The Stone Giant by James P. Blaylock

as if years were spinning away in moments.
    The procession danced beneath an arched bridge made of cut stone that wheeled around into a high, crenellated wall, and for the space of five minutes the cornucopia vanished. When it hove once again into view, there, among the throng that danced behind it, was Leta. He was certain of it.
    He pushed along toward the sidewalk, jumping and craning his neck to see. An enormous woman with a feathered hat grabbed him by the wrists and whirled him away. He yanked loose, bumped against a trio of circling pipe players, and nearly went down. ‘Here now!’ cried one, hopping for a moment and grabbing the toe of his shoe. Escargot shouted an apology to the wind as he leaped into a brief clearing. He sprinted toward a tiny cobbled alley, pushing through an almost solid, writhing mass of revelers who blew in time on paper flutes. In a moment the way was clear. There was just enough sun left. In five minutes he’d have to trust to torchlight to illuminate the crowds, and the task of finding Leta would become monumental.
    Ahead, winding up the hill, labored the cornucopia, flanked by scores of marchers clad in great circular masks, painted like rouged baby faces, all of them whirling round like tops, revealing at one moment a hideous grin, at the next a weeping frown, and amid them, looking hither and thither as if lost, stumbled Leta. Escargot shouted. He waved his arm. But she was oblivious to him. She couldn’t conceivably hear him above the noise. She angled away to the right, disappearing for a moment behind the lurching cornucopia, then appeared again, stepping into the gloom of an alley, running now, as if pursued. Escargot followed. It was impossible that she was running from him. She couldn’t know he was there.
    In the shadow of the alley he slowed. He could hear footfalls ahead, scraping against cobbles. But the sun was gone and the alley was shrouded in ocean mist. He had forgotten in his haste and in his desire to see a familiar face that Leta wasn’t what she seemed. He recalled, suddenly, the sight of her in the windmill, crouched on her haunches like a great cat and changing with the rising sun into the stooped, blind crone. And his ruined Smithers – he recalled that too. Their paths, he reasoned in a sudden fit of courage, seemed destined to cross; they might just as well cross now, while he was the pursuer and not the pursued.
    The alley curved down the hill, past countless overgrown backyards, and evening slipped by the moment into night. The fog thickened. Escargot slowed, then stopped and listened. The sure tread of Leta’s footfalls had been replaced by the dim, measured swish and scrape of someone walking slowly, almost wearily – toward him now. He took a step back, quelling the urge to cut and run. He’d see this out, he told himself. Come what may he’d wrestle with these devils so that he could get on with things. He couldn’t have them continually popping up at him out of every alley he passed.
    The fog before him swirled and parted, as if stirred by an unfelt breeze, and out of it, looming toward him, shuffling along slowly and inexorably, hunched the witch, leaning on her stick and twisting her head back and forth as if she knew someone were there, watching her. Escargot smashed himself against a fence and waited.
    A clatter of footfalls arose in the fog, as if a company of people were running toward them down the alley. Shouts rang out. Escargot stepped along into the shadow of an entryway, feeling for the knob with his left hand. It was unlocked. If it came to it, he’d slip the door open, enter the house, and lock the door after him. He’d be pitched out, for sure, as a drunken reveler, but better that than ... what? He didn’t at all care to find out.
    The old woman shuffled along past him, hurrying, it seemed, tapping the cobbles with her stick. The lace of her shawl hung like wet cobweb and the bones of her cheeks and forehead seemed to twitch with