Page 26 of The Neverfear

‘Wow,’ said Anya. ‘And was it—?’

‘Stop there! We will never speak of it again. Christopher, it is not to go in my biography.’ He shook himself. ‘I have found the dog. It is in a kennel, in a stables behind the kitchen. But the door is locked, and well-fitted, so you will need the key. I followed a giant for more than an hour – a most uncouth and grotesque specimen – and saw that he put the key on a hook in the kitchen.’

‘Could we slide in under the kitchen door?’

‘With ease,’ said Jacques. ‘If you choose to risk death.’

‘Right,’ said Christopher. ‘Into the castle then?’

And Anya nodded. She gave a Gaganan jerk of her head, and a flick of her fingers. It meant Brace yourself; danger incoming.

The kitchen was lit by two fires, one at each end of a room the size of a football pitch. They had run across the courtyard, a great ocean of stone cobbles that they weaved and climbed around, slipped under the door, and now stood staring at the room around them.

Anya ducked her head to the left and diagonally down. ‘Amazing,’ she said. There was fear in her voice, but also a thrill.

Knives hung from hooks on the walls, each as large as a broadsword. A pair of giant shoes you could row down a river stood by the fire. In the centre of the room was a table; all along the edge of the table nails had been driven in, and on each of them hung a key.

‘That one,’ said Jacques. ‘Second from the left.’

‘Are you going up or me?’ said Anya.

‘I’ll go,’ said Christopher. ‘I’m taller.’

‘I’m quicker.’

‘No you’re not! Anyway, I’m older.’

‘By eight months! Don’t even try that, behemoth boy.’ Anya grinned at him. ‘Both of us. Together.’

It was surprisingly easy to reach the top of the table. The chairs were cross-barred, and they could haul themselves up them; it was not unlike climbing a tree, with handholds in the coarse grain of the wood.

‘Golly-marvels,’ said Ratwin, as they scrambled up on to the table top. ‘They have lefts out their dinner-feastings!’

There were bread rolls, each as large as a sofa cushion, and chunks of a firm yellow cheese you could have built a house with. There was a basin of spun-sugar candyfloss, and chocolate biscuits you could surf on, and a bowl of custard as big as a Jacuzzi. Christopher’s hunger came roaring back, double-vast and triple-urgent.

Anya looked at him, and her face showed exactly the same question he was thinking. ‘Shall we?’ she said. ‘Now I think of it, I’m so hungry I might faint. Which would be bad if we were trying to tame a Cerberus at the same time.’

A wild, devil-may-care feeling was coming over Christopher. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But fast. And let’s try to make it look like it was rats.’

Ratwin let out a small burr of pleasure. She leaped at a disc of cheese, impaling her horn on it, while Anya plunged her fists into a dish of raspberries and meringue, both arms coated in cream.

Christopher scooped out two fistfuls of chocolate icing from the side of a chocolate cake taller than he was. The icing was firm in his hands, and the taste was spectacular. He pushed his hand in further, elbow deep, and scooped out the cake itself. It was so rich he gasped.

‘Put it in the Bestiary,’ Anya said, ‘that giants are chefs. Try this meringue!’

‘Try this jams!’ said Ratwin. ‘It’s is supernacular-excellentings.’

‘Look at this marshmallow!’ It was a pink slab as huge as a mattress. Anya jumped up and down; she somersaulted and bellyflopped on to it. Laughing, she plunged her whole face into it and tore off a mouthful.

‘Wait!’ said Christopher. ‘Do you hear that?’

The sound reached him first through his bones, then through his ears.

‘What’s that?’ said Jacques.

It was the seismic quiver of a giant approaching at a run.

‘Hide!’ Anya thrust herself into the candyfloss, which closed around her like a cloud. Ratwin leaped into the hole of a Swiss cheese and Jacques disappeared into a pitted olive.