Edgar located the hole by touch, then began chipping away at it. Without light the work was excruciatingly slow, since he could not take mighty swings with the pick. Instead he began tap-tap-tapping at the tooth, and in this way painstakingly enlarged the hole. This method was clearly safer, since the giant merely moaned, rather than howling in pain, and did not again slap his hand to his cheek. Edgar and Meagan did have one bad moment when the giant began digging at the back of his mouth with his fingertip, trying to dislodge whatever was bothering him. But Meagan had tied them down with slipknots, and as soon as she saw the light at the front of the giant’s mouth, she loosened the ropes so they could again take shelter in the gap between the teeth.

The giant’s blunt and dirty fingertip prodded against their hiding place but was far too wide to get at them. He did try his fingernail a couple of times. It came somewhat farther into the gap between the teeth, but by cowering back they were able to avoid it. Edgar longed to attack the probing nail with his pick, but Meagan held him back.

By the time they decided to rest, Edgar had managed to enlarge the hole to the point where he could get his head and shoulders into it. His arms ached, and he longed for light. But he reminded himself that Meagan had done the same thing all on her own, with no company and no hope of light for relief, with nothing but her own will to survive driving her on.

When they had returned to the tooth where Meagan made her home and she had lit a fresh torch, Edgar found himself looking at her with new respect.

The outer coating of the tooth was hard but brittle, and broke away fairly easily. After about four feet, the material changed to something dense and yellow, and tougher to work with the pick.

It took five days—which is to say, five of the times between when they slept—to reach this inner material. Two days before that, the hole had been big enough that Edgar could crawl completely inside. Though it was big enough for him to fit in comfortably—if you consider being curled in a tight ball comfortable—Meagan did not make him move there immediately, as he had once feared she would. This pleased him, and not merely for the obvious reasons. They had grown more easy in their companionship as the work on Edgar’s home had continued, and he had come to think of her not merely as someone sharing a disaster, but as a genuine, if somewhat irascible, friend.

Finally the time came when the excavation in the tooth was big enough for Edgar to take up his home in it. He moved his things—that is, the two or three items Meagan had given him, as well as a pitchfork (the single thing he had managed to snag on his own)—to his new abode.