Anne ran away to the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath, wondering what to do. She heard the voices of the three heroes out in the passage after a moment. She shut the bathroom door, very quietly. Nothing happened. After a while she felt she had better go and see what the heroes were doing.
There was a hole like a mousehole in the bottom of her bedroom door. The heroes were on their way downstairs. Anne could hear Enna Hittims saying, “Come on, Marlene! Just let yourself drop and Spike will catch you.” They seemed to be halfway down. Anne went down cautiously to see how they were doing it. They seemed to be letting themselves down on the rope tied to Spike’s magic spike. Marlene was dangling and spinning on the rope. To Anne’s surprise, she was wearing a new dress of a pretty harebell blue.
“Ooh! It’s so high!” she said.
“Don’t be so feeble!” said Enna Hittims. “We’re halfway down.”
Spike was keeping guard. “There’s a giant on the stairs above us,” he said quietly.
Enna Hittims glanced up at Anne. “You two go on,” she said. “It’s only a small one. You two get down and look for the big giants, while I slice off a few of this one’s toes to keep it busy.”
Anne was forced to run back to the bathroom again, rather than lose her toes. Then she realized that her bedroom was safe now and went back there. It was in the most awful mess, even if you did not count the lunch in the bed. The heroes had pulled books and jigsaws and games out of the shelves. Enna Hittims had slashed Anne’s piggy bank to bits with her sword, but she obviously had not thought that 50p in pence was much of a treasure, and she had cut some of the money up, too. Spike had pulled out Anne’s records. She could see the scratches his spike had made, right across her favorite ones. One of them had scribbled with a mauve felt tip across most of Anne’s drawings. But it was Marlene who had done the worst damage. She had cut a ragged circle out of Anne’s best sweater in order to make herself her new dress.
That made Anne so angry that she almost ran downstairs. By now she hated all three heroes. Enna Hittims was bossy and bloodthirsty. Spike was a vandal. And Marlene was so awful that she deserved the way Enna Hittims ordered her about! Anne wished she had never invented them. But it was plain she was not going to get rid of them by just wishing. She was going to have to do something, however nasty that might be.
As she arrived at the bottom of the stairs, quaking but determined, there was a ringing SMASH! from the living room and the sound of smithereens pattering on the carpet. Anne knew it was the big china lamp her mother was so fond of.
The heroes came scampering around the living room door into the hall. “Too many hazards in there,” Enna Hittims announced. “Now let’s see. We’re sure the small purple-faced giant is only a servant left on guard. Where can we go to kill the big ones when they come back?”
“The kitchen,” said Spike. “They’ll want to eat.”
“Us, probably,” Marlene quavered.
“Don’t moan, Marlene,” said Enna Hittims. “Right. To the kitchen!” She held her sword up and led the other two at a run around the open kitchen door.
Something in the kitchen went ching-BOING! and there was the glop-glop-glop of liquid running out of a bottle. “Oh, no!” said Anne. She had left the milk bottle on the floor while she was looking for Tibby. Worse still, she remembered the way Tibby always knew when there was milk on the floor. She could not let Tibby get in the way of the enchanted sword. She ran across the hall.
“My new dress is soaked!” she heard Marlene whine. Then came the sound of Tibby’s cat flap opening. Marlene gasped, “A monster!”
“What a splendid one!” Enna Hittims cried ringingly. “You two guard my rear while I kill it.”
By the time Anne got to the kitchen, Enna Hittims was standing in a warlike attitude facing Tibby, barring Tibby’s way to the pool of milk on the floor. And Tibby, who had no kind of idea about enchanted swords, was crouching with her tail swishing, staring eagerly at Enna Hittims. It was clear she thought the hero was a new kind of mouse.
Anne charged through the kitchen and caught Tibby just as she sprang. “Oh-ho!” shouted Enna Hittims. The enchanted sword swung at Anne’s right foot. Spike sprang at Anne’s left foot and stabbed. Tibby struggled and clawed. But Anne hung on to Tibby in spite of it all. She ran out into the hall, kicking the kitchen door shut behind her, and did not let go of Tibby until the door was shut. Then she dropped Tibby. Tibby stood in a ruffled hump, giving Anne the look that meant they would not be on speaking terms for some time, and then stalked away upstairs.
Anne sat on the bottom stair, watching blood ooze from a round hole in her left big toe and more blood trickle from a deep cut under her right ankle. “How lucky I didn’t invent them poisoned weapons!” she said. She sat and thought. Surely one ordinary-sized girl ought to be able to defeat three inch-high heroes, if she went about it the right way. She needed armor really.
She went thoughtfully up to her bedroom. Tibby was now crouched on Anne’s bed, delicately picking pieces of macaroni cheese out of the stewed apple. Tibby loved cheese. She looked up at Anne with the look that meant “Stop me if you dare!”
“You eat it,” said Anne. “Be my guest. Stuff yourself. It’ll keep you up here out of danger.” She got dressed. She put on her toughest jeans and her hard shoes and her thickest sweater and then the zip-up plastic jacket to make quite sure. She tied the covers of her drawing book around her legs to make even more sure. Then she collected a handful of shoelaces, string, and belts and picked up the tray. It had little regular notches in it where Enna Hittims had carved her footholds. Mrs. Harvey would not be pleased.
She shut her bedroom door to keep Tibby in there and went down to the living room. She stepped over the pieces of the china lamp to the dining area and fetched out the tea trolley. Then she spent quite a long time tying the tray to the front of the trolley, testing it, and tying it again. When she had it tied firmly, so that it grated along the carpet as the trolley was pushed, and nothing an inch high could possibly get under the bottom edge of the tray, Anne picked up the poker. She was ready.
She wheeled the armored trolley out through the hall. By lying on her stomach across the top of it, she managed to reach the handle of the kitchen door and open it quietly. She looked warily inside.
She was in luck. The three heroes thought they had defeated her. They were relaxing, filling their waterskins at the edge of the pool of milk. “Now remember to go for the big giants’ eyes,” Enna Hittims was saying. “You can hold on to their ears if they have short hair.”
“No, you can’t!” Anne shouted. She shoved off with one foot and sent the trolley through the pool of milk toward them. The tray raised a tidal wave in front of it as it went. The heroes had to leap back and run, or they would have been submerged. They ran across the kitchen, shouting angrily. Anne followed them with the trolley. This way and that, they ran. But the trolley was good at turning this way and that, too. Anne pushed with her foot, and pushed. Whenever the heroes tried to run to one side of the tray, she leaned over and jabbed at them with the poker to keep them in front of it. Spike’s spike tinged against the tray. Enna Hittims carved several pieces off the poker. But it did no good. Within minutes, Anne had pushed and prodded and herded them up against the back door where the cat flap was. She let them hew angrily at the tray, while she leaned over and pushed the cat flap open with the poker.