Free Snow White and the Giants by J. T. McIntosh

his jacket off and was unbuttoning his shirt. "Can someone lend

me a pair of shorts?" he asked.

Greg suddenly laughed -- the bellow that had rattled the windows of my

office. "I like you," he said.

"Most people do," said Jota.

"You're a bit like me," said Greg.

"In more ways than one," said Jota softly. And now he was speaking

with significance.

There was a sudden silence. Jota knew something he wasn't supposed

to know.

I was out of this, yet not entirely out of it, not without some clue.

I had known Jota a long time . . .

"Remember," Greg said, "I killed you."

"Remember," Jota said, "I let you."

They suddenly all decided by common consent that if Jota was halfway

one of them, I certainly wasn't. " He can't stay," Greg told Jota.

"That's all right," said Jota calmly. "I don't need anyone to hold

my hand."

They were going to let him stay. He was going to have his way, as

usual. And I knew he'd had this idea in his head all along.

Jota, despite a wide variety of personal contacts that were fleeting or

lasting, was a lone wolf. He didn't want me with him. He wanted to do

this his way.

"What's your name?" he asked one of the girls, the prettiest next

to Miranda.

"Irwina," she said.

"Let's go and dangle our toes in the water -- after somebody lends me

a pair of shorts."

Greg looked at me. "Get out," he said briefly.

I didn't argue. Jota, living in the camp, was bound to learn a lot --

perhaps everything there was to learn.

I walked away and left them.

It was quicker to walk back along the river bank than it would have been

to cut across country to the road into town.

There was no point in going back to the office. I knew I couldn't do

anything useful that afternoon. Fighting for your life, even if you win,

doesn't leave you cool, calm and collected.

To say I was shaken was an understatement. Unharmed, unscratched

though I was, I had lived the nightmare. Jota had died, and yet he had

experienced less than I had. I could still feel the pain in my wrist,

the warm dripping of blood. I would never forget what it was like to

fight for my life, knowing the only choice was to kill or be killed. Nor

would I forget what it was like to be a killer.

If I ever killed again, there would have to be a reason, a stronger reason

even than self-defense. Until then I had not realized there could be a

stronger reason. Yet if you kill merely to avoid being killed, you don't

want to kill. If you kill in anger or hate, you mean it . . .

I was going home to have a stiff whisky, or two, or three. Sheila was

out. And Dina would have gone to the Carswells.

I was glad Sheila wouldn't be at home. If a man and woman are close,

married or not, everything that happens has to be shared, and as soon

as possible. Once I'd have been running home to tell Sheila what had

happened, to talk it out with her. As it was I was impatient to get

into a cool, darkened room, out of the sun, with a glass and a bottle

of Glen Grant.

I meant to get drunk. Yet I don't drink a lot, and seldom alone.

Ahead of me, I saw a swimmer in the river. And what a swimmer! She was

moving away, gaining on me. She must therefore have slipped into the

water, unnoticed, just in front of me.

Although I could see only her dark head, she must be Miranda. Nobody in

Shuteley could swim like that.

I guessed at once where she was going.

When three or six or a dozen out of the ordinary things happen at

more or less the same time, the chances of a connection between them

are overwhelming. Miranda was swimming downriver. She wasn't swimming

lazily, as anyone might on a hot day. She was swimming with a purpose,

to get somewhere.

About half a mile downriver, on the south side, was the copse where

I had seen the unexplained, inexplicable radiance. And short of going

all the way to Shuteley, crossing there, coming back on the other side

and then walking up our drive, past the house and through the garden,

the only way to reach it from the