The Nixie’s Song (13 page)

Tony and Holly would like to thank
Kevin, our faithful, fantastical guide
for this grand adventure,
Linda, for mapping out Mangrove Hollow
(and the spaghetti!),
Cassie, Cecil, Kelly, and Steve,
for their smarts,
Barry, for all his help,
Ellen, Julie, and all the folks at Gotham,
Scotty and Johnny Lind, for keeping the art on track,
Will and Joey B., for keeping Tony on track,
Theo, for all the patience and encouragement,
Angela (and Sophia)—more Spiderwick!
More endless nights of discussion!
At least it was on a beautiful, sunny Florida beach .
.
.
,

and all the wonderfully talented folks at S&S for
all of their support in bringing the next chapter
in the Spiderwick tale to life.

The text type for this book is set in Cochin.
The display types are set in Nevins Hand and Rackham.
The illustrations are rendered in pen and ink.
Managing editor: Dorothy Gribbin
Art director: Lizzy Bromley
Production manager: Chava Wolin

A
SNEAK PEEK AT
B
OOK
2,
A G
IANT
P
ROBLEM

Nicholas Vargas had never been all that good at sports.
He liked to play basketball, but he scored a lot higher with a controller in his hand and an animated character shooting the baskets for him.
Same with baseball and tennis and even swimming.
He saw absolutely no reason why anything would be different when it came to giant-killing.

Nick’s stepsister, Laurie, had twisted her blond tangles into braids because she’d read somewhere that it was important to keep hair
off your face in a fight.
She was determined to learn how to kill giants, but Nick was pretty sure that she was bad at basketball and baseball and swimming both in real life
and
on the screen.
A notebook was balanced on her knees and she had set a microcassette recorder on the ground so she could replay the whole lesson later.
She chewed the end of her pencil thoughtfully, ready to take extra notes, as Noseeum Jack started to speak.

“First you got to find the giant,” he said, sitting down on a stump.
They were in the front yard of Jack’s ramshackle house in the middle of the day, and the humid air settled on all their shoulders like a heavy blanket.
“If he’s moving, things have already gone too far.
Your best bet is doing the slaying before they wake up.”

Laurie raised her hand.

Jack kept on talking.
“Couple o’ ways to know there are giants underfoot.
They like the
swamps, but they like freshwater better than salt since they gotta drink it through their skin.
Look for rocks and hills, especially if they’ve got odd-colored grass on ‘em.
Lots o’ the time, that grass is really hair.”

Laurie waved her hand a little, impatiently.
Nick snatched her pencil.
On the page of her notebook, he wrote
HE’S BLIND
.

Jack’s eyes were cloudy with what Nick thought might be cataracts.
His grandma had had cataracts and the doctors did some kind of laser surgery on them, but Jack’s eyes looked much worse than Nick’s grandmother’s had.

Noseeum Jack.
It was a really sad nickname.
He’d had the Sight, and blindness took it away from him.
Maybe he could see a little bit through the cloudiness, but obviously he couldn’t see enough to notice a hand waving in front of his face.

“Are there girl giants?” Laurie asked, interrupting a story Jack had been telling about finding a giant by the way his mountainous head and weedlike hair were covered with dandruff.

“Uh,” he said, and then scratched his head.
“Sure.
I guess.
Mostly I never noticed any difference.”

Laurie wrote something in her notebook, nodding.

“Look,” Nick said.
“This is dumb.
We’re just two kids.
And you said that more giants were going to wake up.
All of them, maybe.
All at once.
We can’t stop that.
This is useless.”

“We all got to play the hand we’re dealt,”Jack said, picking up
his machete.
“This area’s where the highest concentration of giants is.
Estimate’s maybe thirty still around.
There are two good killing blows guaranteed to put down a giant if you just—”

“What hand was I dealt?
It’s summer,” said Nick.
“My job in the summer is to have fun.
School’s out.
We shouldn’t have to come here every other day.”

“But these lessons aren’t like school,” Laurie said.

“Oh, come on,” said Nick.
“It’s not like you really want to kill anything.
You’re just excited because you get to talk about giants all day long.
This isn’t pretend anymore.”

She narrowed her eyes.
“I know that!”

“Do you?” Nick looked over at Jack, but he was just shaking his head at both of them.

“Wait!
I have it!” Laurie said.
“We have to get other people to join us.”

“That’s crazy,” Nick said.
“No one would believe us.”

“We’ve got to make them believe,” said Laurie.

Jack grunted softly.
“You think you could?” He looked hopeful, which only made Nick feel more glum.
Maybe Jack had already realized what bad students he had and how hopeless this was.

“I know I could,” Laurie said, full of stupid certainty.
“And we could get Jared and Simon to come back, and maybe they will bring Mallory this time.
And maybe they’ve met other people who would want to help.”

“Jared and Simon went home to Maine.
They’re not coming back,” Nick said.
“They got what they wanted.
They got their uncle’s papers.”

“Either way,” said Jack, “there’s one thing we can be sure about: The more people we got to
train, the more you both better know.
So listen up.” With that, he began telling a complicated story about what had appeared to be two giants sleeping side by side, but turned out to be a rare type of giant with two heads.

Laurie recorded every word.

*
Still not his real name.