Jumbeelia peeped into the glove and there, peeping back at her from one of the fingers, was the boy iggly plop. He was waving a nail and looking fierce.
Jumbeelia saw that the other two were there as well, tucked inside two more fingers. How could Zab have just left them there like that?
Never mind – they were safe now. She spoke to them reassuringly, telling them that she would take them back home, get Pij to build them a newer, bigger, cage, and that she wouldn’t let Zab or the spratchkin get them, not ever again. She would put them in her collecting bag now and take them straight back home …
‘Nug!’ a voice interrupted her.
It wasn’t the boy this time. It wasn’t the wild girl either. It was the iggliest one, and it was speaking to her in Groilish!
‘Nug, Jumbeelia. Glay jum, boff bimplestonk.’
28
Over the edge
‘GLAY JUM, BOFF bimplestonk,’ repeated Poppy.
Colette could hardly believe what she was hearing. Her little sister, who couldn’t even speak English properly, was talking away to a giant. And Jumbeelia was answering her. They were having a proper conversation.
When Colette thought back, it began to make sense. Poppy had spent nearly a week on her own with Jumbeelia. And more recently, in the cage, she had been chatted to every day in giant language – not just by Jumbeelia but by her father and grandmother.
Although Colette couldn’t understand the words, she could read the expressions on Jumbeelia’s face. The girl giant looked puzzled at first, and then a little disappointed.
‘What was all that gobbledygook?’ Stephen asked.
‘I saying go home down beanstalk,’ said Poppy.
‘What beanstalk?’ Stephen sounded like his old irritable self, but Poppy wasn’t put out. ‘Big girl got beans,’ she said.
Jumbeelia started spouting some more giant language. Colette didn’t think she sounded happy at all.
‘What’s she saying now?’
‘Big girl saying she likes us. She’s got nice house.’
‘Tell her we want to see our mum and dad again.’
‘Oggle woor mij tweeko, oggle woor pij tweeko,’ Poppy pleaded with Jumbeelia.
Jumbeelia seemed to understand at last. Her face cleared, and she lowered the glove gently down to the ground.
The three children scrambled out. Jumbeelia squatted beside them, and Colette saw that she was holding a box, made of different shapes of painted wood. She was fiddling about with it, as if she was searching for something on its surface, a hidden lever or panel. Suddenly a drawer in the box sprang open. She lowered it so they could all see the squirly wrinkled round things inside.
‘Bimples,’ she said.
‘Big girl saying beans,’ said Poppy.
‘Obviously,’ said Stephen, but he couldn’t guess Jumbeelia’s meaning when she then announced, ‘Bimplestonk chingulay.’
‘Beanstalk tomorrow,’ Poppy translated proudly.
‘She’s going to throw one of them over the edge,’ said Colette. ‘That must be how the last beanstalk sprang up.’
A warm feeling of relief spread through her whole body. Bean today, beanstalk tomorrow. Just one more day! That wasn’t long to wait. And now Jumbeelia was on their side!
She looked up gratefully and saw that Jumbeelia was smiling down at her. Suddenly the girl giant felt like a real friend.
Jumbeelia reached into the box to pick up a bean.
At the same time, a figure emerged from the mist and they heard a voice.
‘Wahoy!’
Colette’s relief chilled into terror. It was Zab.
‘Quick! Hide!’ yelled Stephen. He took Poppy’s hand and pulled her behind the carved boulder. Colette ran after them, but she was too late. Zab had spotted her. She heard his leering laugh, and the next moment his fingers were curled around her body, squeezing her and lifting her up in the air.
And now he was stretching his arm, reaching out into the cold mist beyond the edge of the land.
He wouldn’t really do it, surely? He wouldn’t throw her off? He was just trying to wind up his sister, wasn’t he? Colette’s heart beat furiously.
‘Wunk, twunk, thrink …’
She felt his grip loosen.
‘Askorp!’ came Jumbeelia’s voice suddenly.
The grip tightened again. Colette saw that the girl giant was standing beside her brother, and that she too was dangling something over the edge of Giant Land.
It was the lawn mower!
‘Nug! Osh ez mub strimpchogger,’ cried Zab.
‘Osh ez mub iggly plop,’ replied Jumbeelia, and Colette realised that Zab was being forced to choose between her life and the loss of the lawn mower.
Zab hesitated. Slowly, he lowered Colette – then stuffed her into his trouser pocket while he lunged for the lawn mower. Colette peered out fearfully and saw him try to wrest it from Jumbeelia’s grasp.
They were struggling now, locked together in serious combat. Colette lost her grip on the edge of the pocket and slipped down inside it.
In the crushing darkness she was swung this way and that, till there came an enormous jolt, and she heard Stephen shout, ‘Quick, Colette! Climb out! They’re on the ground.’
Colette managed to wriggle her way out of the pocket into the pale chilly daylight. She slid down Zab’s thigh on to the rocky ground.
Stephen was there, waiting. He caught her hand and tugged her behind the rock. There was Poppy, and the sheep, who was eating their supply of parsley, completely unaware of the crisis.
The children peered round the boulder and saw the two giants wrestling. They saw Zab tug the lawn mower free from Jumbeelia’s hands. They saw him break away from her with a jerk which sent her rolling in the other direction.
And they saw her slip over the edge.
‘No! Nug! Help big girl! Aheesh!’ cried out Poppy. She ran forward.
‘Come back, Poppy!’
All of them froze, aghast at the sight of Jumbeelia, who was clinging to a ridge of rock with the fingers of both hands. Her body was dangling over the edge of the land.
Zab looked aghast too. He was kneeling beside her, clutching one arm and trying to pull her back to safety. But he wasn’t strong enough. Now Jumbeelia had lost her hold on the rock, and was dangling in Zab’s grip.
‘If he doesn’t let go she’ll pull him over too,’ said Stephen.
‘Aheesh! Aheesh!’ shouted Zab at the top of his voice.
‘Ee aheesh! I help!’ cried Poppy, but Stephen held her back, and Colette said gently, ‘We can’t help. We’re too small.’
‘No one can help them now,’ said Stephen.
29
Oidle oy
‘AHEESH! AHEESH!’ 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.
30
Unpicking the stitches
‘GIVE BACK! NIFFLE 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.