a piece beside each bowl. He then half-sat on the table and began to swish the bread into the stew, using it as a kind of spoon. Charlie did the same. Squirra stew was surprisingly good, but then Charlie was very hungry.
They ate in silence for a while. Charlie kept thinking of the dog outside the tower. How frightened he must be. And then the warm stew settled in his stomach and he could only think how comforting it was. Occasionally he glanced at his ancestor’s face. He could see no resemblance between the Yewbeams he knew and the giant. Grandma Bone and her sisters had tiny black eyes and thin lips, while Otus had grey eyes, and a wide, generous mouth. But, of course, many generations had come between them.
‘Tell me about your life,’ said the giant, scraping the last morsel from his bowl.
Charlie licked his fingers until every delicious trace of the stew was gone, and then he began. He told the giant how his father had been hypnotised by Manfred Bloor, and lived for ten long years in the school called Bloor’s Academy, while no one knew he was there. He went on to say how he, Charlie, had discovered his talent for travelling into pictures. He described Grandma Bone and her terrible sisters, and his friends, the normal boys like Fidelio and Benjamin. ‘Only Fidelio isn’t really normal,’ Charlie added. ‘He’s a musical prodigy and one day he’ll be famous.’
And then Charlie recounted some of his adventures with those other children, the endowed, descendants of the Red King, like himself. Emma, who could fly, Billy, who understood animals, Lysander, who could call up his spirit ancestors, Tancred the storm-bringer, Gabriel the clairvoyant, ‘And there’s Olivia.’ Charlie gave a chuckle. ‘She’s an illusionist, but the Bloors don’t know about her. She’s kind of our secret weapon.’
‘So this ancient man, Ezekiel, keeps you prisoner in his Academy for the . . . the?’ The giant looked at Charlie questioningly.
‘Gifted, I suppose you’d call it,’ said Charlie. ‘And we’re not really prisoners.’
‘But under his control.’
‘Sometimes we disobey.’
‘Good! Good!’ cried Otus, clapping his hands. He glanced up at the window. ‘Darkness has come. The dog can be rescued.’
‘Runner Bean!’ Charlie had almost forgotten poor Runner Bean while he’d been talking to the giant.
Otus led the way down the tower. He held the candle in an iron dish. It smelled like burning fat and cast huge leaping shadows on the stone walls. When they reached the outer door, the giant stopped and listened. Charlie waited beside him, scarcely able to breathe.
Otus had barely opened the door, before Charlie rushed out. He was met by such an overpowering blackness, he felt he might have been blinded. And through the terrible dark came the winds, first from one side, then another, driving him against the wall of the tower, dragging his legs, howling in his head.
‘RUNNER!’ Charlie screamed into the wind.
He waited for an answering bark. But nothing could be heard above the winds.
‘Best return, boy,’ called Otus. ‘He has been taken.’
‘No!’ Charlie ran blindly forward. Suddenly, he was falling. He landed with a groan on to hard, rocky ground. Putting out a hand, he felt a damp wall. Something scuttled over his fingers and he screamed again.
There came a deep, throaty bark and, even in his dangerous position, Charlie felt a surge of joy. ‘Runner!’ he called.
The giant’s voice drifted above the wind. ‘Cursed giant that I am. I should have warned you of the pits. Where are you, boy?’
‘Here!’ cried Charlie. He heard the thud of boots. A giant hand touched his, and then he was being hauled up the side of the pit. As he reached the top, a shaft of weak, ragged moonlight showed him a large yellow dog perched on the rim. ‘Runner!’ he shouted.
Runner Bean barked delightedly as the giant bundled boy and dog towards the tower. ‘Hush, dog!’ he said, pushing them both through the door.
Charlie grabbed the excited dog’s collar, while Otus closed the door and drew two heavy bolts across it.
‘Faith, that dog will have us all in chains before night has passed,’ the giant muttered.
‘Did someone hear us?’ Charlie stroked Runner Bean’s head, calming him down.
‘I fear my neighbour,’ Otus admitted, as he ascended the stone staircase. ‘His tower is close, and he is not a kind man.’
Now that Runner Bean had found Charlie, he seemed reluctant to climb the shadowy steps. Charlie had to coax him up with strokes and promises of bones, though he had no idea if any would be found once they reached the giant’s room.
The giant had thought ahead. By the time Charlie had enticed the nervous dog to the top of the stairs, Otus had fished two bones out of the cooking pot. Flinging them across the floor, he chuckled, ‘Chew on those, brave dog.’
‘I don’t think he feels very brave,’ Charlie remarked as he watched Runner Bean ravenously gnawing the bones.
‘Charlie, you must flee from here,’ Otus said gravely. ‘We cannot hope to hide that dog. Soon my neighbour will alert Oddthumb and his crew. You will hear the horn, and then you must be gone.’
‘But how?’ Charlie gazed round the giant’s room. ‘I can’t,’ he said in a strangled voice. ‘I don’t know how I got here. When I travel I have a wand . . .’
‘A wand?’ The giant’s eyes widened. ‘Truly, you are a magician, then?’
‘No, no.’ Charlie shook his head. ‘It’s just something that I inherited from my other ancestor, a Welsh wizard. It’d take too long to explain.’
Too long, indeed, for, at that moment, the eerie sound of a wailing horn echoed round the giant’s tower.
‘Oh, mercy, what’s to be done?’ The giant strode round and round, clenching his fists and glaring at the high window. ‘I shall defend you with my last breath, Charlie. But I am only one. I cannot prevail. Oddthumb will take you. Oh, poor boy, what is to become of you?’
The giant’s mournful voice was too much for Runner Bean. He leapt up with a dreadful howl – and something astonishing happened. From inside one of the dog’s ears, a white moth fluttered out. She came to rest on Charlie’s arm.
‘Claerwen,’ breathed Charlie. ‘My wand.’
‘In my day, we called such things moths,’ said the baffled giant.
‘Yes, yes. She is a moth, but she was once a wand,’ Charlie told the giant. ‘Mr Yewbeam, Otus – we can go now. Thank you, thank you . . .’
‘Then go,’ said Otus, ‘for I can hear troll feet. Swiftly, swiftly, Charlie Bone.’
‘Maybe I could take you with me, Otus?’
The giant sadly shook his head. ‘An impossibility. Go now, Charlie.’
Charlie flung his arm round Runner Bean. ‘I’ll came back, Otus, I promise. I’ll find a way to get you out of Badlock.’ Gazing at the moth, he cried, ‘Claerwen, take me home.’
The room about him began to jerk and jolt. Defying gravity, the table, chair and bed tumbled sideways, then became airborne. Charlie was treading air. Now he was upside down. His ears were bombarded with a thousand sounds. He felt Runner’s coarse hair melting under his fingers and tried to grip it tighter, but something, or someone, was trying to tear the dog from his grasp. And then his hand was empty and he was whirling away.
Charlie caught one last glimpse of his ancestor’s kind, incredulous face before he was thrust through time, through a sparkling, shifting web of sounds, smells and sensations.
He landed with a light bump on the cold cellar floor of number nine,