Fergus looked up at his brother. Your turn, he nodded.
“Who are you?” Kieran shouted. “What are your names?”
“Don’t tell it,” the uncle snapped.
“Oho! Then you heard them too?” said the nephew.
“Don’t get too close. They’ll enchant you!”
“My name is Humphreybodie,” the bearded giant said in a slow, explanatory voice. “Humph-rey-bodie. This is my uncle.” He placed a hand on the moustached giant who didn’t really look much older than the other. “His name is Osgoddodius. Osgod-dodius. Have you got names?”
“Don’t be silly, of course they haven’t.”
“I’m Fergus, and this is my brother, Kieran.”
“I’ll be blown over,” the uncle said in a murmur like a foghorn. “What strange things to call one’s self. However do they remember such short names?”
“Where did you come from?” Kieran called. “How did you get here? What are you doing?”
“Came up through the ground, of course,” Humphreybodie said matter-of-factly. “Like respectable giants.”
“Why?” Fergus hollered. “Can’t you swim?”
“Swim?” Humphreybodie looked alarmed. “No honourable giant ever learned to swim. Not when there’s jumping to be done.”
“Jumping?” asked Kieran. “Why are you doing that?”
“Why,” Humphreybodie replied, “we’re getting ready for tonight’s practise, of course.”
“What are you practising?” yelled Fergus.
“Why, jumping, of course. Got to practise our jumping,” Humphreybodie answered with a look across to his uncle.
“Blow me over,” Osgoddodius said under his breath. “I didn’t know they could talk.” He clutched at his stomach. “I’ll never eat another one as long as I live.”
Fergus renewed his clutch on Kieran’s sleeve.
“We jump at night,” Humphreybodie continued. “It’s good for the lungs and makes the muscles work harder. We need to be in good shape for the competitions.”
Something clicked for Kieran. “Wait, is it you who’s keeping everyone awake? Jumping at night like that?”
“Sorry, pet,” Humphreybodie said, bending closer. “I didn’t catch that.”
“Did you know you’re keeping people awake?!”
“Keeping people awake? There are no people on this island-only you little creatures. There used to be, but there aren’t anymore. It’s deserted. That’s why we use it. That’s why we’re testing it.”
“Testing it for what?” Kieran hollered, his throat getting hoarse now.
“Why, for the games, of course,” said Osgoddodius.
“What games?” yelled Fergus.
“The Giant Games,” Humphreybodie said expansively, throwing his arms wide apart. “It is a meeting, a coming-together-of. My uncle and I are going to compete in jumping. But first we have to see if this place is made of the right stuff for jumping. We’ve been here each night for the last couple months, testing out every inch of it. If we like what there is, we’ll spread the word and all the giants will descend upon it and we shall compete in jumping up and falling down.”
“How many are in the competition?” Kieran asked.
“Oh, hundreds,” Osgoddodius answered.
In their mind’s eye, Kieran and Fergus saw hundreds of enormous feet falling from the sky like a shower of meteors, pounding the ground, making craters in the streets, shaking houses to the ground. Was there any way to stop them? Could they warn people? Evacuate the island, perhaps?
“Are you any good?” Fergus shouted.
Humphreybodie drew back and puffed his chest out. “Any good? I should say we are. Did you hear that, Nuncle? ‘Are we any good?’”
“Good? We’re the best. That’s why we have the job of finding the jumping grounds.”
“I don’t know, I saw you jumping just now, and it didn’t look that far. I bet you couldn’t even jump to the Calf,” Fergus said, sounding disappointed.
“‘Calf’?” Osgoddodius repeated. “What ‘Calf’?”
“The Calf is what we call that island over there,” Fergus answered, pointing out to sea, to the southwest. They had been walking from Port Erin to Cregneash, and the Calf of Man was clearly visible from where they now stood.
“That little thing? No problem.”
“I bet you can’t,” Fergus taunted.
“’Course we can,” Humphreybodie said. “A child could make that.”
“A toddler,” said Osgoddodius.
“Show us, then.”
“Right,” Humphreybodie said. He turned and stood up straight. He gazed the distance and then took two enormous steps and leapt.
They watched him rise up, up, into the air in a great arc, and then come down, down, and alight upon the island. A couple seconds later they heard the impact shock.
Osgoddodius snorted derisively. “He barely reached the place, the pillock. He’s not as strong a jumper as myself, not that it needed saying.”
They watched Humphreybodie, still fairly visible at this distance, take another run and leap back up in the air toward them. He hung in the sky, then grew larger and larger, and came down only a few feet from where he had jumped off from. The thundering shake nearly knocked both Fergus and Kieran off the rock they were on.
“Now,” Osgoddodius said. “Watch this. No run up. Watch this.”
And, sure enough, from a stationery start, Osgoddodius leapt up into the air and came down on the Calf.
“Silly old bugger,” Humphreybodie said, sniffing condescendingly. “What’s he trying to prove? He’ll do himself an injury, at his age-pull something he’d rather not have pulled.”
“You mean you can jump farther?” Fergus asked.
“’Course I can,” Humphreybodie said, just before Osgoddodius came back and landed next to him, toppling Kieran and Fergus.
“What did you think of that?” the gigantic uncle asked. “Pretty keen, eh?”
“Humphreybodie didn’t think so,” Fergus called. Kieran didn’t know what his little brother was up to, but he was obviously running the show now, and he had an intense look on his face, the kind he wore when he was thinking hard about a card or board game. “He said you were old, and he might be right. I don’t think you could even make the Isle of Booty.”
Kieran blinked. The Isle of Booty? That was an island they had made up when they were little and played pirates on the beach.
“’Course I can make it,” Osgoddodius said, turning around and scanning the horizon. “Where is it?”
“I didn’t think you could see it. Humphreybodie said your eyesight was going.”
“Yeah, yer blind old duffer,” Humphreybodie taunted.
“Well, where is it then, knucklehead?” Osgoddodius asked his nephew.
But Fergus answered, “It’s right there, on the far side of the Calf. It’s about twice the distance again.”
It suddenly dawned on Kieran. “Twice? More like three times.”
“Probably more,” Fergus rejoined.
“Most likely more,” said Kieran. “It’s too far for either of you, in any case.”
“Much too far,” Fergus said. “Forget we said anything.”
“Forget nothing!” Osgoddodius exclaimed. “I’ll hop to the Calf and skip to the Booty, no problem, just you watch.”
Osgoddodius dug his feet into the sand. “Right, here goes,” he said under his breath and started bounding along the shore, each footfall growing farther and farther apart. He touched down once on the last tip of the Isle of Man, came down on the Calf, and crouched and sprang for the final jump. He leapt so high up in the air he became obscured by a cloud.
“You know,” Fergus called to Humphreybodie, who had watched his uncle’s progress with interest. “It didn’t look like he was going very fast. I’ll bet you could make it there before him, if you really tried.”
A wide grin spread across Humphreybodie’s face. “I’ll just bet I could, and all! Hah! Wait ‘til I see the look on his face!” And without any more hesitation than it took to say those words, he was off and running.
Fergus and Kieran watched him take the same route off the island and into the air, toward an island that only existed in their imaginations.