The Stone Giant by James P. Blaylock Read Free Book Online Page B

desperate and dangerous incantations. The ground heaves, mountains crack asunder, and the giants are swallowed by the earth and crushed, droplets of giant blood splashing into the river and solidifying into little globes likes water-cooled obsidian.
    Escargot was particularly fond of stories that took place eons in the past, in a past so distant that anything might have happened. Then the air was so full of magic that the wind sang when it stirred the leaves on trees or blew through willows along a river. The Moon was still close enough to the Earth so that with a really long ladder – the sort, perhaps, that the linkmen use to pick fruit in their orchards – a man might climb high enough to touch it. Smithers was full of that sort of thing. It didn’t matter where you started reading Smithers’ books, really. They were like one vast history that began in mist and hadn’t yet ended, and it didn’t make a nickel’s worth of difference whether you started in at chapter twelve, which chronicles the arrival of the armies of the field dwarfs at the battle of Wangley Bree, or in chapter forty-two, in which the light elves sail to the Moon in a flying machine to explore the emerald caverns of the Green King. In short, there was no end to adventures in Smithers, and in the three hours that Escargot had before it was time to visit old Stover, he could look into only a smattering.
    But he was anxious to pay Stover a visit. As ten o’clock drew near and passed, he found himself checking his watch again and again, certain that more time had gone by than really had and making up and discarding conversations that he was likely to have with the tavern keeper. At last he stood up, put Smithers into the blanket, slung it all over his shoulder, and set out toward town, whistling a higgledy-piggledy tune.
    Stover stood on the boardwalk outside the tavern door, slapping whitewash onto the wooden siding and scrubbing it off with a brush whenever he slopped it across the stones of the foundation. Escargot watched him from across the street. There was something oddly satisfying in the scowl on Stover’s face. It was a scowl that seemed to suggest that there was nothing he loathed more than whitewashing. He could, of course, hire any of a number of village boys or girls to do the whitewashing for him, for a fee. But the idea of fees turned Stover purple – they were worse than whitewashing, worse than anything. Escargot strolled across the street, still whistling.
    ‘Whitewashing is it?’ he said cheerfully.
    The old man gave him an up and down look. ‘If I’ve got any left after I finish here I’ll give you a coat of it too. But don’t count too heavily on success, sir, for it’ll take a bucketful at least to hide the grime that covers the likes of you.’
    Escargot hadn’t been prepared to be insulted. His imaginary conversations that morning had involved his insulting Stover, and Stover wringing his hands and politely apologizing. He forced himself to stretch his grin. ‘Leta still renting the room upstairs then?’
    Stover stared at him and shook his head – not by way of answering, but as if Escargot’s question were so foolish that no answer would work.
    ‘I’m not at all surprised, actually,’ said Escargot. ‘I suppose she’s had her fill of Stover’s Tavern. But I rather fancy it, myself. I’ve been thinking that a man like me might elevate himself if he was to study a man like you, a pillar, as they say, of the village.’
    ‘Go away,’ said Stover.
    ‘I’m very serious. If Leta’s moved out, I’ll take her room.’
    ‘I haven’t any room to rent, not in the tavern I don’t. I
do
, however, have the power to let you into a room in Monmouth Prison very cheap. And they’d give you a fresh set of clothes along with it. Abandonment, sir, is worth a year under the law. Civil disruption, of course, is worth a month of two more. And if you’re inclined toward violence, which I haven’t any doubt you are,