'Ma!' shrieked Muncle. 'Gritt's upside-downing me again.'
The only light in the Troggs' home came from Ma's fire. Now it threw the shadow of a larger-than-life Gritt on to the rocky wall, with a much-too-small Muncle dangling helplessly from his hand.
'Ma!' Muncle yelled again. His shadow swung wildly to and fro.
This sort of thing made him feel smaller than ever. At twelve he should have been able to stand up for himself. But at the moment he couldn't stand up at all. Gritt had him firmly by the ankles. It wouldn't have been so bad if Gritt had been his older brother, but Gritt was four years younger.
'Ma!' He was going to be sick if he stayed upside down much longer. It was a good thing Pa wasn't home yet. Pa always took Gritt's side. Gritt was the sort of son a giant could be proud of.
Ma Trogg peered through the cloud of steam above her cauldron. She was a handsome woman with an enviable number of bristly warts, but her broad yellow smile was too often clouded by an anxious frown. It was all wrong that she still had to worry about her eldest child when she had two younger ones to look after. But she would always worry unless Muncle could find some way of fitting into a world where he so obviously didn't fit. And time was running out. In three days he would be leaving school. If he couldn't find a job he was capable of doing by then, his prospects were bleak.
'Gritt!' roared Ma. 'Put your brother down at once.'
'But you told me to play with him till breakfast.'
'I didn't mean you should use him as a toy.'
'Oh. All right.' Gritt dropped Muncle as quickly as he'd picked him up.
Muncle's smallness did give him one advantage: he was unusually agile. The moment Gritt let go, Muncle somersaulted in mid air, landing on his bottom rather than his head. It still hurt. If anyone else had been dropped on their bottom they would have bounced, but where every other giant had rolls of comfortable fat, Muncle had only skin and bone.
He wasn't bad looking. He had an excellent complexion: coarse grey skin dotted with sparse hairy warts. He had Pa's bushy eyebrows and fleshy nose. He had Ma's bulging eyes and uneven teeth. It was just Muncle's size that was wrong.
'We can't wait for your pa any longer,' said Ma, clattering wooden bowls on to the low stone table, 'or you'll be late for school. Come and eat, both of you.'
She unstrapped the wicker baby-basket from her back and set it down beside the table. Flubb grabbed her leather bottle and glugged the fungus porridge down eagerly.
'You can almost see her growing,' Muncle thought enviously.
He pulled up his bracken-filled cushion, not just because his bruised bottom felt tender, but because he needed the thick cushion in order to reach the table.
Everyone else sat on the bare, rocky floor and drank their porridge from bowls, large ones for Gritt and Ma and a much smaller one for Muncle. He was glad that Ma had stopped trying to make him grow by feeding him the same amount as Gritt. He'd hated the constant reminders that his appetite, like everything else about him, was too small.
The thick grey porridge was too hot for Muncle, but Gritt swung his bowl to his lips and drained the contents in one long swig.
'Seconds!' he demanded, before Ma had even sat down.
'Not until Pa's had his,' said Ma, peering into the cauldron. 'There might not be enough.'
Gritt banged his bowl down on the table.
'It's mean of Pa to stay out so late,' he complained. 'If he doesn't come home soon, I'll have to go to school hungry.'
Muncle and Ma exchanged anxious glances.
'He'll be all right, Ma,' said Muncle. 'He's the best hunter in town.'
Ma bit her lip.
'Raiding isn't the same as hunting though, is it?' she said. 'Going on to a smalling farm for a sheep isn't like snaring rabbits on the mountainside. What if he's run into a smalling with a magic killing stick?'
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