Emergency Bell
The deafening sound of the Emergency Bell woke William the next morning. His eyes popped open and he jumped out of bed.
Is the castle on fire?
The Marigold family had regular fire drills, so William knew exactly what to do. He met Bea and Jens coming out of their rooms and pulled them down to the family meeting place in the front hall. Cordelia was already there with the king and queen.
“What's going on?” William asked.
“I’m not sure,” the king said. “I don’t smell any smoke.”
If there was any sign of a fire, they were supposed to meet outside, under the bridge. The whole family went outside together. Bite was ringing the Emergency Bell with his finger.
William could have said nasty things about giants who woke people up for fun, but he clamped his mouth shut, attempting to nip giant prejudice in the bud.
“Nice doorbell,” Bite said, when he saw William. “Usually they’re much too low for giants.”
Doorbell. William bowed and said nothing. He needed more time to re-stock his polite words. His family must have felt the same way, because it was quiet for a long moment.
Then the queen said, “Does anyone else want some eggs?”
“With hot sauce,” snapped the king, who believed in spice as stress relief.
“No, thanks, ma’am,” Bite said, provoking another silence. William could practically hear the queen calculating how many eggs she would have needed for a Bite-sized serving.
“And toast,” Bea said, dragging her parents into the kitchen.
“False alarm,” Cordelia said. “I’m going back to bed.”
She and Jens also went back into the castle, leaving William alone with Bite. The other giants slowly drifted over. Picketing duty evidently started early for giants, because they all looked wide awake.
“So, I brought you some books.” Bite stacked the giant-sized volumes on the restaurant’s stone patio. Each one was as tall as William. Even with the chairs and tables stacked, it was a tight fit. On his own, William would never have been able to get those books.
“Thanks,” he said, meaning it.
“No early risers around here, I guess,” Bite said and his grin made William wonder if he’d rung the Emergency Bell on purpose.
Giant humor?
“Librarian give you trouble?” William asked. Normally, Hugh Ancry helped everyone, but the Magenta archers had never loosed arrows at hospital visitors before either.
Something flickered in Bite’s face, but he said, “Oh. No.”
“Run into any archers?” William persisted.
Bite’s face turned pink. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
“You too, huh?” Rocks said, but the other giants hushed him.
William didn’t like the sound of that. His parents had always said the Welcome Café was their way to give something back, because they had been welcomed. But William was beginning to wonder if his parents had felt lonely in the Seven Kingdoms, even though the queen had been born here.
Bite opened one of the huge books that Hugh had sent over. It was so big that only a giant could have transported it, and it was marked “Reference”.
“‘May Not Leave Library’,” William read aloud.
Bite flinched. “Yeah, well, you needed it.”
William had a sudden image of Bite clonking Hugh on the head running away with the books, but he told himself he’d draw too many comic strips. Bite must have convinced Hugh to loan out the Reference book. It was an emergency.
“Uh, did you find anything good for Reggie in these?” William asked.
“No time. I came right back,” Bite said, with a hunted look in his eyes.
“You mean you forgot your glasses,” Shale suggested.
A delighted smile broke out on Bite’s face. “Yeah, yeah. I do that all the time.”
Bite was hiding something. But what? From down here, William couldn’t tell if those dots across the giant’s nose were freckles or wounds, but he didn’t think he’d get the truth if he asked. He tapped the nearest book, hoping to make Bite lean down, and asked, “Can you open this to the Table of Contents for me?”
Bite’s long arm reached down and he flipped the book open, but his face was still too far away for William to tell. He put that question on hold for now. The book was here and William needed to read it. Because it was so big, he crawled up the page on all fours. No footprints on a Reference book.
The Table of Contents read:
CULTURE OF GIANTS 35
—Food 37
—Language 79
—Geography 156
—Traditions 201
—Medicine 335
“Sorry, but can you turn to page 335?” William asked, looking up at Bite. “If I do it, it will take forever.”
“Oh, Medicine, of course,” Bite said, without any glasses at all. “That's a good one. You read all about that and let us know what it says.”
“You know, it'd be much faster if you read it,” William said.
“I’m tired after picketing your castle all day. How about you read it and let us know?” Bite suggested.
“At least help me find the pages?” William was afraid he wouldn’t recognize the cure when he saw it.
“No problem.” Still without leaning down, Bite thumbed through the pages, and stopped at page 335 and opened the page flat. “There you go.”
Nothing useful in there that William could see and the language was dry and brittle with long, unfamiliar words, like the authors didn’t want to give any secrets away to the patients. Bite helped with a few more books until they finally opened one that was dedicated to giants and sickness called Epidemiology of Acute Illness in Giants.
“There’s nothing cute about illness,” William grumbled. He had a paper slice on his arm and it burned.
Bite grunted agreement and turned to the page William had found in the Table of Contents: “Food Poisoning”.
“Oh,” William said, after he’d gotten a regular-sized—he corrected himself—people-sized dictionary from the castle. “‘Acute’ means sudden but for a short time, like the flu or something. I hope Mr. G has something like that. ‘Chronic’ means it never goes away.”
“How can food be born?” Bite tapped on a heading: “How To Prevent Food-Borne Illness.”
“That’s when you get sick after eating something.”
“Huh.”
The giants nudged each other in a way that made William uneasy.
Because of the family restaurant, food-borne illness wasn’t a new idea to William. The king always said, “Washing our hands keeps our customers healthy.”
William read quickly down the familiar list, “Handwashing, yeah. Keep raw and cooked meat, fish, and eggs separate, uh, huh. Keep hot foods hot and cold foods cold, check.” He looked up at the too-silent giants pointedly and said, “We do all this stuff in the restaurant.”
The giants’ eyebrows went up and they nodded and gave him fake smiles. Doubt rolled off them in waves.
“Oh, here’s something new—” William slowed down and read aloud:
“Some giants are at greater risk of food-borne illness than others because of food allergies. For historical reasons, most giants are highly allergic to magic beans. While giants who inherit the J- allele generally recover in weeks or months, giants who inherit the J+ allele can have serious reactions to magic beans, including magical coma5. Giants with the J+ allele usually progress from coma to death within two weeks. Every effort must be made to awaken giants that fall into a coma in order to prevent death.”
Death. The cold, little word cast a giant-sized shadow. William shivered. The giants stood like trees in winter on a day with no wind. William read the whole paragraph again, hoping he’d missed something that meant Mr. G was going to be okay.
What were these J- and J+ things? He didn’t know what an allele was, but it sounded like something you got from your parents. How did they find out if Mr. G had it or not? There was a tiny 5 at the end of that sentence.
“Can you turn the page, please?” William’s voice shook. Sober now, Bite turned the page and William ran his finger down the numbered notes until he found:
“5Giants who inherit the J+ allele can be easily identified with a convenient marker. Their feet display the so-called ‘Jack’s toe’, where the second toe is longer than the first.”
Jack, again. Not funny.
“What does it say?” Bite asked. “That’s too tiny for my eyes.”
“I think it means Mr. G’s second toe had better be shorter than his first toe,” William said. Because if he ate magic beans and his second toe is longer, then he’s going to die. “Did you see his feet?”
Bite gave an exasperated shrug. “He had his boots on. What do his toes have to do with it?”
William read footnote number five aloud.
“Uh, huh.” Bite called over to the other giants. “Hey, guys, what do you know about ‘Jack’s toe’?”
Five minutes later, the giants were sitting below William’s patio in a semi-circle on the ground, with their socks and heavy boots off. They propped their pungent feet up on the slope below the castle.
Whew! William’s eyes watered, half from the passage about death and half from the stinky feet that were a sign of life. “Don’t you guys ever change your socks?”
“We’re traveling,” Tom, who was nearest, said with dignity. “You think it’s easy to wash your socks when you aren’t at home?”
“Did you think we didn’t notice?” Rocks asked.
“Giant prejudice,” murmured Traver.
“Sorry, sorry!” William’s face burned.
“Happens. No worries.” Tom waved it all away with his giant hand, making the tablecloths flutter on the clothesline.
“What do you think? Is this toe longer than that one?” Gneiss flattened his toes with one hand and measured with the other.
“Mine is definitely longer,” said Bite gloomily. “Do you think I should cut it shorter?”
“Please don’t.” William shuddered and made a mental note to lock up all the kitchen knives. “I mean, I don’t think it works that way. Your toe doesn’t make you sick, it just means you can’t eat magic beans.”
Now that William was sitting here with seven barefoot giants, they felt like . . . not best friends, but definitely not enemies. He knew their names and they only knew one of his names. It kept him in suspense, but he wasn’t going to tell them his other name. Hopefully, they’d never figure it out.