Giant Cold

by Peter Dickinson

  Did he find what he was looking for? Anything about the giant?

  A spark of hope, the first since you woke all that long day and night ago, glows at your centre. Quick, before they wake, climb down, run to the book, scramble up where the spine makes a valley and on up the curve of paper onto the flat plain of words. A fly, large as a pig, snouts into a crumb on the opposite side. Walk to the top of the page and begin to read, pacing to and fro, spelling out the big black letters as though you were reading the stones in a graveyard.

  OF APPLE ISLAND

  This land lies in the western sea, beyond any other land nineteen days sail on a fair wind, and it is named for that from far off, long ere it be seen, the sailors know it by the odour of its trees.

  Now in the said island, there are no seasons, but it is summer through the livelong year, whereby the trees bear fruit month by month without ceasing. And a kindly prince rules the land, with courtiers rich and worthy, and good scholars, and men of many crafts. But that the men of Apple Island be not overweening in their good fortune, they teach their children always that upon a day there will come from the sea a giant all of ice, the which they name Giant Cold, but with what ruin he may visit the said island I do not know.

  This I have from Mondobundus called the Navigator, who speaks of it in doubtful wise. A more certain thing I learn from the sailors of Haskilly in the north of our own country. Upon the cliffs nearby Haskilly comes a certain goose to make its nest, and the name of this goose is Red-Necked Looby, for that on its neck it bears no feathers. Now this bird at the coming of winter, by the nakedness of its neck being unfit to abide the snow and ice, takes wing and flies all in one flock to Apple Island, where it dwells while that it is winter in the northern seas. But upon the coming of spring, it returns all in one flock, a marvel to see, no man can count the number of it, and upon the cliffs of Haskilly it makes its nest anew. Thus there is a saying among these sailors that the said goose is an Apple Island Trader, for but few ships make so far a journey to trade.

  This tale of the Looby I hold for certain, for I have heard the same from many an honest sailor. But concerning the truth of the tale of Giant Cold, I take this to be doubtful. Who has not …

  How can you turn the page of a book that is big as a carpet? How can you grapple with a page when you must stand on it to begin? A hinge creaks as you struggle to prize up one edge. The sailor enters, peeps around, listens. Strange how you know a thief by the way he moves. He is afraid but eager, tiptoeing towards the table. Huge hands, hairy-backed, close over the box where you slept. He lifts it, peers, pokes this way and that among the silk, grunts disgust.

  Where can you hide on the big bare page?

  His eyes are stupid, but sharp. He glances round. A hand swoops. You cower in the black cavern below his palm.

  “Got you!” he whispers. “You’re coming with me, elf-child. You’re going to make me a pot of money.”

  Darkness. The sweet sick stink of the inside of the sailor’s tobacco-box. He has cut a hole for you to breathe by, and you try to call out through it as you hear him saying good-bye, but your voice is too thin and high for the men to hear. Perhaps the cat can hear. It mews. The men do not notice.

  “Well, we have seen wonders together, my friend,” says the scholar.

  “That we have, sir. That we have,” answers the sailor. “Not but I’d have been glad to take another look at that elf-child of yours.”

  “It was never mine. I believe the elf-parents must have come in the night to carry it home. That would be for the best, I think.”

  “You’re right, sir. You’re right it would be for the best. Never a doubt that’s what happened. Ah, you’re a wise one.”

  “Wise in some things, foolish in others, like the rest of mankind. Now, my friend, there is something you can do for me. You remember you told me last night that you had sometimes sailed from Haskilly and seen the loobies nesting on the cliffs?”

  “More than once I’ve done that, sir.”

  “I dreamed all night about Apple Island, and now I have a fancy to send a message. A greeting to those good scholars of whom my book spoke.”

  “Now that’s another question, sir. Didn’t the book say too that there are few ships sailing that way?”

  “That is not my idea, my friend. Look, here is a shilling. Here is my greeting. And here is a bright red ribbon. When you are next in Haskilly, I want you to catch me a live looby and tie my greeting to its leg, using this ribbon. My hope is that some fisherman on Apple Island will see it and wonder what it is and catch the bird to find out. Then he will take my message to some scholar to read. You see? Will you do that for me, in exchange for a shilling and a night’s lodging?”

  “I will, sir. I’ll do that gladly.”

  The cat still mews. How much does it know? Nobody can ever tell.

  THE BOTTLE

  Day after day. Fairground after fairground. People peering in, the big stupid faces stretched to strange shapes by the curve of the glass walls of the bottle which is now your home. All those eyes, bleary or bloodshot or clear, blue or brown or green or in-between, shining with easy wonder as they stare at the elf-child.

  Though the sailor has stupid eyes, he has clever fingers. Before the first fair, he made a table, a chair and a bed, all cunningly jointed so that he could poke them through the mouth of the bottle for you to unfold and set into place. Next he made a tiny knife and plate and found the husk of a grass-seed for you to use as a cup. Each time a fresh batch of fairgoers cram into his tent, you go through your act. You get out of bed and yawn and stretch and then sit at the table and pretend to eat. Then you walk around and do a little dance with somersaults over the table, then yawn and stretch again and go to bed. The show is over.

  At first you tried sulking, but the sailor found he could tap the bottle with the pad of his finger, quite gently so that none of the watchers would think he was doing you any harm. But inside the bottle, ah, it was like being inside a drum, or a heart, the deep beat, heavy and slow, trembling through all your bones till you could not bear it. You had to pretend to like doing what he wanted. You invented your act, to keep him happy.

  Next you made plans to escape. You stored away hard crumbs that would not rot. You sharpened your knife and tried to creep up the slope at the mouth of the bottle, to widen the hole he had cut in the cork for you to breathe by, but the cork was too tough, the blade too weak. You decided to wait for your chance.

  But the days went by and no chance came. The sailor is too careful. Even when he puts you in your padded box to travel between fairgrounds, he always makes sure you have left your knife in the bottle, in case you should try to cut yourself free. And when, sometimes, he lets you out to walk around a table he watches you every second, stretching out a big hairy hand to stop you going anywhere near the edge. Oh, yes, you could jump from the edge without being hurt—you are so light in your smallness. Even the tricks you do in your bottle to please the people in the fairgrounds, you could never have done those at your full size. But he gives you no chance to jump, to find a crack between floorboards, slip through, scuttle between the joists, and then …

  Then what? What use is it anyway to escape, so far from Apple Island? How can you journey there, helpless in your smallness? How could you reach a port, and then what use would it be, when no ships trade into those far seas?

  So, slowly, you begin to forget. At least you are safe in your bottle, and warm and fed. And in his way, the sailor loves you—at least you hear him say so, often.

  “I love you, elf-child, but I wish you’d bring me a bit of luck for once,” he grumbles, climbing to bed after another evening at cards, with all his money gone.

  It is always the same pattern. Another fairground, another purseful of money. A bottle of wine at the inn, and cards. Then more wine and a fresh pack of cards and a prayer for better luck. But the prayer is never answered. He never win
s.

  Late one night he sits in an inn. Your bottle lies on the table. Most of the other gamblers have gone to bed, but an old man with a yellow, always smiling face stays with him. Their voices come boomingly to you through the walls of glass.

  “I was always a lucky player before my shipwreck,” says the sailor. “This last three months I’ve not held a card worth counting.”

  “Perhaps the elf-child is bringing you ill luck,” says the yellow man.

  “Ah, no!” cries the sailor. “You’re wrong there, sir! Me and my elf-child, we’re friends. I care for it like a father, I do. Where would it be without me to mind it?”

  “That’s as may be,” says the yellow man. “All I say is luck like yours is against the run of nature. If it’s not the elf-child, then you’ve crossed a witch, or lied to a sorcerer, or cheated a man with the secret knowledge. But to my mind it’ll be the elf-child putting the ill luck on you.”

  He glances at the bottle and away, smiling more than ever. Next thing he will offer to take the ill luck off the sailor by buying you. But the sailor leaps up, bangs the table and snatches up the bottle, rattling you down to the end of it in his anger.

  “And to my mind, sir, it is not!” he shouts, then lurches off to bed.

  Is it your chance at last? If it is, it is not the kind you were expecting, but at least it might bring you close to a harbour. While the sailor sleeps, you take your knife and cut one of your blankets into strips, which you lay out along the floor of the bottle. Then when he wakes in the morning and peers as always through the glass to see that you are still there, you stand on the table and point. He stares. His big wet lips move in his beard as he spells out the word you have made.

  “L. O. ’Nother O. B. Y. Luh … loo … loo-by? Looby! The Red-Necked Looby! Ah, elf-child, you’ve got it! You were listening to what the fellow told me, then! A man with the secret knowledge. The old man had that, for sure. Did you ever see so many books? Gave me a shilling, he did, too, and I gave him my word back. Cheated a man with the secret knowledge! Sure, that’s the reason of my ill luck since I left him. And they’ll be going, the loobies, any day now. We’d best be off to Haskilly this very morning. Ah, elf-child, I knew you were my friend!”

  Another evening and another inn. The sailor plays cards with men who are sailors too, and right inside your bottle you can smell the wildness of air blown off salt water. Your sailor’s luck has changed, so that the coins he has won lie like shingle round your bottle. Over and over again, he tells the others about his promise to the man with the secret knowledge, and how he has come to Haskilly to catch a looby and tie a message to its leg.

  “Then you’ll need to be smart,” says a fisherman. “They’re wild to catch and the wind is changing. Soon as it lies north-east, they’ll be gone and we won’t be seeing them again till springtime.”

  “This very night I’ll have done it,” says the sailor. “I’ve set a rope over the cliff this afternoon, hanging close by some fine nests. Oh, I’m the thoughtful one. But it’s early still. Let’s deal another few hands and open another bottle, and then I’ll be up on the cliffs to earn my shilling and keep my word to the fellow that has the knowledge.”

  So the night goes on, with always more bets, always one more bottle. At last the other gamblers drift away. The sailor drowses on his bench. The innkeeper comes to put out the lights, looks at the sailor and leaves him sleeping. Now would be the moment. If only you could get out. It can’t be far to the harbour.

  The fire fades in the hearth. Cold creeps into the room, a new cold, smelling of winter. The wind has changed to the north-east.

  In the hour before dawn, the sailor wakes with a mutter, then a cry. He jumps up and runs to the door to look at the night, then lurches back to the table, picks up the bottle and buckles it to the loop in his belt where he carries it between fairgrounds. No time, he must think, to put you into your travelling box. You rattle with your furniture down the glass slope. The money chinks in his wallet, where it hangs from his belt beside the bottle. He staggers out into the street, up the steep cobbles, up the narrow track between fields, out onto the cliff-tops, where the dawn wind whines through the gorse and the black sea thuds against the rocks below. Pale streaks of dawn lighten the eastern sky. A cock crows.

  The sailor lurches around, still fuddled with wine. As you bang about in the bottle, you snatch at your blankets and try to wrap them round you to cushion the bumps. He runs to the cliff edge, finds his rope, kneels and slides smoothly down it. As you slither and rattle, you catch glimpses of the world outside the shape-changing glass, a glitter of white below you where a wave spumes up the cliff, the sky with fading stars, the pale horizon, the black columns of the cliff.

  Then the world steadies as the sailor brakes his slide. You and he hang, dangling above the angry sea. By the faint dawn light you see on a ledge beside you a row of mounds streaked dark and white, glimmering here and there with the sheen of smooth feathers. These must be the loobies, still asleep, thousands and thousands of them all along the cliffs, with their bare necks tucked under their wings for warmth. Past the round of the sailor’s buttock, you watch his arm reach out for the nearest bird. The big, strong fingers grip.

  Stillness explodes. Shapes change. The horizon tilts and swings with the struggle. He has it by one frenzied wing, a huge bird fighting for freedom, its other wing pounding the air, swinging the dangling rope around, out from the cliff, back. …

  A blackness, blacker than night, rushes at the glass wall. A clang, a crash, the rush of icy air, you falling through it, tumbling slowly because of your lightness, while all around you the birds explode screaming from their ledges.

  And you land, lightly still, on something that is not rock. A piece of your bottle clinks into cliff close by, and tinkles into splinters. The thing you are on stirs, heaves, grows a snaking great neck, vast wings, launches itself hooting from the cliff.

  Lie flat, grip the rib of a feather, cling there as the wingbeat steadies and the bird carries you up, past the black cliffs, past the sailor still wrestling with the one last looby that is not flying free. The neck of your broken bottle hangs from his belt.

  Call to him in your thin high voice which he has no hope of hearing.

  “Be lucky now. Be lucky again.”

  He brought you to Haskilly, after all, and put you aboard your Apple Island Trader. He may not have known he was helping you, but he did.

  THE LOOBIES

  And the looby carries you on, not knowing either. After the wing-thunder of their first rising from the cliff, the birds settle into a spiral, a vast stairway of air which they climb into the dawn light. They make the sun come up. It glistens off plumage, white wings dazzling pure, black backs rippling with rainbow flickers. Down below, the green islands off the coast of Haskilly dwindle until they lie like leaves on the dark sea. And still the loobies climb.

  They hoot and honk as they pound up through the diamond air, crying to each other, “Yes. Time. It is time. Time to go. Now.”

  The crash of the breaking bottle could almost have been the signal they were waiting for, because they were waiting for you. But of course they do not know. They go for their own reasons, south by west, to an island where it is summer all year long.

  Your heart in you echoes their calling, whispering “Yes.” The island is calling you, just as it is calling the loobies. You must go, follow the striding giant, but not for his sake. It is your own need you answer, though you do not know why. Something waits for you there, and you will not be whole till you have reached it.

  At last the loobies reach their chosen height. They spread into ragged lines. One last whooping call wavers from flank to flank and then their crying dies away as they settle to a line, a pathway somehow mapped in their minds, as straight as the giant’s march across land and ocean.

  Ah, but it’s bitter cold in the high dawn air, after weeks in the cosy bottle!
One of the blankets you wrapped around you to cushion yourself when the sailor hurried to the cliff is still there, wedged between your body and the bird, a poor coarse thing, no use when you try to spread it over you. And how long can you lie here, grasping the feather-rib with aching fingers? And what if the looby turns its head? Its eyes are set to see almost all round it. It need only twist its stretched neck a little and then surely it will notice the creature it is carrying—a tasty bite, a snack for the journey. And what will you eat yourself when the few crumbs in your pockets are gone? What will you drink? How will you sleep?

  Look at the looby’s back feathers. See how they lie lapped across each other in cunning rows like a tiled roof. Haven’t you plucked ducks at the cottage in the forest? Think. Beneath that layer there is another, a space filled with softer feathers, which keep the bird warm. Edge inward then. Slide slow and careful, to one side and then to the other, first under this feather, then back beneath its neighbour, worming in towards the warmth until you lie in the layer of white down with the armour of outer plumage above you. Huddle into warmth while the big wings, steady as a drumbeat, carry you south-west.

  And so for five days and nights. Drowsing, resting, dozing, sometimes edging warily out to look at the world or drink from the round drops that lie on the feathers when it rains. You find you are not the only passenger on this journey. There is a thing like a blind crab, as big as your foot, that creeps among the feather-stems and feeds on a still smaller animal, a flat round brownish thing like an oyster that does not move, but fastens itself to the looby’s skin and sucks. When your stored crumbs are gone, rather than starve, you try it. It crunches between your teeth like biscuit but tastes of sardine.