“Shim!” cried Rhia and I at once.
Finishing his yawn, the giant looked down on us in surprise. He rubbed his eyes, then looked again. “Is you a dream? Or is you real?”
“We’re real,” I declared.
Shim scrunched his nose doubtfully. “Really, truly, honestly?”
“Really, truly, honestly.” Rhia stepped forward and patted one of his feet, which towered over her. “It’s good to see you again. Shim.”
With a great smile, the giant reached out with one arm and gently scooped us into the palm of his hand. “I thinks I is still dreaming! But it’s you, the truly you.” He brought his nose a little closer and took a sniff. “You smells like bread. Goodly bread.”
I nodded. “Ambrosia. Like we had that night with Cairpré. Do you remember, good Shim? I wish we’d brought you some! But we’re in a hurry, you see. A great hurry.”
The immense nose scrunched again. “Is you still full of madness?”
“You could put it that way.”
“Ever since that day we firstly meets, you is full of madness!” The giant rocked with a thunderous laugh, swaying on the grassy knoll, shaking loose some rocks that bounced down into the valley. “That day you almost gets us stingded by thousands of bees.”
“And you were nothing but a blundering ball of honey.”
Rhia, who had managed to rise to her knees in the fleshy palm, joined in. “You were so small I was sure you were a dwarf.”
Shim’s pink eyes glowed with pride. “I is small no more.”
Another tumultuous crash from the valley filled the air, rocking the ridge. Even Shim’s mighty arm swayed like a tree in a gale. Rhia and I clung to his thumb for support.
His expression turned serious. “They is workings hard down there. I is supposed to brings the branches, for cookings the supper.” He looked suddenly sheepish. “I only wanted to rolls in the branches, then takes a little nap! A briefly little nap.”
“We’re glad you did,” I replied. “We need your help.”
A long, painful moan came from the loose branches at the far end of the notch. Before I could say anything, Shim reached over with his free hand and lifted out Bumbelwy by his heavy cloak. Draped with drooping ferns and broken branches, frowning with his whole face down to his layered chins, the gloomy jester looked half alive at best.
Rhia watched the dangling jester with concern. “Did you see him go flying when Shim woke up?”
I gave her a sardonic grin. “Maybe that was the leap that Gwri was talking about.”
“Ohhh,” groaned Bumbelwy, holding his head. “My head feels like a rock that just bounced down one of these cliffs! I must have rolled off that pile of—” All at once, he realized that he was being carried over the knoll by a giant. He struggled, swatting at the huge thumb that was hooked under his cloak. “Helllp! I’m about to be eaten!”
Shim grunted and shook his head at the bedraggled jester. “You isn’t very tasty, that’s easily to see. I wouldn’t puts you in my mouth for anythings.”
I waved at Bumbelwy. “Don’t worry. This giant’s a friend of ours.”
Bumbelwy, swaying before Shim’s nose, continued to flail wildly. “Such a tragedy!” he wailed. “All my humor and wisdom, lost forever down a giant’s gullet.”
Shim dropped him into the palm of his other hand. Bumbelwy landed in a heap beside Rhia and me. He struggled to stand, took a swing at Shim’s nose, tripped, and fell flat on his face again.
An enormous grin spread across Shim’s face. “At leastly he’s funny.”
Bumbelwy, who was trying to stand again, froze. “Do you mean that? Funny enough to make you laugh?”
“Not that funny,” boomed Shim, his voice so powerful it almost blew us all over the edge of his palm. “Just enough to makes me grin.”
The jester finally stood, trying to keep his balance while squaring his shoulders and straightening his cloak. “Good giant. You are more intelligent than I had thought at first.” He bowed awkwardly. “I am Bumbelwy the Mirthful, jester to—”
“Nobody.” I ignored his glare and spoke to Shim. “As I was saying, we need your help. We need to get to the lair of the sleeping dragon, the one Tuatha battled long ago. It’s somewhere across the water.”
The giant’s grin faded, as the rising wind howled across the cliffs. “You must be kiddingly.”
“I fear he’s not,” said Bumbelwy, his usual glumness returned. “You might as well eat us all now, before the dragon does.”
“If it’s really a sleeping dragon,” asked Rhia, “just how dangerous can it be?”
“Verily,” thundered Shim, his whole frame swaying like a great tree in a storm. “For starters, the dragon is still hungrily, even while it sleeps. For enders, it could wakes up anytime.” He paused, tilting his huge head in thought. “Nobodies know when Tuatha’s sleeping spell will wears off, and the dragon will wakes up. Although the legends say that it will happen on the darkest day in the life of Fincayra.”
Bumbelwy sighed. “Sounds like a typical day for me.”
“Hush!” I gazed up at Shim. “Will you take us there right away?”
“All rights. But it is madness! Certainly, definitely, absolutely.” Scanning the knoll, strewn with brush, he bit his great lip. “But firstly I needs to brings these branches down to Varigal.”
“Please, no,” I begged. I scanned the afternoon sky, afraid to see the rising sliver of the moon. “Every minute counts now. Shim. I’m almost out of time.”
“I supposes I is already late with these pokingly branches.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
Shim replied by standing and taking a single, enormous stride along the spine of the ridge. Rocked by the jolt, we fell together in a jumble on his palm. Untangling ourselves was made more difficult by the giant’s bouncing gait, but we finally succeeded. Except for Bumbelwy, whose cloak had wrapped itself tightly around his head and shoulders. As he struggled to free himself, his bells were mercifully silent under the cloak.
Rhia and I, meanwhile, crawled to the edge of Shim’s palm and peered through the gaps in his fingers. Wind rushed past our faces as we watched the landscape transform. So great were Shim’s strides that the chanting of the giants, and the rumbling of their labors, soon faded away completely. He stepped over boulder fields as if they were mere clusters of pebbles, crushing rock ledges with his feet. Mountain passes that would have taken us days to scale he climbed in a few minutes. He traversed yawning crevasses with the ease of a rabbit hopping over a stick.
Before long, the terrain began to flatten. Hillsides of trees replaced the snow-draped ridges, while the valleys widened into broad meadows painted with purple and yellow flowers. Shim paused only once, to blow on the boughs of an apple tree, showering us with fruit. Unlike Bumbelwy, who hadn’t yet regained his appetite, Rhia and I ate the apples avidly.
Shim sped along, so fast that I had only barely noticed the expanding sweep of blue ahead, when his heavy foot splashed into water. In another moment, he was wading through a channel, surrounded by a flock of screeching gulls. His voice boomed, frightening the birds. “I remembers when you carries me across a ragingly river.”
“Right!” I shouted to be heard above the wind and screeching gulls. “The crossing was so rough I had to carry you on my shoulder.”
“That would be hardly now! Certainly, definitely, absolutely.”
Turning my second sight across the channel, I noticed a line of dark hills, as rugged as a row of jagged teeth, on the horizon. The Lost Lands. Well I remembered the words Cairpré had used to describe that territory.
Uncharted and unexplored.
With a deadly dragon sleeping somewhere in those hills, I didn’t wonder why. Instinctively, I reached for the hilt of my sword.
Minutes later, Shim stepped out of the channel, his hairy feet slapping on the shore. He set us down on a wide bank of flat rock. No flowers, nor even grasses, sprouted here. Even the glowing light of approaching sunset brought no softer hues to the land. Only a shiny, black ash coated the rocks, stretching to the hillsides far inland. The air reeked of charcoal, like an abandoned fire pit.
I realized that this entire coastline, and everything that once grew on it, must have been scorched by powerful flames. Even the rocks themselves looked cracked and buckled, seared by repeated blasts of extreme heat. Then, scanning the rugged hills, I found the source: a thin curl of smoke rising from a hollow not far inland.
“That’s where we’re going,” I declared.
Shim bent his worried face so low that his chin almost touched the top of my staff. “Is you certainly? Nobody goes to visit a dragon on purposely.”
“I do.”
“You is foolishly! You know that?”
“I know that. Too well, believe me.”
The giant’s moist eyes blinked. “Then good luck. I misses you. And you, too, sweetly Rhia. I hopes to makes another crossing with you one daily.”
Bumbelwy’s bells jangled as he wagged his head. “With the dragon’s lair just over there, we probably don’t have another day.”
With that, Shim straightened his back. He gazed down on us for another moment, then turned and strode straight into the channel. The setting sun, streaking the western sky with lavender and pink, outlined his massive shoulders and head. High above, a pale crescent moon lifted into the sky.
28:
E
LIMINATING
Rather than try to approach the lair of the dragon at night, I decided to wait until dawn. While the others slept fitfully on the blackened rocks, I sat awake, thinking. For the sixth lesson, the lesson of Eliminating, could mean only one thing.
I must slay the dragon.
My stomach knotted at the very thought. How could one boy, even a boy armed with a magical sword, possibly accomplish such a thing? Dragons, as I knew from my mother’s stories, were incredibly powerful, astonishingly quick, and supremely clever. I recalled the night when, her face aglow from the fire in our earthen hut, she had described one dragon who destroyed a dozen giants with a single swipe of his tail, then roasted them for supper with his fiery breath.
How, then, was I to succeed? Unlike the wizard Tuatha, I knew none of the magic that might help. I knew only that, asleep or not, a dragon would be terrifying to approach, and nearly impossible to eliminate.
As the first rays of sunlight touched the charred shoreline, spreading like fire across the waves, I reluctantly stood. My hands felt cold, as did my heart. I pulled one of Shim’s apples from the pocket of my tunic and took a bite. Crisp and flavorful though it was, I hardly tasted it. When nothing but the core remained, I tossed it aside.
Rhia sat up. “You didn’t sleep at all, did you?”
I merely gazed at the jagged line of hills, now brushed with pink. “No. And I don’t have even a hint of a plan to show for it. If you have any sense, stay here. If I survive, I’ll come back for you.”
She shook her head, so vigorously that some of the leaves enmeshed in her brown curls tumbled to the ground. “I thought we discussed that already. Back at the Lake of the Face.”
“But this time the risks are too great. Rhia, you’ve been warning me ever since the Dark Hills that I could get lost. Well, the truth is there is more than one way to be lost. And that’s how I feel right now.” I blew a long, slow breath. “Don’t you see? Only a wizard, a true wizard, can defeat a dragon! I don’t know what it takes to be a wizard, really—strength, or skill, or spirit. Cairpré said it’s all that and more. All I know is that whatever it takes, I don’t have it.”
Rhia’s face pinched. “I don’t believe it. And neither does your mother.”
“For all your instincts, this time you’re wrong.” I glanced at Bumbelwy, huddled under his thick cloak. “Should I give him the same choice as I gave you?”
The lanky jester suddenly rolled over. “I’m coming, if that’s what you mean.” He stretched his long arms. “If ever you needed my wit and good humor, it’s now, on the day of your certain death.”
With an expression as somber as one of Bumbelwy’s own, I turned toward the hills. From one of the wedgelike hollows between them rose a dark column of smoke. It twisted skyward, marring the sunrise. I took a step toward it. Then another. And another. At each step, the base of my staff clicked on the rocks like a door snapping shut.
Across the scorched land I marched, with Rhia by my side and Bumbelwy not far behind. Knowing that stealth was essential, we tried to tread as softly as foxes. No one spoke. I rested my staff on my shoulder to keep it from striking the rocks. The jester even clamped his hands over his hat to muffle his bells. As we drew nearer to the smoking hollow, my feeling of foreboding deepened. While the dragon might wait for Fincayra’s darkest day to wake, my own darkest day had certainly arrived.
A low, roaring sound reached us across the blackened flats. Deep as the bass strings of a titanic harp. Regular as breathing. It was, I knew, the sound of the dragon snoring. It swelled steadily as we approached.
The air grew hot, uncomfortably hot, as the rocks lifted into the charred hills. Pace by pace, keeping quiet, we drew nearer to the column of smoke. Here the rocks had not just been seared by flames, but also pounded and trampled by enormous weight. Boulders had been crushed. Gulleys had been flattened. All living things had been destroyed. Eliminated.
Hardly daring to breathe, we crossed a pile of crushed stone. Suddenly Bumbelwy slipped and fell. Rocks skittered down the pile, smacking into the rubble at the bottom. That sound, however, was obscured by the clamorous banging of his bells. They rang out, echoing among the hills like a clap of thunder.
I glared at him, whispering, “Take off that cursed hat, you club-footed fool! You’ll wake the dragon before we even get there!”
He scowled. Reluctantly, he pulled off his three-cornered hat and stuffed it under his cloak.
I led the way into the steep-walled hollow, wiping my brow from the heat. Even through my boots, the soles of my feet burned. The sweltering air rippled like water, vibrating with the snoring sound. Everything reeked of charcoal. With every step I took, the walls of rock drew closer together, submerging me in darkness.
Suddenly I halted. There, partly shrouded by shadows, lay the dragon. He was even larger than I had feared, as huge as a hillside himself. Coiled like a great serpent, his green and orange body, covered with armored scales, could have almost filled the Lake of the Face. His head, smoke pouring from the nostrils, lay across his left foreleg. Beneath his nose ran a row of scales, so blackened from smoke that they resembled a huge moustache. Every inhale revealed his rows of sharp-edged teeth; every exhale flexed his powerful shoulder muscles and shook the vast wings folded against his back. Claws, as sharp as the sword on my belt but ten times as long, glistened in the early morning light. Midway down one claw, like an oversized ring, sat a skull large enough to have belonged to Shim.