The Nixie’s Song (12 page)

“They were your papers?” Laurie asked.

“We didn’t know .
.
.
we didn’t know he’d die,” said Nick.

“He’s not dead,” said the man.
“Not yet.”

“What do you mean?” Laurie asked.

The old man walked up to the giant and shoved his machete through the giant’s eye.
Its body twitched and then went still.
The old man was right—now Nick could see that the giant hadn’t been dead before.
This stillness was far more terrible.
Laurie choked on a sob.

“Now he’s dead,” said the old man.

“Who are you?” Jared asked.
His voice didn’t sound very steady.

“Noseeum Jack, they call me,” he said.
He smoothed back his white hair with one hand.
“‘Cause I don’t see too good anymore.
I hunt giants—just like my daddy.
You kids aren’t half-bad hunters.”

Jared swallowed.
“Your dad must have been the one writing to my great-great-uncle.
Arthur Spiderwick.”

Noseeum Jack nodded his head.
“Yep.
Good man.
And good on you for following in his footsteps.”

Jared looked embarrassed, but pleased.
Nick rolled his eyes.

“So, you
kill
giants?” Laurie asked.

“Yep.” He held up his machete.
“Stick ‘em in the ear.
Or the eye, like you saw.
Or dynamite.
Dynamite works pretty good.”

“But can’t we just let them go?” she asked, looking over at the body.

“Let them go where?
They’re territorial, just like us.
If we let one giant go, it’ll destroy anything it thinks of as on its land.” Noseeum Jack shook his head.
“You don’t understand.
I been hunting giants for years, but they’ve mostly
been sleeping giants.
You search ‘em out, and so long as you’re careful, they never wake up.
No chance to blow fire or smash things before you get the job done.”

“That’s terrible!”

“You might think so, but that’s because you don’t understand.
Giants are like cicadas.
Just like the cicadas come up all at once every decade or so, giants wake up all at once, too, ‘cept they do it every five hundred years,” he said.
“Good thing you kids showed up when you did.”

“Why’s that?” asked Nick.

“Me with my sight not being what it used to be, I could use the help.
It’s time.
The giants are all waking up.” Noseeum Jack put one wrinkled hand on Nick’s shoulder.
“And if we don’t stop ‘em, all of Florida is going to burn.”

Nick looked at Jack and Laurie and Jared, then at all the wood frames of half-finished houses
in his father’s development.
He looked over at the lake and the exhausted nixie resting in the mud on the bank.
He thought of things, buried things, pushing their way up out of the ground.
It seemed to him that no matter how much he wanted to keep things the same, no matter how good he was or what he did or how much he tried to contain, everything was going to change.

And, somehow, he had to change, too.

Tony DiTerlizzi is the author and illustrator of
Jimmy Zangwow’s Out-of-This-World Moon-Pie Adventure,
as well as the Zena Sutherland Award–winning
Ted
.
In 2003, his brilliantly cinematic version of Mary Howitt’s classic poem “The Spider and the Fly” received stellar reviews, earned Tony his second Zena Sutherland Award, and was honored as a Caldecott Honor Book.
His most recent picture book is
G Is for One Gzonk!
In addition, Tony’s art has graced the work of such well-known fantasy names as J.
R.
R.
Tolkien, Anne McCaffrey, Peter S.
Beagle, and Jane Yolen as well as Wizards of the Coast’s
Magic: The Gathering
.
He, his wife, and his daughter reside in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Visit Tony on the World Wide Web at
www.diterlizzi.com
.

Holly Black’s first novel,
Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale
, was published in the fall of 2002.
It was a YALSA Best Book for Young Adults and made YALSA’s Teens’ Top Ten booklist for 2003.
A companion novel,
Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie
, won the Andre Norton Award for young adult fiction from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Her most recent solo venture is a
New York Times
bestselling companion to
Tithe
and
Valiant
entitled
Ironside: A Modern Faery’s Tale
.
She has also contributed to anthologies by Terri Windling, Ellen Datlow, and Tamora Pierce.
Holly also lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.
She lives with her husband, Theo, and a remarkable menagerie.
Visit Holly on the World Wide Web at
www.blackholly.com
.

Beware, fair Laurie.
Heed, young Nick.
.
.

BOOKS BY

Jimmy Zangwow’s Out-of-This-
World Moon-Pie Adventure
Ted
Z
ENA
S
UTHERLAND
A
WARD
WINNER

G Is for One Gzonk

BOOKS ILLUSTRATED BY

Alien and Possum:
Friends No Matter What

Alien and Possum Hanging Out
BY T
ONY
J
OHNSTON

The Spider and the Fly
BY
M
ARY
H
OWITT
Z
ENA
S
UTHERLAND
A
WARD
WINNER
C
ALDECOTT
H
ONOR
B
OOK

BOOKS BY
Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale

Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie
A
NDRE
N
ORTON
A
WARD
WINNER

Ironside: A Modern Faery’s Tale

BOOKS BY
T
HE
S
PIDERWICK
C
HRONICLES
BOOK 1:
The Field Guide
BOOK 2:
The Seeing Stone
BOOK 3:
Lucinda’s Secret
BOOK 4:
The Ironwood Tree
BOOK 5:
The Wrath of Mulgarath

THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES
Notebook for Fantastical Observations

Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the
Fantastical World Around You

T
HE
S
PIDERWICK
C
HRONICLES
Care and Feeding of Sprites

T
HE
S
PIDERWICK
C
HRONICLES
Deluxe Collector’s Trunk

The Chronicles of Spiderwick: A Grand Tour of
the Enchanted World, Navigated by Thimbletack