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below.
    The giant house was very quiet. Somewhere a tap dripped, but that was all.
    ‘Poppy go down slide,’ said Poppy.
    ‘No. Wait,’ said Colette. ‘I’ll go first, to catch you if you fall off.’ She climbed on to the yellow plastic track.
    It was scary sitting at the top of a such a steep slide, especially one with no sides. Colette turned over on to her tummy. That felt safer.
    ‘Here I go!’ she said. She relaxed her grip on the edge of the track and went whizzing down, landing with a bump on the stair below. It was even faster than she’d expected. Colette looked anxiously up at Poppy.
    ‘Don’t forget to keep holding on!’ she called.
    Poppy slid down safely, though she complained that the track was ‘all bumpy’. Stephen followed.
    They had managed the first stair, and the others should be just the same.
    ‘I hope there aren’t too many,’ said Colette.
    After three stairs, Poppy started clamouring for Baa Lamb.
    ‘Baa Lamb isn’t coming. He likes it in Jumbeelia’s bedroom.’ Colette didn’t like lying to Poppy, but she felt that the truth would be too frightening for her little sister. The sight of the giant mother sweeping the sheep into a box and the sound of the giant toilet flushing had stayed with Colette all morning. She wished it had been a bad dream, but she knew that it had really happened. And it could happen to them too.
    Slide, bump; slide, bump; slide, bump. They were into a rhythm now with the railway track; they knew exactly what to do and hardly needed to talk to each other any more.
    They rounded the bend in the stairs and had a view of the hall below. So very far below! Colette felt suddenly tired. Would this never end?
    The dripping tap was above them now, and somewhere below they heard a clock ticking the seconds away.
    ‘Let’s hope we make it before Jumbo and her Mumbo get back,’ said Stephen.
    Colette had just reached the next stair when she heard a door open.
    She turned round and froze. On the step above her Stephen and Poppy froze too.
    Someone was coming down the stairs towards them. There was nowhere to hide.
    And now, an enormous boy was standing above them … bending down … picking them up, not gently the way Jumbeelia did, but grabbing them roughly, Stephen and Poppy in one hand and Colette in the other.
    ‘Wahoy!’ he said. ‘Wahoy, iggly plops!’

13
Whackleclack
    O LD T HROG KNELT in the mist, a pointed stone in his hand and a boulder on the ground in front of him.
    He had never tried stone-carving before, and it was hard work. Throg had cut himself twice, and some of the letters looked a bit crooked. But that didn’t matter: it was the words themselves which counted, not how they were written.
    Throg’s heart swelled with pride as he thought howgiants for generations to come would look at this boulder and the writing on it:
ISH EZ QUEESH THROG KRAGGLED O BIMPLESTONK.
    (THIS IS WHERE THROG KILLED THE BEANSTALK.)
    They would rejoice and remember the courageous old giant who had saved them from an invasion of iggly plops.
    Still swollen with triumphant thoughts, he climbed back over the wall and hobbled along the narrow road which led to the town.
    Only when he passed the field where he had dozed the other day did his mind take a different course. He remembered the grinning girl he had seen walking along the same road, and the recollection sparked memories of his own childhood.
    Throg’s earliest memory was of a toy, a furry animal called Lolshly. The word lolshly meant white, but Throg could only remember his Lolshly beinga dirty brownish colour.
    Young Throg and his Lolshly had been inseparable: he cuddled the toy in bed and took it everywhere with him. His mother, he remembered, had been less enthusiastic. She said that Lolshly was dirty and smelly and needed a wash. But Throg had refused to hear of such a thing: it was the smell that he liked ; he would press his nose against Lolshly’s body and take deep comforting breaths while he twiddled