CHAPTER NINE

Willy

Racing up the hill, Emma had been some yards behind Gabriel and gotten a clear view of the giant leaping out from behind the cliff and snatching up Gabriel with a gleeful laugh. Even in the moment, as part of her brain had shouted Giant! That’s a giant! I need a camera! another part had been amazed that something that large could hide that well; but the giant looked so much like the earth itself, all rough and craggy and dirty and mucky, that it was little wonder he’d blended in perfectly with the landscape. Gabriel had managed to pull his sword, and as he was lifted into the air, he’d jabbed it into the giant’s hand, causing the monster to give a strangely high-pitched shriek. The giant had yanked out the sword and thrown it spinning away into the distance; then, with his thumb and forefinger, he’d flicked Gabriel in the side of the head and dropped his limp body into a leather pouch at his side.

All this had taken no more than a few seconds, and by the time Emma had overcome her shock, she herself had been snatched up. Michael had appeared a minute later, having heard Emma’s scream, and he’d been seized as well, and, with a child in each hand, the giant had brought them up close to his face so that they were only feet from his great, mossy, snaggletoothed grin. Then he’d begun literally jumping up and down with glee, making the whole hillside tremble.

“TINY PEOPLE! TINY PEOPLE!”

“Let go of us!” Emma had shouted. “Put us down!”

But the giant had sniffed the air and pressed himself back against the cliff face, while also transferring Michael to the same hand as Emma and crushing them both in his moist, filthy, eggy-smelling fist. Emma was wondering what he was doing when she heard Kate calling her name and tried to claw her way up out of the giant’s fist to warn her sister, but it had been too late.

And then they were all caught.

Clearly feeling that he’d done a good morning’s work, the giant walked along humming gaily, carrying Emma and Michael in one hand and Kate in the other. Emma had managed to worm her head out of the giant’s fist, but Michael was stuck down deep in the pit of the massive palm, and she could see him slowly turning green as he breathed in the rank, funky air.

As the giant lumbered along, swinging them forward and back, forward and back, in long sweeping arcs, Emma and Kate tried calling to each other in the moment or two the other was visible during passes over the enormous bulge of the giant’s belly.

“Are you okay?!” Kate yelled.

“We’re okay!” She looked down at Michael. “Are you okay?”

Michael nodded, though he looked more and more like he might be sick.

“We’re okay!” Emma shouted, and then shouted it again. The first time she had mistimed it and shouted as Kate was disappearing behind the giant’s back. Kate asked about Gabriel, and—again it took a few tries to get the message across—Emma told her that he’d been knocked unconscious and stuck in the giant’s pouch.

Kate and Emma both screamed at the giant to put them down, pounding their fists ineffectually against his hands. Emma even bit the skin of the giant’s thumb to try and get his attention, which was far and away the grossest thing she’d ever done, and it turned out to be pointless anyway because the giant didn’t seem to notice but went trundling along, singing a made-up-sounding song, the few words of which Emma picked out were pie and yum-yum.

Emma knew that the Atlas was their best chance of escape, but for that to work, they would have to be touching each other and not touching the giant. For now, all they could do was wait.

And hope Michael didn’t suffocate.

They were moving quickly, as you do when the legs of the person carrying you are fifteen feet long. The giant’s booming footfalls left deep craters in the earth, and Emma realized that it was one of his footprints she’d fallen into, and what had first caught Gabriel’s attention.

The giant kept mostly to the valleys and had no compunction about wading through the center of a lake so that Emma and Michael (and Kate in the opposite hand) were repeatedly dunked as his hands swung in and out of the icy water. Emma wondered that the cold water didn’t wake Gabriel, but there was no movement in the leather pouch, and she began to worry that her friend was more gravely wounded than she’d thought.

By now, Emma had been able to really look at the giant. Obviously, the most immediately impressive fact was that he was forty feet tall. But he wasn’t just tall, he was also wide. And thick. So much so, his proportions seemed off. His face too wide, his eyes too big, his hands and fingers too cumbersome and massive. If anything, Emma reflected, he should’ve been taller and more stretched out.

He had shaggy brown hair that looked as if it had been cut with some sort of tree-trimming tool, his eyebrows—or rather eyebrow, as it was one continuous line—was a dense brown shrub that curved around the corners of his eyes. His features were heavy to the point of being grotesque, but there was also a certain goofiness to him, which would’ve been more pronounced, Emma reflected, if he hadn’t been planning to eat them. That he was going to eat them, Emma had no doubt. She’d also made the mistake—only once—of looking up while directly below the giant so that she’d seen into his nostrils, where something (she wasn’t sure what, that it was brown and furry was all she could be sure of) was moving about.

His clothes all looked decidedly homemade—which made sense, as where would a giant go to buy clothes?—and his pants, shirt, and vest were stitched together from various sources (all of them in the tan-to-dark-brown spectrum), giving him a hodgepodge, village-idiot sort of look.

They went on like this for perhaps twenty minutes, the giant humming and singing all the while. Kate would periodically call over to make sure they were okay, and Emma would say they were, or that Michael had thrown up again, but yes, otherwise, they were okay. When she could, Emma would glance toward the leather pouch for some sign of Gabriel stirring (still none), and several times, she caught sight of other figures in the distance, massive heads and shoulders bobbing along the tops of hills. Once, the giant crouched down behind a large rock outcropping, again effortlessly becoming part of the landscape, to let another giant, a great, fat, shambling mountain of arms and legs and stomach, pass by, the earth shaking as he went.

“It was another giant,” Emma told Michael, who couldn’t see anything from inside their giant’s fist. His face was now a green, sluggy color. “Our giant’s hiding.”

“He probably doesn’t want to share his dinner,” Michael said flatly.

Emma reflected that this was probably true.

“Did you know giants were real?” she asked.

Nauseated as he was, this was the kind of question that Michael loved, and he rallied himself to answer. “I never…considered the existence of giants as such, but it stands to reason that if dwarves and dragons and—”

“Never mind,” Emma said, already regretting she’d asked.

Once the fat giant (or really, the fatter giant) had moved off, the children’s captor rose and continued on. He seemed to be heading toward a line of higher hills in the distance, and, again thanks to the length of his stride, it was not long before they were being carried down a steep-sided valley with the hills rising up directly before them.

“Look!”

It was Kate, shouting to them from the giant’s other fist and pointing. Farther along the valley stood an enormous, ramshackle wooden house. It looked exactly like the sort of house that someone forty feet tall and not overly concerned with cleanliness and appearance might choose to live in. It was probably twice the size of the mansion in Cambridge Falls, but while the mansion had been imposing and grand, this house, for all its size, was more shacklike and thrown together. Parts of the roof appeared to have caved in, walls were buttressed with tree trunks, filthy canvas flaps covered the glassless windows, and the whole thing was listing dangerously to one side. A crooked, gray-stone chimney rose from the roof, dark smoke climbing into the sky.

The giant stopped, turned, and crouched down so that his back blocked them from view of the house. He placed his fists on top of a large boulder and brought his face down close to the children. When he spoke, it was obvious he was trying to keep his voice low, but the effect was still deafening.

“Now listen, tiny little people, when we get inside, not a peep!”

“My brother can’t hear you!” Emma shouted. “And he’s suffocating inside your stupid, smelly hand!”

The giant frowned as if he hadn’t heard, then turned his head so that one ear faced Emma, causing Emma to exclaim:

“Oh! That is so, so gross!”

For the giant’s ear was clogged with clumpy mounds of blackened dirt and wax, some of which hung from the ceiling of his ear canal like rotted-yellow stalactites, and there was a wall of wax at the back of his ear so thick-looking that Emma wondered how he heard anything at all. Still, she was about to shout again when she and Michael were lifted in the air. They were both then upside down and screaming as he stuck out a massive pinky finger—causing Michael’s legs to kick furiously in the air—and screwed his pinky back and forth in his ear, making loud squeak-squeak noises and no doubt packing the wax in tighter, as if he were loading a huge, fleshy blunderbuss.

Then he placed his fist, and the extremely dizzy Michael and Emma, back on the rock, turned his ear toward them, and said:

“Whazzat? Didn’t hear ya!”

Emma cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “My brother can’t breathe!”

“Oh.” The giant opened his fist so that Michael and Emma both tumbled out onto the boulder. Michael immediately fell to his knees, gasping. Emma glanced over at Kate, but she was still held tight in the giant’s other fist.

“Like I was saying, no talking when we get inside or it’s right straight into the pie.”

“Put my sister down too!” Emma demanded. “And let Gabriel go!”

“Huh?”

“You are so annoying! I said—” She cupped her hands around her mouth and was about to yell when there was a noise from the house, a clatter like a dropped pan, followed by the sound of someone cursing.

“Oh no,” the giant said, and he snatched up Michael, who still looked extremely woozy, dropped him into one of his vest pockets, and then, before Emma could protest, snatched her up as well and placed her in another pocket. She landed facedown in a pile of dirt and twigs and small rocks, bits of hard cheese, and what felt very much like bones.

She was just getting to her knees when something landed hard on her back.

“Oww!”

“Sorry!”

It was Kate. The sisters embraced in the dank darkness of the giant’s pocket, and Kate asked if she was hurt.

“I’m fine.”

“And Michael?”

“Just sick.”

“Did you say Gabriel’s in the giant’s pouch?”

“Uh-huh. That smelly creep knocked him out and stuck him in there. I’m worried. I don’t think he’s moved.”

Kate reached out and gave her hand a comforting squeeze. “As soon as we’re all together, I’ll use the Atlas. Are you really okay?”

There was light coming in from the top of the pocket and more through a small rip near their heads, but it was still dim, and they were both trying to keep their balance, as the giant had risen and begun lumbering, presumably, toward the house.

But Emma could see Kate studying her closely.

“I’m fine. Really.” And to change the subject, she said, “There’re bones in here.”

“I think they’re sheep. At least, I hope.”

“Yeah.”

Through the rip in the pocket, they could see the house getting closer. As they neared the front door, the giant (sort of) whispered, “Remember—quiet!” then pushed on the door, and they entered a large, smoky, poorly lit room. There was a heavy, slightly sour odor made up of bubbling fat and fermenting beer and body odor. Despite there being no glass in the windows, the room smelled like it had not been aired out in years. Emma and Kate caught glimpses of an enormous wooden table and chairs, collections of jars and cups, various roots and leaves and dried meats hanging from the ceiling, a goodly amount of trash, and, against one wall and throwing an orange-red glow across the room, a large gray-stone fireplace at which a woman (a giant woman, obviously) with long, dirty blond hair and a dress of washed-out gray was leaning over an iron pot, stirring a concoction with a wooden spoon that looked to have been carved from the trunk of an entire tree. The sleeves of her dress had been pushed up, revealing massive, muscled forearms.

“Finally!” She hawked a large, brown glob of spit into the pot. “You been gone all mornin’! What’d you bring, then?”

“Nothin’, Sall. Sorry.”

“Nothin’?!” The blond giantess turned toward them, and Kate and Emma instinctively pulled back deeper into the giant’s pocket. But the woman’s attention was on the giant’s face. As she spoke, she waved about her spoon, sending globby droplets of stew this way and that. “You been out all mornin’ wanderin’ around like a simpleton, probably starin’ at clouds and rocks, and you come back and tell me you got nothin’ for the stew?! Oh, but you’re still expectin’ to be fed, ain’t ya? Old Sall, she can just make a stew outta nothin’, can’t she? Well, it’s a big pot of nothin’ you’ll be eatin’ for supper, you half-wit!”

“Said I’m sorry, Sall.”

“Sorry?!” She laughed sourly. “Don’t you go apologizin’ to me! It’s gonna be Big Rog’s Thumb you’ll have to be apologizin’ to, sayin’ you’re sorry as he’s gouging out your eye!”

“Ah now, Sall. Don’t be tellin’ the Thumb, right?”

“ ‘Don’t be tellin’ the Thumb,’ is it? I will be tellin’ the Thumb!” The giantess had come over so that she was right in the other giant’s face, and she poked him as she spoke, her finger like a battering ram and coming awfully near Kate and Emma. “I’ll be tellin’ the Thumb the minute he walks in the door, and then it’ll be half-wit-eyeball soup we’ll be havin’! Oh indeed! Num, num, num!” And she made loud slurping sounds and rubbed a massive hand over her massive belly.

“I’m goin’ to me room,” the giant muttered, and he started to turn, but the giantess caught his arm.

“You wouldn’t be holdin’ out on me now, would you, Willy? Not holdin’ out on your own only sister? ’Cause not findin’ nothing, maybe—maybe—we could forgive that, you bein’ the half-wit moron dunderhead boogers-for-brains you are. But holdin’ out on us? Well, that’s malicious and unforgivable, ain’t it? And then the Thumb’ll be down on you for sure!”

“I ain’t holdin’ out nothin’!” And he yanked his arm away.

Emma looked at Kate and mouthed, “He doesn’t want to share. He wants to eat us all by himself.” And she made her eyes wide to put three exclamation points after it.

Just then there was a yelp from the giant’s other pocket. The giant froze. The blond giantess froze. Emma and Kate froze. They knew their brother’s voice.

The blond giantess let out a cry and sprang forward. The children’s giant tried to run, but he was too slow. Kate and Emma screamed, but their screams were drowned out by the sounds of the giants grappling, banging into the walls, the table, knocking pitchers and pots on the floor; it was obvious that the blond giantess was trying to dig into the giant’s pocket and the giant was trying to protect it, and Emma was sure that they were going to be crushed—

“Do something!” she shouted to Kate.

“Okay! I’ll stop time—”

“You’ll what?!” This was the first Emma had heard about this power.

“I’ll stop time! Just—”

But before she could, there was a squeal of triumph, and the blond giantess leapt back, and the giant who’d captured them scrambled to his feet. As soon as Kate and Emma had regained their balance, they pressed their eyes to the hole in his pocket, expecting to see Michael in the giantess’s hand. But she was holding aloft a plump, fluffy, frantically bleating sheep, which she now brandished in the other giant’s face.

“Found nothin’, did ya? Just gonna keep this secret, were ya? Ha!”

“Ah, Sall, I forgot it was there. Don’t tell Big Rog.”

“ ‘Forgot it was there,’ my foot! You mean you forgot it was there till you got hungry back in your room and had yourself a private little sheepy snack. And I will be tellin’ Big Rog, and you’ll be talkin’ to the Thumb soon enough, believe you me! Now get outta my kitchen ’fore I put you in the pot!”

Emma and Kate, both now utterly confused, watched the room spin as the giant turned and walked down a long (though no doubt short to the giant) hallway and through a door, which he shut and bolted behind him with a wooden bar.

They heard a great sigh, then a creaking of wood as the giant settled into a chair. Two mammoth fingers probed down into the pocket, scooped Emma and Kate up and out, and set them on a table. It took them a moment to get their bearings, and Emma looked about the room as the giant reached into his other pocket and pulled out Michael.

It was a much smaller room than Emma would have expected, for even though the giant was seated, his head nearly brushed the ceiling. As for furniture, there was a table, the stool or chair on which the giant sat, and that was it. A narrow window covered by a loose piece of canvas let in light, and a pile of old, tattered furs against one wall seemed to serve as a bed. The place looked more like a closet than a bedroom, and a small and shabby one at that.

Yet for all that, it was chock-full of stuff. Teacups, teapots, plates, thimbles, scissors, candleholders, shards of colored glass—red, green, blue, yellow—decorative pins, pieces of cracked enamel, what looked like a doll whose face had been worn off, an array of different-sized knives, a clock that was missing its back, a cobbler’s hob—and everything, obviously, giant-sized.

There was something altogether odd about the collection, but Emma couldn’t put her finger on exactly what that something was.

Kate, meanwhile, the moment Michael had been placed on the table, had grabbed him into a hug. Michael was still green-faced and dazed-looking and, in addition, was now covered with sheep fuzz.

“That was a close one,” the giant said. “What’d you go squawking for? Lucky I had a sheep in there.”

“It bit me,” Michael said, displaying a red mark on his arm.

“Emma,” Kate said, holding Michael’s hand in one of hers while reaching out to Emma, “take my hand.”

“Now, Sall’s gonna tell Big Rog I was hidin’ that sheep and he’s gonna come in here with the Thumb. Nothin’ ever goes right for me.”

“Emma!” Kate hissed.

“Hold on.” And Emma actually moved a step farther away from her sister.

She knew Kate wanted to transport them away. But Emma wasn’t going anywhere without Gabriel. And there was something else too. Over the years, as Emma and her siblings had been bounced from orphanage to orphanage, plunged into the midst of one group of strangers after another, she had developed the skill of discerning, in an instant, which children or adults were threats and which were not. It had never steered her wrong, and right now, it was telling her that the forty-foot-tall creature before them, each of whose teeth was the size of her head, meant them no harm.

“And can you believe that was me own sister? If me da’ were still alive, you think he’d stand for how they treat me? Getting abused on a daily basis? And this was supposed to be my house when Da’ died! Look where they got me living! In a closet! Ain’t right, no no, ain’t right at all!” The giant seemed to grow wistful. “Ah, me da’ were a wonderful man, he was. I’m named after him, you know—Willy. ‘Old Willy,’ they called him. A gentle soul. And a marvelous whistler. Why—”

“Hey, you’re not gonna eat us, are you?”

The giant looked at Emma, then dug a finger in his ear, dislodging several pounds of grayish muck.

“Huh?”

“Emma!” Kate reached for her again, but Emma moved even farther away.

“I said—YOU’RE NOT GOING TO EAT US, ARE YOU?”

“Shhh!” The giant showered them with warm spittle. “Not so loud! Sall hears you, she’ll stick you in a pie for Big Rog’s dinner and that’ll be that! ’Course I ain’t gonna eat you! Who put an idea like that in your head?”

“You did! You said to be quiet or it was straight in the pie.”

“I was talkin’ about Sall. I’d never eat the three a’ you!” And he actually managed to look offended.

Emma glanced at Kate and Michael. They were both staring up at the giant, and Kate seemed to have relaxed a bit and was no longer reaching for Emma’s hand.

“What’d you say your name was?” Emma asked.

“Willy.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I’m Dorothy. This is my sister, Evelina. And this is my brother, Toadlip.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“You too. Would you excuse us? I need to talk to them for a second.”

Emma stepped over to Kate and Michael and turned her back on the giant.

“Why’d you say my name was Toadlip?” Michael hissed.

“Because,” Emma hissed back, “we don’t want to use our real names. What if the Dire Magnus is looking for us? Duh!”

“Yeah, but you two got normal names. Toadlip?”

“Michael,” Kate said, “let it go.” She looked at Emma. “What’re you doing? Do you really believe he’s not going to eat us?”

“Yeah. If he was, he would’ve done it by now. And I just know, okay? You’ve gotta trust me. Anyway, I’ve been thinking, what if the Atlas brought us here for a reason? It doesn’t make sense to leave before we figure out what that is. And he lives here. He can help.”

“As long as he doesn’t eat us,” Michael said.

“Well, he might eat you,” Emma snapped. “Which would be a huge tragedy, obviously.”

“Hey—”

“Please, Kate,” Emma said, turning back to her sister, “I can’t explain it more. I just know we’re supposed to be here is all. Please.”

Kate didn’t respond right away, and Emma—who knew that Kate’s first and last thought was always to protect them—considered saying that sometimes you had to do things that were dangerous in order to be safe later; sometimes, you had to take chances. But she kept silent. And standing there, waiting, she felt her position as the youngest as she never had before, the fact that she was always having to ask, to convince, to plead. It was never up to her to choose the path; that was Kate’s job, and now Michael’s a little too. She supposed it had always been this way, so why did it rankle? Was it just that this was her book they were going after, or was it something else?

“Fine,” Kate said. “But stay close. If he tries anything, I can use the Atlas.”

Emma turned back to the giant, who was blowing his nose on a handkerchief the size of a bedsheet, dislodging half a dozen startled brown bats that flopped about on the table and then took awkward flight. Her first concern now was to get Gabriel released.

“Listen, Willy—”

“Uh-oh.” The giant seemed to have had the same idea, for he was twisted about and peering into his leather sack. “He’s gone.”

“Wait—you mean Gabriel?”

“Is that his name? Your friend who tried to murder my hand with that toothpick a’ his? He ruined my best bag, he did. Look.”

Willy held up the pouch, and the children saw a long slice in the bottom of it. Evidently, Gabriel had woken at some point during their journey and cut his way out. Seeing the hole, Emma was relieved.

“He escaped is all. He’s probably coming here now to kill you for kidnapping us. Don’t worry. We won’t let him.”

“Oh. Thanks, I guess.”

“Sure. So, Willy—”

“Shhhhh.” He twisted his head toward the door, listening. After a moment, he nodded. “Sorry. Thought I heard the Thumb.”

Emma had been intending to ask him where exactly they were, what the land was called, and if he knew anything about the Reckoning (posing the question subtly, like, “Soooooo…you know where the Reckoning is?”), but her curiosity got the better of her. “What’s this whole Thumb business?”

“You mean Big Rog?”

“I guess.”

“Well, Big Rog is Sall’s husband. And his thumb, well, it’s the terror a’ the land, it is. You see this thumb here?” He held up his right thumb, which was the size of Emma herself. “This is a respectable thumb. No man need be ashamed of a thumb like that. But Big Rog’s thumb? Why if he wanted to, he could reach up with it and rub out the sun. He holds it over his head in the rain and he don’t get wet. He’s used it to dam rivers so they run backward. A thumb like that’s a thing a’ Fate, with a capital F.” He thought, then added, “And a capital T for Thumb.”

“So he’s got a big thumb,” Michael asked. “So what?”

“Well, Toadlip—”

“My name—”

“Is Toadlip,” Emma finished. “Go on, Willy.”

“Everyone knows that a fella’s whole power is in his thumb, don’t they? It’s what separates us from the animals. Opposable thumbs!”

“That and you being forty feet tall,” Emma said.

“True. There’s that too. Anyway, he’s the reason I don’t have no friends. Everyone’s too afraid a’ that thumb a’ his. But no more!” And he smiled his huge snaggly smile. “Not when people know that I’m the one that found you three! Ah, if only me da’ could’ve been here. He would’ve been proud, he would. He’s the one who told me about you.”

The giant leaned down and waggled a massive finger at them while putting on a deep, rumbling voice that was apparently an imitation of his father, “ ‘Now, Willy, you be on the lookout! Ever you see three little wee children, you snatch them up right quick and don’t let no one put ’em in a pie! Remember the prophecy! Remember the prophecy!’ ”

Emma looked at her brother and sister and saw they had the same surprised expression she did. She’d thought the giant would be helpful, but she never would’ve imagined that he would know about the prophecy, especially since he didn’t seem like the sharpest tool in the shed.

Michael said as much: “You know about the prophecy?”

Willy the Giant made a pshaw face. “Do I know about the prophecy?! Didn’t me da’—he really was the kindest of giants, even let seagulls nest in his hair, not every giant will do that, the poop, you know, can be a bit overwhelming—didn’t he tell me about it when I was only yea high?” He held his hand about ten feet off the floor.

“See”—Emma turned to her brother and sister—“I told you he could help us!”

She knew you shouldn’t say I told you so, but sometimes you just had to.

“So,” Kate said, “you know where the last book is?”

“Hmm?”

“I said, do you know where the last book is?”

“What book?”

“The last Book of Beginning.”

“The what of the what?”

“You know,” Emma said. “The last Book of Beginning! The Reckoning!”

“Oh.” The giant thought for a moment, then shook his head, smiling innocently. “Nope. Never heard of it.”

“Wait,” Emma said, getting annoyed and now very consciously not looking at her brother and sister. “What prophecy are you talking about?”

The giant looked confused. “The dark stranger’s prophecy, the last words he spoke before he took the city. ‘Three children will come, and they will take death from the land.’ And you’re the first children, you’re the first anybody, to come here in thousands of years. And there’s three a’ you. You gotta be them! What prophecy are you talking about?”

“Oh,” Emma said, “that one. I just got confused for a second. Excuse us again.”

The children all turned to each other, speaking in quiet (really, their normal) voices that the giant couldn’t hear.

“Are you guys thinking what I’m thinking?” Emma asked.

“ ‘Take death from the land,’ ” Michael said. “That’s gotta be the Book of Death, don’t you think? Weird, though, that there’s another prophecy about us.”

“Whatever,” Emma said. “The book’s here. The Atlas brought us to the right place!” And then, because she couldn’t resist, she added, “I told you so!”

Kate smiled at her. “You were right.”

Having Kate smile at her filled Emma with such joy and pride that she felt bad for having said I told you so. But, she reasoned, maybe if Kate and Michael treated her less like a little kid and listened to her ideas, she wouldn’t have to say I told you so. That made her feel better.

Kate said, “But are we even sure we should be finding the book? Emma, there’s something you don’t know—”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll all die if we bring them together! Gabriel told me! But we don’t know that for certain! Dr. Pym was a big fat liar, but maybe he was telling the truth and there really is some part of the prophecy no one knows, like, blah, blah, blah, Michael and Kate and Emma are gonna die unless they blah, blah, blah.”

“I’m sure that’s what the prophecy says,” Michael muttered.

“I’m just saying, we don’t know that the Books are gonna kill us, but we do know the Dire Magnus will! So we’ve gotta kill him first! And the only way we can do that is by getting the last book!”

“I agree,” Michael said. “Whether Dr. Pym was telling the truth or not, if we don’t try to find the Reckoning, we’re just giving up.”

“See?” Emma said, seizing her sister’s arm. “Please, Kate!”

Kate’s eyes moved from her brother to her sister, and as Emma watched her sister take a breath, sigh, and nod, she felt a deep sense of relief. She hadn’t realized till then how much she wanted to find the book, how much she needed to, and Emma was about to tell her it would all be okay, and maybe—she might as well plant the idea—Kate and Michael should learn to trust her a little more, when she let out a cry and tumbled forward, senseless, onto the table.

At the same moment, there was a shattering crack as the door to Willy’s room crashed open, and an enormous, black-bearded giant burst in upon them. He saw the children on the table—Kate holding the now-unconscious Emma—and with a roar swung a massive fist into the side of Willy’s head, knocking him to the floor. With his other hand, which did indeed have a thumb the size of a small locomotive, he swept up the children.

“I knew I smelled something funny in here!”

The giant brought them close to his great, grinning mouth as if he would eat them raw, then and there, and growled:

“Oh aye! Big Rog will be having a feast tonight!”