The Giant-Slayer (19 page)

“You know what Davy Crockett would have done with that old gator?” asked Dickie. He hadn’t stopped thinking of the story. “He would have stuck his arm right down its throat. Then he would have grabbed its tail and turned that old gator inside out. That’s what Davy would have done. Stuck his arm right down its throat.”

“Well, that’s funny,” said Laurie. “Because that’s just what happened.”

“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 been 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.”