Giant, page 20
Jeers filled the air. They went on for some time.
‘That’s brilliant,’ said one.
‘Priceless,’ said another.
‘She’s a liar,’ said a third.
‘But very funny,’ said one of the others. ‘Maybe we should book her for our Christmas party.’
Minnie gulped. Her voice shook. ‘It’s very cowardly, you know, pointing that light at us when we can’t even see your faces,’ she said. ‘Now, listen. I’m from Quake Quarter – I promise. And I need to go back there. I’ve got to see my parents, and my giant, and then I have to tell everyone about what we just discovered—’
The jeering and laughing intensified, and then suddenly stopped.
‘Very good, but let’s go back to our original question. Who are you? Where is Minnie? She’s got a ceremony she needs to attend, and if she doesn’t hurry up, her giant’s going to die before she’s able to turn her into stone, and then she’ll be useless to us.’
Minnie’s heart stopped. ‘Going to die?’ she said. ‘Wh-what do you mean? Is she sick?’
‘Sick and tired of being stuck in a city wall, waiting for a child to turn her to stone,’ said another voice, mockingly. ‘She’s been there since Minnie did a runner.’
So they hadn’t been making it up when they’d said they’d stuck her in a city wall. Speck, I should have come home earlier, thought Minnie, feeling her heart crack. I ran away to save you, but I failed.
To her surprise, Robin spoke up. ‘Well, that’s cruel of you. Why have you done a thing like that, to a giant who has served your company her entire life?’
‘We had to make an example of her. Otherwise all the other children might get silly ideas into their heads about preventing their ceremonies, too, and then where would we be?’
Minnie’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Can I see her?’ she said.
‘You can join her, for all we care,’ said one of the officials.
‘Look, I really am Minnie,’ she tried again. ‘Except I changed into a giant. Actually – I didn’t change. I’ve always been one.’
‘Your lies are wasting our time. We don’t look kindly on fugitive giants at the best of times, and certainly not ones who spin ridiculous stories out of thin air,’ drawled the man, his voice as coldly languid as the mist that curled around their feet. ‘Take them to the dungeon.’
Five men in dark clothes rushed at them both and put handcuffs around their wrists. There was an awful whine and the sound of boot meeting ribcage, and she realised, too late, that Twist had tried to fight off the men, loyal as always. She saw them bend down towards him and try to get a leash on him, and she couldn’t bear it any more. ‘Leave him here!’ she pleaded.
There was another dreadful sound of kicking, a final whine, and then silence.
‘Happy to oblige,’ said a guard. ‘He’s not going anywhere now.’
‘Twist!’ she cried, looking into the gloom, trying to find him, but they were marched away, leaving him behind. Tears streamed down her face at the way the guards had beaten the most loyal and beautiful creature she’d ever known. Everyone she had ever loved was lost to her now, in some way or another. Her parents, Speck, her grandmother, the mother she’d never known, Twist … Robin was right. The island was rotten.
FOR AN HOUR, Minnie and Robin were pushed, prodded and marched through the swamp at the mercy of the guards from the Giant Management Company. Minnie, sickened at Twist’s death, had no fight left inside her. When the guards shouted at her for being too slow, adding that she was just another wicked giant, she dipped her head, not bothering to disagree.
By the time they got to the river, she was walking like a servant. Head down, shoulders rounded, eyes on the floor – trying to make herself as unthreatening as possible. There was no bridge to cross the river (the only existing bridge was down in the south), but this didn’t deter the guards working for the Giant Management Company. Down the river bank they went and into its disgusting waters. In a rare moment of unity, everyone held their breath as they splashed through it. The humans sank into its toxic waters right up to their necks, and Minnie was momentarily very glad of her size, for the water only came as far as her knees.
Out of the water, stinking and cold, they all proceeded along the river path. Minnie could barely keep her eyes open: they’d been walking for hours. As the sky lightened a little, she finally saw Robin again, stumbling and shuffling in front of her.
The city gates of Quake Quarter loomed ahead, rebuilt and restored in Minnie’s absence. As they approached, the gates opened slowly to admit them all into the city, and Minnie saw how much rebuilding had happened; many cafés and shops were operating again, fixed with stone statues that she recognised with a pang.
As Minnie walked, she made everything shake: the broken buildings; the tables outside the cafés; the glass in the window panes; the cups of coffee balanced precariously on trays held aloft by waiters; even the people below her.
‘You’re walking too heavily,’ said the guard on her right. ‘Tread softly or you’ll make something fall.’
Minnie tried. She shuffled along, tiptoeing on the pavements, struck all of a sudden by how hard it was to be a giant in a human settlement. She remembered Speck’s closed-lip smile. I’m going to have to learn to hold my smile back, too, she thought, then realised she wouldn’t have all that much to smile about anyway. She cried a little.
‘Stop that now,’ said a guard, although not unkindly.
Everywhere she looked she saw new statues that had been created to prop up the crumbling buildings and sagging walls – many of them giants she’d seen just a few days ago, alive, at Florin’s ceremony. Her eyes went from one to the next, desperately.
‘Speck!’ she shouted as loudly as she could, startling the few shopkeepers opening the blinds on their newly rebuilt shops. A moment later, she was rewarded with the sting of a lash on her left shoulder.
‘Try that again and we won’t be so gentle,’ said the nasty guard.
They were marched over the cobbles. The deeper they went into the Old Town, the more activity she saw; a few townsfolk, but mostly long lines of rubblers, bent and hunchbacked, snaking in and out of the destroyed buildings, carrying out broken bricks and smashed rubble. She saw how many of them were small children. ‘They’re starting early,’ she whispered.
‘They haven’t finished,’ muttered the guard on the right. ‘They’ve been working through the night. Repairing the damage caused by the quake – caused by your lot.’
Some of the little ones looked and waved at Robin, but most of them were yawning with tiredness. Robin, unable to wave back in his handcuffs, shouted greetings to them, with a bright, artificial cheerfulness. ‘Can you look after my chickens?’ he called. ‘Help yourself to the eggs—’
‘How long for?’ shouted a little girl.
‘Oh,’ Robin said, casually, ‘maybe quite a long time.’
Everything looked tiny, Minnie thought, from her new height; the cafés and newsagent’s and city hall that had once loomed over her, she now loomed over. As people began to stare at her, thinking they were watching a new criminal (one shopkeeper even shouted: ‘Was there an attempt on a child last night, guards?’), Minnie felt an intense longing to shrink back to her usual height, and to walk the shiny cobbles as the human she’d once been. As the only giant in a crowd of people, she felt lonely and conspicuous as if she didn’t belong. It must have been awful for the servants, she thought, suddenly. To walk around Quake Quarter for their entire life, knowing that none of it was theirs.
You do belong, said a cross voice inside her, that other Minnie. You belong here more than any of these people. This island belongs to the giants.
It belonged once, but that was a long time ago, she replied to herself, sadly. There was no denying – looking at the stone statues, listening to the march of the boots on the cobbles – who was in charge now.
She remembered what she’d been told about Speck’s whereabouts, and the longing for her grew too great to be contained any more.
‘Where is Speck?’ she said, desperately, to the guards. ‘I need to see her.’
‘Fair enough,’ said the man at the head of the line, in a mocking sort of way. ‘Let’s show you.’
And they were marched away from the picturesque inner circle of the Old Town and into darker, more cramped streets that Minnie didn’t recognise. Here, houses and food stalls jostled side by side against each other, and the air smelled of stale cooking and broken pipes. There were no gardens or roses or hanging baskets here, but overflowing refuse containers and scuttling rats. These were the outer limits of the Old Town, where the less well-heeled islanders lived, and the broken city wall that encircled this quarter cast a dark gloom. The island I thought I lived in never existed at all, thought Minnie. It was an illusion. This, that toxic swamp, and its secrets, are the real island.
A sweet, cloying stench filled the air. Stringy, scraggly screecher birds, the ones who were too old or too lazy to try and hunt, kept swooping down to pick at the black refuse sacks, dragging them partway down the road, and flying off with whatever they found within the bags.
‘Here we are,’ the man said.
Ahead of them, Minnie saw a weary giant, raising her neck with difficulty, and peering at her blearily from a gap in the broken city wall. And that was when Minnie found herself looking at the face she loved more than any other in the world.
For a moment, time seemed to stop. Speck was wedged into the wall, further fixed in place by the thick chains around her ankles and wrists that were drilled into the stone. She was drooping on the spot rather than standing, utterly pale, bruised and weary. Minnie had never seen anyone look so weak and beaten.
At first, Speck gazed at Minnie with an air of puzzlement, as if she couldn’t place her. Then her eyes widened, and she brought her neck up a bit sharper. ‘Minnie? Is that really you?’
‘Yes!’ Minnie stammered.
‘You’re – you’re a giant!’ she said, thickly. ‘It happened!’
‘You thought I might be, didn’t you?’ Minnie said. ‘What gave it away?’
‘I first suspected it at Florin’s ceremony,’ Speck replied. ‘You don’t usually see Quake society people dance like that. And then I couldn’t open the coffee can, but you could. And your eyes went yellow, in certain lights. Speck’s voice was raspy, and she appeared to swallow with difficulty. ‘I wanted to keep you safe, Minnie.’ She peered fuzzily at the guards. ‘Looks like I failed.’
‘It’s not your fault that I got caught,’ said Minnie. ‘But I should never have run away at all. I wouldn’t have done if I’d known they’d do this to you.’
She may have been weak, half-starving and thirsty, but Speck had enough of her old fire within her to flash her eyes. ‘I’m glad you did it,’ she whispered. ‘I’m proud you tried.’ She looked as if she wanted to say something else, but her eyelids fluttered and her head dropped.
Minnie’s vision blurred at the sight of her favourite person suffering so much, pinned into broken stone, waiting for her misery to end. A screecher bird, who had been slowly circling the area, flew down and settled on the wall next to Speck, as if it knew it might not have to wait too long before it could begin to feast.
‘There you go,’ said the man in charge. ‘Now you’ve seen her, let’s go.’
Minnie looked over her shoulder as she was marched away, but Speck’s eyes were closed. The screecher bird, on the other hand, seemed wide awake.
Up the mound they went. They were led down a flight of huge stone steps set into the ruined wall of the castle. She knew what lay ahead of them.
ONCE, WHEN MINNIE had been eight, she and her classmates from Quake School had been shown around the castle ruins on an educational school trip. They had peered down from the broken battlements into the dark dungeon below – a patch of wet earth with a huge metal grille placed over it. She had shuddered at the sight of the giant bones, watched the screecher birds swoop on and off the grille, waiting expectantly for their next meal.
And now she was being led below the battlements, not to the top. Were the birds waiting for her?
‘I really am Minnie Wadlow, you know,’ Minnie said again, not really expecting anyone to listen as they walked towards a dark cold tunnel. ‘My mama and papa will be desperate to see me. Our guard is called Marcus. He likes to drink beer.’ A look of shocked recognition crossed the man’s face below her, which made her add, encouraged: ‘You might even know him. Papa is an earthquake engineer. Mama is called Nanette, she does lots of charity work …’ Her life rolled off her tongue, as she tried to convince someone, anyone, of her identity before it was too late, and she and Robin were abandoned completely to die.
The guard on her left, who was young and passionate about his work, said: ‘You telling us that means nothing. You could have tortured that information out of Minnie.’
Minnie would have laughed if she hadn’t been so scared. They were halfway down the torchlit tunnel, and ahead she could see large white bones strewn haphazardly over a dark dirt floor.
Then they were led through a large stone archway and into the dungeon itself.
‘Any trouble?’ barked a dungeon guard, a thin, wiry woman with extremely white teeth.
‘A little,’ said a guard, blandly, ‘but not much. This giant keeps saying she’s Minnie Wadlow, though. And although we suspect this boy has hidden away Minnie Wadlow, he’s not telling us where, or why.’
‘That’s because I’m Minnie Wadlow,’ said Minnie. ‘Mr Straw did it,’ she added, almost incoherently, struggling to speak through her shock and her exhaustion. ‘With his medicines.’
The dungeon guard cocked her head and stared at Minnie. ‘Is she feverish?’
‘She’s been saying this for hours,’ came the reply.
‘Well, she can carry on saying it,’ said the dungeon guard, ‘because no one will hear her.’ She gave both Minnie and Robin a look that was almost laced with pity. ‘Goodbye, you two. May your demise be swift.’
‘Wait, that’s it? You’re just going to leave us to rot?’ gasped Minnie.
‘That’s generally what we do with criminals who don’t tell the truth, yes.’ The guard turned on her heel and walked back out, and a heavy metal gate dropped down from the archway, its spikes grinding into the dirt floor with a sickening finality. If they walked away now, Minnie knew, she and Robin would starve to death, and Speck wouldn’t be far behind them.
A sudden, desperate idea occurred to her. If she wanted the truth to come out, she’d have to lie first. It was crazy, but it might ensure one more meeting.
‘Wait!’ Minnie hurried to the bars and peered through. ‘Wait! You’re right. I’m not Minnie Wadlow. But … I know where she is. Me and Robin, both of us do.’
The footsteps stopped. The dungeon guard came back.
‘Tell me what you’ve done with that poor little girl,’ said the guard, ‘and I’ll reward you.’
‘How will you do that?’ murmured Robin, swaying on his feet from fatigue.
‘A quick bullet in the heart, painless death. Much better and more merciful than starving away, believe you me.’
‘No, thank you. Listen,’ said Minnie, urgently. ‘I will reveal her whereabouts, but on one condition.’
The dungeon guard frowned and regarded her through the bars. ‘What’s that?’
‘I get to choose who I tell.’
‘And who might that be?’
And suddenly, something inside Minnie woke up. An idea began to develop in her mind.
‘Everyone,’ she said, and her voice shook, but held firm. ‘I want to tell everyone. And …’ she took a deep breath: ‘I’m going to choose where.’
WITHIN A FEW hours, under guarded escort once more, Minnie and Robin were taken out of the dungeon and back to the grubby section of the Old Town, to the section of city wall where Speck had been pinned.
Gathered on the cobbles were all the people Minnie had invited to witness the truth: Mrs Primrose, looking frustrated; Mr Athelstan; Mr Straw; the Lloyd family, who owned the jackal-meat factory; Hester; Florin; and all her classmates. Also invited was every family on Quake Avenue; people who worked for the Giant Management Company; all the shopkeepers; and the entire rubbler district. (Not knowing how long she’d have the upper hand, Minnie had taken full advantage of it and asked for them all to be given the morning off.)
Although many of the servants had been turned to stone in Minnie’s absence, a few remained, and they were also there. As well as these, there were the giants in training from the compound. These giants were young and in immaculate uniforms, and looked baffled and terrified to be out of the GMC compound for the first time in their lives.
And finally, her parents. They stood in the middle of the group looking absolutely dreadful: dishevelled, sleep-deprived, still wearing the clothes they’d worn when Minnie ran away, their faces full of love, shame and guilt as they took in her new appearance and realised what that meant for them. Minnie thought she’d be full of fury when she saw them, but instead she felt pity. She wanted to hug them and ignore them all at once.
There were also a few who had not been invited by Minnie, but were there regardless: twenty Giant Management Company officials. Each one stood by a flaming jackal-skin torch. Each one held a snarling dog on a leash. And there were the screecher birds too, who were bored and sensed trouble, and when there was trouble there was usually food.
It was quite the crowd, and they were getting restless, in the midday heat, with the flames snapping and roaring between them.
Minnie glanced at Speck, who looked even more exhausted than earlier, and seemed to be struggling to keep her eyes open. She glared at the GMC officials, and said, ‘I’m not going to reveal one word about Minnie Wadlow’s location until that giant gets given some food and water.’
Mrs Primrose bunched up her wrinkly little face, and Minnie realised that she didn’t have a kindly face at all – it was nasty, and mean, and pinched. ‘Giant 581 is our property, and her welfare is nothing to do with you,’ said Mrs Primrose.
