Lilliput Read online

  Sure enough, as she watched, the spider stopped playing dead. Suddenly he wriggled his legs and righted himself. Not daring to breathe, Lily watched him crawl again to the edge of the birdcage. This time he didn’t try to climb. He simply dropped down over the side and vanished.

  ‘Good, Scuttle!’ Lily leaped up and ran to where the spider had been. Down by her feet was a line of silk, fastened to the floor of the birdcage. It glinted in the light of the moon.

  A lifeline. Lily’s way out.

  Escape Plan Thirty-Three was working!

  ‘Thank you, Scuttle,’ she whispered.

  Sticking her head between the bars she saw him. Far below, the spider dangled from his silk. Down he went. Down, down, down to the dark and distant floorboards.

  Lily gripped Scuttle’s thread in both hands. She took deep breaths and tried to still the jitters running through her. Her heart was thrumming in her chest, beating faster than a bee’s wing. Taking one last look at her prison, she shut her eyes tight.

  It was time to go home.

  Squeezing sideways through the bars she started the long climb down. Suspended in the air upon a single steely thread.

  LILY CLIMBED DOWN as quickly as she could. Scuttle’s silk wasn’t made to carry her weight. If she didn’t hurry, it might snap.

  And there were the breezes too.

  Halfway down, the first one came. From the open window there was a whooshing sound. The ragged curtains billowed like sails. A few candles winked out on Gulliver’s desk as the gust whirled in.

  Lily had just enough time to wrap her legs around the silk before she was spinning around and around in the air. Then dizziness swept through her like waves and she lost her grip.

  She waited for the thread to whip through her fingers; for the terrible plunge through the air; for the floorboards to rush towards her; for the final, sickening SPLAT … but none of it happened. Lily stayed right where she was, fixed in place by the incredible stickiness of Scuttle’s silk – it held on to her, even when she let go.

  The breeze disappeared up the chimney with a moan. Lily wound her arms and legs around the thread again, holding on in case another gust came, but none did. Lily listened to Gulliver snoring. To the gentle swish of the curtains. To the glowing coals fidget and crumble in the fireplace below. Then she started to climb down again. Faster.

  Her hands stung and her muscles were shrieking for her to stop as Lily saw the end of the thread at last. The floorboards were just below, but there was no sign of Scuttle – he had crawled away into the shadows.

  ‘Almost there!’ she gasped, just as her arms gave out.

  Lily half slid, half fell down the last few inches to the ground. The glue from the thread pulled a strip of skin from her palms, and she jolted her ankle as she hit the floorboards. She lay in a crumpled heap, groaning with the pain. Then she crawled to her feet, spat on her raw hands to kill any germs, and looked around the room.

  Piles of old plates, tin cups, odd socks and broken quills rose up around her like ruined castles. Gulliver never cleared away after himself – he was always scribbling in his book instead. Lily looked up at him in the distance, asleep on his chair. A faraway mountain of rumbling snores.

  She suddenly felt frightened, standing there all alone. In the birdcage she had been safe. Down here there could be anything lurking in the shadows. Spiders … Rats … Lily shivered.

  Something creaked above her. She froze, but it was just another breeze rocking the birdcage on its hook. How distant and small it looked from the floorboards, like a bell in a church tower.

  Stop being so skittish. She smiled. The first part of Escape Plan Thirty-Three had worked. She had found a way out of the birdcage. Now she needed to find a way out of the attic. And then, after that …

  One thing at a time, she thought burying her worries deep down. You won’t get home until you get out of this room.

  This was harder than it sounded. Neither Gulliver nor Lily had left the attic since they’d arrived, back when the moon was a sliver. Now it was round as a coin. It was the sixth moon to pass since Gulliver had snatched her from Lilliput.

  The first five moons were spent sailing on a ship. Another moon had passed here in London, in the attic above Mr Plinker’s workshop.

  That was all Lily knew. She’d counted six moons wax and wane in the sky. She had listened to Mr Plinker’s clocks stutter and screech downstairs like lunatics in an asylum. Everything else was a mystery. Gulliver had kept her trapped in pockets, cages and socks for almost the whole journey. In the attic he had hung the birdcage very carefully so that the window showed Lily nothing – just an empty square of sky that sometimes held a fleeting bird or a drifting cloud or a few distant threads of smoke.

  He never told her how far they had travelled from Lilliput, or taught her about maps and the world, or let Lily even catch a glimpse of London, the city outside. She knew why. He wasn’t just hiding her from the world – he was hiding the world from her.

  Because the more lost and disorientated she was, the more she was his prisoner.

  That was why Lily had to put all thoughts of home out of her mind for now. She couldn’t look for Lilliput until she was free. Escaping Gulliver came first.

  So far, though, it had not proved easy. Lily had tried thirty-two different plans and every single time she’d been caught.

  During her first five Escape Plans she had tried to wriggle out of the room. To begin with Gulliver had only concentrated on keeping Lily from climbing up the chimney, by making sure the fireplace was always filled with blazing hot coals.

  Being a giant, he hadn’t noticed all the other places Lily could squeeze through: floorboard cracks, door gaps and keyholes.

  But he had still caught her. Every time. And now every crack, gap and keyhole was sealed up with candle wax.

  So, during Escape Plan Seventeen, Lily had decided to make her own way out. Crawling into the barrel of Gulliver’s pistol she’d fetched a thimble of gunpowder and blasted a hole in the floorboards. But Gulliver had woken – even though she’d stuffed fluff in his ears – and covered up the hole with a brick.

  Eventually, during Escape Plan Twenty-One, Lily had decided she needed rescuing. So she had tamed a young mouse that sometimes crept in to nibble Gulliver’s socks, calling him Squeak. Using a strand of giant hair Lily tied a long scrap of paper to the mouse’s tail. On it was her story, written with an eyelash and ink. It told of the Snatching on the Beach, then the long journey across the sea, and the dull days spent trapped in the attic. At the end she signed it:

  Lily

  Then dipped her hand in Gulliver’s ink and printed underneath:

  Squeak had got away, but afterwards Gulliver had stuffed his hole with poison pellets and iron wool. Lily never saw the little mouse again.

  None of that mattered now, though, because the rain had stopped, the winds were calm and Gulliver had left the window open.

  ‘A perfect night for flying,’ Lily whispered.

  LIMPING OVER POTS of old porridge, dirty clothes and candle nubs, Lily headed for Gulliver’s bed. Hidden under it, half buried in a heap of dust, were two pigeon feathers. Lily had stashed them there during Escape Plan Twenty-One. She’d planned to use them as quills for her rescue note until they proved far too big to write with.

  It didn’t matter. Lily had thought of another use for them.

  Pulling out the feathers, she brushed off the dust and checked them over. Maybe they were a bit shabby and grey, but they were strong, and twice as tall as her.

  ‘Come on, you two,’ she said to them. ‘Stop sitting here in the dust. I need you to fly again.’

  The feathers rustled and shivered in the air as if they were eager to get going. Lily felt the excitement too – it filled her with trembles. Laying down the feathers she began turning them into wings.

  First, she searched in the dark for a sticky little cobweb string and untangled it. She worked as quickly as she could – there was no telling when Gulliver
would wake and check on her. His nightmares never let him sleep very long. Lily could hear him now, mumbling something about giant wasps and a talking horse. There wasn’t much time.

  Using the spider silk, Lily bound the feathers together and made two loops either side for her arms. When that was done she slipped in her hands and pulled the whole thing on like a backpack. She tied the last bit of cobweb around her waist to secure the feathers. Now they jutted from her shoulder-blades like wings.

  ‘Don’t let me down,’ Lily whispered to them.

  They quivered as she stepped out into the moonlight. Maybe Escape Plan Thirty-Three would work.

  Maybe tonight she would finally be free.

  But flying out of the window would be dangerous.

  The desk was the perfect place for Lily to jump – from there she could glide to the window ledge at least. First she’d have to climb up there, and there was only one way to the top: Gulliver.

  Once upon a time Lily would never have dreamed of climbing up a giant. But now she was twelve moons old. She was bigger, she was braver and she was desperate.

  Moving quickly, Lily emerged from under the bed and began scurrying up Gulliver’s leg. Her palms were still raw from Scuttle’s silk, and her ankle ached, but she gritted her teeth and ignored the pain. Soon she was hiking up Gulliver’s shirt and tiptoeing over his back. It rose and fell with his snores. Slowly the top of the desk came into view. The edges were piled with scraps of paper and dotted with candles, but in the centre stood an enormous, leather-bound book.

  It was the story of Gulliver’s life – the story of his travels.

  Gulliver had told Lily his tale too. As a young man, he journeyed across the world, visiting strange lands. He saw islands floating in the air, and lived with talking horses. He even visited Lilliput, long before Lily was born. But when he returned to England, no one believed the things he had seen.

  That was why, six moons ago, Gulliver went back to Lilliput.

  For Lily. For proof.

  Soon he was going to publish his Book of Travels. And then he would display Lily in her cage to all the giants in the city.

  And everyone would know that Gulliver’s travels were true.

  That was why Escape Plan Thirty-Three had to work. Lily was running out of time. The Book of Travels was nearly finished. And when it was, every giant in the city would gawp at her and she would never be able to escape.

  Tiptoeing up to Gulliver’s neck Lily slid silently down his shoulder and onto the desk. The once-tall candles were nothing but stumps now, and her feet splashed into a big pool of melted wax.

  ‘Ouch!’ she whispered, hopping from one foot to the other. ‘Hot, hot, hot!’

  She was too busy cooling down her poor burnt soles to notice one of the feathers brush Gulliver’s nose.

  The lightest touch, that’s all it was.

  But it was enough.

  ‘Aaa …’ said Gulliver in his sleep. ‘Aaa …’

  LILY TURNED WITH dread and peered into Gulliver’s huge nostrils, big as caves. She heard snuffling. Sniffling. Twitching. There was something inside those nostrils – something huge.

  And it was about to come out.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ she murmured at the giant’s nose. ‘Don’t you even dare.’

  Gulliver took a tiny breath …

  Then a bigger one …

  Then a huge sucking gasp that made it seem as if he was opening his mouth to swallow her up …

  ‘ATCHOO!’

  From Gulliver’s nose, in a hurricane of snot and breath, came the sneeze. It blew out half the candles and sent a hundred scraps of paper into the air, white and tumbling. Gulliver was wide awake. He tugged his hair away from his eyes and whirled about.

  ‘Lily?’ he rumbled, looking at the birdcage.

  ‘LILY!’ he roared, looking down at his desk.

  ‘LILY!’ he raged in the whirlwind of paper. He turned to the open window. ‘LILY! LILY, WHERE ARE YOU?’

  But Lily was gone.

  Gulliver’s sneeze had caught in her wings with the force of a gale and blown her off the desk, into nothingness.

  For a moment she hung in the air with the moonbeams and the paper scraps … then she was spinning, soaring, flying out the window.

  I’ve done it! I’m free!

  With the wind in her hair, the starry sky above her head and the moon within her reach Lily stretched out her arms and swooped out of the attic. And, at last, she caught her first glimpse of the city called London.

  She gasped.

  Vast plumes of smoke came up from the chimneys, smudging the stars. All around the tiled rooftops stretched out to the horizon like the peaks of mountains. Lily could not believe her eyes. The city was enormous. An endless tangle of streets. A hundred thousand windows glimmering under the moon.

  She tried to focus on flying, but it was impossible. Lily had never imagined anything could be this big. For so long her world had been small. It had boundaries. The walls of an attic. The bars of a birdcage. The inside of a pocket. But London had no limits – it was endless.

  Where do I go now?

  Which way is home?

  For a moment Lily hesitated, pulling on her wings. She hovered in the air. Just for a moment.

  And back inside the attic, Gulliver saw his chance.

  With a desperate lunge he launched himself half out of the window. His hand rushed down towards her and his fingertips closed around the tip of one wing. Before Lily could wriggle free of the knots that tied her to the feathers he yanked her back inside.

  The moon and stars and city suddenly vanished. There was a slam as the window swung shut. When Lily sat up, giddy and shaken, she was on Gulliver’s hand, staring up at his face.

  ‘You are not a bird, Lily,’ he said once he had caught his breath. ‘And so it is foolish of you to try and fly away.’

  As he spoke he began pulling off her wings. Lily couldn’t stop him. She didn’t even try. She said nothing; just covered her face with her hands, trying to press the hot tears back into her eyes.

  And, as the knots of cobweb stretched and snapped, Lily felt something stretching and snapping inside her too. Whatever threads had been pulling her closer to home, they were broken now.

  GULLIVER TOSSED THE feathers into the fireplace where they shrivelled up on the coals. Lily couldn’t bear to watch them burn. She looked up at his face, full of creases and lines, like a map that had been folded and unfolded too many times.

  ‘I am tired of this, Lily,’ he grumbled above her. ‘Again and again you try. How many times do I have to catch you?’

  Lily almost answered. She almost said, None, Gulliver. You won’t have to catch me any more. I’m stopping. I’m giving up.

  ‘You would do better to forget Lilliput and make a new home here,’ he said, taking off his spectacles and rubbing his eyes. ‘In London.’

  He was right. How could she keep going? There were no more escape plans, no more hope. Even if Lily freed herself she would still have to find a way out of London. It was impossible. Lilliput was lost, somewhere beyond the horizon, out of reach.

  But then Lily remembered. For a brief, wonderful second, she had been flying. She had been free.

  And even though home now seemed further away than ever … Even though Scuttle was gone, Gulliver was awake and the window was shut … Lily still remembered that feeling.

  It was enough.

  ‘I won’t stop,’ she said quietly, surprised by her own words. But the more she spoke, the more she believed. ‘I won’t give up. I’ll keep trying to escape until I’m free.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Gulliver hotly. ‘Absurd! Once you escape, what then? London is enormous – you have seen that for yourself now. And it is filled with dangers. Do I need to remind you of the fate of those I brought back from my first voyage to Lilliput? Do I need to show you their bones once more?’

  Lily shivered and shook her head. Gulliver still kept the skeletons of the Lilliputian cows and sheep he
had brought back from the island after his first journey. Every now and then he took them out to show her what would happen if she ever succeeded in running away.

  ‘I let them graze upon a bowling green at Greenwich,’ he began, though Lily had heard the story many times before. ‘Within a week the rats had gobbled up every single one. I found their bones scattered over the grass. Picked clean. Don’t you see, Lily? I am not keeping you prisoner – I am keeping you safe.’

  Once, when she was younger, the story of the bones had been terrifying. But Lily was twelve moons old now and it no longer scared her. She knew why.

  ‘I’d rather be a rat’s supper than your proof,’ she said.

  Gulliver looked at her sternly, and she glared back. There was stubble on his chin, bags under his eyes and snuff on his nose. Several sentences from his Book of Travels were printed upon his forehead from where he’d been sleeping. In the same way, his dream of horses was still smudged upon his eyes. Lily could see it as it galloped out his head.

  Giant eyes were not like Lilliputian eyes. They were so huge that sometimes, if she looked hard enough, Lily saw Gulliver’s feelings. His thoughts. He tried his best to keep them locked away, but every now and then one would get free.

  Lily saw one escape now.

  ‘I don’t belong here,’ she told him. ‘You know I don’t – I can see it in your eyes.’

  Gulliver blinked behind his spectacles and hid his thoughts away again. ‘It is nothing to do with right and wrong.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ she insisted, and explained it in the smallest, simplest way she could. ‘You stole me. Stealing is wrong.’

  Gulliver shook his head. ‘Yet again it seems I must explain …’ He sighed, blowing her long black curls from her eyes. ‘Keeping you here is necessary, Lily. Perhaps I am foolish to expect something so small to understand …’

  ‘Hey!’ She thumped his palm with her fists. ‘I’m not a something I’m a someone.’