The infield had been hastily raked and the outfield was patchy and weedy. It was on this very spot, the giant claimed, that Peavine's barnstorming ferishers had played a series of eighty-one games against him and his seventeen brothers (forming two squads, the Gnashers and the Thumpers, of nine giants apiece), in a great yard built from the bones of leviathans and other elder beasts, that could accommodate ten thousand stomping, whoop-ing beastmen and wood-haints and fair folk. According to the Universal Rules—the details were all in How to Catch Lightning and Smoke—powerful grammers had been worked to grow the ferishers until they were of a size with the home nines. The dimensions of the field were appropriately vast. From the pitcher's mound to home plate, Ethan reckoned now, it must be about a thousand feet. "GIANTS WON THAT SERIES, TOO," Mooseknuckle John said, as he trudged off to take his place. "FORTY-ONE TO FORTY. DON'T BELIEVE ALL YOU READ IN THAT BOOK OF FERISHER LIES." Ethan looked inquiringly at Cinquefoil, who shook his head.
