by Roald Dahl
From then on, Swan came every night to Little Billy’s bedroom window. He came after Billy’s mother and father had gone to sleep and the whole house was quiet. But Little Billy was never asleep. He was always wide awake and eagerly waiting. And every night, before Swan arrived, he saw to it that the curtains were drawn back and the window was open wide so that the great white bird could come gliding right into the room and land on the floor beside his bed.
Then Little Billy would slip into his dressing gown and climb on to Swan’s back and off they would go.
Oh, it was a wondrous secret life that Little Billy lived up there in the sky at night on Swan’s back! They flew in a magical world of silence, swooping and gliding over the dark world below where all the earthly people were fast asleep in their beds.
Once, Swan flew higher than ever before and they came to an enormous billowing cloud that was shining in a pale golden light, and in the folds of this cloud Little Billy could make out creatures of some sort moving around.
Who were they?
He wanted so badly to ask Swan this question, but he couldn’t speak a word of bird-language. Swan seemed unwilling to fly very close to these creatures from another world, and this made it impossible for Little Billy to see them clearly.
Another time, Swan flew through the night for what seemed like hours and hours until they came at last to a gigantic opening in the earth’s surface, a sort of huge gaping hole in the ground, and Swan glided slowly round and round above this massive crater and then right down into it. Deeper and deeper they went into the dark hole.
Suddenly there was a brightness like sunlight below them, and Little Billy could see a vast lake of water, gloriously blue, and on the surface of the lake thousands of swans were swimming slowly about. The pure white of the swans against the blue of the water was very beautiful.
Little Billy wondered whether this was a secret meeting place of all the swans of the world, and he wished he had been able to ask Swan this question as well. But sometimes mysteries are more intriguing than explanations, and the swans on the blue lake, like the creatures on the golden cloud, would remain a mystery forever in Little Billy’s memory.
About once a week, Swan would fly Little Billy back to the old tree in the forest to visit the Minpins. On one of these visits, Don Mini said to him, ‘You are growing up fast, Little Billy. I’m afraid that soon you will be too heavy for Swan.’
‘I know,’ Little Billy said. ‘I can’t help it.’
‘I’m afraid we don’t have any bigger birds than Swan,’ Don Mini said. ‘But when he can’t carry you any longer, I do hope you will still come up here to visit us.’
‘I will, I will!’ Little Billy cried. ‘I will always keep coming to see you! I will never forget you!’
‘And listen,’ Don Mini said, smiling. ‘Perhaps some of us might come down in great secrecy to visit you.’
‘Could you really do that?’ Little Billy asked.
‘I think we might,’ Don Mini said. ‘We could trickle silently down to your house in the dark and creep into your bedroom for a midnight feast.’
‘But how would you get all the way up to my bedroom window?’ Little Billy asked.
‘Have you forgotten our suction-boots?’ Don Mini said. ‘We’d simply walk straight up the wall of your house.’
‘How lovely!’ Little Billy cried. ‘Then we can take it in turns visiting each other!’
‘Of course we can,’ Don Mini said.
And that is exactly what happened.
No child has ever had such an exciting young life as Little Billy, and no child has ever kept such a huge secret so faithfully. He never told a soul about the Minpins.
I myself have been very careful not to tell you where they live, and I am not about to tell you now. But if by some extraordinary chance you should one day wander into a forest and catch a glimpse of a Minpin, then hold your breath and thank your lucky stars because up to now, so far as I know, no one excepting Little Billy has ever seen one.
Watch the birds as they fly above your heads and, who knows, you might well spy a tiny creature riding high on the back of a swallow or a raven.
Watch the robin especially because it always flies low, and you might see a nervous young Minpin perched on the feathers having its first flying lesson.
And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.
Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
It was nearly forty years ago that I first illustrated a book by Roald Dahl – The Enormous Crocodile. At the time I didn’t realize that I was going to do many more, but, in fact, over the next twenty years I produced drawings for all of Roald Dahl’s children’s books.
All except one, that is. In 1990, at the same time as I was illustrating Esio Trot, the artist Patrick Benson was making large and beautiful pictures for The Minpins. I liked them very much, so perhaps you can imagine my surprise when, recently, I was asked to create a new set of illustrations for the book. The words in this new version are the same, but it is smaller and there are many more pages, so there is room for me to draw every single thing that happens. To do the drawings was very exciting for me, and it felt almost like a new Roald Dahl book that I had never read before. I hope you will feel the same.
Books by Roald Dahl
THE BFG
BILLY AND THE MINPINS
BOY: TALES OF CHILDHOOD
BOY and GOING SOLO
CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY
CHARLIE AND THE GREAT GLASS ELEVATOR
THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF CHARLIE AND MR WILLY WONKA
DANNY THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD
THE ENORMOUS CROCODILE
ESIO TROT
FANTASTIC MR FOX
GEORGE’S MARVELLOUS MEDICINE
THE GIRAFFE AND THE PELLY AND ME GOING SOLO
JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH
MATILDA
THE MAGIC FINGER
THE TWITS
THE WITCHES
Picture books
DIRTY BEASTS
THE ENORMOUS CROCODILE
THE GIRAFFE AND THE PELLY AND ME THE MINPINS
REVOLTING RHYMES
Plays
THE BFG: THE PLAYS (Adapted by David Wood)
CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY: THE PLAY (Adapted by Richard George)
DANNY THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD: THE PLAYS (Adapted by David Wood)
FANTASTIC MR FOX: THE PLAY (Adapted by Sally Reid)
JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH: THE PLAY (Adapted by Richard George) THE TWITS: THE PLAYS (Adapted by David Wood)
THE WITCHES: THE PLAYS (Adapted by David Wood)
Teenage fiction
THE GREAT AUTOMATIC GRAMMATIZATOR AND OTHER STORIES
RHYME STEW
SKIN AND OTHER STORIES
THE VICAR OF NIBBLESWICKE
THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR AND SIX MORE
Collections
THE ROALD DAHL TREASURY
SONGS AND VERSE
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First published as The Minpins by Jonathan Cape 1991
Published by Puffin Books 1993
Published as Billy and the Minpins 2017
Text copyright © Roald Dahl Nominee Ltd, 1991
Illustrations copyright © Quentin Blake, 2017
Afterword copyright © Quentin Blake, 2017
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
Illustrated by Quentin Blake
ISBN: 978-0-141-37751-3