The window brightened with a flash of lightning. The thunder followed soon after, booming through the sky.
“That’s weird you were born in a thunderstorm,” said Dickie. And Carolyn, at the end of the row, added, “It’s unlucky, you know.”
“No fooling,” said James. “My dad says it blew a big hole in the roof and burnt up the wires like crazy. He says it pushed all the nails out of the walls, and the pictures fell down in every room. He says being born in a storm means you can see the future.”
The window glared with lightning; it shook with thunder. And the rain started then, so heavy that it seemed they were looking out through a waterfall, at a world as dark as night. Water swept down the glass in waves and ripples, and the wind made a howling noise round the drain spouts and the eaves. And the ivy clung on as it rustled and heaved, shedding leaves that whirled away on the wind.
CHAPTER
TEN
THE GNOME RUNNERS
Behind the storm, the sky was clear and bright. A white swan came down on whistling wings and landed on Piper’s Pond. All around, the grass was strewn with twigs and leaves.
Laurie watched the rain steaming away from the ledge and the windowpane. She heard the sound of someone coming, and turned to see a boy in a wheelchair. He looked like a hillbilly farmer, with big ears and a missing tooth, his hair like a snarl of copper wires. Behind him, a girl appeared, peeking shyly into the room.
“We’ve heard about the story,” said the boy. “Can we listen?”
“Sure, I guess,” said Laurie.
They came trundling in and wheeled their chairs behind the iron lungs. The boy was Peter; the girl was Ruth. Peter wore leg braces under his trousers, and his black shoes were built right into them. Ruth had a gray blanket over her lap, covering her legs and feet. Her face was spotted with pimples, and she looked everywhere except at people’s faces.
“We sort of know what’s going on,” said the boy, “’cause everybody’s talking about it. But where’s Jimmy now? He’s the giant-slayer, right?”
It was Carolyn who answered, turning her head on the pillow to look. “He’s come out of the stupid swamp, and now he’s heading for the mountains.”
“He’s crossing a field of heather,” said Chip. And Laurie took it up from there.
The heather was as high as Jimmy’s knees. It was tough and springy, so that he felt as though he was walking across an enormous hairbrush, snagging his feet in the bristles. Creepy little bugs shaped like triangles kept leaping around him, pinching his legs.
At first he staggered and struggled, every step such an effort that he thought he would never get out of the fields and into the woods again. He stumbled many times.
At dusk Jimmy could still see the witch’s burned-out tree behind him. He spent a night in the heather, hiding as well as he could from the bugs. With his shirt pulled over his head, his hands turtled inside it, he slept in a curled-up ball, a tiny thing all by himself in an endless stretch of heather. In the dark a herd of deer went bounding past him, their white tails bobbing among the stars. Then a flight of gryphons flapped overhead, and soon the deer were shrieking.
Jimmy forged on. It was late in the morning when he reached the forest again and found a trail beside a tumbling river. He trudged upstream, round rapids and waterfalls, until he looked up and saw a bridge ahead, and the ramshackle home of a troll underneath it.
Jimmy had been taught to never trust a troll, so he took to the woods and struggled on. An hour later he came to a road that cleaved through the forest. He turned to his left, walking up the middle of the road toward the mountains of the giants.
At a beaver pond that afternoon, he came across an old cart pulled up on a strip of grass, and an old gray donkey in the harness. The cart was nothing more than a big box with a tiny door and window in the back and another window in the front, meshed with iron bars. It was the sort of cart that was driven by beaver hunters, but lashed to the side was an enormous bundle of pipes and rope, and a leather ball that looked like the head of a snake.
Jimmy looked up and down the road, then out across the pond in the hope of seeing a fellow traveler. Instead, he saw two.
They were swimming in the pond. One was fat and round, the other as skinny as an eel. They floated on their backs, the fat one blowing water from his mouth like a fountain. Jimmy sat down in the shade of the wagon and watched the old donkey graze in the grass.
The men had piled their clothes on the beaver dam. They clambered out, dressed, and came along the shore together.
It was the fat one who was the first to see Jimmy leaning against a cart wheel. “Zounds!” he cried, stopping in his tracks.
The thin man looked just as surprised. “Where did that one come from?” he said.
Jimmy smiled at the men. He raised his tiny hand as a greeting. “Hello,” he said. “I’ve come from the swamp.”
The men seemed amazed. They looked at him and then at each other with expressions of utter disbelief. The thin one scratched his head. “Am I hearing right, Meezle?” he said.
“Yes, it’s true; I came out of the swamp,” said Jimmy proudly. “I even met the Swamp Witch there.” He stood up as tall and straight as he could. “She sent me to kill Collosso.”
The fat man laughed. He didn’t have the jolly, booming sort of laugh that Jimmy would have expected, but a schoolgirl’s timid giggle. Tee-hee-heeeee. Tee-hee-heeee.
“It’s not funny,” said Jimmy, offended. “The Swamp Witch said I’m born to kill giants.”
The men exchanged glances. The fat one said, “You’re a lingo, aren’t you? Tell the truth now.”
“I don’t even know what a lingo is,” said Jimmy, a bit annoyed. “I’m the son of Fingal, from the Dragon’s Tooth. And I don’t see why you’re laughing at me.”
“Oh, I’m not laughing at you,” said the fat man. He wiped a hand across his face and put on a solemn look. “It’s just … well, a little fellow like you taking on Collosso?” He shook his head. “You’ve got spunk, all right. Jiggs, wouldn’t you say the boy has spunk?”
“Piles of it,” said the thin man.
“Oodles, even.” The fat one grinned. “We’re Meezle and Jiggs. I’m Meezle.”
“I’m Jiggs,” said the thin man.
“I think we can help you,” said Meezle. Tee-hee-heeeeee.
The fat man pulled his partner aside. They went a few yards down the road and stood talking in low voices, with Meezle doing most of the talking. Both glanced now and then at Jimmy, and went on with their whispers. Finally they nodded and came back, each with a huge, friendly grin.
“We’ve decided to throw in with you,” said Meezle. “We’ll help you take on Collosso. If you’ll have us, of course.”
“That would be terrific,” said Jimmy.
“But first there’s a little job needs doing,” said Jiggs.
Tee-hee-heeeee. Meezle laughed. “It’s not that you have to do it. We thought maybe you’d want to, that’s all. Scratch our backs, we scratch yours.”
“What sort of job?” asked Jimmy.
“Come up on the cart and I’ll tell you.”
The seat wasn’t big enough for the three of them, so Jiggs climbed aboard the poor old donkey. Meezle took the reins and gave them a shake. “Get up, Dinkey!” he shouted.
The donkey brayed and stretched, then pulled against the harness, and off they went along the road. There was one wheel that squeaked with every turn, a shrill sound that grated inside Jimmy’s head. But he was glad to be riding instead of walking.
Meezle got right to business. “We’re gnome runners,” he said. “We catch the little fellas.”
“Why?” asked Jimmy.
“Profit, mostly.” Meezle shifted on the seat, and the whole cart leaned sideways. “Would you care to give it a try?”
“Well, I’d like to,” said Jimmy. The wheel squeaked below him. “But I’ve got a giant to kill, and—”
“Won’t take long,” said Meezle. “What
do you say? Do you really fancy taking on that giant by yourself?”
“I don’t know how to run gnomes,” said Jimmy. “I never met a runner.”
“Nothing to it. If you can fall off a log, you can run gnomes,” said Meezle. “Usually, we run them with the snake. One of us shoves the snake into the house and shouts through the pipe, and the other does the netting. But you could fit right inside a gnome house. You herd them; we trap them. Simple as that, my little friend. We run the gnomes and head on to the castle.”
“Well, all right,” said Jimmy.
“Good for you.” Meezle clapped the giant-slayer on the back. “You’ll go in by the top when I give the word, and—”
“The top of what?” asked Jimmy.
“The cave! By golly, you think gnomes live in trees?”
“I don’t know where they live,” said Jimmy. “I’ve never seen a gnome.”
Tee-hee-hee. “Gnomes are everywhere,” said Meezle. “I’ve seen six in the last mile.”
“Really?”
“Ask Jiggs if it isn’t so.”
“It’s so,” said Jiggs.
“When you’re walking down the road and you hear something in the bushes but you can’t see a soul, that’s a gnome,” said Meezle. “When no one’s looking at you but you feel that someone is, that’s a gnome. When you catch a movement in your eye, then turn and nothing’s there, that’s a gnome. They’re quick as foxes, sly as all get-out. Gnomes is everywhere, as they say.”
The cart rumbled along so slowly that it raised barely a feather of dust. The wheel squeaked, and the box rocked side to side. “How far is the cave?” asked Jimmy.
Tee-hee-heeee. “We’ve just passed it.”
Jiggs patted Dinkey’s neck, a friendly little gesture. “You never go straight at a gnome house,” he said. “You always circle round it. Otherwise, you find it empty.”
Meezle drove half a mile farther before he brought the cart to a stop. “Whoa, Dinkey,” he said as he pulled on the reins.
Jiggs stayed with the donkey while the fat man took Jimmy into the woods. The ground was steep and rocky, with enormous boulders strewn along the slope.
“Keep quiet now,” said Meezle. He went at an angle up the hill, puffing with every step. Jimmy followed close behind, round boulders and trees, climbing from ledge to ledge.
At the top of the slope, Meezle squeezed between two boulders. He had to suck in his stomach and push himself through, like a cork trying to press itself into a bottle. In the space behind them was a hole in the cliff, a black tunnel. “Here’s where you go in,” said Meezle.
The tunnel was just the right height for Jimmy to stand upright at the entrance. He smelled peppermint and lavender on the cool draft that came from inside. He heard a strange sound, a sort of coo and mutter that reminded him of home. It was the same happy noise that the chickens had made in his hen house as they settled into the nesting boxes. Suddenly, in his mind, he was standing with his mother at the doorway there, smelling the straw of the chickens’ nests.
“Stop gawking and listen,” said Meezle. “Me and Jiggs will go down to the entrance, over there by that tree. When we’re ready we’ll signal with a red flag. Soon as you see it drop, in you go.”
“What do I do?”
“You run. Fast as you ever ran before. You won’t see a thing at first, but don’t worry. The tunnel will spiral to the right and go downhill.” Meezle made a circle in the air with his finger. “Gnome tunnels always spiral to the right. It will take you to the upper chamber. Understand?”
“Yes,” said Jimmy.
“You keep shouting, ‘Run, gnome, run!’ as loud as you can. You waves your arms like this.” Meezle flung his arms in all directions. He looked like a fat spider trying to feel its web. “That’ll clear them out. They’ll head downhill; they always do. Then you just run them, Jimmy. Keep shouting—‘Run, gnome, run!’ Keep waving, and run the lot of them from chamber to chamber, till they spill out the bottom. Me and Jiggs will catch them there. Understand?”
“Yes,” said Jimmy again.
Meezle left the giant-slayer at the gap between the boulders. He disappeared down the slope, and a long time later the creak of the cart wheel came faintly through the woods, fading away with every turn.
Jimmy looked uneasily toward the mouth of the cave. He had never seen a gnome, and wondered what he would do if a bunch came rushing out right then. Like the Tellsman he had met on the road, he was afraid of the creatures. What he knew of gnomes he’d been taught by Fingal. He imagined them as stupid things but cunning, little better than moles or badgers. He knew they worked in the mines, for digging was about all that a gnome was good for. Or so Fingal had told him.
The sun and the shadows moved around him. Jimmy waited for hours, it seemed, and was beginning to think that the runners were playing some cruel sort of joke when the red flag popped up below him, just where Meezle had said it would. Jimmy leaned on a boulder and stared at that dot of red in a world of green. Afraid to look away, he made his eyes hurt with the staring, until the ground and the trees seemed to shimmer and sway.
Then the flag fell. Jimmy turned and raced for the tunnel.
He went in at full speed, and in a moment was in utter darkness. His shoulder rubbed on the stone wall; his feet pattered on the ground. The smells grew stronger, the chattering louder. A crack of light appeared, widening quickly as he whirled through the spiral. He started shouting: “Run, gnome, run!”
He flew out of the tunnel and into the chamber. The ceiling soared above him in a room as big as a church, aglow in the light of a hundred lamps. A dozen gnomes were sitting on the floor, all looking up with terror in their eyes.
Jimmy hadn’t expected them to look like little men. But that was just what they were: little old men with white beards and worn faces. They all looked alike, in red slippers and green trousers, in long caps with tassels on the tips.
All the stories he’d heard, the warnings about gnomes, came back to him. More from fear than anything, Jimmy waved his arms; he screamed and shouted, “Run, gnome, run!”
Up they got, the little old men, their quiet chatter now a frightened squeal and squawk.
“Run, gnome, run!” cried Jimmy.
They bolted for a door in the opposite wall. They crowded through it, pushing each other so that some of them stumbled and fell. The fallen ones shrieked as they struggled up again.
Three more fled from the next room, and four from the one after that. Jimmy herded them on, full of excitement now. The slap of the gnomes’ little slippers, the squeal of their voices, made his blood rush fast and hot. If Meezle had told him to stop at the third chamber, he couldn’t have done it. He had no thought now except of herding gnomes.
They leapt up from games of dice and stones, from beds of cedar boughs, from a dinner table set with wood. The plates were wood, the goblets wood, the knives and forks were sticks. And the gnomes threw them all down and toppled their chairs as they ran for the door.
“Run, gnome, run!” cried Jimmy.
They fled through bedrooms and sitting rooms, through a kitchen with a small fire burning in a pit. They ran through a chamber stuffed with gold and silver.
For a moment, Jimmy froze. He stood there with his little arms held high and far apart, his mouth still open from shouting. He looked around at countless riches, at more than even his father had ever dared to dream about.
The gold was raw, straight from the earth. It was piled to staggering heights, more gold than had ever been seen by any king of the land. There was another pile of silver that was nearly as high, and another of diamonds, and another of rubies and opals and emeralds in a shimmering jumble of colors. Suddenly and completely, Jimmy felt the greed of Fingal.
In the door, a gnome had stopped. He was looking right at Jimmy, and Jimmy was the taller by nearly a quarter of a cubit. Somewhere down the hill, past the lower chambers, Meezle and Jiggs were shouting, and all the gnomes were shrieking. But the one old gnome didn’t s
eem frightened: only sad, and maybe a bit angry.
In little more than an instant, Jimmy had passed from excitement to greed. And now he wasn’t sure how he felt at all. He was partly ashamed and partly angry, as though he’d been caught doing something shameful. He couldn’t stand to see the gnome looking at him, so he waved his arms and shouted again, “Run, gnome, run!”
The gnome didn’t move.
“Run, gnome, run!” Jimmy raced toward the little man, waving and shouting. But the gnome didn’t budge even then. So Jimmy ran right past and left him standing there alone.
He ran through a chamber full of shovels and picks, another stuffed with gnome-size overalls and tiny helmets with lanterns on their fronts. And then he was outside, out on the slope of jumbled boulders, and Meezle and Jiggs were there, laughing as they bundled all the screaming gnomes into a ragged cargo net.
“Ah, Jimmy,” said Meezle. “Good work, boy. Good running.”
Meezle and Jiggs dragged the gnomes in a kicking, squirming ball over the rocks to the wagon. Jimmy watched the red shoes and red caps tumbling along; he saw the beards and the faces and the eyes of the gnomes. The little men reached out through the net and jabbered away in their frightened squeals.
“Shut up! Shut up!” cried Meezle as he stuffed them in the cart. Jiggs slammed the door and threw the latch in place. He put away the net.
Tee-hee-heeee. “Off we go,” said Meezle.
Jiggs took his place on Dinkey’s back. Meezle helped Jimmy into the seat, then climbed up beside him. He got the cart moving. “So,” he said casually. “Did you see any gold in the gnome house? Hmmm?”
Jimmy looked up at Meezle. Behind rolls of flesh, his eyes seemed small and rat-like.
“You’ve heard it said, I’m sure,” said Meezle. “Gnomes and gold is like bees and honey. Their homes are full of the stuff.”
“It was pretty dark in there,” said Jimmy. “I was busy running.”
“But if you saw gold you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?” Meezle was squinting greedily. “You wouldn’t think of keeping it for yourself, or anything like that? We’re partners, after all. Aren’t we?”
The Giant-Slayer Page 13
