The Giants and the Joneses Read online

  The Giants and the Joneses

  JULIA DONALDSON

  Illustrated by Paul Hess

  Copyright

  The Giants and the Joneses

  Text copyright © 2004 Julia Donaldson

  Illustrations copyright © 2004 Paul Hess

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Egmont UK Ltd

  239 Kensington High Street

  London

  W8 6SA

  Visit our web site at www.egmont.co.uk

  First e-book edition 2010

  ISBN 978 1 4052 5158 7

  For Angharad and Rhiannon

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1 The secret box

  2 Throg

  3 Snail number nineteen

  4 Bimplestonk

  5 In the bag

  6 Suspicion and sandwiches

  7 The mountain of cliffs

  8 Weedkiller

  9 Snishsnosh

  10 Discovery

  11 The return of Zab

  12 The staircase and the slide

  13 Whackleclack

  14 The icy lake

  15 Oggle arump

  16 The battle jar

  17 Sweefswoof

  18 The running-away collection

  19 Spratchkin

  20 The monster on the bed

  21 Blood

  22 Alone

  23 Beely bobbaleely

  24 The bridge of doom

  25 Escape

  26 The spy

  27 Nug!

  28 Over the edge

  29 Oidle oy

  30 Unpicking the stitches

  31 Three years later

  English/Groilish Dictionary

  Groilish/English Dictionary

  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 frikely

  bimplestonk,

  Eel kraggle oy flisterflay. (Around the land I go, go,

  Around the land I go.

  You horrible horrible

  beanstalk,

  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.

  3


  Snail number nineteen

  DOWN IN THE land of the iggly plops, an eleven-year-old human boy called Stephen Jones lay sprawled on a garden path, surrounded by marbles.

  ‘You stupid stick insect!’ he yelled.

  Stephen’s sister Colette turned round from the flower bed where she had just picked a snail off a leaf. ‘It’s not a stick insect. It’s a snail,’ she said. ‘I mean you, you brainless bluebottle!’ Stephen scrambled to his feet and hurled a handful of marbles into a bush.

  ‘Stop!’ cried Colette. ‘That’s my marble collection!’

  ‘I know it’s your stupid marble collection,’ said Stephen. ‘I’ve just trodden on one, haven’t I? Now I’m going to have a collection – a collection of bruises.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Colette. ‘But they’re not stupid. They’re beautiful. They’re lovely and shiny and swirly.’

  Stephen put on the silly high-pitched voice he used to imitate Colette. ‘Lovely and shiny and swirly!’ he screeched.

  ‘Just because you can’t appreciate anything that hasn’t got an engine,’ said Colette. She put the snail into the cardboard box at her feet and turned her back on Stephen. Another snail was sitting on a leaf, waving its horns around. Snail number nineteen, it was. ‘In you go,’ she said.

  The other eighteen snails were sliding around in a slow bewildered way. They weren’t taking much notice of the selection of leaves Colette had put in for them. Snail number four had climbed up the wall of the box and was nearly at the top.

  ‘I’ll have to make you a lid,’ Colette told them. ‘With holes in, so you can breathe.’

  A bit of cardboard from her junk collection should do the trick. Colette took the box inside the house.

  ‘Stupid centipede!’ Stephen called after her, but half-heartedly. He had recovered from his fall and was now sitting on the seat of the lawn mower, fiddling with the controls. The lawn mower was brand new. It was gleaming and enormous. It even had a trailer. For Stephen it had been love at first sight.

  As soon as she stepped into the house Colette heard Dad’s voice.

  ‘The basin is full of stamps!’ he shouted.

  She put the snail box on the kitchen table and ran up the first flight of stairs. Dad was standing in the bathroom doorway looking fed up.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Colette. ‘I’m just soaking them off their envelopes. Can’t you wash your hands in the kitchen?’

  As Dad opened his mouth to reply a feather fell on his nose.

  ‘Bird flying!’ came another voice, from above them. Colette looked up. Her little sister Poppy was lying on her tummy on the top landing, throwing feathers down between the railings of the banisters.

  ‘Stop! That’s my feather collection! You’re such a pest, Poppy!’ Colette ran on up, her footsteps loud and furious.

  But even louder and more furious was the voice which now rang up the stairs.

  ‘Colette! Come here! Now!’ It was Mum.

  Colette grabbed Poppy’s fistful of feathers and slunk back downstairs, past Dad who was still muttering about stamps. She opened the kitchen door.

  ‘Look at them! They’re everywhere!’ Mum pointed at the table. The snails were slithering around among the crumbs from teatime, leaving slimy trails behind them. One had reached the rim of a jar of honey and an even more adventurous one (number four again) was climbing up the spout of the teapot.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Colette yet again. She put the feathers down and started to pick up the snails and put them back in the box. ‘I was going to make them a lid but …’

  But Mum didn’t want to hear any buts. ‘This is one collection too many,’ she said. ‘Put them back outside. Now.’

  ‘Birds!’ said Poppy, coming into the kitchen and spotting the feathers on the table. But Colette’s big box was even more interesting. Poppy trailed after sister and box, out into the garden.

  ‘Don’t start collecting anything else out there, whatever you do!’ Mum called after them.

  And Colette didn’t. Not that day, anyway. But this wasn’t because she was obeying her mother. It was because she was about to be collected herself.

  4

  Bimplestonk

  FOR THE SECOND time in her life, the girl giant climbed over the wall. Then she turned and looked back down the narrow road. She couldn’t see far because of the mist, but she didn’t think anyone was following her.

  Thank goodness her horrible spying, prying brother Zab was safely away at boarding school.

  No one had seen Jumbeelia yesterday, either, when she came this way and threw the bimple off the edge of Groil. No one had heard her urging it to grow: ‘Eep, bimple, eep!’ At least, she didn’t think so. But what about old Throg? Could he have been lurking around somewhere? Was he here now, hidden behind one of the huge boulders which she could only just make out through the mist?

  It was Throg’s rhymes, as well as the bedtime stories about the iggly plops, which had brought Jumbeelia here, but she certainly didn’t want to bump into the strange old man.

  She shivered. The air was colder today, and the mist grew thicker with every step she took. Soon she could hardly see anything – not even her hand when she held it out in front of her, not even her feet as they shuffled along the hard ground.

  There wouldn’t have been much to see anyway. No trees grew here in the cloudy edgeland; no flowers, no grass, nothing at all. The rocky ground was bare and smooth, even a little slippery.

  It wouldn’t do to slip – not so near the edge of Groil. Jumbeelia shuffled slowly, feeling with her feet for the place where the ground stopped and the emptiness began … the emptiness which she hoped would not after all be quite empty.

  Here it was, sooner than she remembered. She stopped. And yes! Surely there was something looming out of the mist.

  ‘Bimplestonk!’ she murmured, full of wonder.

  Jumbeelia reached out. She didn’t have to reach far. Almost immediately her fingers touched something damp and cool and floppy – a leaf! And now her hand was curling round a thick firm stalk.

  It was the loveliest thing she had ever seen or felt.

  ‘Beely beely bimplestonk!’

  So it was true! A bimple could grow into a bimplestonk overnight. And if that was true, surely the rest of the story must be true! Jumbeelia reached out with the other hand. And then her feet followed her hands …

  Down she climbed. ‘Boff, boff, boff!’ Down, down, down through the clouds. Down, down, down to the land of the iggly plops. And when she was out of the clouds she could see it spread out below her, a patchwork of iggly green fields, with darker green blobs which must be woods, and threads of cotton which must be roads.

  Of course, things always looked iggly from a distance. Maybe when she reached the ground everything would be the same size as in Groil.

  But no! Here she was at the very bottom of the bimplestonk. She unclasped her hands and stepped out on to grass as short and fine as giant eyelashes. ‘Iggly strimp!’ she cried.

  And then she noticed something much more wonderful. A few strides away, nibbling at the strimp, were some woolly creatures the size of mice. But they weren’t mice, of course – they must be sheep.

  ‘Iggly blebbers!’

  Jumbeelia took her collecting bag off her back. It wasn’t a very big bag but it had several pockets. She picked up one of the blebbers. It wriggled and bleated as she put it gently into one of the pockets. She put in a few tufts of strimp too, hoping that the blebber would settle down and eat them.

  Excitement bubbled up inside her. Where there were blebbers there were bound to be plops.

  She made her way across a few fields, stepping over the ankle-high hedges and splashing through a pond as shallow as a puddle.

  She strode along a lane and came to a pillar box.

  ‘Iggly pobo!’ She picked it up and thrust it into a pocket of the bag.

  She turned a corner and saw a telephone box.

  ‘Iggly frangle!’ she cried as it went into another poc
ket.

  Round the next corner was something even better – a cluster of iggly houses. She couldn’t see any plops, but in the nearest garden was a swinging seat covered in cushions.

  ‘Iggly squodgies!’ Into the bag they went. They would make a nice soft floor for the iggly plops. Surely, surely she would find some iggly plops soon.

  But the other gardens were disappointingly empty, and though she peered in through the windows of the houses and saw lots of sweet iggly furniture there was not an iggly plop to be seen.

  Jumbeelia began to worry that Mij would have woken up from her afternoon nap and be missing her. Maybe she should go home and come back another day. After all, she had plenty of other iggly things to play with – the pobo, the frangle, the squodgies and, best of all, the beely woolly blebber. The blebber had stopped bleating and she could hear it munching the iggly strimp. She couldn’t wait to offer it some proper giant-size strimp.

  She was about to turn around when she noticed another house on its own about half a mile down the lane.

  Ten strides and she was there. The front garden was empty, but when she saw what was in the back garden she gave an excited skip which set the blebber bleating all over again.

  A machine was sitting in the middle of the lawn. ‘Iggly strimpchogger,’ she whispered in delight.

  But even more exciting were the three creatures she could see – one of them in the seat of the strimpchogger, the other two nearby, bent over an iggly cardboard box.

  Jumbeelia counted to herself: ‘Wunk, twunk, thrink iggly plops!’

  5

  In the bag

  ‘WHERE ARE WE?’ Stephen’s voice sounded shaky and his face was white.

  Colette looked round at the blue canvas walls of their prison. She shuddered, remembering the fat pink tentacles that had put her there.

  ‘I think we’re in a giant’s bag,’ she whispered back.