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had woken Collosso was the first sound that the baby heard. For him it was monstrously loud, an ear-splitting crash right over his head. Down in the parlor, Fingal watched in fear as the rafters shook and a snowfall of plaster fell upon him. But Jimmy didn’t cry. He didn’t wail or shriek; he just lay in his mother’s arms, pink and wrinkled, like a wise old man.
    At the moment of his birth, the wolves began calling from the forest. They sang and they howled, more wolves than ever had sung at once. Jimmy’s mother, hearing them, pulled the blankets over herself and the baby. She lay shaking in the bed while Jimmy laughed and kicked against her.
    Although she must have had a name, no one could remember ever hearing it. She was Fingal’s wife—the Woman—no more than that. Thin as a whip, with hard lines in her face, she had a nose like the blade of an axe. She was always telling her husband what to do, and when to do it, and when to do it again if he hadn’t done it right.
    Jimmy wasn’t the firstborn child. He was neither the second nor the third, but he would never meet the others. A sister had drowned, and another had been squashed by the giant, while his only brother—Tom—had simply disappeared.Fingal’s wife told anyone who asked that Tom had struck out on his own, up the Great North Road to seek his fortune in the mountains, but as he was only six years old at the time, that seemed unlikely. Fingal believed the gryphons had got him. “There’s nothing that gryphons like better than boys,” he said.
    “Well, gryphons won’t get this boy,” said Fingal’s wife. “My little Jimmy won’t be eaten, and he won’t be squashed. He’s my little treasure.”
    Treasure?
thought Fingal. He muttered under his breath, careful not to be heard.
“Woman, you’re mad if you’re thinking that babby’s a treasure.”
    Fingal was a mean-hearted man, and to him the child was a cost, an item he recorded on the debit side of his ledger. On the day that his son was born he drew a narrow column that he headed “Jimmy,” and there he recorded in minuscule writing—because even ink cost money—every expense, from diapers to mashed peas. He had started columns for his other children, and began this one in the same way—with a huge sigh, as though he believed it was bound to be a wasted effort. As he wrote he kept moaning, “All debits, no credits. What’s the use of a babby?”

    “What about the giant?” asked Dickie, in his iron lung. The bellows worked below him. “Did Collosso go looking for Jimmy?”
    “No, he didn’t,” said Laurie.
    “Was he scared?” asked Chip.
    Dickie’s head nodded slightly on the pillow. “I think so.”
    “Well, you’re right; he was,” said Laurie. She shifted her feet, leaning back against the windowsill. “Collosso was scared to death of the giant-slayer.”

    For days, the giant fretted in his castle. He stood at the ramparts, staring across the mountains, over the valleys, toward fields and forests. From sunrise to darkness he stood and stared, leaning his elbows on the great stone blocks.
    It was all he could think about, that a giant-slayer was out there. The idea worried away at him, as though an animal gnawed at his innards. At night he dreamed about the giant-slayer, then woke in the morning more frightened than he’d been the day before. On a Sunday afternoon, as he had on many Sundays, he took out his entertainments. He lifted the lid and saw the people cowering inside. Some held on to each other, some raised their hands toward him for mercy, and many sat hunched and quivering in the corners. Just weeks before, the sight would have made him laugh uproariously. But now he only slammed the lid in place again and pushed the box away.
    “Curse him. Curse him,” said Collosso. “I cannot bear this any longer.”
    Right then, the giant got up from his chair. He put on his jaunty red hat and went out from the castle. He strode to the south, over the pass and down