Jack, the giant-killer by Charles De Lint Read Free Book Online Page A

showing the boundaries of our realm.”
    Everything was familiar, but foreign at the same time. The shapes of the streets and the placements of surrounding villages and towns were all as they should be, but reading the names Jacky felt as though she’d stepped through Alice’s looking glass, and everything had been turned around.
    “It’s all different,” she said.
    “Just the names. We have our own. And the Court of Kinrowan is not the only Seelie Court either.” He pointed to the area north of the Ottawa River where the Gatineau Hills began. “This is the Laird of Dunlogan’s realm.” Now he pulled out a second map and the finger moved down it, from Kinrowan towards Kingston.
    “And this is Kenrose. But there are gaps, you see. Here and here.” He pointed out shaded areas between the various faerie realms.
    “These are the Borderlands where the fiaina sidhe dwell— the wild faerie that have no allegiance to either Court. But because the fiaina take no side, the Unseelie Court can host against us in the
    Borderlands—unopposed.” He pointed to Winchester.
    “Here is a place where the Host has driven out a Laird’s Court, taking it for their own. Such places grow almost daily now.
    “This map’s not so new now and some of the
    borders have changed, for as Gyre the Elder’s people grow in strength, our own borders shrink. There was a time, Jacky, when you wouldn’t see a bogan though you walked from the High Dales of Dunlogan down to Avon Dhu.” He pointed to the St. Lawrence Seaway as he spoke. “But now… now Gyre the Younger stands outside my Tower, penning me in, and sluagh whisper on the winds that creep between the boards.”
    “Can’t these other Lairds help you?” Jacky asked. The Gruagagh shook his head. “They’re as bad off as we are—if not worse.”
    “What about these wild faerie?”
    “The fiaina are impossible to gather under one banner. They are a solitary folk and won’t see the danger until it’s too late. Since the Host has made no move against them to date, they appear content to remain uninvolved. It’s an evil time, Jacky Rowan, and it’s not getting any better.”
    She pointed to the first map. “It says ‘The Gruagagh’s Tower’ here,” she said, indicating the house they were in. On the map, Belmont Avenue had become Auch Ward Way. “Why does it say Tower?
    This is just a house.”
    “In the homeland, the gruagaghs all had Towers,”
    he explained. “We’re a folk that stick hard to tradition, so that even if the building’s not a tower, we’ll call it one all the same.”
    “Here’s Tamson House,” Jacky said, still poring over the map. She glanced up at him. “It’s called that in our world as well.”
    The Gruagagh nodded. “That is an old magic
    place—a doorway to the Otherworlds of the spirits who were here before we came.”
    Well, there was certainly something odd about the block-long building, Jacky thought. It had always fascinated her when she walked by—especially the towers—but she’d never been inside.
    “Where is Gyre the Elder’s Keep?” she asked. The Gruagagh opened the second map again and showed her. She had to think for a moment before she could find the proper name for the place—at least the name she knew it by.
    “That’s near Calabogie,” she said at last. It was an hour west of Ottawa and she’d had a picnic at a friend’s cottage near there just this summer. “But I don’t remember seeing anything that looked even vaguely like a Keep.” Then she smiled. “But it’s not a Keep, is it? You just call it that.”
    The Gruagagh nodded. “The Giants’ Keep is a cave—a well-guarded cave, Jacky. You’ll find it hard to get near to it, little say inside, even with a hob skilly man’s stitcheries to help you.”
    “But I have to try, don’t I?”
    The Gruagagh nodded again. “I suppose you must.”
    “If I get the Horn, will you help me call the Wild Hunt? We can set it on the giants and see how much