

  “Yes, you did,” said Jimmy.

  The King of the Gypsies laughed. “Well, now, I never did,” he said.

  “I don’t get it,” said Dickie. “The Wishman brought the Gypsies? What kind of wish was that?”

  “It was just the first part of it,” said Carolyn. “You’ll see; it will all work out in the end.”

  “I think it will,” said Chip.

  The three lay hopeful and content, stretched out in their iron lungs. They slept peacefully that night.

  The doctor came just after midnight, while the room was dimly lit.

  He was a tall man, his black hair in a ducktail that shone with oil. He moved like a ghost in his white coat and soft-soled shoes, a gray shape that walked without sound. He passed along the row of iron lungs, looking down at the children, reaching out to softly touch their heads.

  Carolyn didn’t wake up, and neither did Chip. But Dickie stirred at the touch of the doctor’s fingers. He opened his eyes and saw, in the mirror, the doctor passing by, moving on to Laurie.

  Mr. Valentine was slumped forward in the chair. He had his chin on his chest, an arm dangling down. The map of the future had slipped from his fingers and was lying on the floor. His snoring was quiet, a pleasing sound for Dickie, who had often found comfort in the snoring of his father after waking from a nightmare.

  The doctor picked up the map from the floor. He put it carefully on Mr. Valentine’s lap but didn’t disturb the sleeping man. Then he stood over Laurie, and with his back toward Dickie, worked away in his silent manner, making barely a sound at all.

  Dickie could see nothing but the man’s broad back and the shine of his hair oil. He could see his arms moving, but not what he was doing.

  “Is she going to be okay?” he asked.

  “Shh.” The doctor looked back. “Yes, she’ll be fine,” he said very quietly. “Don’t worry.”

  He went right back to his work, moving from Laurie’s head to the side of her iron lung. He put his hands through the portals and leaned over the machine.

  “When will she wake up?” asked Dickie.

  “In the morning,” said the doctor. He moved back to her head and talked in whispers to Laurie.

  The respirators whined and whooshed. Mr. Valentine snored in his chair. And the doctor kept working, talking in a quiet voice.

  “You’re safe now. Don’t be frightened,” he said, as though Laurie were already awake. “You’re at Bishop’s, Laurie.”

  Dickie asked, “Is she going to be all right?”

  The doctor turned to him now, big as a polar bear in that white coat. “Yes, she’ll be fine. Just sleep—hush now—and let me work.”

  Dickie couldn’t see the man’s face very clearly. But he saw his hand reaching out, as though floating toward him as gently as a falling feather. And he heard his voice saying, “I’m Dr. Wishman.”

  And just as Dickie felt the doctor’s fingers touch his forehead, he was asleep again.

  It was a sound of tapping that woke Mr. Valentine just after dawn. In the dream that he was having, a big black bird was pecking at his bedroom window, trying to smash through the glass to get at him. He woke with a start, raising his arms to shield himself.

  He saw right away that he wasn’t in his bed at home, that no enormous bird was trying to kill him. But the great relief that came with that lasted less than a second. When he saw the iron lungs, his heart sank.

  He realized only then that the sound that had woken him was still going on. It wasn’t very loud at all, but it was hurried and frantic, and Mr. Valentine looked up to see Laurie’s hand moving in the window of the iron lung.

  Her fingernails were hitting the glass, tapping faintly on the little window.

  Mr. Valentine was on his feet in an instant. “Laurie, I’m here,” he said.

  But she was still asleep; she couldn’t hear him.

  “Laurie!” Mr. Valentine gestured frantically with his hands, as though trying to hold on to her, but not seeing how to do it. He grabbed the legs of the iron lung and shook the whole machine.

  He shook everyone awake.

  For Dickie, the room was suddenly full of light and noise. He had been awake in the night, in the quiet and the dark, and now—the next instant, it seemed—Mr. Valentine was shouting beside him, and on the other side Carolyn was crying out with each breath of her respirator, “What’s going on?”

  But Mr. Valentine just kept shaking the legs of the iron lung, shouting his daughter’s name. He made so much noise that Mrs. Glass came barging into the room, bringing a doctor behind her.

  “She’s moving!” said Mr. Valentine. “She’s moving in there!”

  In his mirror, Dickie watched the doctor rushing by. He turned his head and saw him push Mr. Valentine out of the way, then bend down to peer through the window of the iron lung.

  “She’s not moving,” said the doctor.

  “She was,” said Mr. Valentine. “She was still asleep, but she was tapping at the glass.”

  “Well, that’s a good sign. A very good sign,” said the doctor.

  He was young and tanned, more like a lifeguard than a doctor. He put his hand on Laurie’s forehead. “She’s been in a coma how long?”

  Mr. Valentine had to count back through the days. “I can’t remember,” he said. “It’s all a blur.”

  Dickie grunted, but nobody looked toward him.

  The doctor took a small flashlight from his pocket. He pried Laurie’s eyelids open and peered this way and that. When he finished he turned off the flashlight and spun it absently in his fingers, like a gun slinger with a six-shooter.

  “Well?” Mr. Valentine was squeezing one hand with the other. “When will she wake up?”

  “A coma’s a strange animal, Mr. Valentine.” The doctor slipped the flashlight back in his pocket. “There’s no telling how long it will last.”

  Dickie grunted again. He piped up from his pillow. “She was kind of awake in the night. When the other doctor was here.”

  Mr. Valentine glanced at Dickie. So did Mrs. Glass and the doctor. They all gave him the same sort of look—puzzled and disbelieving. And Dickie sensed that Carolyn and Chip were doing the same thing on his other side; he could feel them looking at him.

  “What doctor’s that?” asked Mrs. Glass, too casually. Dickie knew she didn’t believe he had seen a doctor at all, that none of them believed it.

  “He came in the middle of the night,” said Dickie. “His name was—” Suddenly, he didn’t want to say it.

  “His name was what?” asked Mrs. Glass. She looked at him sharply. “Dickie, what was his name?”

  “Dr. Wishman,” he said.

  Chip didn’t laugh. Neither did Carolyn, though she did say, “Oh, Dickie.” She said it in the very nicest way, just as kindly as Miss Freeman would have done. “Oh, Dickie,” she said, “you got that name from the story.”

  “No I never,” he said. “That’s what the doctor told me himself. He was here.”

  “I think you were having a dream,” said Mrs. Glass.

  “It wasn’t a dream,” said Dickie.

  The doctor was watching more intently than anyone. Now he raised his eyes to look beyond Dickie, over his head to Carolyn and Chip. “Did either of you see this?” he asked.

  “No, they were asleep,” said Dickie. “But I was awake, and I know it’s true. I talked to Dr. Wishman.”

  They began to look away from him now. Mr. Valentine turned back toward Laurie. Mrs. Glass straightened her little nursing hat and fussed with one of the envelopes of papers on Laurie’s iron lung. Only the young doctor kept looking at Dickie. He said, “A dream can fool anyone, you know.”
r />   “But it wasn’t a dream,” said Dickie. “Dr. Wishman was here.”

  “Okay, Dickie,” said Mrs. Glass. She came and fluffed his pillow with her big callused hands.

  “It’s true,” said Dickie. “He told me that Laurie would wake up in the morning. He said she was going to be okay.”

  “And I’m sure he was right,” said Mrs. Glass, smiling down at him. “Now let’s let the doctor do his work.”

  It didn’t take long for that; there wasn’t much the doctor could do. Mr. Valentine hovered around him, asking questions that didn’t really have answers.

  “I’m sure it’s no comfort,” the doctor said, “but your daughter’s not alone with this. There was a problem at one of the labs, Mr. Valentine. Maybe a live vaccine.”

  “Yes, I understand that,” said Mr. Valentine. “I know about the Cutter lab. I work for the Foundation. The only thing I want to know is this: what will happen to my daughter?”

  “It’s my hunch that she’ll be fine,” said the doctor. “I’m sorry that it all comes down to a hunch, but it’s the best I can do. Every day improves her chances.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Valentine. He knew the odds very well. Twenty percent of the deaths in the first day, eighty-five percent in the first three weeks. It was a long way to go until anyone could say she was safe.

  Little Dickie was looking up. “Don’t worry, Mr. Valentine,” he said. “She’s going to be okay. She really is.”

  And he was right.

  Laurie came out of her coma not an hour later. She could move her arms and legs, her fingers and toes, and before noon she could manage just fine without a plastic tube in her throat.

  The doctor took it out. But he left the girl in the iron lung. “Just for a night or two,” he said. “I’ve never seen a patient recover so quickly.”

  In her iron lung, Laurie listened as Dickie told her how the story had unfolded. He brought her up to Piper’s Pond, with the Wishman there, and the Gypsy King. The others interrupted now and then when they thought he’d got it wrong, then Laurie asked one question: “So what did they wish for? The one wish for all three.”

  “Yeah, what was that wish?” asked Dickie, turning to look at Carolyn.

  She blushed. She shook her head, and the long braid of hair swished from the pillow. “It’s stupid,” she said.

  “Aw, come on. Tell us,” said Dickie.

  “Well, it sounds dumb,” said Carolyn. “But they all wished to live happily ever after. And that’s how the story ends.”

  No one spoke. There was just the huffing of the iron lungs as Dickie and Chip frowned at each other. Laurie stared into her mirror, out at the window behind her.

  Finally, Dickie spoke up. “What do you mean, that’s how it ends?” The coonskin cap dangled in front of him, beside the wooden tomahawk and the pictures of Davy Crockett. “Boy, there’s got to be more than that. What happened to Khan and Finnegan Flanders? What about the Swamp Witch and the Woman and the Gypsy King?”

  “Beats me,” said Carolyn. “I think Laurie should finish it.”

  Dickie turned the other way now, and grinned at Laurie. “So what happened next?” he asked.

  It seemed to Laurie that Carolyn knew very well how the story would end. Giving it back was a kindness, she thought, the first gesture of friendship she’d ever seen Carolyn make.

  With her head on the pillow, the iron lung pulling her breaths in and out, Laurie felt herself floating from her world of hospitals and machines, into the land of her story. In the tilted mirror, there was a strip of sky with big round clouds made silver by the sunlight.

  But in her mind she saw the fire blazing in the grove at Piper’s Pond. She could hear the laughter and the music, and watch the Gypsies dancing.

  In firelight, the Gypsies reeled in a huge circle. Their clothes were swirling, their rings and bracelets flashing. Sparks flew up from the fire, and the fiddles screeched, and the Wishman played his pipes.

  Jimmy the giant-slayer danced three times with every girl, until he was exhausted. But the Woman danced only with the King.

  Jimmy watched his mother twirl and laugh, and could not remember a time when she had been so happy. And when she was as tired as he, they sat together through the night and listened to the music.

  At the edge of the pond—not seen by anyone—the Swamp Witch crouched in the shallows. Beside her was the little basket, empty now.

  Her throat bulged and shrank. A happy croaking sound, something like the purr of a cat, came from deep in her throat.

  At midnight a Gypsy girl went to the pond for water. She carried a pot and a dipping ladle, and she tossed back her long hair as she knelt at the edge of the water.

  The Gypsies were dancing behind her, whirling through the firelight.

  A splash, or a swirl of water, made the girl sit up and stare into the darkness over the pond.

  “Marla!” said the witch in the darkness.

  The girl gasped to hear her name come from the black pool in a croaking sort of voice. “Who’s there?” she asked.

  “Marla, don’t be scared,” said the witch.

  The girl stood up, staring. She saw a black shape hunched nearby. Behind her, the fire flared as someone added wood, and she saw the witch’s eyes staring from the pond.

  She dropped the pot; it clattered on a stone. She dropped the ladle. She opened her mouth to scream.

  “It’s me,” said the witch. “Your sister.”

  The girl stepped back from the water. She held up the hem of her long dress, ready to run. “Jessamine?” she whispered.

  “Yes. Please stay,” said the witch. “It’s really me.”

  The girl hesitated. She looked back at the fire, again at the pond. She took another step from the water. Then she leaned forward and whispered into the shadows the beginning of a rhyme she had invented long ago. “The Gypsy King has dash and flair.”

  And back from the darkness came the rest of it. “And yellow spots in his underwear.”

  The girl laughed. She ran into the water, splashing through the shallows blindly.

  Suddenly, a face loomed in the faintness of the fire; cold arms reached out and hugged her. She could see the witch’s frog-like face. She could touch the knobs of lizard skin. But she could feel the soul of her sister, and that was all that mattered.

  “Jessamine!” she said, and drew her toward the fire.

  The dancing stopped as the pair came closer. The music faded away. Then every Gypsy stared as the Swamp Witch and the girl walked slowly round among them. The witch was wearing her Gypsy rings now, her earrings and bracelets, the very same jewelry that Jessamine had worn on the day she’d disappeared.

  When she came to the King of the Gypsies, the Swamp Witch stopped and looked up. Her throat filled and emptied. She held out her webbed hands, the fingers long and knobby. “Father, I’ve come home,” she said.

  Carolyn sighed. She was looking up at her mirror, or at least toward her mirror. In its surface she saw the darkness of Piper’s Pond and the face of a Gypsy girl. “Gee, that’s nice,” she said. “That’s keen.”

  “Huh?” said Dickie, beside her. “What’s nice?”

  “Just the way she went home,” said Carolyn. “She was so different, so ugly, but she went home anyway.”

  Chip didn’t seem as pleased with that part of the story. “But the King wouldn’t even recognize her.”

  “Yeah, that’s true,” said Dickie.

  “It wouldn’t take him long; he’s not stupid,” said Carolyn. “On the inside, Jessamine’s the same girl who got stolen. Maybe she’s even better now. Maybe she’s nicer.”

  Laurie nodded. This time it pleased her that Carolyn had seen right through the story. “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “But what about the changeling?” said Chip. “When the witch stole Jessamine she left a changeling behind. That’s what the hunter said.”

  “Yeah, what about that?” asked Dickie. “Boy, what’s a changeling anyway?”


  “It was a creature,” said Laurie, “a thing made of wood and sticks and stuff. It looked like Jessamine. It talked and moved and everything, but it was evil and horrid. When the witch left it there, the Gypsy King couldn’t understand how his lovely Jessamine had suddenly become so horrible.”

  “But the changeling didn’t live very long,” said Carolyn. “Did it?”

  “A few weeks. That’s all,” said Laurie. “Then it withered away like a plant without water. It got dried-out and hollow, until all that was left was a thin, hard shell. Then the King understood; he saw that this thing was really a changeling, nothing more than enchanted wood. From that day on he was haunted by the thought that his daughter was still alive, so he kept moving from place to place, hoping to find Jessamine.”

  “Maybe that’s why Gypsies roam today,” said Carolyn. “They got used to it.”

  Dickie was happy now, content. But Chip still looked puzzled. “So why does the King hate the Swamp Witch so much?”

  “Gee, I know that,” said Dickie.

  “Does he think she’s the one who stole Jessamine?”

  “No,” said Dickie, scornfully. “There wasn’t even a Swamp Witch living then. It was just a story that she was a hundred years old. There wasn’t a witch in the swamp until Jessamine went to live there. Right, Laurie?”

  “Right,” she said.

  “So why does the King hate her?” asked Chip again.

  “Boy, it’s easy. Every time she came around the camp, and the dogs knew she was there, the King was afraid she’d steal another baby. He thought all witches stole babies.”

  “Oh!” said Chip. “Now I get it.”

  Carolyn rolled her eyes. “I hope the King was happy that day his daughter came home,” she said. “What happened after that?”

  The witch was never changed back to the way she had looked as a girl. Forever she was froglike, with enormous yellow eyes and a mouth that barely had lips. But in the story the Gypsies told of that night, a tale that would live a thousand years, she had never seemed more lovely than she did in the light of the fire, as she came home from the bottom less swamp.