A Giant Problem Read online

  “Why are they fighting?”

  The smaller giant pushed itself up from the ground and lunged. Grabbing the larger one around the middle, it lifted the massive body above its head and hurled it against the ground so hard that nearby trees crumpled from the force. The bigger giant thudded to the ground near where Nick and Laurie stood, branches scraping Jack’s back.

  Nick screamed. Laurie dug her fingers into his skin. “Shhh!”

  When the dust cleared, one giant lay completely still, its body half-crumbled into dirt. The other sagged near it, dark, mudlike blood covering its face.

  “Now’s our chance,” Jack said, like a big tree hadn’t almost smashed them flat. “Hear that? It’s stilling. We got to go down there and kill it.”

  Nick looked at the giant, at the rise and fall of its massive chest, at its bent head. “I can’t.”

  “It’s hurt,” said Laurie, like the giant was a dog with a wounded paw. Her voice shook a little, but her expression was firm.

  Jack drew his machete and Nick started talking very fast. “Maybe since it got its territory and it’s hurt, if we just leave it alone, it will go back to sleep.”

  “Right!” Laurie said. “Your prophecy thingy doesn’t say how long they stay awake, does it? And that giant looks pretty tired.”

  “It’s not prophecy, it’s science,” Jack said, but he looked uncomfortable, and Nick was reminded that Jack had seldom, if ever, killed a giant while it was still moving. He’d been going after sleeping giants for years, but sleeping was different.

  “Besides, are you sure you can see—”

  “I can hear fine,” Jack said. “I’ll take care o’ the giant. I don’t like doing it, but it still’s got to be done. You two watch if you want.”

  Nick tried to think of something that would stop Jack from climbing down next to that hulking, hurting thing and trying to slay it, but there was nothing. Instead, he watched Jack creep closer and raise his machete.

  The blade must have caught the moonlight and glittered, or the giant must have heard something, because it turned with a grunt and slapped at Jack, like he was a mosquito that buzzed too close. That slap sent Jack sprawling back toward them, his leg bent at an odd angle and his head knocking hard against the ground. The machete flew out of his hands, clanging against wood.

  “Jack,” Nick whispered, starting toward him.

  “Wait,” said Laurie, grabbing his arm. She was watching the giant, but it didn’t seem to be paying them any attention.

  Nick shook her loose and ran over to him. “Jack!” he said louder, not caring about anything except finding out if Jack was okay.

  Jack moaned a little and pushed himself into a sitting position with a wince. He looked around like he was confused.

  “Can you stand up?”

  Nick asked him.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Lean on me,” Nick said.

  Laurie scurried to get the machete and came back with a long stick. They helped him up, and, between the stick and Nicholas, Jack was able to stagger out of the clearing. Even as thin as Jack was, his weight was heavy on Nick’s shoulder. He stepped carefully through the dark as Laurie ran ahead with the machete, clearing the way of branches and making sure they weren’t about to step into a hole or trip on a bush. Even still, Nick stumbled twice on the way to Jack’s ramshackle house.

  Jack watched them with his cloudy eyes and grunted when his bad leg hit something, but he didn’t say anything—not about giants, or even doctors—and shook his head when they wanted to call an ambulance. They settled him in a threadbare chair, and Laurie tried to get his legs propped onto a low stool.

  Nick walked into the kitchen, getting a package of frozen peas out of the icebox. That’s what his mom had put on his arm years ago when she’d been afraid he’d broken it.

  Walking back into the living room, Nick accidentally knocked his hip into a cabinet. A bunch of papers slid to the floor. Dropping the peas, he picked up the papers and was about to shove them back on top when he got a better look at them: a yellowed diploma from a university and an old picture of a young Jack with his arm slung around a pretty girl. He was grinning like he’d just won the lottery.

  Nick picked up the peas.

  In the living room Laurie was adjusting the rabbit ears on the television, as if the fuzz would coalesce into a picture. Nick put the peas against Jack’s thin leg where the scrapes looked particularly raw.

  “It’s getting late,” Jack said. His voice sounded hoarse and tired. “You two should get on home.”

  As they were saying good-bye and asking again if there was anything they could do, Nick realized that Jack was old.

  Nick had known that, but he’d never really thought about what it meant. Now he couldn’t get the thought out of his head.

  When Nick and Laurie got home, they found Jules sitting on the hood of his car, his calves and feet coated with sand, nodding in time with music coming from his tiny earbuds.

  “You waited!” Laurie went up to Jules and put her arms around his waist, startling him out of his musical fugue. “You’re the best!”

  He pulled off the earbuds. “Where were you guys? Aren’t you too young to start sneaking around?”

  “Mom and your dad were fighting,” Laurie said, and a lie wouldn’t have shocked Nick as much as her use of the truth did.

  “About what?” Jules asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It was just really upsetting. We went for a walk.” Laurie smiled and continued on blithely. “Nick bought me an ice cream.”

  Jules looked at Nick like he didn’t know him. “Uh, that was cool of you.”

  Nick thought that Laurie had finally gone too far and that there was no way Jules was going to swallow any of this, especially the part about Nick being nice. Maybe Laurie thought that too, because she reached into her pocket and pulled out a key chain. A heart-shaped piece of cork with a clear plastic center and something inside of that.

  “Here, I’ve been meaning to give this to you, Jules. I made it. For luck. See, it can even go in the water.”

  “Thanks.” Jules looked at it blankly and then slid it onto his key ring. “You really made this for me?”

  She nodded.

  Pushing off the car with a grin, he ruffled her hair as he walked past them and toward the house.

  “What?” she said when she saw Nick’s expression. “I told you I always wanted a brother.”

  The creature did a capering dance.

  Chapter Four

  IN WHICH a Sandspur Gets Stuck with Nick

  All night the rain came down, and Nick tossed and turned on his bed. Jules slept peacefully on the other side of the room, oblivious to the distant thunderous bellowing that Nick couldn’t help thinking was giants awakening and stretching their lungs like newborns.

  Around his side of the room were models of ships and planes he’d carefully made with glue and tweezers and balsa wood. The Viking ship kit that his mother had given him was finally finished and resting beside the others. But now they looked the way he imagined that he might look to a giant—fragile. Nick closed his eyes tightly, but nothing he thought of shut out his fears.

  He woke early the next morning and went downstairs to pour himself cereal. Eating mechanically, he chewed without actually tasting the food. He couldn’t stop thinking about the way the giant had knocked Jack down like he was made of paper. Surely now Jack would see that training Nick and Laurie to fight these things was a joke.

  Maybe Jack could find some hero kids. Like from books. Like Jared. He thought about calling the phone number Jared had given them when he left and asking for advice, but he was afraid that all of Jared’s advice would be as crazy as Jack’s was.

  Out of the corner of his eye Nick saw something dart across the lawn. He walked over to the door and saw a creature the size of a large cat sprinting away on three-toed feet. Yesterday’s garbage was scattered across the grass.

  Nick opened the door. “He
y!” he called.

  The creature stopped and looked back with golden eyes. It was very small, covered in a dusting of tan fur all the way down to its three-toed feet, and was staring at him with an almost comical expression of astonishment.

  Nick started toward it, but as one foot hit the first of the brick steps, the other slammed onto a bowl of milk. It cracked under his weight, splinters of pottery slicing his flip-flop. He fell on the walkway, skinning his hands on the cement.

  He knew exactly who had left that bowl there.

  “Laurie!” he shouted. “Laurie!”

  His palms were streaked with gravel and blood. He felt stupid and angry and then embarrassed when tears stung his eyes. Blinking them back, he took a shaky breath and waited for his hands to stop throbbing.

  Laurie stuck her head out past the screen door. She was wearing pajamas with cats on them. “What happened? I heard you yelling,” she said with a yawn.

  “You left out your cereal bowl. What does it look like happened?”

  “Oh,” she said. “That was for the faeries.” She stared at him a moment longer. “You stepped in their milk?”

  Just then Charlene pushed the door wide. She was hastily tying her robe. “Go get me some hydrogen peroxide,” she told Laurie, looking at Nick’s hands.

  “I don’t know where that is,” Laurie complained.

  “I’m fine.” Nick got up and walked a few paces toward the street. He didn’t want his new stepmother taking care of him like he was a baby.

  Charlene sighed and rubbed her face. “You two, stay right there. I’ll get it myself.”

  “Sorry about your foot,” Laurie said.

  He shrugged, although he wanted to yell at her. Just not when Charlene would be back any second and would probably take Laurie’s side. “I saw that little faerie again. The one that filled Dad’s car with sand. I think he’s been at the garbage.”

  “Maybe we can make friends with it.”

  “Don’t we have enough problems with the faeries we’ve already befriended?” Nick looked over at Taloa’s lake.

  She looked toward the lake then too. “Hey,” Laurie said. “What’s that?”

  He squinted. The three-toed creature seemed to be lifting up tiny pieces of something and tossing them around. A few floated on the water. “There it is!”

  Charlene stepped into the doorway, holding a brown bottle. “Nick, come here.”

  He glanced back at her. “I’m okay,” he said absently, turning to the lake. “My hands are fine.”

  “You can keep hating me,” she called to him. “Just let me put a Band-Aid on your scrape.”

  His face reddened. He didn’t hate her. It wasn’t that.

  “We’ll be right back,” Laurie said. “Nick and I need to talk.”

  Charlene stared at Laurie as if stunned, and then her shoulders sagged. “Sure, okay,” she said softly, putting the bottle on the stoop. “I’ll leave the medicine here in case you change your mind.”

  Laurie was already walking toward the lake, and Nick ran to catch up to her.

  As they got close, the creature did a capering dance. They could see a few tattered pieces of a tabloid magazine were pressed in the wet dirt, rocks holding them in place. The creature hissed at them and kicked aside a rock, snatching up the scrap of paper in one hand. A few more scraps floated on the lake. Nick looked at what remained of the message:

  “Hey!” Nick darted toward the creature, trying to snatch the piece of paper.

  “Do you think Taloa left us this message?” Laurie asked.

  The thing leaped out of Nick’s way and then shoved the paper in its mouth.

  “I think Taloa left us the message,” Laurie said.

  “Great,” said Nick. “Do something.”

  The creature went very still. For a moment Nick didn’t understand what was happening, and then he realized that the creature didn’t seem to know they could see it. It didn’t know they had the Sight.

  Nick looked away from it and tried to edge up without seeming to. But before he could take more than a couple of steps, Laurie threw herself into the mud, tackling it.

  The creature bleated horribly and spat out the letter. It was an S.

  “Get something! Anything!” Laurie shouted, trying to keep the tiny body from squirming out of her grasp.

  “Off! Off! Off!” the creature wailed.

  Nick sped off to the house and looked in the garage, tearing apart the boxes from when Laurie and her mother had moved in and the old stuff Nick, Jules, and their dad had moved out to make room for them. And there, in the back, were boxes with Nick’s mother’s name on them. He walked toward them slowly and lifted one of the flaps. A wig she’d worn when she was really sick was at the top. He stared at the strands of hair for a long moment, then looked away and kicked the box savagely. His foot made a dent in the side. Turning away, his gaze fell on a large plastic birdcage among the boxes. The inside was filled with plastic flowers and a bird made with turkey feathers that he remembered helping to glue together. The faerie monster thing might fit in the cage, but it’d be a tight squeeze, and the whole thing didn’t look very sturdy.

  He picked it up and dumped out the flowers and fake bird, but as he was heading out he saw a box from Laurie’s house. CAT STUFF. He hadn’t even known they’d had a cat.

  Setting down the cage, he ripped off the tape. Inside he found a cat bed, several bowls, a half-empty bag of litter, and a leash. The blue nylon leash was the kind that fit around the cat’s whole body. Nick looked at it and grinned.

  He ran back, holding up both.

  “The cage!” Laurie yelled, and tried to force the flailing and shouting thing into it.

  A moment later, when it was inside and chewing on the bars, she slumped down in the dirt. “You sure took your time,” she said.

  He grinned, looking at her bedraggled pajamas and muddy hair. He didn’t feel so resentful about stepping on the cereal bowl anymore. “You said you wanted to befriend it. I was just giving you the time you needed.”

  Laurie stuck out her tongue.

  The creature wailed. “How did you see me? Oh! No! How? How could I not see that you see?” it said, wrapping thin arms around its plump body.

  “Maybe we should figure out what the note is supposed to say,” said Nick, gesturing toward the remaining rocks and scraps of magazines.

  Laurie was too busy staring through the bars at the creature to notice. “What’s your name, little guy?” she asked.

  It just hissed at her.

  “I’m going to call you Sandspur,” she said rapturously.

  It made a strange, gibbering noise.

  “You like your name, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Did you get the paper it was holding?” Nick asked her. He didn’t think the creature liked its name all that much. That hadn’t seemed like a happy sound.

  “Here.” She handed him the crumpled and wet wad. He waded into the lake, grabbing for the rest of the letters, heedless of the way his knee and palms stung when the water hit them. He got bits of magazines that read E, O, E, W, I, S, R, and T. One piece still seemed to be missing, but he couldn’t find it.

  “Huh,” Nick said. He looked at the message again. “You” looked complete and the word next to it could be “will” using the W.

  “‘You will,’” he read.

  “I will what?” asked Laurie, not paying attention.

  “‘You will be sorry’!” said Nick.

  “I’ll be sorry? For what? I already apologized that you tripped! Why do you always have to—”

  “No, no,” he said, interrupting her and pointing to the letters. He started to set the papers he’d found homes for in their places. “That’s what the last four words say.”

  Laurie pointed. “That there could be ‘sisters.’”

  “So we have: ‘I e k my sisters a on you will be sorry.’”

  “Whatever it says, it doesn’t sound good.”

  “‘I seek my sisters alone,’”
Nick read, moving the last of the letters around. “‘You will be sorry.’”

  “Oh no.” Laurie stood up. “She’s right. We should have gone out more. What if something happens to Taloa now? It will be because of us.”

  “We didn’t have any idea where to look,” Nick said, but he felt ashamed. They’d looked halfheartedly in the beginning, but they should have kept at it instead of going to giant-killing lessons he knew were useless. Laurie had stopped insisting about Taloa, and Nick had blown the whole thing off.

  Charlene’s hair was wet and she cradled a cup of coffee in both hands when Nick and Laurie walked in. Nick’s father was pouring himself a travel mug full of orange juice. He took one look at Laurie in her muddy pajamas and started to laugh. Nick, who had been waiting to get scolded, was relieved.

  “What game were you two playing?” Charlene asked.

  “We fought g i a n t s , “Laurie said with a huge grin, holding up what must have looked like an empty birdcage. “And I caught a faerie.”

  “You think you two will be okay until Jules gets back from the beach?” Charlene asked. “Paul’s headed to the office to drop some stuff off, and I’m going to the grocery store.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Nick said.

  She looked at him, and Nick thought she seemed sad. “Put some antiseptic on your cuts, okay, Nicholas?”

  He nodded. He wanted to tell her that he didn’t hate her, but he couldn’t find the right words.

  Also, if she and his dad were going to get a divorce, then maybe he did hate her.

  Or at least, he wanted to reserve the right to.

  He went up to Laurie’s room and flopped on the bed, looking at the caged goblin thing while she took a shower. He tried to find a drawing of something like it in Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You, but none of the pictures were quite right.