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    Giant Cold
    Giant Cold
    Giant Cold
    Ebook89 pages1 hour

    Giant Cold

    By Peter Dickinson and Alan E. Cober

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    About this ebook

    Can a child defeat a frozen giant and bring summer back to Apple Island?

    It’s the last night of a family’s holiday on a tropical island filled with black beaches, sweetfruit, and red-necked looby birds. Their final adventure is to climb the island’s tallest mountain before they leave in the morning. But when the child—who might be you—wakes up the next morning, the world has become a frozen wasteland and the father has been transformed into ice.
     
    Setting out in search of Giant Cold, a frozen monster no one has ever seen, you—now a tiny elf—meet two giants: white-beard, a scholar; and black-beard, a sailor. You’re forced to live inside a bottle and travel with black-beard—until the looby birds snatch up the bottle. Flying over forests, fields, and seas, you must rescue Apple Island from Giant Cold and his armies of wind, snow, and ice. With only the warmth of your own life—a tiny spark—you take on the powerful giant. Riding the wind up to the mountain peak, your tiny size will become your greatest asset as you make a surprising discovery about yourself.
     
    Giant Cold is a strikingly original, big-hearted fantasy about love, family, and finding your way home.
     
    This ebook features black-and-white illustrations by Alan Cober and an illustrated personal history of Peter Dickinson including rare images from the author’s collection.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateJan 5, 2016
    ISBN9781504025140
    Giant Cold
    Author

    Peter Dickinson

    Peter Dickinson is one of the most acclaimed and respected writers of our time and has won nearly every major literary award for his children's novels. THE KIN, his first book for Macmillan, was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal in 1999, as was THE ROPEMAKER in 2001. Peter is currently writing the sequel to THE ROPEMAKER, due October 2006. His most recent book for Macmillan, THE GIFT BOAT, was described by Books for Keeps as 'a masterpiece, gripping, the work of a major writer at his very best.' Peter was one of the three shortlisted candidates for the first Children's Laureate. He lives in Hampshire.

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      Book preview

      Giant Cold - Peter Dickinson

      Giant Cold

      Peter Dickinson

      Illustrated by Alan E. Cober

      for Emilie McLeod

      BEFORE …

      On a holiday island, somebody falling asleep—it might be you.

      Hush, shush, murmurs the sea. …

      Voices of parents from the next room.

      It’s much too far for a child.

      But it’s our last day, tomorrow. We mustn’t waste it.

      I don’t call it a waste, lying on the beach, soaking up sun.

      I do, when we still haven’t climbed the mountain. We promised we would, first day we came.

      Yes, it was a promise. … Cars on the mountain road. At one special corner, their lights shine straight at the window, bright for an instant through the thin curtains, bright even through closed eyelids.

      We don’t want to get home dog-tired. It’ll be winter soon. Think of it. Sleet, snow, ice, and the wind whipping round the street corners as if it wanted to blow you away. We’ve got to store up sunlight in ourselves to get us through.

      Haven’t we done enough of that? I think we want to store up something special in our minds. It’s a terrific mountain. Don’t you remember, flying in, how it looked like a gigantic sail coming out of the sea?

      From along the sea-front, a disco, just the drums at this distance, like the beat of a huge heart. Overhead an airliner, full of tourists, flying in to land, drowning all noises with its thunder.

      "There’s been plenty special enough already. Aren’t black beaches special? And the sweetfruit—that doesn’t grow anywhere else. And that bird with the stupid name."

      Looby. The red-necked looby.

      Well?

      Look, it’s the mountain that makes everything else special. The beaches are black because it was once a volcano. The sweetfruit has to have volcanic ash to grow in. The loobies come …

      Can’t we just lie on the beach and look at it?

      "Not the same thing. Not if we’re going to make it part of ourselves. Just think. Somewhere at the heart of that mountain, there is still fire!"

      We can’t take that home with us.

      Honestly, darling …

      No, really …

      Why do people argue when they have paid so much to be happy? They are arguing about love. They love each other. They love their child. Each wants to give the others the best they possibly can. That’s what love means.

      Does it? A sort of competition—who can give most, best? Sometimes it seems to become a different competition—who shall have their own way, who is strongest?

      Hush, shush, murmurs the sea.

      This is stupid. We’ll spoil the whole holiday if we go on like this. Let’s do it your way.

      Oh no, darling, I don’t want …

      Is the night colder? Or is it just thinking about the cold back home? What does it mean, loving someone? How can you get love? How can you keep it? Can you huddle into love, like huddling into your blankets, huddling into your own warmth, clutching it to you, precious, like gold, warm, like gold fire, fire at the heart of the mountain?

      At the souvenir stall you can buy a sweetfruit stone in a bottle, just beginning to grow, to put out a root-tip. It will never grow in the cold back home.

      What does love mean? What does anything mean? What does the man mean, the man on the island’s flag, bearded, naked, waving the branch of a sweetfruit tree? Nobody knows. Perhaps he is calling to the loobies, as they migrate from the cold north.

      What does anything mean to somebody falling asleep, huddling into warmth, clutching it to them?

      No voices now. Somebody fell asleep. It might be you.

      THE GARDEN

      Is it you? You waking on this sort of shelf in the tiny white room, with the harsh straw mattress under you and a fur rug for a blanket?

      Yes, it is you, but all changed. Changed house, changed life, changed world. Changed but not strange, because all your life you have slept in this room, curled for warmth under this rug, woken to see the sky and the treetops through this window. The window has no glass in it, but that is not strange either. You

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