The Giants and the Joneses (11 page)

‘A
HEESH
! A
HEESH
!’ IT was the boy’s voice. He sounded desperate.

Throg unscrewed the cap of his can of weedkiller again and tottered towards the cry for help.

A terrible sight met his eyes. The boy was leaning over the edge of the land, into the misty emptiness, and both his hands were clamped around his sister’s arm, which looked as if it was nearly out of its socket. The girl was hanging in the emptiness. Any second now the
boy would lose his grip and she would fall.

The boy turned a terrified white face towards Throg. ‘Aheesh!’ he whispered hoarsely.

The girl’s other arm was flailing about wildly. Throg knelt down, reached out and caught hold of it. As he did so he felt his knees slipping towards the edge. The girl was surprisingly heavy, and for one dizzy moment Throg thought she would take him with her, crashing down to the land of the iggly plops. What a way to die!

But then he caught the desperate hope in the girl’s eyes and he knew he had to rescue her. If they pulled together they could do it.

‘Wunk, twunk, thrink, haroof!’ he croaked.

The girl’s head rose above the rocky edge of the land. Her shoulders followed.

‘Tweeko!’

With a supreme effort they pulled again until her tummy was on the rock and she was wriggling herself forward to safety.

The boy let go then. He looked even whiter than before, ghostly white. Instead of lingering to comfort
his sister or thank Throg he grabbed something – a toy car, was it? – and ran.

The girl was sitting up now, hunched over, her arms wrapped around herself, shaking. Still kneeling, Throg patted her head awkwardly and murmured, ‘Ootle rootle.’

And then his eye lit on something and he stopped patting and telling her it was all right, because it wasn’t. It wasn’t ootle rootle at all.

There on the ground lay an open box, and the box was full of bimples!

In an instant Throg was on his feet, the can in his hand, sloshing the poisonous liquid over the beans.

‘Nug! Nug kraggle o bimples!’ shouted the girl.

And from behind the boulder –
his
boulder, the one he had carved – there rushed a tiny ferocious figure. It wagged its finger at him.

‘Pecky, pecky, pecky!’ it scolded.

An iggly plop, and one who could speak Groilish!

The can was still in Throg’s hand. He tilted it towards the horrible creature.

At the same time, something stung one of his toes.

He lifted his foot, wobbled, and sat down with a thump. The can went flying from his hand. It must have been almost empty because not a drop spilt from it as it bounced, once, twice, and then disappeared over the edge.

‘Yes!’ came an iggly triumphant voice from the ground.

It was the toe-stinger – an iggly plop, wearing a round shield and armed with a nail. Beside him stood two more, one with its arm round the other. Throg recognised the iggliest one as the finger-wagger.

Looking more closely, he was amazed to see that they were only children.

He reached out for them, but the girl giant was too quick for him. She had scooped them up.

‘Beely iggly plops!’ she said. At least, that’s what he thought she said, but he was distracted by another sound. A long loud bleat.

A grubby, tatty-looking fleecy creature had appeared from behind the boulder. Although it had splendid curly horns it had a needy, pathetic air about it. It looked up at Throg plaintively with its beely yellowish eyes and bleated again.

Throg’s heart melted. He picked the creature up and held it to his withered old cheek. The familiar, comforting smell of dirty wool filled his nostrils.

He looked down at the iggly plops in the girl’s hands, suddenly feeling baffled.

She understood his look, and seemed to want to explain things to him.

‘O iggly plops ev niffled oy o iggly blebber,’ she said.

Could he be hearing right? Could the three iggly plop children really have given him this adorable woolly creature?

In a flash, Throg saw it all. Tears of gratitude filled his eyes. These three miniature children were on his side. They had rebelled against their terrible tribe. They had climbed the bimplestonk just for him. They had given him back his Lolshly!

‘Oidle oy! Oidle oy, iggly plops!’ he murmured.

‘G
IVE BACK
! N
IFFLE
abreg!’ Poppy was clamouring for the return of Baa Lamb.

The old giant didn’t appear to hear her; he was too busy stroking and talking to the sheep, who had stopped bleating and seemed to be enjoying the attention.

‘I think Baa Lamb likes the old giant,’ Colette said.

But Poppy wasn’t convinced. ‘Baa Lamb go home,’ she kept repeating.

Stephen did his best to reason with her. ‘Think,
Poppy. What happens to sheep back home? We eat them. Whereas this old guy obviously wants this one as a pet. I think we should let him keep Baa Lamb.’

‘Baa Lamb go home down beanstalk,’ said Poppy stubbornly.

Stephen’s patience, which Colette had been admiring, broke.

‘
What
beanstalk?’ he snapped. ‘There isn’t a beanstalk, you silly little larva. And now there won’t be. All Jumbo’s beans have been poisoned.’

Poppy looked disappointed, but then her face cleared. ‘Fly down with feathers,’ she said.

‘Could we, Stephen?’ asked Colette. ‘Could we make ourselves some wings? Strap the giant feathers to our arms somehow?’

‘It wouldn’t work,’ he said in his Mr Know-All voice. ‘We wouldn’t be able to keep our arms apart. We’re not like birds – our muscles aren’t strong enough. We’d just go down like bullets.’

Poppy couldn’t understand the science but she got the message and began to cry.

‘Roopy iggly plop,’ murmured Jumbeelia. She put
them all down gently, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a handkerchief.

And another one. And another one. Five handkerchiefs, all knotted together.

‘Look! They’re the sheets from your cage, Poppy!’ said Colette.

‘Climb down sheets, go home,’ said Poppy, sniffing, as Jumbeelia dabbed her eyes with a corner of one of the giant handkerchiefs.

‘It’s much too far,’ said Colette. ‘I expect we’d need about five
thousand
sheets for that.’ She glanced at Stephen, half expecting him to pour scorn on her calculations.

‘What about the harnesses, though?’ he muttered to himself.

‘What are you talking about?’

Stephen was staring at the sheet-handkerchiefs in a kind of trance.

‘Stephen?’

‘Parachutes,’ he said.

Suddenly she understood.

‘You mean we can use the giant hankies to parachute
back home? That’s a brilliant idea!’

But Stephen hadn’t quite convinced himself yet. ‘The trouble is, we’d have to make harnesses for our bodies, and then somehow tie the hankies on to them. We really need some rope and some cords.’

‘How about the sock?’ suggested Colette. ‘The one Poppy slept in when she was in the cage.’

She fetched it from the running-away bag, made a hole in it with one of the nails, and started to unravel the wool.

Jumbeelia didn’t look happy. She seemed to be telling them off, and Poppy translated. ‘Big girl saying sock for baby.’

‘Tell her we’re making parachute harnesses,’ said Stephen, but Poppy didn’t know these words in English, let alone in giant language.

‘We’re going to fly down with the hankies,’ Colette explained, holding her arms up to mime a parachute, and Poppy translated for Jumbeelia.

The giant wool, strong and thick but soft, was just right for the harnesses, and Stephen – who had read countless books about pilots bailing out of burning
planes – knew how to wind it round their bodies and what sort of knots to tie. Meanwhile, Jumbeelia helped Colette to undo the handkerchiefs.

Old Throg, still cuddling Baa Lamb – or Lolshly, as he insisted on calling him – looked on with bright-eyed interest.

‘Iggly plops glay jum,’ he said approvingly.

‘Old man saying us go home,’ said Poppy.

But Stephen was frowning again.

‘This wool is good for the harnesses, but we really need something thinner for the parachute cords,’ he said.

‘I know! The running-away bag!’ exclaimed Colette.

The bag was harder to unravel than the sock had been, but the glittery thread from which it was woven was just the right thickness for parachute cords, and before long they had enough of it to attach to the corners of the handkerchiefs and to their harnesses.

‘It’s a pity we haven’t got any crash helmets,’ said Stephen.

‘I’ve already thought of that,’ said Colette. Proudly, she produced the three acorn cups from the running-away collection.

‘Hat,’ said Poppy, putting one on her head.

Jumbeelia clapped her hands. She was clearly pleased that one of her collections was being put to good use.

Colette knew the feeling. ‘See?’ she felt like saying to Stephen, but she stopped herself.

‘Yahaw! Yahaw! Bye bye, big girl,’ Poppy was saying now. She had climbed on to Jumbeelia’s shoe and was clasping her ankle in a goodbye hug.

Gently, the girl giant picked her up and lifted her towards her mouth.

Colette remembered the first time Jumbeelia had done this. So long ago it seemed! They had feared then that she was going to eat them. This time they knew what was in store.

‘The sooner this is over the better,’ said Stephen, bracing himself for his goodbye kiss. At least this time he didn’t say ‘Yuk’ when it happened.

And now it was Colette’s turn. The giant kiss seemed even wetter than the usual ones, till Colette realised that some of the wetness was salty and came from the tears which were trickling down Jumbeelia’s cheeks.

With a sudden rush of pity for the girl giant, Colette almost wished she could promise, ‘We’ll be back.’ But even if she had been able to say it in giant language, it wouldn’t be true. Instead, she shyly said, ‘Yahaw,’ as Poppy had done.

Jumbeelia smiled through her tears and put Colette carefully back on the ground beside the other two. Poppy was now waving up at the old giant and the sheep.

‘Yahaw, floopy plop! Yahaw, iggly blebber!’ she said.

‘That’s enough, Poppy – we don’t want
him
to start slobbering over us,’ said Stephen. But there was no danger of that. The old giant took a nervous step back, still holding Baa Lamb firmly to his cheek as if he was half afraid that they might reclaim the creature. He muttered ‘Yahaw,’ and waggled the fingers of his other hand, but more in a ‘be off with you’ kind of gesture than a proper wave.

And it
was
time to be off. Off the edge and down through the clouds. Poppy was already standing there, poised for the plunge.

‘No, Poppy. I’ll go first,’ said Stephen. ‘Then you,
and then Colette.’ Although he was taking charge, his voice sounded a little shaky, and Colette saw that his hands were shaking too as he raised them above his head.

‘Watch me, and do what I do,’ he told them. ‘Arms up, legs apart, head back. Then lean forward. Like this.’

He leaned forward. He jumped.

He was gone, swallowed up by the cloud.

‘Wunk, twunk, thrink, boff!’ Poppy was gone too.

Colette stood on the edge of Giant Land, in the very spot where Zab had dangled her. Then she had been sick with fear. Her fear now was mixed with a wild excitement.

Her mind raced forward – she was landing, she was running home across the fields with Stephen and Poppy, they were hugging Mum and Dad, they were telling everyone about their adventures.

‘It won’t happen unless I jump,’ she said to her pounding heart. And she jumped.

She plummeted through the clouds. The wind roaring in her ears was almost deafening. Such speed, such noise! She had never felt anything like this before.

And then there was a terrific jerk, and the roaring noise stopped.

The mist had cleared. Colette looked up. The handkerchief, full of air, billowed above her. She looked down. Two tiny figures drifted below her.

She was floating. She was free.