Power of Three

by Diana Wynne Jones

  Gair did not like it in the house. A faintly pulsing feeling of depression took hold of him there, rather like the feeling he had had in Garholt, only not so strong, and colder somehow. He would have been very troubled by it but for the interesting strangeness of the house. It smelled of water, and mustily of old, old building, with newer, cleaner smells on top. Everything possible was square. Giants seemed to want things square as naturally as people wanted them rounded. Gerald led them to a square, hard-white room, full of silver things, where they took off their sopping clothes and dried themselves with vast towels. Brenda had recovered. They could hear her shouting to be told where the bacon lived, whatever that meant. Gair and Ayna were alarmed by the strange silver fitments. But Ceri, who was recovering rapidly now that they were safe, looked thoughtfully at one and made it send out a stream of hot water. It was he who discovered the use of the thing Gerald called the loo, for which they were all grateful and which amused them considerably.

  Then Gerald came back with an armload of old clothes and took theirs away to dry, looking at the garments with interest as he gathered them up. They found Giant clothes quite as queer. The most fascinating things were the magic fastenings called zippers. Once again, it was Ceri who discovered how they worked.

  “We might almost be Giants!” Ayna said, when they were zipped into the clothes which fitted best. “We must thank them. I’d no idea Giants were so kind.”

  In the kitchen, Brenda was making achingly appetizing smells at a box where there seemed to be no fire. Nevertheless, when she turned the food onto plates, it was perfectly well-cooked. They were a little embarrassed at having to sit at a table to eat, instead of round an eating-square, but, as Ayna said, it was not so different except that your feet dangled. Brenda, as might have been expected from the size of her, put out a stacked plateful for herself, too. And Gerald, when he smelled the food, said he thought he could manage a second lunch. Shortly, they were all tackling strips of fried salt meat, huge eggs and quantities of wheat-bread and butter. Brenda made a hot drink called tea, but they found they preferred the mild-tasting cow’s milk.

  “Ayna, Gair and Ceri,” said Brenda. “Have I got that right? Funny names! Where do you live and all? What happened?”

  Before they could be sidetracked by the explanations Brenda clearly wanted, Ayna and Gair tried to thank the two Giants for their help. “I mean,” Gair said shyly, “it was the way you came and said ‘What do you want me to do?’ which was so good.”

  “Not asking questions, just helping,” Ayna agreed.

  Gerald seemed embarrassed and said it was nothing. But Brenda said, “Don’t be silly. You needed helping, so we helped. That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it, Gerald?”

  “Yes. It was like a call for help at sea, when all the ships in the area go,” Gerald said. “Even if it turns out to be a practical joke. I thought yours was, actually. I thought it was Brenda, or the yobboes up in the village.”

  “So did I,” said Brenda. “Or Gerald.”

  This explanation cast a new light on Giants. Gair thought about it while Ayna told how they came to be marooned in the pool. And here he found another peculiarity of Giants. Though they were both sympathetic about the disaster in Garholt, Gerald awkwardly, Brenda heartily, it was the unimportant details that really interested them.

  Brenda said, several times, “Fancy the Moor being full of—er—you all, and those Dories, and us never knowing!”

  “Well, the Moor is supposed to be haunted,” Gerald said, equally interested in this fact. “Now we know why.”

  It was the same when Ayna said she had made the pool safe from the Dorig. The Giants’ chief interest was in how she had done it.

  “I said the words and planted a thorn tree, of course,” Ayna explained. “Then they couldn’t touch the water.”

  “Magic, you mean?” Brenda asked, sharply and eagerly.

  “No,” said Ceri. “Words.”

  “That’s what she meant,” said Gerald. “A magic spell.”

  “No it wasn’t,” Ceri insisted. “It was words, and words are quite ordinary. Magic is things like your talking boxes and the box that cooks without fire.”

  “Those aren’t magic. They’re science,” said Brenda.

  “And electricity,” added Gerald.

  There was silence, as each side discovered it did not understand the other. Gair found Ayna and Ceri looking at him, trusting him to be wise enough to explain. Though he did not feel very wise, he did his best.

  “There’s nothing magic about words,” he said. “They just do things if you say them right. Look, if I say, ‘Pass the bread, please’—no thanks, I didn’t mean it really— you give it to me.” This practical demonstration made both Giants laugh until the table shook. “But,” said Gair, “if I just said nonsense, like—er—gobbledygook or something, then you wouldn’t give me the bread. And it’s the same with everything else. You just have to say the right words.”

  “Well,” said Gerald, “I’d still call that magic. But about electricity—”

  “See here,” Brenda interrupted. “Those Dories. They fair give me the creeps—sort of fishy and snaky, with those starey yellow eyes. Can they turn themselves into anything they want?”

  “Yes, I think so,” said Gair.

  “Then what’s to stop them turning themselves into fleas and hopping in here under the door?” Brenda said, lowering her voice and glancing uneasily over at the back door.

  Ceri and Ayna looked, too, much alarmed. “Do you think it would seal like our doors?” Ceri asked.

  Gair was sure all doors did. He was about to say the words, when it occurred to him to give the Giants another practical demonstration. He turned to Gerald and told him the words. “Stand in front of it and say them,” he said. “Then see if it opens.”

  Gerald did so, in the most awkward and unconvinced way. Then he put out a large hand, lifted the latch and tugged. The door would not open. “Blimey!” he said. “It works!”

  “How creepy!” said Brenda, shaking the table with a happy shudder. “Did you use words to broadcast on our radios?”

  “No, that was a Thought,” said Ceri. “And I didn’t get it right, either.”

  This caused another wave of interest from the Giants. They were not satisfied until Ceri had explained both his Gifts to them, found a penknife Gerald had lost a week before—it was behind the cooking-box—and broken and joined the butter dish.

  “That’s better than Uri Geller!” said Brenda. “You could make your fortune!”

  Ceri felt suddenly shy, which was a most unusual feeling for him. He tried to divert Brenda’s quite overwhelming interest by explaining Ayna’s Gift.

  “Ooh!” said Brenda. “You tell fortunes! Tell mine!”

  Ayna put her head up. “Sorry,” she said. Her voice shook. “I—I’m not going to use my Gift again. Not—not until I’m sure someone asks me the right questions. None of this would have happened if—” She had to stop there.

  There was a difficult moment. Brenda did her best to smooth it over by asking Gair, “And have you got a Gift, too?”

  Gair had been afraid one of them would ask him that. Glumly, he shook his head. Brenda yelped as he did so. He rather thought Gerald had kicked her under the table.

  “Oh yes you have, Gair,” Ayna said. “If they’d listened to you, they’d have asked me the right—” She had to stop again.

  “What do you mean?” said Gair.

  “You warned them,” said Ceri. “You said not to let any living creatures in—and the Dorig came in as sheep.”

  “But—but that was just—” Gair wanted to explain that it was simply a feeling he had had. Then it occurred to him that he had no idea what a Gift should feel like. For all he knew, Ayna and Ceri were right. And if they were, then it meant Gair had the rarest Gift of all. Only five people since King Ban the Good had had Sight Unasked. That took some getting used to. So, too, did the discovery that, whatever he was, no one could call him ord
inary now—now when the Dorig had conquered Garholt and it was too late to make any difference. Depression pressed in on Gair. It took him a second or so to see that it was caused not only by this discovery, but by the pulsing of the house he was in. Rather uncertainly, since the whole thing was so new to him, he said, “I think there’s something wrong about this house. It feels—oh, threatened.”

  Brenda gasped. Gerald looked gloomy. “It’s more than threatened,” he said. “This time next year it’s going to be under water.”

  “Our house, too,” Brenda said mournfully.

  “Now do you believe me, Gair?” Ayna asked, wiping her eyes on her hand.

  “But why is it going to be under water? How?” said Gair. “Is it the Dorig?”

  “No. People in London!” Gerald’s gloom and bitterness were large even for a Giant. “They want to make the whole Moor into a beastly reservoir and then drink it.”

  “Has your dad had any luck?” Brenda asked anxiously.

  “I don’t know. I hope so,” said Gerald. “He’s got some high-up from the Ministry that he used to be friends with coming here tonight. But Aunt Mary says they hate one another’s guts now, so the high-up will probably flood the Moor just to spite him. Aunt Mary’s gone to that meeting about it. I wish I could do something!”

  “Me, too,” said Brenda. Sighing gustily, she lumbered to her feet and began, very noisily, to clear away the plates.

  The others sat quietly, overcome by the disasters dogging the Moor. First the Dorig—now this. None of them could quite understand why the Giants should be so thirsty that they needed to fill the Moor with water, but none of them quite liked to ask. Gerald and Brenda were miserable enough about it. They wondered what they should do when the Moor was a lake, only fit for Dorig.

  Gair felt a sad sense of triumph, because he had connected the pulsing of the house with Brenda’s talk of flooding from the first. The pulsing depression weighed on him harder as soon as he thought of it, and, as he had in Garholt, he found himself bracing himself to resist it. And the more he resisted, the harder the feeling pressed. After a second or so of fierce, private battle, Gair realized it was trying to tell him something else. He was scared. But he was also ashamed of himself. He had forced Ceri to come to terms with his Thoughts, and yet he was too frightened himself to do anything but try to ignore his own Gift. The trouble with Sight Unasked was that it was a Gift so rare that there was nobody alive who knew enough about it to help Gair come to terms with it. He knew he would have to do it on his own. It was a very lonely feeling.

  So, hesitantly and timidly, dreading what might happen, Gair tried to give in to the feeling. It was unpleasant, but not as bad as he feared. Once he was not trying to resist it, the Gift did not batter and press at him. It simply showed him something evil. It was very evil. It was cold, venomous and insatiable. It lay pulsing somewhere in this very house and, what was more, pulsing and chill at the heart of all the troubles on the Moor. It poisoned Giants and, through them, people. Gair, shuddering, realized he would have to find whatever it was and try to destroy it.

  Meanwhile, Ayna pulled herself together and told Ceri to clean his collar. “It’s a disgrace, all black like that.”

  “Yours aren’t much better,” Ceri said sulkily. He took his collar off and rubbed it with a Giant checked table napkin. Ayna and Gair took theirs off, too, and found they were black all round the inside. They took up napkins and rubbed away as well.

  Brenda was exceedingly interested. “They’re ever so pretty!” she said. “Do you wear them always? Aren’t they heavy at all?”

  “No. They’re quite light,” said Gair. And, glad to be distracted from the cold evil he had felt, he explained, as he rubbed, how you had to wear gold or keep it warm, or it would turn back to black ore again. A thought struck him. “Dorig must be warm-blooded,” he said. “Or they couldn’t have collars.”

  “Do they?” said Ayna. “Oh yes. Father got one.”

  Gerald and Brenda were looking oddly at one another. “Green gold,” said Gerald. “I wonder.”

  “That turns to dead leaves in the drawer overnight!” said Brenda. “Oh, that settles it. You are fairies!” She drew a deep wistful sigh. “Do you grant wishes at all?” At this, Gerald scowled and turned away.

  “No,” Gair said patiently. “We don’t grant wishes. How can we? We’re not fairies. We told you. We’re people.”

  “Oh no, you can’t be!” Brenda exclaimed. “You’re so little and sort of delicate, and so pretty!” Gair felt his face going as red as Gerald’s at this, although, when he looked at Ceri and Ayna, he knew what Brenda meant. Though neither of them was much smaller than the Giants, they looked little and fragile beside Gerald’s large features and thicker frame. And both of them were much prettier than Brenda. “And you live forever, don’t you?” Brenda added, rather accusingly.

  “No, we don’t!” Gair said, truly astonished.

  “Shut up, Brenda!” growled the heartily embarrassed Gerald. “They’re not fairies. They’ve told you.”

  “They must be,” Brenda insisted. “They can’t be people, because we are.”

  “No. You aren’t people,” Ceri explained. “You’re Giants.”

  “Well!” said Brenda, very pink. “Big I may be, but Giant I am not! Giants are huge, big as houses. And they’re not true. Anyway, I thought you were called Lymen.”

  “That’s what the Dorig say. We say people,” Ayna said. “We haven’t any other name but people.”

  “Well, neither have we!” said Brenda. “Giants indeed!”

  “Why worry?” said Gerald. “Anyway, they’re nothing like as different from us as those Dorig. Why can’t they be People and we be Humans?”

  “Gerald, you ought to be a politician!” said Brenda.

  Gerald’s face bunched up. “Is that meant to be funny?”

  Brenda and he suddenly remembered they were enemies. They stared at one another with such ferocity that Gair feared they were going to come to blows. He was not sure he could stand it in the confined space of the kitchen.

  Ceri put a stop to it by bursting into tears. “Oh don’t do any hitting!” he wailed. “Everyone was hitting everyone in Garholt this morning. Don’t! Ayna, please can’t I ask you what’s going on there?”

  “No,” said Ayna.

  “Gair,” said Ceri, “don’t you know? Make her tell me!”

  Gair shook his head, feeling tearful himself.

  “But you must want to know!” Ceri wailed.

  “Of course I do. Be quiet. We’ll have to go and see.”

  By this time, the Giants had forgotten their quarrel. “You can’t go and see,” said Brenda. “Those Dories will snap you up the moment you set foot outside the door.” She looked worried. “Gerald, what are they going to do?”

  Gerald looked equally worried. “It looks,” he said slowly, “as if we ought to know what happened at Garholt before we can decide anything. Suppose I take the gun and go and see? Dorig seem to have a healthy respect for us Giants.”

  “And I’ll come with you,” Brenda offered. “Put them in your room and let them put a hex on the door so that no one can find them there.”

  Ayna and Gair consulted together anxiously about this plan. Neither of them dared think what Gest would say to it. But, since Ayna utterly refused to use her Gift, they could think of no other way of finding out what had happened in Garholt. They agreed to let the Giants go. Gerald showed them where his room was and Gair, wondering what his father would think if he knew what he was doing, gave the Giants exact instructions how to find Garholt and open the main gate.

  “I say,” said Gerald, “if there’s any of your people … there, how are they going to know you sent us, and we’re not just marauding Giants?”

  “Don’t keep calling us Giants!” said Brenda.

  “Marauding humans then,” said Gerald.

  This was not difficult. Gair took his collar off. “They’ll know this is mine, if you show them.” He was about to
hand the collar to Gerald, when it came to him how grateful he was to Gerald and how glad he was to have met him properly. He took the collar back and spoke words over it.

  “Gair!” said Ayna.

  “Why not?” said Gair. “I think Father did it.” He passed the collar to Gerald. “There. You can keep it now—keep it warm.”

  Gerald turned Gair’s collar this way and that, almost said something, changed his mind and said something else. “I ought to give you something in exchange. Here.” He took his watch off and handed it to Gair. “That’s gold, too.” The collar was uncomfortably tight for him. He had to keep it in an inner pocket. Then he picked up his gun and Brenda her poker and they tried to open the back door. Of course they could not.

  “Say the opening words we told you, silly!” said Ayna.

  Gerald said them, this time with great conviction, as if he had been using words of power all his life, and Brenda mouthed them with him. The door opened and the two Giants clattered out.

  “They’re almost like people,” Ceri said. “I’d rather have them than Ondo and Aunt Kasta any day.”

  Chapter

  10

  MOST OF THE WAY TO GARHOLT, THE TWO GIANTS, in their different ways, were wondering what to do about Ayna, Gair and Ceri.

  “Poor little souls!” Brenda said, in the sentimental way which never failed to set Gerald’s teeth on edge. “I feel so responsible! Can we hide them? Or should you tell your dad?”

  “No,” said Gerald.

  “We ought to tell someone,” said Brenda. “What’ll any of them do when the Moor’s flooded? Tell that man your dad’s having tonight. Tell him the Moor’s crowded with—Lymen and he mustn’t make it into a reservoir.”

  “You don’t understand!” said Gerald, fingering Gair’s warm collar. He had never been more surprised and honored by any gift in his life, and he felt he owed it to Gair to stop Brenda doing anything so stupid. “Those people have a whole way of life. If we go and show them to a stupid Government official, that’ll be the end of it. He’ll probably make the Moor a reservation and trippers will drive over on Sundays to goop at them. Ceri would probably end up in a circus—and Ayna—and the rest would all be selling carvings and gold collars. Like the Red Indians.”