Food is Running Out
The giants made laps around the Marigold castle with their picket signs much faster than William got through a page on giant medicine. There were seven of them, but the book was heavy reading. For example, The Epidemiology of Acute Illness in Giants wanted William to wake up any giant in a coma, but didn’t explain how. The giants would have to get some more books or go back to the Giant Mountains—wherever that was—and ask somebody who knew.
While William was wrestling with this problem, he realized what he’d missed. The giants had checked their toes. Maybe they only wanted to prove they didn’t have a Jack’s toe, because they were obsessed with “Jack”. Or the beans were poisonous. Thanks to the Giant Cooking Demo, they knew everything else in the soup was safe for giants, but if the beans were poisonous, Reggie’s illness would still be William’s fault.
Finding a cure was a lot harder with grief and guilt chasing him around. But hiding from the truth wouldn’t help.
“Hey,” William shouted extra loud, so his voice wouldn’t shake. “Did you find out if the beans were okay?”
“They’re fine,” Traver said. None of the giants looked surprised.
“Why didn’t anybody tell me?” William was a little annoyed and, honestly, skeptical. Why were the giants still picketing if the beans were fine? William would need proof, for the Sanitarian or possibly for the High Court of the Seven Kingdoms.
“So how can you tell?” he asked.
“No sparkles on the stem or leaves,” Shale said, counting on his thumb. “Too skinny”—he showed the width of the stem with his thumb and index finger—“And three. Growing too slowly. They’re regular beans.”
“Regular?” William’s whole body tensed.
“Not magic,” came Traver’s reassuring answer.
“So it wasn’t my fault.” William pumped the air with his fist and his heart did a victory lap in his chest.
Mr. G was still sick with a mysterious illness. William’s face burned. He brought his hand down, feeling ridiculous and a little selfish.
“Sorry,” he said, wiping his sweaty lip off with his hand. “Uh, can someone help me with the books again? We still have to find out how to wake him up from this coma.”
Gneiss swished his hands around in the Elf Brook, wiped them dry on his pant legs and came over to the patio in two steps. They looked up “coma” in the index and William struggled through the paragraphs, but there was nothing about how to wake up a giant from a coma, only that “folk remedies” didn’t usually work.
“What folk remedies?” William asked Gneiss.
“Herbs? Songs? Dances in a circle? No idea,” Gneiss said. “But it says they don’t work.”
Gneiss pretended to pirouette in a circle with one arm over his head and one finger planted on top of his head like a pivot. He clicked his heels together in the air, then drifted off into wordless humming to go with his pirouettes.
William put his finger on the top of his head and twirled around daintily. “How’s that supposed to help Reggie?”
“It says they don’t work,” Gneiss said, but he kept on twirling.
The other giants came over to see what they were missing, and looked back and forth from William to the-now-hiccoughing Gneiss as if they were a puzzle to solve.
“What’s so funny?” Rocks asked.
“Nothing,” choked out Gneiss the giant ballerina. “William needs cheering up. Want to dance too? Actually, this would be even better in lumberjack boots—”
William stopped dancing and let out a shuddering sigh. He’d run out of ideas.
“Don’t give up, you’ll get it,” Gneiss said. Thunk! Something hit William from the back, and he fell forward over the patio railing.
The whole Marigold Kingdom went upside down.
“Aaaaah!” William yelled.
Gneiss caught William in mid-air and set him carefully back down on the patio. “Sorry about that.” Gneiss was blushing.
Leaning against the castle wall for support, William gave a shaky laugh. “Don’t know your own strength.”
Gneiss looked sheepish and held up a finger to his lips. “Don’t tell the others.”
William drew an X in the air over his own chest. “Hope to die.”
“Don’t die.” Gneiss’s forehead furrowed. “Everyone will blame us.”
It wasn’t funny, but William sputtered. The mixed-up guilt and uncertainty about Mr. G; the failure in the restaurant and the Proclamation; and the fear of the Magenta Fortress dungeon built up like a battering ram that forced out a bark of laughter.
“Thanks. That kind of helped,” William said, wiping his eyes, but that broke the spell. He blew his nose and went back over to the Epidemiology of Acute Illness in Giants and looked up reasons for giants to fall into a coma. Sobered now, ex-ballerina Gneiss turned the pages for him.
“Giants may fall into a coma after a head injury—“
Head injury. William shifted uncomfortably. Mr. G had fallen from the restaurant table. He must have smacked his head on the patio stones. William made a note and kept reading.
“. . .head injury, stroke, high blood sugar, heart attack, inhalation of mushroom dust, brain tumor, or encephalitis. Giants with fever, headache, stiff neck, vomiting, confusion, or actively shading their eyes from the light should be tested for Jack’s Meningitis immediately. The attentive giant physician will check vaccination records for every patient.”
William didn’t like the look of “Jack’s Meningitis”. He called out to the giants, “Hey, can someone go over to Mr. G’s house and look for his vaccination card?”
“What’s it look like?” Gneiss asked.
Mr. G was a Seven Kingdoms’ resident. “Hang on—I’ll show you mine.” William slid carefully away from the book, ducked into the main castle, and jogged up to his room in the tower.
When he came back, the king and queen had come out onto the patio and a mountain of platter-sized chapati was set out on the edge where the giants could reach it. The chapati was wrapped up in a tablecloth to keep warm.
William gave his yellow vaccination booklet to the giants, but they frowned as they passed it hand to hand, even though they were all munching chapati.
“It’s kinda small,” Tom said.
Traver scratched the back of his head. “How are we going to find that in Mr. G’s house?”
“I keep mine in my bedside table,” the king offered.
“Me too,” the queen said.
Gneiss got up, handed William the yellow booklet, and said, “I’ll get it for you. It’s my turn.”
The queen gestured to the chapati. “A few for the road?”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Gneiss took one and loped off. The other six giants took one more each and politely thanked the king and queen.
After that, the giants started eating at the Royal Marigold Restaurant everyday. They kept on picketing, which didn’t make a lot of sense to the Marigold family, and so far no one had dared to ask them to pay. William and his family talked it at the breakfast table.
“If the soup is okay, why are they still doing that?” Bea asked.
“They like chapati?” Cordelia suggested.
“They’re up to something,” Jens said, but he didn’t say what that might be.
“I think they think they’re protecting me,” William told the queen.
“You’re going to have to speak to them,” she said. “The giants are welcome, but they can’t have free food forever. We need paying customers to make ends meet.”
The king grunted and looked at William. “Any ideas?”
The pantry for the restaurant had gaping holes on the shelves where ingredients would normally be. Even the lentils were getting low. The only thing they still had a lot of was beans.
No one wanted those. William went out onto the patio and shouted, “Good morning!” up at the giants. “Can you guys eat some beans?”
Traver strolled over, yawning and making a sound like a water buffalo. “Beans? No, thanks. What else have you got?”
“That’s the problem,” William said, stretching the truth a little. “We’ve only got beans left. You guys ate everything else.” Or they would in the next day or two.
“We can just have chapati,” Moth said. “Everyone likes chapati.”
“Yeah,” William said. “That’s why we don’t have any more flour.”
Moth’s head swiveled toward the other giants. “Hey, there’s no more food. What are we going to do? Do you want to eat beans?”
“No!”
“Never!”
“Not happening!”
“No magic beans for me!”
“Down with beans!”
“Plant’em, don’t eat’em!”
Traver shrugged, and said to William, “They don’t want beans.”
William waited for them to make up their minds about what they wanted to eat. That’s what a waiter did.
“Is there anything left at Mr. Giant’s house?” Bea called out, making William jump. He hadn’t noticed her come out of the castle.
“Good question,” he said, but quietly so the giants wouldn’t hear.
The giants had a rumbly discussion and decided that there wasn’t anything worth carrying over from Mr. Giant’s house to cook.
“When Mr. Giant wakes up, we’re going to owe him a lot of food,” Bea said, sternly.
None of them met her steely gaze and two of them actually hung their heads. William had to work to keep his restaurant waiter’s poker face on.
“What are we going to do?” Traver asked. “No food. No money. No work.”
“Except picketing,” Tom said in a glum voice.
“That doesn’t pay well.”
“Yeah, but we can’t stop.”
Each giant looked sadder than the one before.
“Why can’t you?” William asked. “Is someone paying you to picket?” He gave them his charming waiter smile and waited to see if they’d say something else, but the giants wouldn’t meet his eye.
Finally, Bite roared out, “We should take this grill on the road and sell chapati!”
The giants clapped each other on the back and the ground shook.
“We’ll visit every kingdom!” shouted Rocks. “Then we can take Reggie to the best doctor in the Hospital of the Giant Mountains.”
“There’s a hospital for giants?” William cut in. That would solve everything.
“We’d have to sell a LOT of chapati. There’s no way we can carry Reggie all the way to the Giant Mountains,” Bite explained. “And your barge captains charge a lot and don’t go all the way there.”
When the ground and the giants settled, William pointed out that they had no flour to make chapati.
“You’re kind of a Negative Nelson,” Gneiss said.
“That’s okay,” Bite said, clapping William on the shoulder, then destroyed the moment by saying, “At least he’s not a Joker Jack.”
Through gritted teeth, William faked a smile. He asked, “Where’s the Hospital of the Giant Mountains?” If it was somewhere nearby, maybe they’d send a doctor over to the Royal Aeronautical Academy Hospital to take a look at Mr. G.
“Too far,” said Rocks.
“Much too far,” Tom said shuffling his feet and frowning at his well-worn boots. “It has to be 700 kilometers to the Giant Mountains from here.”
Too bad. That would have been perfect.
William went back to his newest idea, a questionnaire to send to the Proclamation to try and get answers about the day Mr. G fell ill.
He’d gotten the idea from The Epidemiology of Acute Illness in Giants. The book suggested making the questions a bit tricky to keep people from making up the answers when they didn’t know.
The giants helped him add in some funny choices in case some people decided to joke around.
“That’s a good idea,” Moth said, clapping William on the back, then picking him up again afterwards. “Sorry.”
“You know, every time you do that, I get extra scribbles across the message and have to start over,” William said.
“Sorry.” Moth said again. He brushed William’s back. “Was that better?”
“Lighter than a weeping willow in the wind?” Rocks called over in a drifty sort of voice. They all laughed.
“I’m not that fragile.” William was a little surprised by the giant’s poetic language, but he kept writing. These giants were quirky, but they were growing on him.
“Are you going to throw out all the ones with the funny answers?” Tom asked.
“That’s the idea.” William had to finish this, so people could send in their answers, so they could find out what was wrong with Mr. G, so they could wake him up before it was too late.