Read Online The Stone Giant by James P. Blaylock - Free Book Online Page A

change his mind and decide they were the voices of women – witches, perhaps. One voice, though, was a bit higher. It was a familiar voice – very pretty, actually.
    Escargot stiffened. He knew whose voice it was. He’d
have
to take a look through the window. There was another window higher up on the second floor, but there was no way to climb the slippery, shingled sides of the mill – no handholds or footholds unless he clambered up one of the vanes. The noise of it, though, would give him away. They’d catch him at it, halfway up and utterly defenseless. At least if he was discovered on the ground he could make a run for it.
    He crept forward, thankful that the grass and leaves on the meadow were heavy and silent with fog. He cupped an ear to the wall below the windowsill, but all was silent save for a low and rhythmic chanting in a guttural language he had no desire to understand. When he turned up toward the window, there on the sill, next to the glowing pumpkin, a black cat sat peering out into the night. Escargot crouched below, staring up at it. It wouldn’t do to frighten it. Perhaps it wouldn’t do to be
seen
by it. The cat seemed to be watching the vanes turn in the breeze, fascinated with it as it might be fascinated by a bit of dancing yarn.
    Then it leaped across the four feet that separated it from the revolving vanes, lit against the ragged lattice and scrabbled its paws through, holding on as the blade swept upward into the mist. Escargot watched the vanes whoosh back down – one, two, three, four, five, and then he was counting the same vanes over again. The cat was gone –perhaps searching the upper story for mice.
    Escargot edged past beneath the window, conscious of the turning blades behind him. It wouldn’t do to have one of them crack him in the head. He pulled himself up on the sill, wafered against the damp, dark shingles, and peered in at the window. A half dozen jack-o’-lanterns burned round the walls. Three witches kneeled on the dirt inside, casting a pair of enormous ivory dice across a carven board. Leta wasn’t among them. Yet Escargot had been certain that it was her voice he had heard above the murmuring. Near the shut door of the mill an iron cauldron sat on a heap of burning kindling. The smoke from the fire mingled with steam from the cauldron, hovering in the air in a pink cloud before condensing and falling back into the cauldron like bloody raindrops. Four broomsticks leaned against the door.
    One of the witches was enormously fat, with a fleshy face that nearly hid her eyes. She crouched there on the floor, an overstuffed, robed doll, her fingers working like pudgy snakes over the tumbling dice. Next to her lay a leather bag – Escargot’s leather bag. Marbles spilled out of the mouth of it.
    ‘Hey!’ cried Escargot in sudden surprise, astonished to see the bag and determined to get it back. The fat witch grinned up at him, as if she were happy that he’d dropped by, as if she’d been expecting him. She plucked up one of the marbles, held it up briefly in the light of a glowing jack-o’-lantern, and flipped it into the cauldron which hissed and smoked and sent a reeking cloud of vapor swirling about the little room, smelling sickeningly of blood.
    Escargot lurched backward, pushing the pumpkin on the windowsill into the room. He heard it thud against the dirt just as one of the vanes swung round toward him, skiving across the back of his head, brushing his ear. The next vane, whipped round in a sudden gust of wind, snatched the back of his coat, and the ragged lattice tangled itself like fingers into his collar and hair.
    Before he had time to cry out he found himself swept around in a broad arc, into the air, following the path of the cat. He clawed at the air behind him, clutching for a hold on the rickety vane. Surely his weight would stop the thing’s turning – either that or simply snap it off. He’d find himself rolling down the hill with a broken neck. He