The Donkey was another climbing frame at the adventure playground. It had a tail made of knotted rope, which Poppy could confidently climb up and down. Remembering this stopped Colette feeling too nervous.
‘I’ll go first,’ she said.
Hand over hand, she lowered herself to the floor. It was much quicker and less scary than climbing the vegetable rack had been.
Watching Poppy was worse, but Colette made herself remember the Donkey, and sure enough her little sister climbed down fearlessly and easily.
What a relief to be down on the ground again! At least, for Colette it was; Poppy was looking round the dim kitchen anxiously as if she expected the kitten to appear at any moment. Colette led her to the back door where the new cat-flap had been fitted.
‘Too high,’ said Poppy.
‘It’s all right – we can make a ramp with the railway line. I’ll go and find it. Do you want to come with me?’
But Poppy was staring, horrified, at the cat-flap. Colette looked at it too, and had the impression it was moving slightly.
‘Cat coming,’ said Poppy in terror.
‘Quick! Run!’ Colette grabbed Poppy’s hand and together they ran for the gap beside the fridge. They reached it safely and peeped out.
Yes, the cat-flap was definitely lifting slowly towards them. And now something was appearing from underneath it. Something pale and round. A face.
‘Stephen!’ shouted Poppy.
25
Escape
THE LAWN MOWER stood waiting on the moonlit path.
Stephen could guess exactly what Colette would say when she saw what was in the trailer: ‘Stephen Jones, you’ve turned into a collector!’ He tried out various replies in his head.
But Colette didn’t say it. In fact, it was all she could do to climb into the trailer. He was shocked to see how weak she seemed. She looked thin and dirty too.
‘You’re even more of a fright than I am,’ he joked.
Colette smiled faintly, but all she said was, ‘I’m so tired, Stephen. I just want to lie down.’
‘Well, you can,’ he told her, patting the giant gardening glove that filled up half the trailer. ‘This bed’s got compartments for all of us, and a couple to spare. And there’s some thistledown inside that makes it quite cosy.’
Poppy, who didn’t seem at all tired, helped him tuck Colette up in one of the fingers of the glove.
‘I found it under the shed,’ he said proudly. But Poppy was more impressed by the pile of giant blackberries as big as footballs.
‘Help yourself,’ he said, clambering into the driver’s seat. He started the lawn mower up.
‘All bumpy,’ complained Poppy, as they jolted down the garden path.
‘It’s this gravel – it’s like boulders,’ said Stephen. ‘It’ll be smoother once we’re on the road.’
And so it was. They drove through the night. Colette was asleep, and Poppy was too busy gorging herself on the juicy bobbles of the giant blackberries to talk much.
‘Stephen have nice black’by?’ she said at last, offering him one.
‘No, I’m sick of them. They’re just about all I’ve had to eat.’
They drove on in silence for a while. Then, ‘Go to beanstalk, climb down?’ asked Poppy.
‘That’s right,’ said Stephen. But he was beginning to feel uneasy. He had been looking out for the buttons that Colette had dropped when they were captured, but he hadn’t spotted any of them.
They came to a crossroads, and Stephen parked the lawn mower under an overhanging leaf. Which way now?
Colette woke up. After eating a whole blackberry she was more like her old self – annoyingly so.
‘Stephen Jones, you’ve turned into a collector!’ she said, exactly as he knew she would. As well as the glove, the blackberries and some extra thistledown, there was a stack of curly giant parsley and some garden nails as long as swords.
‘Ah, but my collections are to keep us alive. I don’t collect useless things.’ He eyed the glittery bag which she had insisted on bringing with her.
‘This is the running-away bag,’ protested Colette. ‘It’s full of useful things.’
‘Like food?’ he asked hopefully.
‘No,’ admitted Colette. ‘Well, there’s a bit of carrot. We did have some other food, but we finished it all ages ago. Jumbeelia stopped feeding us, you see.’
‘Big girl got snails,’ explained Poppy.
‘I expect she’s gone off them too,’ said Colette. ‘None of her crazes seem to last very long.’
‘That’s the trouble with you stupid collectors,’ said Stephen.
‘So you think these are stupid then, do you?’ Colette emptied the bag and produced his very own jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt.
‘Cool! Where did you find these?’ Stephen was already ripping off his thin torn floppy soldier’s outfit.
‘On the washing line Jumbeelia collected. We packed a sheet and a towel from it too. And look at these other things.’
Stephen inspected the giant items that Colette had tipped out of the bag. Three badges, three acorn cups, a few sweet papers, a matchstick, a baby’s sock and some feathers.
‘The badges are good,’ he said, ‘and I suppose the matchstick is OK.’
‘It’s more than OK,’ said Colette. ‘I opened Poppy’s cage with it.’
‘And that sock thing looks quite warm,’ he admitted grudgingly. ‘But why the feathers?’
Colette looked a bit sheepish then. ‘Well, they don’t weigh much,’ she said. ‘Anyway, you know what Poppy’s like about feathers. She just fell in love with them.’
Typical, he thought. ‘And I suppose she fell in love with these stupid acorn cups – or are they in aid of anything?’
‘Get water?’ suggested Poppy. It had been raining the day before, and she climbed down and filled one with water from a puddle.
‘It doesn’t look very clean,’ said Colette, but they were too thirsty to worry about that. They ate another blackberry between them and nibbled some of the parsley, while Stephen told them all about his time outdoors – the days spent hiding and hunting for food, and the night-time searches for a way into the house.
‘What about all the creepy crawlies?’ asked Colette.
‘I think most of them were more frightened of me than I was of them. The worst thing was that cat – always nosing around under the shed.’
‘Naughty cat,’ said Poppy, looking around as if she half-expected it to be coming down the road.
But the road was empty, although the sky was light by now.
‘Hadn’t we better be going?’ asked Colette.
‘Yes, but which way? I haven’t found any of your famous buttons yet.’
‘We might now that it’s daytime. Why don’t we each look down a different road?’
Stephen agreed, but he searched with a heavy heart. He had a horrible feeling they might have gone the wrong way in the first place.
Poppy treated the button-hunt as a party game. ‘I find flower! I find stick!’ she shouted, and then, extra loud, ‘I find poo poo!’
‘Well, don’t tread on it!’ Stephen shouted back.
‘Little poo poo. Baa Lamb poo poo!’ said Poppy.
Stephen and Colette came to look.
‘They’re probably from a giant mouse,’ said Colette.
‘No – I know what those look like,’ said Stephen, whose time in the garden had turned him into something of an expert. ‘These ones do look like sheep droppings – normal sheep, I mean, not giant ones.’
‘But Jumbeelia’s mother put the sheep down the …’ Colette stopped, but Poppy couldn’t hear her anyway. She had wandered a bit further down her road, and she now called out, ‘More poo poo!’
‘We may as well go that way,’ said Stephen, and they climbed back into the lawn mower.
They followed the trail of droppings for a mile or so. Then, ‘I’m sure the beanstalk wasn’t this far away,’ said Colette. ‘Shouldn’t we go back, Step
hen?’
‘We can’t. We’re nearly out of petrol.’
Almost as if the lawn mower heard him, its engine noise spluttered and then died, and they came to a stop.
‘Oh no,’ said Colette. ‘We’ll have to walk.’
‘Don’t want to walk,’ said Poppy.
‘You wimpy woodlice,’ said Stephen, but his heart wasn’t really in insulting them. He was too worried. Suddenly he felt very tired. He hadn’t slept all night. Neither had Poppy. Colette was better rested, but she still seemed very weak.
Still, there was no choice. The girls realised it too. They wrapped a few of the firmest blackberries in sweet papers, and stuffed them into the bag, along with the nails and some of the thistledown. Colette shouldered the bag wearily, while Stephen dragged the glove-bed behind him.
As they trudged along the road he couldn’t resist a glance back at the lawn mower. He hated leaving it there. He had been cherishing a wild hope that he could somehow get it safely down the beanstalk.
To his surprise, he could only just see it. It was shrouded in mist. Stephen realised that the air around them was growing thick, cold and white.
‘This feels right,’ said Colette.
And then, without warning, the road just stopped. In front of them was an enormous stone wall.
‘What do we do now?’ asked Stephen.
‘Go through hole,’ said Poppy, pointing to a gap between some of the lowest stones.
The other side of the giant wall, the mist was thicker still. ‘Let’s hold hands,’ said Colette.
The ground was bare and slippery and the air cold and clammy. They shuffled forwards together.
‘If you were a giant you wouldn’t even be able to see the ground,’ said Stephen.
‘I can, though,’ said Colette, ‘and I can see a button!’ She picked it up triumphantly. ‘So we are on the right track!’
Just then, they heard a muffled bleating.
‘Baa Lamb!’ shouted Poppy. She broke free and started to run.
‘Stop! You might fall off the edge!’ Stephen caught up with her, grabbed her elbow and slowed her down.
The bleating came again, and at the same time the mist thinned slightly and they all saw Baa Lamb. He was standing at the very edge of the land, gazing out into the empty space beyond. He looked tattier than ever. The end of one of his twisty horns had broken off, and his wool was full of bits and pieces, as if he had been rolling about in a giant compost heap.
‘Baa Lamb!’ Poppy cried again, reaching out to him. The sheep remained still, gazing down, and Stephen thought he had a forlorn look about him.
‘And look, another button!’ exclaimed Colette. ‘So the beanstalk must be just here.’
But it wasn’t.
26
The spy
COMINGS AND GOINGS. Goings and comings. Throg had been keeping a watchful eye on the policeman’s house, and it was all very suspicious.
First the boy had gone away. A day or so later the old lady had arrived and the mother had gone away. And then, yesterday evening, the boy had come back again, accompanied by an old man. What did it all mean? Throg felt sure that in some mysterious way this family was in league with the iggly plops. Most likely the whole police force was involved too.
Throg crept up to the front door. He could hear raised voices inside the house. One of them seemed to be crying and shrieking. Throg’s hearing wasn’t as good as his eyesight, but he was convinced he heard the words ‘iggly plop’.
He knocked at the door. He knew that if he asked the usual question he would get the usual answer, so he decided he would try and catch them out. Instead of asking if they had seen any iggly plops he would ask them how many they had seen.
The policeman opened the door. Throg recognised him even though he wasn’t wearing his uniform.
‘Heek munchly iggly plops?’ he asked.
The man seemed to hesitate – a sure sign of guilt. Then, as he opened his mouth to speak, the girl charged out of a room. Her face looked swollen and tear-stained, and in her hand she carried a string of knotted handkerchiefs.
‘Nug!’ she shouted. ‘Nug iggly plops! Glay awook!’
The father put an arm round the girl, but she wriggled it off and ran upstairs. The man shrugged apologetically. ‘Yimp,’ he said to Throg, and closed the door.
Throg hovered on the pavement, uncertain what to do, and then a picture flashed into his mind. It was a picture of the back garden, on the day that he had spoken to the old lady. He could see the scene quite clearly: he was leaning over the garden gate, and the old lady had left her knitting on a chair to come and talk to him. The girl was there too, and a black spratchkin which had jumped out of her arms and run to the garden shed. All the time that Throg and the old lady had been talking, the spratchkin had been poking about under the shed. That must be where the iggly plops were hiding!
Clutching his can of weedkiller, Throg hobbled down the lane at the side of the house. He opened the gate and crept into the back garden. There was the shed – and there, on his knees, reaching under it with a stick, was the boy.
Hearing Throg’s feet crunching on the gravel, the boy turned round. He was grinning.
Throg came straight out with his new question: ‘Heek munchly iggly plops?’ and this time he got a different answer.
‘Thrink,’ said the boy, holding out three fingers as if Throg was an idiot. Then a cunning look came into his face, and he asked if there was a reward for finding them and handing them over.
Of course there was a reward! ‘Sprubbin!’ Throg told him. The reward for giving up the iggly plops would be joy – the joy of having freed Groil from the wicked creatures who were planning to destroy it.
But the boy didn’t seem interested in that kind of reward. He had lost interest in poking around under the shed too; dropping his stick, he made a rude sign at Throg and went into the house.
Never mind. Throg knew where they were now, and he was certain there were more than three of them. There was probably a whole army under there.
He unscrewed the top of his can, in readiness; then he lowered his old body to the ground. Lying on his tummy, he peered under the shed.
Nothing. Nothing except a few cobwebs and a couple of blackberries. They had got away, the rascals! Or they had been hidden away.
As Throg heaved himself back to his feet, he heard someone opening the back door of the house. At the same time, he noticed that the shed door was open a crack. Before he could be spotted he slipped inside.
Peeping through the crack, he saw the girl come out of the house. He noticed that she was carrying a small wooden box. Halfway down the garden path she paused and looked over her shoulder, as if she was afraid someone might be following her.
And someone soon would be following her! Throg was just about to creep out of the shed and go after her himself when he heard more footsteps on the path.
It was the boy again. Like the girl, he had a secretive air about him. When he reached the garden gate he stopped, peered over it and then waited for a few minutes before opening it.
Was he stalking his sister, spying on her? Or was it just a game?
If so, it was a game which Throg could play too.
27
Nug!
TEARS BLINDED JUMBEELIA’S eyes as she ran along the road towards the edgeland. Her feet tapped out an angry rhythm: Zab ez frikely, Zab ez frikely.
Why couldn’t her horrible brother have stayed with Grishpij for ever instead of coming back home and messing up her life again? What had he done with the iggliest plop?
Jumbeelia didn’t believe for a moment that the tiny girl had knotted those handkerchiefs together all by herself. And she couldn’t possibly have opened the cage door from inside. The whole thing was Zab’s doing. She remembered how he loved setting tests and trials for the other two iggly plops. This sheet-ladder must be another of those. Zab denied it, of course, but even Pij and Grishmij didn’t believe him.
Had Zab let the iggly
plop escape? Worse, could he have handed her over to that mad old Throg?
The most likely thing was that he was hiding her somewhere, to tease Jumbeelia, and in the hope of doing yet another sweefswoof. But she had already swapped him the iggly strimpchogger and the iggly pobo, and she knew he wasn’t interested in the iggly frangle because it didn’t work. There were no other iggly gadgets left in Jumbeelia’s collection. Her only hope was to climb down the bimplestonk again in search of some items which might appeal to Zab.
That is, if the bimplestonk was still there. She had heard old Throg chanting about how he had kraggled it. Just in case he really had, Jumbeelia had brought the box of bimples. They rattled gently in time to her footsteps: Zab ez frikely, Zab ez frikely, Zab ez …
Crash! The rhythm stopped abruptly as Jumbeelia stumbled over something and fell.
She had grazed her knee slightly, but far more interesting than the droplets of blood was the object which had tripped her up. It was the iggly strimpchogger.
So Zab had been here! What was he doing so near the edgeland? Could he have taken the iggly plop there?
A new and horrible fear filled Jumbeelia’s mind as she picked up the strimpchogger and continued on her way.
She clambered over the wall into the edgeland. The mist swirled around her as she inched her way forward over the slippery rocks towards the emptiness.
A reddish boulder loomed out of the mist. She noticed that there were some words scratched on the stone in uneven capital letters:
ISH EZ QUEESH THROG KRAGGLED O BIMPLESTONK.
So old Throg had carved these ragged letters. And perhaps he really had killed the bimplestonk too, as the writing boasted, because here she was at the very edge of the land, and there was no sign of it.
Jumbeelia peered out into the emptiness, and reached out too. Nothing. No stalk, no leaves, no pods full of bimples.
And then she saw it. Not the bimplestonk, but the glove – an old gardening glove, lying at the foot of the boulder.
Jumbeelia picked the glove up, and then nearly dropped it in shock when it spoke to her.
‘Put us down!’ it said.
The Giants and the Joneses Page 8