The Giant-Slayer by Iain Lawrence Read Free Book Online

slithered off through the grass, and the crayfish scuttled deeper in the mud.
    “Help me, witch!” said Collosso. He settled more deeply in the mud. The black water closed over his shoulders, and his huge head seemed to float there in its red hat. “Please,” he said. “What do I do?”
    “Go home to your castle,” she told him in her croaky voice. “Wait for the slayer to come.”
    “Will he kill me?” asked the giant.
    “He will try,” said the witch. “But remember this: as long as you are living, you cannot be killed.”
    This gave the giant a strange comfort. For the first time in a fortnight, a smile came to his face. The deep lines of worry smoothed away from his eyes, and he muttered to himself: “As long as I am living, I cannot be killed.”
    “Now go,” said the Swamp Witch. “Hurry home to your castle.”
    She was sliding feet first from her chair, vanishing into the swamp. But Collosso cried out, “Wait! There’s more. That wasn’t the end of my dream.”
    “What else did you see?” she asked.
    “He came to find you. I saw him with you in the swamp, and in my dream he spoke to you.” Collosso tried to shift his feet. The water crept higher up his neck. “He bade you to point the way to my castle. He said, ‘I mean to kill Collosso. I will do him in a flash.’ Oh, witch, what does it mean?”
    “Many things,” she said. “But this above all: you must protect me, for your dream must be fulfilled. The giant-slayer must come to see me.”
    “What will you tell him?” asked Collosso.
    “Whatever you like.”
    The giant sighed a mighty sigh. His breath flattened a field of rushes, scattering ducks and blackbirds. “Send him to my castle. Tell him I am waiting,” he said. “And tell him this: before that day is done I will crush him in my fingers like a nit.” Again his hand came out of the water. He pressed his fingers together, as though already crushing. Then he turned around and waded home, with the water churning into monstrous waves until he reached the solid ground. He went full of joy, so happy that he actually skipped across the foothills, over the black ground of burned forests. He sang to himself as he crashed through the dead trees. “As long as I live, I cannot be killed.”
    Straightaway, Collosso put his slaves to work. “Build me a lookout tower half a mile high,” he commanded. “Dig mea moat half a mile deep. Fill it with pitch and tar, and build me a drawbridge to cross it.”
    Collosso collected more slaves, and more after that. He put them all to the task of strengthening his castle. “Hurry,” he told them. “The giant-slayer is coming.”

    In her iron lung across the room, Carolyn sighed as loudly as she could. “That’s so dumb,” she said. “It would take years to finish.”
    “He knew that,” said Laurie. “Collosso figured he had twelve years before the giant-slayer would be old enough to come after him. In all that time, he never rested for an hour.”

    On Jimmy’s first birthday, Fingal lit a candle and went down to the basement of the Dragon’s Tooth. He pulled the bung from a half-emptied cask of brandy and ladled water through the hole. It was a job that he’d done every morning for seventeen years, and it always made him happy. He liked the smell and the gurgling sound, the flash of his candlelight on the pouring water.
    He worked in shadows, for the basement was a gloomy place, the home of rats and spiders. Every now and then he paused to sample the thinning brandy, then smacked his lips and started again. He cackled as he worked, overcome by the thought that he was turning water into gold.
    The cask was nearly full when Fingal heard the Womanshout.
“Fingal!”
The sound, though faint, took him by surprise.
    “Oh, mercy, what now?” he said to himself. “I’ll never have a moment’s peace with a babby in the house.”
    She shouted again.
“Fingal!”
    “All right, all right, I’m coming,” said Fingal.
    He slammed the