Page 163 of The Sea Witch
“Like the lock on the church in Domingo,” he said. “One of the skills you acquired as a pirate?”
“Norham, actually.” She continued to focus on picking the lock. “When I was a child, my parents used to punish me and Ellen by locking our poppets into a chest.”
“And you freed the poppets.”
She froze, and her eyes went wide. “Did you feel that?”
“Rumbling.” He widened his stance. “An earthquake.”
“Not uncommon in these parts. I’d heard what happened to Port Royal.”
The shaking stopped, and Alys bent back to her task. Butthen the ground shook with even more force. The stones in the hut rattled with the strength of it.
Ben grabbed Alys’s hand and hauled her out of the hut. The last place they wanted to be in an earthquake was inside a stone cottage of dubious stability.
The shaking continued, the stones jolting with more force. Yet the ground beneath Ben and Alys’s feet was stable and unmoving.
Ben said, “What—”
The air filled with the sounds of stone rasping against stone. The hut verged on collapsing. And then the whole cottage shifted and groaned and lurched upright, the stones rearranging themselves.
Into the form of a giant human.
It stood about twelve feet tall, with wide shoulders and massive hands, and its face was made up of the smaller stones and bricks that had once been part of the hut. Large round pebbles were its eyes, and when it opened its mouth, it revealed rough teeth made of stone shards, which it gnashed at Ben and Alys.
“Jesus God,” Ben exclaimed.
Ben and Alys dove in opposite directions as the creature swiped with its huge stone hands. It made a rumble of anger when Ben and Alys barely managed to avoid its next strike.
Ben rolled to standing. He struck at the giant’s forearm with his cutlass, but the metal only bounced off the stone. When Ben thrust at the stone creature’s leg, sparks flew as his blade glanced away.
Alys hurled a fiery spell at the giant. This, too, was deflected by the creature’s rocky body.
“Fuck,” she snarled from the other side of the clearing. “Nothing works against this thing.”
“It has a weakness,” he called back. “Everything does. Look closely. There must be something we can use against it.”
They circled around the giant, evading its swinging arms and blows from its gargantuan stone hands. If one of its palms connected with their skulls, the bones would be pulverized into dust.
Alys gave a yelp.
Ben rushed to her side, yet she wasn’t hurt. She pointed to a piece of metal on the back of its neck.
“That was part of the hearth,” she said. “And look.”
“There’s a slot in it.”
“Just the right size to fit this.” She pulled out the gilded carving knife again. “The key.”
He nodded. “I’ll provide distraction.”
Ben took up a position in front of the stone creature. He grabbed a rock and threw it at the giant’s chest. The beast lunged for him, and Ben danced away. Again and again, he did this, narrowly missing the giant’s stone hand breaking his bones.
Alys eased up behind the colossus.
Ben shouted at the giant, waving his arms and throwing more rocks at the beast. At the same time, Alys took a running leap.
She landed midway up the giant’s back. The creature tried to shake her off, but she clung to the stones that comprised its body, even as her own body whipped this way and that. Ben attempted to keep the giant distracted with more yells and thrown rocks, yet it was too busy attempting to fling her off.
