tipped the wheelbarrow up on its one big wheel and pushed it, jostling and bumping against the cobblestones, back to where Jack lay. She nudged Jack with her foot. "Get up," she said. "I've come to rescue you from early-morning milk deliveries and from Wilbur Stillmanson bringing his pigs to market."
Jack opened his eyes and looked all that distance up to Effie's face. "Oh," he said. "It's the lady giant again."
"Yes," Effie said, to get him moving. "Come on. Get up. Get in here."
Shakily, Jack managed to get to his feet.
For about two seconds.
He stumbled and fell facedown into the wheelbarrow, which wobbled but did not tip over.
With Jack's legs hanging over the edge, Effie started pushing the wheelbarrow back to her house.
Jack's nose was being tickled by the mattress of vines and leaves he was lying on. He didn't like to complain about the bumpy ride, since the lady giant was helping him, but he asked, "Do I need rescuing?"
"Yes," Effie said. "Keep your voice down. If you wake up my father, we'll both need rescuing."
Ah,
Jack told himself.
The lady giant's father is an ogre.
He passed out again.
Effie considered leaving Jack in the wheelbarrow out in the garden. But it was already getting light out, and if her father came outside, he'd be sure to see him Which would leave her with a lot of questions to answer. So she decided it would be better to wheel Jack around to the workshop door and bring him into the house the back way.
After pushing him all the way up the hill and over the door jamb, when she realized Jack was asleep again, she tipped him out onto the floor.
"Ow," Jack said, shaking twigs and leaves out of his hair. "Where are we, lady giant?"
"
Shh,
" Effie warned.
But it was too late.
"Effie?" her father's voice called from his bedroom, down the hall. "Effie, is that you?"
Effie motioned for Jack to keep still. "Yes, Father," she answered in her sweetest, most innocent voice.
Which, of course, made her father suspicious. "Are you just now getting back home?" he asked.
"No, I've been home for hours," Effie answered. "I've been to bed and now I'm up getting breakfast."
But she could hear the door to her father's room open and she realized he was coming to check.
"If he finds us here together, he's going to kill both of us!" she whispered frantically to Jack. But where could she hide him? She had a suspicion Jack couldn't make it the five whole steps to the door. She cast a hurried look around her father's workshop. Under the table that held the potter's wheel? Too open. Behind the drying racks? Only if Jack could stand still and not tip over. She couldn't count on that. Effie touched the side of the kiln to see if it was hot. It wasn't. "Quick!" she whispered to Jack. "Get in the oven. Father won't be using it today."
Jack, who thought he was in a kitchen, staggered back, overwhelmed by the size of the kiln. "That's one big oven, lady giant," he said.
"Yes," Effie said. This "lady giant" business was becoming annoying. She shoved him in and slammed the door.
But she didn't latch it, so that he could breathe. From the crack along the edge, Jack watched as Effie's father walked into the room.
"Are you just getting back?" her father asked again.
"No," Effie said, hastily tying on an apron to cover her party dress. "I came in here for wood to get the kitchen fire going for breakfast."
Her father sniffed the air. "What's that I smell?" he asked. But he knew what he smelledâhe smelled beer; he just wanted to know where the smell was coming from. "Is that you?" he demanded.
"No, Father," Effie said.
He sniffed her, but the beer smell didn't seem to be coming from her. "It better not be you," he warned.
Meanwhile Jack, in the oven, thought,
Oh, no! He can smell me! He must be a man-eating giant.
Jack began to work out his last will and testament.
Effie picked up two pieces of split log and left, bringing them into the kitchen to start the breakfast fire.
Her father stayed in the
Heidi Murkoff, Sharon Mazel