Chapter 2: The Giant Man Makes a Plan of Action Which They Carry Out

The croco-diamond popped the last bit of sami-nana-kin in his mouth.

“Delicious!” he said to the giant man. “Did you grow that on this farm?”

“I grow everything on the farm and then sell it at the market. I like to work outdoors.”

“And you live here alone?” asked the croco-diamond, noticing, now that the sun was fully up, that the giant man’s house, while well made, was, to be honest, a little messy.

“I’ve lived here alone for a long time.”

The croco-diamond said, with pride, “I have never lived alone.” Then, thinking his response may have been a bit impolite, he whispered conspiratorially, “However, I did live in a swamp. It was quite mucky. You can’t even imagine what it did to…my jewels.”

Every croco-diamond has a unique set of jewels, some won from dueling with pirates, others bestowed for valor, a few given as payment for scholarly works, and the rest handed down through the generations. All of the croco-diamond’s star garnets were inherited from his father, who had received them as payment for a series of books he had written about Roebertian engine design. Croco-diamonds can be very mechanically inclined when they aren’t being lazy.

“I wonder if I might have a copy of your father’s book. Let’s go look,” said the giant man.

Located down the hallway from the kitchen was the giant man’s library. It was full of all kinds of books. Cook books, plant books, bird books, farm books, and the entire Poggly Woggly adventure series. But not the croco-diamond’s father’s book.

“Well, it was a limited edition series. Very expensive. One really must have jewels to afford it.”

But the giant man had no jewels. That made the croco-diamond feel bored. He thought about returning to the purple hammock for some sleep. The giant man had other ideas.

“What we are going to do now is go out in the field and pick some more cringle roots. Then we will go into the kitchen and make the cringle crisps. I think we can make at least two baskets before market.”

At first the croco-diamond was not sure at all that he wanted to go into a field to do manual labor. The giant man watched as the croco-diamond lowered his snout and made a “kkkech, bleccch” noise. He wrapped his tail around his body and looked as if he would turn into a giant ball and bounce away.

So the giant man said, “I would like to tell you about the cringle root. The cringle root is a beautiful thing, like your jewels.”

The giant man pulled out the Oxmand Varveris’ Handbook of Corms to show the croco-diamond.

“You plant it in the fall, the seed looks like a flower. You must tend to the root gently through the winter. In the spring tiny green leaves sprout from the dirt. The leaves are shiny, like…”

“Like my emeralds?” the croco-diamond asked, suddenly interested since the subject had changed to him.

“Yes, like your emeralds. Under the leaves a small root grows hidden, a translucent globe at first, darkening to a shade of purple, the purple of royalty. The purple … of Kings.”

“I see,” said the croco-diamond, contemplating the rich purple of the cringle crisps, and how they had shimmered in the basket, tempting him to eat them.

He wondered how croco-diamonds had been unaware for all of the years that cringle crisps existed since they were obviously the food of Kings. So light and airy with an exceptional crunch leaving a nutty earthy taste in the mouth as one savored the broken crisp on the tongue.

A trickle of saliva rolled down the croco-diamond’s lower jaw. He wished for a cringle crisp at that moment and wanted it more than anything in all of the worlds. He thought to ask the giant man if there might be some over looked baskets, perhaps in the house, which, while not a perfectly clean environment, would not preclude the croco-diamond, recently from the swamp, from eating a cringle crisp.

“Say, would there be any more cringle crisps about somewhere? You have piqued my interest. I am very excited to get to know more about them through a thorough study.”

The giant man sadly shook his head no.

At that moment it became clear to the croco-diamond what needed to be done. He raised his snout up.

“To the field!” he commanded, raising a finger on his front foot in the air. “We go! Post haste!”

And so they went into the field. The croco-diamond watched impatiently as the giant man picked a cringle root. He had to bend down from way up high to the dirt where the cringle roots were.

 He would stick his big fingers in the dirt, fumbling because the cringle roots were much smaller than his fingers. Because of his height it was hard to see the ground, so he would have to bend even lower, saying “oof, my back!” to make sure he only picked ripe cringle roots.

“This will not do! This will not do at all!” The croco-diamond’s mind was racing thinking: cringle yummy crunchy. Crunchy cringle crummies. Cringly crispy yummy.

“Please, step aside dear sir!” commanded the croco-diamond. “We will NEVER get to market this way!”

He began to delicately scratch at the ground, determined, though it was manual labor, to pick some cringle roots so he could have some cringle crisps.

The croco-diamond was much faster at picking than the giant man. Being lower to the ground, with his long nails, he could easily pull the cringle roots out of the earth.

The croco-diamond was able to pick 10 cringle roots in the time the giant man picked just one. Because the croco-diamond was faster at picking, the giant man busied himself back at the house making the cringle crisps. He covered the ground from the house to the field in just five steps, returning to pick up baskets when he heard the croco-diamond’s joyous “Ruf!”  indicating that yet another basket had been filled.

Left alone in the field, the croco-diamond was filled with anticipation as he pulled each cringle root out of the ground.

“Oh my beauties. I will do anything for you! You, of exceptional delicacy and taste…”

He paused, holding a shimmering purple cringle root up to the light of the sun. A solitary tear slid from the croco-diamond’s right eye.

Then, embarrassed and fearing he was being dramatic, he addressed the basket of cringle roots before him, “Well, I do like you. But, mostly when you are a cringle crisp.”

In less than two hours, they were ready to go to market with five baskets of cringle crisps. The giant man put the baskets into his ticky-tap-tap. Although there was room for the croco-diamond to sit in the front seat he decided instead he wanted to sit in the ticky-tap-tap bed with the cringle crisps. The giant man strung the purple hammock up across the bed.

“You see, this is how my people travel,” the croco-diamond told the giant man as he climbed into the hammock.

“I am used to being carried in a royal litter by eight sloth-toed land fish. A flamencio bird walks in front, sprinkling a basket of petals to mark my arrival.” The croco-diamond looked around hopefully, but there were no flamencio birds or sloth-toed land fish to be seen anywhere. “You do at least have petals? Red is my color. But what ever you have on hand will do.”

The giant man worriedly scanned his yard. No red petals. The closest thing he had was an oops-a-daisy bush and that wouldn’t flower for another month. He scratched his head, thinking quietly “um, hm, em”. And then…

“I have an idea! I read it in a book! I can tie red streamers to the front of the car. That way everyone will know there is a very important person arriving.”

The croco-diamond genteelly nodded his head in agreement. Quickly the giant man tore the red bandana he wore around his neck into strips. The strips were attached to the bumper and they were off to the market.

As the giant man drove he could hear, from the back of the ticky-tap-tap, a muffled “crunch crunch.” But when he looked in the rear-view mirror, the croco-diamond appeared to be asleep.