“What?” said the Giant.
“I mean, do you have any further indispositions?”
“Besides what I told you? Yes, I have. I have griping in my brain and my ears, where language is destroyed by slow attrition day by day; where thought is bombinated, as if my skull were a besieged city.”
“Anything more?”
“I sleep now. Many hours in the day. I wake at dawn and hear myself growing, before the noise of the criers starts, and the wheels of carts. In the day the city’s noise swamps it, but in the watches of the night you may hear the crack as my bones break free of their moorings, and the slap of the tide beaches against my liver. Mr. Hunter, would you enter into my difficulties? A chair already will not fit me. My tailor has to stand on a ladder. He sends in bills that are insupportable.”
“Your agent … I am surprised, in the circumstances, that he thinks of reducing your rate. I would have thought, on the contrary …”
“I don’t grow quick enough for Joe. Patrick O’Brien in Cork is springing up day by day. They say he’s nine foot tall and practically embarked.”
“Indeed? I shall be most interested to see him. What is his age?”
“Pat? He’s a young lad, seventeen or so.”
“Healthy?”
“Prime.”
“I see.” The Scot frowned. “Nine foot, you say?”
“By repute.”
“We shall see.”
“It appears you are fond of giants, Mr. Hunter.”
“Oh, I never miss my chance to view. If the tariff is reasonable.”
For the benefit of Slig, whose ignorance of dwarves was deep, they had taken to explanations.
“They are the size of a child of seven,” Pybus said. “Their skin is the colour of earth, that is because they live in the earth. Their hair is black when young. Their cloaks are black—”
“Or red,” said Jankin.
“—and they wear long smocks so you don’t see their duck feet. Some of them have hairy ears—”
“And how do they disguise those?” Slig asked.
“With hats,” Jankin said. “They can change a lump of coal to a precious jewel. Can’t they, Charlie O’Brien?”
“They make cheese,” the Giant said. “They have the art of tending to cattle. There was once a man who had seven white cows, and it was the time of year to bring them down from the mountain to the lush valley grass. But the cows were missing, and though he searched all day he found no trace. That night he went to sleep exhausted, and didn’t say his prayers. When he woke the next day—”
“—and still no sign of the cows,” said Jankin.
“—he decided he would go on as if he had the cows still, so he milked them, invisible as they were, and he led them to the valley, and he fed them all winter on invisible food. When spring came—”
“You’d wonder where he got the idea,” said Slig.
“—when spring came, he drove them once more up the mountain. That night, when it was time for milking, his seven white cows came lowing towards him, and trotting after them, nuzzling their silken flanks, came seven shining white calves.”
“If Connor’s grandfather had only known,” Claffey said, sardonic. “Instead of all the shouting, and the breaking of pates among O’Sheas. If he’d just sat tight, he’d have been a wealthy man.”
“Well. There is a lesson to be learned,” the Giant said.
“You’re too tall,” Claffey said, “to be so sententious.”
“The lesson is not about getting beasts,” the Giant said calmly.
“The lesson is about believing that things may be invisible but still exist.”
Constantine Claffey stirred the coins in his pocket, smirking greasily at the deep jingle. “I like the evidence of my senses,” he said.
“Then you are a foolish fellow, Con. Supposing a mosquito lands upon the back of my hand. What do his senses tell him? Ah, here is a nice even plain, very well to romp upon, I’ll tell my friends. Ah, here is nice rich blood, I can take a gallon and tomorrow come back for more, we can drink, me and my wife, we can drink a gallon a piece. Then—
“More dwarves!” Jankin demanded. “I want the servant girl in the forest, freezing and starving as night comes down!”
“By the ghost’s waistcoat, you are a nasty piece of work,” Claffey said. “You are a kind of apprentice piece for a monkey, are you not, Jankin? When the Giant is the whole ape?”
“I only said,” Jankin complained, “I only said she is in the forest, and that’s true. I only said her belly’s empty, which it is because she’s been turned out of her home, and I said she’s cold because it’s usually at least autumn when this tale takes place.”
“So she’s walking in the forest,” Joe said. “And night’s coming down? But I bet she spies a little cottage, eh?
