Lilliput Read online

  To Mum, who is also Boss.

  Also by Sam Gayton

  The Snow Merchant

  ‘A delightful debut … full of action and invention’

  Sunday Times

  ‘A gem of JK and a pinch of Pullman’

  TES

  ‘An inventive and accomplished debut’

  Independent on Sunday

  ‘Beautifully old-fashioned storytelling weaves a hugely imaginative tale’

  The Bookseller

  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Also by Sam Gayton

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue: Catching

  Pinchers & Plips

  Part One: Escaping

  1. Scuttle & the Birdcage

  2. Thread & Fall

  3. Plansupon Plans

  4. Feathers & Flight

  5. City & Sneeze

  6. Gulliver & his Lectures

  7. Slubber & Stunkle

  8. Sock & Story

  9. Clock & Stitch

  10. Seventeen Steps & a Stranger

  11. Coffee & Sorry

  12. Quilts & Questions

  13. Eye to Eye

  Part Two: Searching

  1. Lily &Finn

  2. Wound-Down Clocks & a Waste Not Watch

  3. Freedom & Fur

  4. Plinker & Horatio

  5. Reek & Clamour

  6. Lost & Found

  7. Mr. Ozinda & his Chocolate House

  8. Rhyme & Slime

  9. Hide & Seek

  10. Trufferdunks & Tantrums

  11. Chit & Chat

  12. Where & How

  13. Autumn & August

  Part Three: Leaving

  1. Planning & Preparation

  2. Up & Away

  3. Mimic & Miracle

  4. Lure & Limerick

  5. Map & Trap

  6. The Astronomical Budgerigar

  7. Caged & Caught

  8. Saddle & Swift

  9. Sprugs & Sorrow

  10. Boom & Break

  11. Forgiven & Free

  Epilogue: Returning

  Afterword

  A List of Some of My Favourite Gulliverania …

  Acknowledgements

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781849399784

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  First published in 2013 by

  Andersen Press Limited

  20 Vauxhall Bridge Road

  London SW1V2SA

  www.andersenpress.co.uk

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  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means,

  electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without

  the written permission of the publisher.

  The rights of Sam Gayton and Pete Williamson to be identified as

  the author and illustrator of this work have been asserted by them in

  accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Text copyright © Sam Gayton, 2013

  Illustration copyright © Pete Williamson, 2013

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.

  ISBN 978 1 84939 412 3

  Prologue: CATCHING

  ‘To the Giant’s Country he lost his way;

  They kept him there for a year and a day.’

  (William Brighty Rands, Stalky Jack)

  ALL DOWN THE pebble path to the beach Lily sulked about her iron shoes. They clang-clang-clanged on her feet as she made her way to the shore. It was blowy and the waves were high as houses. Bellin was already there with his grumpy older sister Bree. They dug through the sucking wet sand, looking for pincher crabs.

  Lily stomped towards them, iron shoes flashing in the sun. Bree scowled and nudged her brother, and Bellin pulled his tweezers from the beach and threw them with a plonk into his bucket. Together they watched her coming down the dunes to the wet sand left by the tide.

  ‘Can I dig with you?’ Lily asked, looking at Bellin.

  ‘Suppose so,’ Bree muttered, rolling her eyes. She pointed down at Lily’s shoes. ‘But take those off first.’

  Lily hesitated. A part of her wanted to, but the shoes were bound to her feet by more than just leather straps. ‘I can’t,’ she said at last.

  ‘You have to,’ said Bree. ‘All your stomping will scare off the pinchers. Me and Bellin leave ours over there.’ She pointed at two pairs of rusty iron shoes by the dunes. ‘Come on, Lily. Don’t be a little’un.’

  Lily sniffed and shook her head again. ‘Can’t,’ she repeated.

  ‘You can,’ Bree insisted. ‘It’s not dangerous, as long as you’re careful.’

  Lily flung down her bucket and sat on a cockleshell glaring at her feet. ‘That’s what I say to Nana. But she never listens. She makes me promise.’

  Bree threw up her hands in frustration and looked over to her brother, but Bellin just shrugged. He grabbed his giant tweezers again and went back to rummaging.

  They all knew why Lily’s nana made her promise. Catching pinchers was dangerous. The crabs dug themselves in the sucking sand, and if any hands or feet sank down close to them, they would snip off a finger or toe with their claws.

  That was why Lilliputians used giant tweezers to pull up a pincher crab, and wore iron shoes. But iron shoes were heavy and the pinchers always hid when they heard them.

  Bree was older than Lily, and Bellin was braver. They always took off their shoes, so they could tiptoe up above the pinchers and take them by surprise.

  But Lily never did. Nana made her promise every time she went out crabbing, and though she sulked, she was also secretly glad. Lily liked her toes and she wanted to keep them.

  Picking up her own tweezers, she clambered from the cockleshell, looking for a good spot of sand to rummage in.

  ‘You’re still a little ’un.’ Bree folded her arms. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

  Lily felt herself go hot with embarrassment. ‘I’m six moons old,’ she told Bree angrily. ‘You’re only seven.’

  ‘But I know how to catch pinchers.’

  ‘Then why is your bucket empty?’

  ‘Come share my spot, Lily,’ said Bellin stepping in front of his sister. ‘There’s lots of space by me.’

  Bree hissed in anger and tugged her bucket to another patch of sand.

  ‘Don’t listen to her,’ Bellin said quietly. ‘She thinks you’re scaring the pinchers away, but you’re not. They were dug down deep before you even got here.’

  Lily smiled. Her lips were dry and she licked them wet again. She scanned the beach. It was a hot spring day. Just a few squiggles of cloud and all the rest blue. Strange. Usually when it was warm the pincher crabs came up almost to the surface to sunbathe. But not today. Today, they were all hiding.

  ‘Something has them scared,’ she told Bellin.

  He shrugged and wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘Maybe it’s Bree’s temper,’ he whispered.

  Lily’s giggle became a gasp. Bellin tugged at something, then stood up straight, a huge pincher wriggling and clacking in his tweezers. It was as big as a dinner plate.

  ‘Here’s a brave one. It’s not hiding like
the rest.’ Bellin dropped it with a rattle in Lily’s bucket. ‘Have it. Take it back to your nana. Everyone in Plips knows she makes the best pincher-crab pie in the village.’

  Lily grinned. ‘I will. And I’ll tell her to save you the biggest slice. Thanks, Bellin.’

  Bellin shrugged.

  Behind him his sister screamed.

  At first Lily thought that Bree had been snipped by a pincher’s claw. But she hadn’t. She was pointing at the sea. Her body was rigid, and her tweezers lay forgotten in the sand.

  Lily and Bellin turned, following her finger to where the waves were galloping back and forth over the shore. They both saw the head rise up from the spray, and the arms. Then the legs, wading out of the water.

  He was so enormous Lily couldn’t believe it. But there he was. Climbing out of all the stories Nana told her at bedtime.

  A giant.

  A mountain of a man.

  He stood there, sea dripping from his hair, waves roaring at his feet. From the pockets of his coat he took an enormous pair of spectacles, the size and shape of a bicycle, and balanced them on his nose. His head moved left then right.

  And he saw them.

  Suddenly Bellin’s hand had fallen into Lily’s and it was pulling her, dragging her back up the beach. They left the buckets and tweezers and fled for the dunes.

  Lily couldn’t keep up. The iron shoes were too heavy and she couldn’t stop to untie them. Bellin’s hand slipped from hers. Bree was on the shingle path, screaming for them to hurry.

  Bellin caught up with his sister, and he turned to shout for Lily, but Bree dragged him off into the dunes. Behind them Lily tripped, fell, rose, stumbled. She felt the rumbling steps of the giant, coming closer.

  Closer, closer, closer, with his hands stretching out.

  At last Lily reached the dunes and crawled into a hiding place in the grass. Gasping, she lay down and listened. The waves crashed and the wind blew and each breath rasped in her throat and that was all.

  Make him go, she kept praying to the Ender. Make him turn back to the sea.

  Then everything went darker, but the clouds had all unravelled from the sky.

  Lily was sitting in his shadow. It was huge. It stretched out in front of her. Somewhere ahead Bellin and Bree were screaming.

  ‘Run, Lily … Run, run, run.’

  She didn’t even take a step. The giant was too quick. He scooped her into his palm, rough and lined. It bore her up like a flying carpet, and the beach fell away from the sky, and Bellin and Bree’s voices fell away from her ears, and the sand trickled away through the giant’s hand.

  ‘Fair tidings to you, child of Lilliput!’

  Lily opened her eyes. The giant was speaking. His voice boomed in her ears.

  ‘If my speech sounds strange to your ears, apologies. I learned to speak Lilliputian over two hundred moons ago, in the court of Emperor Mully Ully Gue the First. No doubt the language since then has altered considerably. Indeed, I imagine almost everything in Lilliput has changed since last I was here. The emperor’s great-grandson must sit on the throne now, yes?’

  Lily gazed up, dumb with terror. The enormous face hung in the sky like a new moon, with its sloping cheeks, its cragged mountain of a nose and the thousand little craters that pock-marked his skin.

  ‘My name is Lemuel Gulliver,’ the giant continued in Lilliputian. ‘I should like to explain more to you, but we must leave at once. A great journey looms ahead of us, and the sooner we set sail for England, the sooner we shall arrive.’

  His spectacles flashed in the sun. Lily blinked and started, at last, to scream. Gulliver waited some time for her to stop. She did not. She screamed and screamed, then drew in another great gasp and screamed again, until the giant’s palm tipped and Lily fell down into darkness.

  Gulliver patted his pocket closed. Then he turned on his heel and began to walk. Back over the dunes, across the beach and into the sea.

  Part One: ESCAPING

  ‘Big fleas have little fleas,

  Upon their backs to bite ’em,

  And little fleas have lesser fleas,

  And so, ad infinitum.’

  (The Siphonaptera, a nursery rhyme)

  THE BIRDCAGE HAD tall, elegant sides with tiny iron flowers woven through the bars. It hung from the ceiling on a hook above the medicine chest. Swinging inside was a perch decorated with china ivy leaves, engraved with a message long since worn away to nothing.

  Scattered on the floor of the cage was a thimble, a penny covered in crumbs and a girl under a handkerchief pretending to snore.

  At midnight she sat up.

  Throwing off her covers, Lily quickly crossed the birdcage. The floor swayed with her steps and the hook above creaked in the ceiling beam. Downstairs in the workshop, some of Mr Plinker’s clocks began to chime, but none of them struck twelve. They never got the hour right. It didn’t matter. Lily knew what time it was – time for Escape Plan Thirty-Three.

  Reaching the other side of the cage she stuck her head between the bars. The floorboards were far below. It was a long way down. She closed her eyes until the dizziness passed and looked across the room at her kidnapper. Her giant.

  Gulliver had fallen asleep at his desk, like he did every night, halfway through writing one of his chapters. Lily studied him carefully. She had to be sure he really was asleep, and not just dozing.

  She watched the candles on the desk as their orange flames danced to and fro with each of Gulliver’s snores. The quill was still in his hand, the Book of Travels open in front of him, but he was deep in dreams. For now.

  Got to hurry, she thought.

  Lily gulped half a dewdrop from one of the thimbles and rushed over to the penny, which was her plate. She scoffed down the crumbs of food, wriggled out of her nightie and into her dress. She had made it herself from Gulliver’s silk neckerchief, stitching it together with cobwebs. The skirt and shirt she’d worn the day he snatched her from the beach were far too small now. Lily was growing up.

  ‘Ready,’ she whispered to herself, kneeling by the thimble. She put her ear to it and listened.

  It was a while before she heard anything. Inside there was the faintest sound – like fingertips drumming on the metal.

  ‘Hello, Scuttle,’ she murmured, for that was what she had decided to call the creature inside. ‘I’m sorry for trapping you all day. I had to wait, you see. Now I’m going to let you out.’

  Gripping the thimble with both hands, Lily readied herself. Scuttle was very fast when he was frightened. Over and over again she whispered to the creature the things she wanted him to do.

  ‘Make sure you don’t try climbing up the birdcage, Scuttle. You want to go down … You want to spin a thread.’

  The pattering inside the thimble stopped. Scuttle was listening.

  ‘And don’t bite me, either,’ she murmured. ‘I know you’re scared, but I’m not going to hurt you.’

  Bad thoughts spun around Lily’s head then, of her gasping on the floor of the birdcage with Scuttle’s poison running through her … turning purple … swelling up and going pop …

  She shook her head, as if her worries were cobwebs in her hair. Then she pulled away the thimble with both hands to let Scuttle loose.

  He wasn’t there.

  Lily stared wide-eyed at the space on the birdcage floor where Scuttle should have been.

  ‘But that’s impossible,’ she breathed. ‘I caught you this morning. And I just heard you moving …’

  Lily realised too late where the spider was. Scuttle had been hanging upside down inside the thimble. Now he was climbing out onto her shoulders.

  THREE LEGS – EACH as long as Lily’s forearm – rested lightly on her sleeve. Moving just her eyes she glanced down at them. Scuttle was halfway out of the thimble. Crouched. Watching. Very still.

  His front legs prodded her arm. Could they feel her skin sweating? Her blood rushing? Her heart jump-jump-jumping in her chest? She watched for the spider’s fangs, but the
y were hidden under what looked like a large, drooping moustache. Scuttle was the colour of dirt, except for his shiny black eyes, like little globs of ink.

  Suddenly he clambered out of the thimble and down her back. A trickle of sweat dribbled into Lily’s eye and she blinked.

  Scuttle paused. Lily didn’t dare breathe.

  At last he stepped lightly down her legs and dropped to the birdcage floor.

  Lily was so relieved she couldn’t stop the sigh. Scuttle heard. With a jolt he sped away in terror to the far edge of the birdcage. She whirled around and saw his legs dangling in the nothingness. Then the spider found the bars of the cage and began to climb.

  ‘No!’ Lily hissed at Scuttle. ‘You can’t climb, you’ve got to fall!’

  Escape Plan Thirty-Three was only seconds old and already it was going wrong! In desperation she threw the thimble, hoping to scare Scuttle back down. It span through the air and slammed into the bars just above the spider.

  There was a clang like a blacksmith’s anvil and Lily looked at Gulliver, terrified he would wake. But the giant just snorted in his sleep, and that was all. When Lily turned again, Scuttle was still climbing up. She searched around desperately for something else to throw. By the foot of her bed were her iron shoes, rusted to two dull flakes of brown. She scooped the right one into her hands and tossed it up at Scuttle.

  It flew wide, spinning through the bars and out into the attic. Another miss! Lily picked up the left. It was her last chance – Scuttle would soon be too far away. She hefted the shoe and threw it as hard as she could … It hit! The shoe struck Scuttle’s front legs and the spider slipped. He fell down and hit the floor. Lily ran forward, but Scuttle didn’t get up. He didn’t move at all.

  He lay on his back, legs clenched; a huge, hairy fist with too many fingers. When Lily crept up to poke him with her toe, he rocked on the ground like a dry leaf. Dead.

  ‘No,’ she moaned. ‘Oh, no. Please.’

  She had just wanted him to come down. She hadn’t meant for this to happen. Lily backed away and slid down the bars, head in her hands. Only then did she realise that Scuttle was pretending.