Fire and Hemlock. Diana Wynne Jones

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      A girl Mr Piper recofnises as Maisie Millet from the supermarket checkout goes running past, looking terrified. “Something at the supermarket, dear,” he calls back.

      “Go and see!” Edna screams at him. She is unbearably curious. She likes to know everything that goes on in Stow Whatyoumacallit. But she cannot go out herslef because she always wears a dressing gown to save money and never takes her hair out of curlers.

      Mr Piper, still holding his axe, goes out of his shop and stares up the srteet. Sure enough, there is broken glass over the pavement in front of the supermarket, and people are running away from it in all directions, shouting for help. A robbery, thinks Mr Piper, and runs towards it, axe in hand. He pases the phone booth on the way. The manager of the supermarket is in it, white-faced, dialing 999. The plate glass window of the supermarket has a huge hole in it, with notices about this week’s prices flapping in shreds around it. As Mr Piper races up, a white deep-freeze sails out through the hole and crashes into a parked car. Dozens of pale pink frozen chickens drop like bricks and skid across the road. People scream and scatter.

      One person does not run. This is a small boy with rather long, fair hair. As Mr Piper stops and stares at the slithering chickens, this boy girl person comes hopping through the mess towards him.

      “Thank goodness you’ve come, Tan Coul!” this person calls. “Do hurry! There’s a giant in the supermarket.”

      This child suffers from too much imagination, Mr Piper thinks, looking down at her-sorry!-him. She-sorry!-he is madder than I am. “There are no such things as giants,” he syas. “What is really going on?”

      Like an answer, there is a terrible roar from inside the broken window. Mr Piper wonders if his glasses need cleaning. A young man in white overalls from the butchery departmnent leaps through the hole in the window and runs as if for his life. Something seems to grab at him as he leaps. Whatever it is is snatched back immediately, and there is an even louder roar. It sounds like swearing.

      Mr Piper is trying to convince himself that he did not, really and truly, see a huge hand trying to grab the younf man, when the boy says, “See that, Tan Coul? That was the giant’s hand. He cut his thumb on the window. That’s why he’s swearing. Let’s go in quickly, while he’s sucking it. There may be some more people stuck inside.”

      Mr Piper looks down the street, where the supermarket manager is still frantically talking into the teolephone. There is no sign of police or fire brigade yet. It is clear something has to be done. Consoling himself with the thought that there must be a lunatic inside the supermarket even more insane than he is, he says, “Very well. Stay there,” and crunches through the broken glass to the window.

      There is an awful mess inside. Shelves of things have been pushed this way and that. The floor is covered with mounds of salt and washing powder, broken jam jars and pools of cooking oil. There are holes in the walls where freezers have been ripped out. Toilet paper has been unreeled across everything. But the thing which causes Mr Piper to stop short by the checkout desks is the huge bulk he can see down at the far end. Something large and round shines balefully at him from there, surrounded by what seems to be barbed wire.

      Could that thing really be a giant’s eye, peering at him from a giant’s hair, behind a giant’s doubled-up knees?

      “I don’t think it’s a windmill,” he murmurs doubtfully to himself.

      “Of course it isn’t,” says a voise at his elbow. He sees that the boy has followed him inside. “The giant’s sitting down against the end wall, with his knees up. He’s too big to stand up in here. That should make things easy. You can just chop his head off with your axe.” Mr Piper does not like veeven killing flies. He is quite convinced that the huge thing down at the end is an optical illusion of some kind. He tucks his axe under his arm and takes his glasses off to clean. The giant – or whatever – dissolves into a blur, which makes him feel much happier. “I told you to stay outsude,” he says to the boy.

      “I wouldn’t be much use as an assistant if I did that,” the boy retorts. “I’ve come miles from Middleton to be your trainee, Tan Coul, and I’m not going away now.”

      “My name is Piper really,” Mr Piper says.

      “I keep a hardware shope. Is that why you keep calling me Can Tool?”

      “Not Can Tool, Tan Coul, stupid!” says the boy. “The great hero-”

      But at this moment the giant moves. The blur Mr Piper can see produces a yard-long bent strip of white, unpleasantly like a glaoting grin. Something huge softly advances on them. Mr Piper claps his glasses on his nose and sees an immense hand with a cut on its thumb reaching out to grab them. Illusion or not, he and the boy dive out of its way. The hand, with terrible speed, snatches after them. The boy dodges behind a zig-zag of loose shelves. Mr Piper is left out in the open and only a pool of washing-up liquid saves him. He slides in it, falls flat on his back, and loses his glasses. Somehow the boy pulls him behind the shelves too. They crouch there, panting, while the giant, as far as Mr Piper can tell, lumbers about the shop on his hands and knees. The giant is too big to see all in one piece, even if he had not lost his glasses. There are crashes, rendings and sliding sounds.

      “What’s he doing?” pants Mr Piper.

      “Pushing some freezers and the cash desks across the hole in the window,” says the boy.

      “Now he’s put another freezer across the door at the back.”

      “Oh,” says Mr Piper unhappily.

      The giant begind to roar again. His voice is almost too loud to hear, but Mr Piper distinctly catches the words “fresh warm meat on legs!” and possibly something about Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum too. He does his best not to believe that he is trapped in a supermarket with a hungry giant. But the shelf they are hiding behind tips and begins to move. Four enormous fingers with dirty nails seem to be gripping it by one end. The boy and Mr Piper get up and tiptoe hurriedly behind the next lot of shelves, skipping over smashed pickle jars and trying not to crunch in cornflakes. Mr Piper has to do this by smell and instinct, since he can hardly see the floor.

      “Kill him!” the boy whispers as they tiptoe. “You’re a hero. You can’t be a coward!”

      “Oh, can’t I just!” Mr Piper whispers back. The shelf they are now behind gegins to move too. They tiptoe on, through tins of dogfood and mushy peas. “There are no such things as giants,” Mr Piper explains as they go. “This is some kind of illusion.” The latest shelf moves, and they scuttle behind another.

      Now a low rumbling begins, getting gradually louder. If Mr Piper were not doing his best to know better, he would swear it was the giant laughing with triumph, because the giant is moving his prey shelf by shelf into a corner where the upended freezers spill out squashed butter and squinched cartons of yoghurt. They will be trapped in that corner.

      The boy sighs. “Do me a favour, Tan Cou – er – Mr Piper. Pretend there is a giant. Pretend we’ll be dead in a minute unless you do something.”

      Mr Piper’s foot slips in yoghurt. He goes down with one knee in a pound of butter. The giant’s rumbles becomes a roar. The boy’s advice suddenly seems excellent. Mr Piper swings his axe round in threatening circles as he kneels.

      The laughter stops. The blurred shape of the giant, on all fours against the windows, looks at them with its bushy head tipped on one side. Then СКАЧАТЬ