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
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 they 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.
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.