The Giant's Seat Read online

  Could Cader Idris also be the mountain that the lady-voiced Bap had been talking about in Charlie’s dream?

  The dwarf sucked his teeth. “You one of the Old Man’s?”

  Charlie shook his head. “I beg your pardon?”

  The dwarf spat. “You belong to me now, then. You’ll get to Cader Idris if and when I take you there, Donkey.”

  Charlie turned and started to walk away.

  “You won’t get far,” the dwarf called.

  Charlie snorted and broke into a run.

  He left the three gold-trimmed wagons behind, and the herd of donkeys, and the meadow. With each step he pushed himself faster, and because he knew Wales was somewhere to the west, he ran away from the rising sun. The ground was moist, but the worst of the mud had solidified and the sky overhead was clear.

  He had only run a mile when his legs began to twitch.

  No!

  He ran faster.

  “Gnat! Bob! Ollie!” he yelled.

  His body stopped working and he pitched forward into unconsciousness again.

  * * *

  Charlie opened his eyes again and saw the same dwarf. The dwarf was grinning now and chewing on the stem of a long blade of grass. He stood over Charlie, who lay on his back in the path.

  “I didn’t wind you very much, you see,” the dwarf said. “Donkey. And I’m not going to wind you very much. I suggest you stay close to the wagons and do exactly as I tell you at all times.”

  “You’re wicked!”

  The dwarf folded his arms over his chest. “I found a valuable tool lying on the ground in the forest. That doesn’t make me wicked; it makes me lucky.”

  “I’m a boy.”

  “You’re my donkey. And I’m not in the habit of arguing with donkeys. Now get up.”

  Charlie stood. He was where he had fallen after running away. The three wagons were lined up in the road, each pulled by two of the donkeys. On the high seat at the front of the first wagon, holding the reins, sat a dwarf who looked very much like the dwarf Charlie was talking to, only his beard was done into two braids and Charlie didn’t see any gold wire in it.

  “What’s your name?” Charlie balled his hands into fists. He wanted to push the dwarf down and run, but he knew he would only stop working again and be caught. He would have to bite his tongue and bide his time. He’d get to a town or his friends would find him.

  “You’ll address me as Master.”

  Charlie tightened his fists. “I see.”

  “You see…what, Donkey?”

  “I see, Master.”

  “If you must refer to me when speaking to others, you may call me a certain dwarf.”

  “A…certain dwarf?”

  The dwarf nodded. “Correct.”

  Charlie shook his head. “Which dwarf?”

  “A certain dwarf. Do you hear? If you speak to any other dwarf here, I am a certain dwarf.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t have to understand.” The dwarf’s eyebrows crowded together over a fierce glare. “You just have to do as I tell you.”

  Charlie shrugged. “A certain dwarf, it is.”

  “Good. Now, we’re going to need firewood. I suggest you stay ahead of us and close to the lane. That way, if your spring unwinds, I’ll find you easily. If you get stuck out in the middle of the forest and out of sight, it might not be worth my trouble to come after you.”

  The dwarf stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled three sharp blasts. The driver of the first wagon snapped his reins, and his donkeys trundled forward. As the wagon moved past, Charlie saw that its back wall consisted of two doors, now latched open. Inside sat a beardless dwarf on a small stool—a woman. Her hair was tied in a long braid down her back, and instead of a leather jacket, she wore a padded doublet, dyed red. She held a knife, and she was carving a forked stick. As she passed, she eyed Charlie from head to toe, but her face showed no expression.

  Beside her reclined a tassel-eared cat. It stared at Charlie just as impassively as she did.

  The driver’s seat of the second wagon held two dwarfs, both with long white hair. The woman drove the team of donkeys and paid Charlie no mind, but the man, who had a short beard and cheeks that shone so red they might have been polished, looked Charlie’s way with twinkling eyes and smiled.

  The dwarf who wanted to be called Master climbed up into the seat of the third wagon and took the reins. “You’ll put the wood you collect in the back of my wagon,” he told Charlie. “A certain dwarf will open it for you if you knock.”

  “I thought you were a certain dwarf.” Charlie’s confusion added to his sense of being alone, lost and trapped.

  The dwarf chuckled, a hard sound that made Charlie feel small. “I’m a certain dwarf who can get things done.”

  He shook the reins, and the last two donkeys shuffled forward, putting the entire caravan on the move.

  Charlie stood still for a moment, watching the wagons pull off ahead of him down the track. They were beautiful, all lacquered a matching crimson—the same color as the dwarf’s head scarf—and trimmed in gold. There were curious markings, like letters, painted in vertical gold columns up the wagons’ corners. The beds of the wagons were long and narrow, but the shingled and arched roofs were wider, so the side walls curved up and out to end in eaves under the rooftops. From before or behind, the wagons appeared wedge-shaped. Each wagon had multiple shuttered windows and a little iron chimney.

  “Clock off,” Charlie muttered.

  But because he had no choice, he started. He had to trot a little to get ahead of the three wagons, and then he began to forage for wood.

  Charlie quickly found that he got the best results by locating large evergreen trees not far from the path. They usually had lower branches that were dead, dry, and easy to snap off. He gathered his first armful of wood and jogged to the back of the caravan. The dwarf who insisted on being addressed as Master nodded as he passed, but didn’t say anything.

  A certain dwarf? Charlie was baffled.

  Charlie knocked on the double doors at the rear of the wagon, and one of them opened. A lady dwarf nodded at him. She had red hair, and although the interior of the cabin was a little dark, Charlie thought she had it done into three braids.

  “A certain dwarf told me you’d be knocking,” she said.

  “A certain dwarf? Do you mean the certain dwarf who can get things done? The…master?” Charlie felt humiliated. He didn’t want to call anybody his master.

  “Give that here.” The dwarf leaned forward and took the armload of pine branches from Charlie. Beside her, Charlie saw an iron stove and a wooden box; she stacked the branches neatly into the box. “If you see any dandelion by the side of the path, pull it up and bring it here. Be sure to get the root, mind. A certain dwarf has an upset stomach.”

  “A certain dwarf?” Charlie hesitated and almost stopped walking. “Do you mean…Wait—who has an upset stomach?”

  “A certain dwarf who is quite a bit younger than your master.” This time she nodded beside her into the darkness of the wagon as she said it.

  Charlie peered in and saw a baby.

  The baby sat in a frame of leather and springs hanging from the ceiling, so as the wagon rolled, the baby bounced around slightly. The contraption reminded Charlie of the harnesses hanging beneath Bob’s flyer, and he tried not to think of his missing friends. The baby wasn’t particularly tiny, but it did have fine reddish fuzz on its cheeks and jaws, a baby beard. As Charlie looked, the baby’s stomach emitted a loud gurgle.

  Charlie didn’t really know what to say to a parent, and especially not to a dwarf parent. “He’s a sturdy little fellow.”

  “She’s a girl,” the dwarf lady told him. “That one’s a boy.” She nodded again, and deeper in the wagon Charlie saw a small dwarf in short leather trousers and short sleeves. He lay in one of several hammocks that stretched across the broad upper part of the wagon, reading by the light that came in through the slats of a
shuttered window. Charlie craned his neck but couldn’t see what was printed on the pages.

  Below the hammock dozed another tassel-eared cat.

  “Oh.” Charlie felt awkward.

  “Donkey!” called the dwarf who could get things done, and Charlie was grateful for the excuse to withdraw. He jogged around to the front of the wagon. “Get up here a moment,” the dwarf said. “Let me give you a half turn.”

  Charlie climbed onto the high seat and turned his back. His master wound Charlie’s mainspring, but only a little bit, and then Charlie hopped down and looked for dandelion.

  He found a patch in a sunny little glade just off the track and carefully pulled as much of it as he could before the wagons passed him. The moistness of the earth from the storm helped. Then he trotted back to the rear wagon and knocked again.

  Charlie handed the red-haired dwarf the roots. “The Collins Herbarium suggests cutting the root into small pieces and roasting it before brewing it into tea.”

  She cocked her head and looked at him curiously. “The Collins Herbarium?”

  “It’s a book.” Charlie shrugged. “I’ve read a lot of books.”

  “Thank you.” She moved to shut the door again and then stopped. “My name is Yellario,” she said. “And the certain dwarf with an upset stomach is Yezi. She would tell you herself, if she could speak.”

  “I’m Charlie. I mean…my master calls me…that is, a certain dwarf calls me Donkey. He says that maybe in the future he’ll call me Harry. But my bap called me Charlie.”

  Yellario laughed, a sound like a song. “Thank you.” She shut the door.

  Charlie nodded at the back of the wagon. Then he jogged around to look for more wood.

  If Charlie stayed ahead of the wagons, the dwarfs would be able to find him in the event his mainspring wound down. The trees immediately beside the track had already been stripped of the best branches, so he turned and walked a few paces into the woods.

  Those steps took him out of sight of the dwarfs’ wagons, and suddenly he saw a person. The stranger sat on a fallen log, hunched forward, face hidden by a broad black hat. He or she seemed to be writing in a blank book with a fountain pen.

  Charlie stopped.

  Of course he had known that people wrote books. Someone—Robert Louis Stevenson, one of the Brontë sisters, or Sir Walter Scott, for example—had to sit down and actually write words on a page before a book could come into existence.

  And he’d seen his bap writing in ledgers many times, keeping track of work done and amounts billed to clients.

  Still, to come across a person in the forest, alone, writing words in an open book…it was a magical moment. Charlie felt as if he were in the presence of a creature of fable.

  “Hello,” he said.

  The person looked up; it was a man. He was neither particularly old nor particularly young. Under his broad hat he had a pale face and longish hair that stuck out in all directions. His clothing consisted of a high-collared black jacket, trousers, and boots, not unlike what Charlie himself was wearing. His eyes rolled around, and when they came to rest, they weren’t pointing in exactly the same direction. One eye looked at Charlie, but the other aimed off to the side and behind him.

  “Hello,” said the man. “Shoe duck he?”

  Charlie hesitated. Had the man just spoken gibberish? Was he insane? “I beg your pardon?”

  “Ah,” the man said, shutting his book. “Key see sice. You’re English. Well then, how do you do?”

  “I don’t think I am English,” Charlie said. “Not really. And I’m not doing very well.” Had he said too much?

  The man smiled. “I’m not English either. I’m come row, a Welshman.”

  “Come…come row?”

  The Welshman chuckled. “Spelled C-Y-M-R-O. Not an Englishman, not a sice, spelled S-A-I-S.”

  “That’s Welsh.” Charlie didn’t know any languages other than English, but he knew Welsh was the language people spoke in Wales. He also had the vague idea that those same people all herded sheep and ate a lot of cheese.

  “I am. Although we don’t actually call it that, you know. Welsh is an Old English word that means ‘foreigner.’ ”

  Charlie’s heart lifted. Of course a Welsh person could be anywhere, just as an English person or a Punjabi could, but meeting this Welshman, however odd he was, made Charlie feel that maybe he was close to Wales and the object of his quest.

  For the moment, he forgot about firewood.

  But he wasn’t entirely sure what to say to the man. Should he ask the mysterious writer to wind his mainspring? But in the first place, Charlie wasn’t entirely sure how to wind his mainspring, since he’d never seen it himself, and in the second, the thought of telling a stranger that he was a device and how he could be wound filled Charlie with dread.

  Couldn’t this Welshman imprison Charlie just as easily as the dwarfs had? Was Charlie any better off trading one master for another? “I’m sort of a foreigner, too.”

  The Welshman laughed. “There’s a story in there—excellent! Stories are powerful things.”

  Charlie knew he should be gathering wood and didn’t want to anger the dwarfs, but he couldn’t help himself. He pointed at the book. “Are you writing a story?”

  “A song. Naturally, every song is a story. But I need a song specifically.”

  “You need a song?” Charlie didn’t know what to make of that.

  The Welshman pointed at a pile of sticks near his feet. The sticks were arranged in layers that alternated directions and left room inside for wadded paper and wood shavings. Charlie knew exactly what such a stack was for because he’d read how to start campfires in one of his bap’s books, A Rambler’s Guide to the Lake Country.

  “You see, I know a song,” the Welshman said, “and it even has a line that seems as if it ought to work for me: ‘Oyer eeoor tea heb dan un a gaia’—which means ‘Cold is the house without a fire in winter,’ you know. Only I’m singing the line and it doesn’t work. So I’m trying to write my own song about lighting a fire instead. A song personal to me to light my fires.”

  “Oh.” Charlie remembered something he’d read in Smythson’s Almanack. “Does that mean you’re a dewin?” The Almanack said that Welsh wizards were called dewins and performed their magic by singing.

  “I’ve given myself away.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t always have the best manners.”

  The Welshman grinned. “I’m trying to be a dewin.” Charlie had pronounced the word DOO-in, but apparently it was supposed to be DAY-win. “I have some talent on me, but I’m not sure how much. And I know some songs, but I’m not very good at controlling them, or getting them to do a lot.”

  “Oh.” Charlie could have said something similar about himself. He was able to do things, unusual things, but he wasn’t really sure how far he could push himself, and he definitely didn’t feel in control at the moment.

  “But I keep trying because it seems as if…well, it seems as if this is my special talent, so I ought to use it, oughtn’t I? And oughtn’t I to use it to, you know, help others?”

  Charlie thought of his bap, who had been kidnapped and whom Charlie had failed to rescue. He nodded.

  “You say you’re a foreigner, but you sound English enough.” He squinted at Charlie. “Indeed, though, you’re a bit distinctive-looking. Some kind of elder folk, are you? Gnome, kobold? Maybe you’re from Egypt or the Indies? Too tall to be a pixie, no?”

  Charlie straightened up. His bap had always slathered him with skin creams when he went outside, to mask the fact that Charlie didn’t look quite like a flesh-and-blood boy. The chalk and mud on his skin must have been having the same effect. “Have you seen other pixies? I mean, have you seen a pixie in these woods?”

  The dewin shook his head. “Tell me this story of yours, boyo.” He opened his book to a new page.

  Charlie considered his words carefully. “My name is Charlie Pondicherry. My bap was from the Punjab.” And his name, Cha
rlie thought with a pang, was really Singh.

  “India!” the Welshman cried. “Land of the treasure-hiding yaksha and the half-bird kinnari.”

  Charlie nodded. “We lived in London, in Whitechapel, only now…” The fact that this wobbly-eyed stranger seemed to know some of the same stories as Bap made the broken pipe stem in Charlie’s pocket heavier. “I’m looking for some friends. Two London lads. One of them is named Ollie and wears a bowler hat. He’s a ginger. Bob wears a bomber cap. And they’re probably in these woods somewhere.” The storm could have blown them a hundred miles away. “Also a fairy, a pixie. Her name is Natalie de Minimis, and she’ll be the Baroness of Underthames one day, once she…well, the barony was her mother’s, but Gnat has to earn the right to take it back. But she will. She’s fierce.”

  As Charlie told the Welshman about himself and his friends, the dewin took notes. He wrote in a fast hand that was large and hard to read. Even granted that Charlie was seeing the words upside down, they all looked like straight lines to him. Was the dewin really writing words at all? And was it Charlie’s imagination, or were his eyes rolling in his head as he wrote?

  Charlie didn’t mention that he was a machine.

  “My name is Lloyd Shankin,” said the dewin when Charlie had finished. “And I come from a magical spot, which is to say a place of poetry and madness. It’s a mountain, a rocky hill called Cader Idris. Cader means ‘chair,’ so that’s ‘the seat of Idris’ in Welsh, you see, Idris being a giant and needing a whole mountain to rest his backside upon. I come from Cader Idris, and I’m on my journey home now. But I haven’t seen a bowler hat or a bomber cap in weeks, and I’ve never in my life seen a pixie. It’s said there were pixies once on the Cader, but they’ve been gone a long time.”

  Cader Idris! Cader Idris was where Charlie was supposed to find Caradog Pritchard, his bap’s friend, and warn him. Did he dare ask about Pritchard? When his bap had repeated to him the name in a tunnel under Waterloo Station, he had accidentally told the man’s location to the Iron Cog, the organization from which Raj Pondicherry and Caradog Pritchard had both been on the run. “Did you write in your book about me?”