Fire and Hemlock. Diana Wynne Jones

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 a vast arm stretches. Mr Piper scrambles round on his knees and chops desperately at the huge hand reaching out at him.

      “Throw tins at his face!” he gasps to the boy. “Get him to stand up!”

      “Good idea,” says the boy. He picks up a tin and hurls it, and another. His aim is good, but he is not strong enough to worry the giant, who just comes crawling towards them.

      Mr Piper throws a tin himself and chops again with his axe at the reaching hand. The giant gives a roar that buzzes the windows. They snatch up tim after tin and bombard the giant’s head. The giant, kneeling hugely opposite, keeps on grabbing at them. Mr Piper chops at his fingers every time he does, keeping him at bay. He feels hopeless now. He can only see the reaching fingers when they are almost too close. He cannot see properly to aim tins. The boy keeps hitting, but this does not worry the giant at all. On the rare occasions when Mr Piper’s tins hit, they make him rear up and bump his head on the ceiling.

      “What’s up there?” pants the boy. “Anything that might help?”

      As far as Mr Piper knows, there is the supermarket manager’s flat up above. He is hoping that there are iron girders in the ceiling, on which the giant might be induced to brain himself. But they run out of tins just then. Mr Piper scrambles backwards to the nearest shelf and seizes a packet off it at random. Beside him, the boy hurls a large cheese. It misses, because the giant moves his bushy head aside. He moves it into line with the packet Mr Piper has just thrown.

      It turns out to be a packet of flour. It succeeds beyond Mr Piper’s wildest hopes. It hits the giant in the eye and bursts all over his face. The giant howls, so loud it hurts their ears. He claps both fists to his face and, most unwisely, rears up on his knees. The great, bushy head goes straight through the ceiling. The giant howls again and falls over backwards, smashing two sets of shelves underneath him. And things begin to rain down on the giant through the hole in the ceiling. First comes a large sofa, then a television, followed by a squad of armchairs. While the giant is gasping from these, there is a pause, full of sliding noises. Then a kitchen table falls on him, followed by a washing machine, a big refrigerator, a dishwasher, and finally a heavy gas oven. The gas oven hits the giant in the stomach and knocks the breath out of him with a WHOOF that blows all the tiolet paper into the air. Mr Piper picks his way among the fluttering streamers of it until he is so close that even he can see he is standing by a steep, bushy hill of head, beside a monstrous ear. He takes careful aim, swings the axe with all his great strength, and hits the giant with the flat of it, just behind that enormous ear.

      Everything goes quiet. In the qiet Mr Piper becomes aware of sirnes – sorry! – sirens, and neenawing and whooping. Flashing lights are arriving outside the window.

      The boy appears at Mr Piper’s elbow again.

      “You didn’t kill him,” he says reproachfully. This is a very bloodthirsty child, Mr Piper thinks. Does she-sorry!-he want me to cut the giant into joints and pack him in the freezers? He does not like to admit that he cannot even kill flies. He replies with dignity, “I never kill a helpless enemy. Haven’t you heard of chivalry? What’s your name, by the way?”

      “P – er – Hero,” says the boy. “There are police cars and fire engines outside. What shall we tell them?”

      “Nothing,” says Mr Piper. “We’ll go out of the back door. I’ll move that freezer as soon as I’ve found my glasses.”

      “Here they are,” Hero says, and puts the glasses into Mr Piper’s hand. As Mr Piper fumbles them on to his nose, Hero explains, “I picked them up and kept them. I knew you’d manage better if you didn’t have to keep explaining you weren’t really seeing a giant.”

      Mr Piper looks from the boy to the giant. It is indeed, monstrously and hugely, a giant, snoring peacefully among the litter. He feels rather sick.

      They leave the supermarket the back way as the police come through the front. Edna, by this time, has taken her curlers out, put on her best dressing gown, and arrived at the shop door. She is watching when the police make the mistake of asking the fire brigade to hose the giant’s face to revive him for questioning. The giant hates this. He has had enough anyway.

      Edna sees him burst out of the supermarket, shoving a police car one way and a fire engine the other. After which he rises to his full height of forty feet or so and runs away, shaking the ground as he goes. Edna is so amazed at this sight that she not only forgets to scold her brother for being covered with flour and yoghurt; she forgets to forbid him to take on a smart new boy assistant.

      In this manner Mr Thomas Piper and his assistant Hero began their careers as trainee-heroes. At least, I hope you agree that this is how it was.

      With best wishes to my assistant trainee-hero,

      Thomas G. Lynn

      P.S. I seem to remember that all heroes have a special weapon of some kind. Don’t I need to find a sword? And what about a horse? I tried to be faithful to your description of Edna. Did I get her right?

      Polly put the letter down with a sigh. She thought the giant ought to have been killed too.

      “Finished?” Nina said rather sourly. She was standing by the window. “If you can spare the time, come over here and look.”

      “Why?” said Polly, still seeing broken supermarket in her mind’s eye.

      “Because,” Nina said with awful patience, “one of the people following me is standing across the road.”

      That fetched Polly across the room. Funny thing, she thought, as she pressed her forehead against the window in order to see into the dark outside, real life trumps made-up things every time – if this is real, of course. “Where? I don’t see anyone.”

      “Under that person opposite’s big bush. There,” said Nina.

      Polly could see the figure now. It looked like a boy humped in an anorak. While she looked, the person shifted, stamped feet, and began walking up and down. He must have been cold standing out there in the dark. He stopped before he got to the streetlight and turned again, but at that end of his walk there was enough light to show he had neat hair and a scornful set to his smooth face. And Polly had sharp eyes. Her heart thudded rather. She said, “He’s called Seb. He was at the funeral.”

      “Why is he following me?” Nina whispered. “I’m scared, Polly.”

      Polly asked, feeling rather shrewd and detective-like, “Did the man following you have two sort of black lumps under his eyes?”

      Nina