Pip Goes After His Brothers

There were three brothers in a cottage at the end of one road, and their names were Tom, Jack, and Pip.

Tom was the clever one. Jack was the strong one. Pip was neither, but Pip could pack a basket better than anybody alive. He knew how to lay the bread so it did not squash the cheese. He knew that a jar of pickles goes at the bottom and an apple goes at the top. And he always, always packed one extra of everything, because you never know who you will meet.

That was Pip’s whole talent. Keep an eye on it. It turns out to be the entire trick.

On Tuesday, Tom and Jack went off to seek their fortunes, the way big brothers do. Pip packed them a basket with one extra of everything and stood at the gate and waved.

On Wednesday, they did not come home.

On Thursday, they still did not come home, and the soup Pip had made was sitting on the stove going cold, and I am sorry to tell you it had a skin on it. There is nothing sadder in this world than a soup with a skin on it and nobody coming to eat it. Pip looked at that soup and made up his mind.

“Right,” said Pip. “I will go and get them, and we will have supper.”

He packed a basket. Bread, cheese, pickles, apples, and one extra of everything. Then he took the one road out of the cottage, the only road there was, which goes over the Long Marsh and up to the blue hills.

Now, the Long Marsh is a wide grey water with reeds in it, and no bridge, and no boat, and everybody knows you cannot cross it. But Pip’s grandma had told him the way, and the way is this: you ask.

Pip stood at the edge of the water with his basket on his arm.

“Please,” said Pip.

And a stone came up out of the marsh, slow and dripping, and sat there like a plate.

Pip stepped onto it. “Please,” said Pip. And another stone came up.

He said it eleven times and got eleven stones. On the eleventh he stepped off onto dry grass on the far side. Behind him the stones sank back down, one by one, quiet as bubbles. Pip said thank you to the marsh, because he had been raised properly, and went on up the road toward the blue hills.

Here is the thing about the blue hills. They are not hills.

They are a giant. He is lying on his side across the whole country with his knees up, asleep. He has been asleep so long that grass has grown on him, and sheep walk about on his shoulder. His coat is as big as a field. His buttons are the size of millwheels. When he breathes, the sheep go up, and then the sheep come down.

Pip stood at the giant’s elbow and looked all the way up, and his heart went thump. But he thought of the soup, and he started to climb.

He climbed up a fold of the coat, which was like climbing a hill made of blanket. He went along the sleeve. And near the top he came to the pocket, which was a great dark doorway in the cloth, and out of the pocket came the sound of somebody singing.

Pip put his head in.

There inside the giant’s pocket, comfortable as anything, were his two brothers.

Tom sat on a heap of pocket lint with his boots off. Jack was lying on his back with his hands behind his head. There was a shepherd in there too, an old man with a tin whistle he never blew. He had been in that pocket so long that he had knitted the giant a scarf out of pocket lint, and it was nearly done. And there was a horse. The horse looked at Pip and looked away again, the way horses do.

“Pip!” said Tom. “How nice. Have you brought anything to eat?”

“You’ve been gone since Tuesday,” said Pip.

“Have we?” said Jack. “It’s very warm in here.”

“There’s no draft,” said the shepherd. “I’ll say that for it.”

“He picks you up when you go by,” said Tom, “and he puts you in his pocket, and there you are. It’s not so bad. We were going to look for our fortunes, but honestly, Pip, this is a very good pocket.”

Pip looked at the two of them and the shepherd and the horse and the enormous quiet dark, and he understood something, which was not clever of him exactly, but it was right.

“He’s lonely,” said Pip.

“Well, he’s got us,” said Jack.

“That isn’t the same,” said Pip.

And he climbed out of the pocket and up over the buttons and along the collar and out onto the giant’s cheek, which was as wide as a plowed field, and he took a deep breath and he shouted.

“EXCUSE ME,” shouted Pip.

The whole country moved. The sheep went sideways. One eye opened, and it was as big as a pond, and it looked at Pip, and Pip stood very still and held on to his basket.

“You’re in my pocket,” said the giant. His voice came up through the ground. “Everyone is. That’s how you have company.”

“It isn’t, though,” said Pip. “That’s how you have people in your pocket.”

The giant thought about this for a while. The eye blinked, slow.

“Then how?” he said.

“You invite them,” said Pip. “You say, come to supper. And they come, and they eat, and you talk, and then they go home again. And then the next week you say it again. That’s the part nobody told you. They go home, and they come back.”

There was a very long silence, and then the giant made a sound that Pip had never heard before, which was a giant being embarrassed.

“Nobody has ever invited me anywhere,” he said.

“I’m inviting you,” said Pip. “Thursday. There’s soup.”

And the giant sat up, and the sheep ran off down his back, and he turned out his pocket right there on the spot. Out came Tom, out came Jack, out came the shepherd with the scarf over his arm, and out came the horse, who was not sorry either way.

The giant walked them all over the Long Marsh in three steps and put them down at the cottage gate.

He came to supper that night. He sat outside with his legs stretched down the road and his head in through the window and his chin on the table. Pip gave him one bean on an ordinary spoon, because that was the biggest spoon in the house.

The giant ate the bean. He shut his eyes.

“That,” he said, “was a feast.”

Then he said thank you, and got up, and went home, which he had never done from anywhere, and he liked it very much. And the next Thursday he came back, and the Thursday after that.

Tom and Jack never did find their fortunes. They stopped looking. Pip packed the baskets, and always one extra of everything, and there was always somebody to eat it.

And every Thursday, if you went past that cottage, you would see two legs stretched all the way down the road, and hear a giant saying it was a feast.

The end.