Eddie and Susannah barely noticed this. They had eyes only for the overall-clad giants following along in Jaffords’s wake. Eddie and Susannah had seen maybe a dozen extremely large people on their tour of the smallhold farms along the River Road, but always at a distance. (“Most of em’re shy of strangers, do ye ken,” Eisenhart had said.) These two were less than ten feet away.

Man and woman or boy and girl? Both at the same time, Eddie thought. Because their ages don’t matter.

The female, sweaty and laughing, had to be six-six, with breasts that looked twice as big as Eddie’s head. Around her neck on a string was a wooden crucifix. The male had at least six inches on his sister-in-law. He looked at the newcomers shyly, then began sucking his thumb with one hand and squeezing his crotch with the other. To Eddie the most amazing thing about them wasn’t their size but their eerie resemblance to Tian and Zalia. It was like looking at the clumsy first drafts of some ultimately successful work of art. They were so clearly idiots, the both of them, and so clearly, so closely, related to people who weren’t. Eerie was the only word for them.

No,Eddie thought, the word is roont.

“This is my brother, Zalman,” Zalia said, her tone oddly formal.

“And my sister, Tia,” Tian added. “Make your manners, you two galoots.”

Zalman just went ahead sucking one piece of himself and kneading the other. Tia, however, gave a huge (and somehow ducklike) curtsy. “Long days long nights long earth!” she cried. “WE GET TATERS AND GRAVY!”

“Good,” Susannah said quietly. “Taters and gravy is good.”

“TATERS AND GRAVY IS GOOD!”Tia wrinkled her nose, pulling her upper lip away from her teeth in a piglike sneer of good fellowship. “TATERS AND GRAVY! TATERS AND GRAVY! GOOD OL’ TATERS AND GRAVY!”

Hedda touched Susannah’s hand hesitantly. “She go on like that all day unless you tell her shush, missus-sai.”

“Shush, Tia,” Susannah said.

Tia gave a honk of laughter at the sky, crossed her arms over her prodigious bosom, and fell silent.

“Zal,” Tian said. “You need to go pee-pee, don’t you?”

Zalia’s brother said nothing, only continued squeezing his crotch.

“Go pee-pee,” Tian said. “You go on behind the barn. Water the sharproot, say thankya.”

For a moment nothing happened. Then Zalman set off, moving in a wide, shambling gait.

“When they were young—” Susannah began.

“Bright as polished agates, the both of em,” Zalia said. “Now she’s bad and my brother’s even worse.”

She abruptly put her hands over her face. Aaron gave a high laugh at this and covered his own face in imitation (“Peet-a-boo!” he called through his fingers), but both sets of twins looked grave. Alarmed, even.