Buch lesen: «The Giants and the Joneses»

1 The secret box

‘BEESH, BEESH, BEESH!’ said the girl giant. In giant language, this meant, ‘Please, please, please!’

The girl giant, Jumbeelia, was sitting up in bed and holding out a book to her mother. ‘Beesh, beesh, beesh, Mij!’ she pleaded again.

Mij, Jumbeelia’s mother, sighed. Without even looking at the book, she knew that the picture on the front was of a tiny little man standing on a leaf. When would Jumbeelia, who was nearly nine and perfectly capable of reading to herself, grow out of these babyish bedtime stories about the iggly plops?

Everyone knew that the iggly plops didn’t really exist. Just as well, since they were such nasty little things in all the stories about them. Jumbeelia’s big brother had stopped believing in them long before he was this age.

Jumbeelia’s mother took a different book from the shelf. It had a picture of some nice normal giant children running about in school uniform.

But Jumbeelia looked so disappointed that Mij gave in. Yet again she told the ridiculous tale of the iggly plop who climbed up a bimplestonk and arrived in the land of Groil.

He was a very wicked iggly plop: he stole a hen and a harp and a lot of money. The poor giant who had been burgled chased after him but he wasn’t fast enough; when he was halfway down the bimplestonk the iggly plop chopped it down and the giant fell to his death.

It was a horrible story, Mij thought. What was especially awful was the fact that the nasty iggly plop got away with his crimes instead of being punished. But Jumbeelia didn’t seem to mind that. If anything she was on the iggly plop’s side, and when her mother finished the story she wanted it all over again. ‘Tweeko! Tweeko!’ she cried.

Her mother refused, so Jumbeelia contented herself with asking questions about the iggly plops. Were they very very iggly? Would they reach up to her knee or were they as iggly as her iggly finger? Did they have iggly houses and trees and animals and beds and cups and spoons? And what did they eat, apart from bimples? They must eat bimples, because they climbed up bimplestonks.

But Mij wasn’t much help. They didn’t eat bimples and they didn’t climb up bimplestonks, she said. How could they, when they didn’t exist?

She kissed her daughter goodnight and switched out the bedside light.

As soon as the footsteps had died away, Jumbeelia switched the light back on. She got out of bed and weaved her way across her bedroom. She didn’t walk in a straight line because her bedroom floor was covered in all her collections. There was a tin of coins, a bag of shells and a basket of fir cones. There was a heap of buttons, a hill of egg boxes and a mountain of cushions. But Jumbeelia didn’t want to play with any of these things. She weaved her way round them all to the corner of the room and rummaged inside a big chest.

Was it still in here? Yes!

Jumbeelia took an old box out of the chest. It was made of different shapes of coloured wood. She shook it, and smiled when she heard the lovely dull rattling sound.

Turning the box over, she found the special shape she was looking for. It was a red diamond. She pressed it hard with her thumb, and the hidden drawer in the box sprang open.

Jumbeelia’s smile grew and she put the box down on the floor. Squatting, she scooped up a handful of the lovely, wrinkly, squirly-patterned things inside.

‘Bimples!’ she murmured as she poured them from one hand to the other and back again.

And then an idea struck her – a wonderful, marvellous idea.

‘Bimplestonk?’ she said.

2 Throg

ALTHOUGH JUMBEELIA’S MOTHER was always telling her that no grown-up giants believed in the iggly plops, this wasn’t quite true. There was one very old giant who did believe in them, but no one took him seriously because he talked to himself all the time. He talked in rhyme about iggly plops and bimplestonks, and as he talked he walked – not just anywhere but round and round the very edge of Groil, the other side of the wall, where the land stopped and the clouds began. In his hand he carried a can full of extremely powerful weedkiller.

The old giant’s name was Throg, which meant warning in giant language, and his rhymes were a warning to anyone who would listen – a warning that one day a new bimplestonk would spring up and that the wicked cunning iggly plops would climb up it and invade Groil.

Throg’s favourite rhyme went like this:

Arump o chay ee glay, glay,Arump o chay ee glay.Oy frikely frikelybimplestonk,Eel kraggle oy flisterflay.

(Around the land I go, go,Around the land I go.You horrible horriblebeanstalk,I’ll kill you soon.)

Hardly anyone did listen to the old giant because most of the other giants preferred to stay away from the edge of Groil, fearing that they might fall off. But now and again one of Throg’s rhymes would drift to them on the wind. Then they would shake their heads, smile, and call him a poor old man – ‘Roopy floopy plop’.

Jumbeelia’s father was a policeman. He had told her that Throg was forever calling at the police station and asking them to organise proper police patrols of the edgeland. But none of the police took this idea seriously. ‘Roopy floopy plop,’ they would say, just like all the other grown-up giants.

Jumbeelia had never been to the edgeland; she wasn’t allowed the other side of the wall. But she had heard old Throg’s rhymes, and now and then she caught sight of him taking a nap or eating sandwiches in a field. She would have liked to talk to him – to ask him what he knew about iggly plops and bimplestonks – but she didn’t dare. She couldn’t help feeling a little scared of him.