The BFG Read online

  Sophie was quite moved by this curious statement.

  'Perhaps one day we will get you an elephant,' she said. 'And peachy fruits as well. Now tell me what you were doing in our village.'

  'If you is really wanting to know what I am doing in your village,' the BFG said, 'I is blowing a dream into the bedroom of those children.'

  'Blowing a dream?' Sophie said. 'What do you mean?'

  'I is a dream-blowing giant,' the BFG said. 'When all the other giants is galloping off every what way and which to swollop human beans, I is scuddling away to other places to blow dreams into the bedrooms of sleeping children. Nice dreams. Lovely golden dreams. Dreams that is giving the dreamers a happy time.'

  'Now hang on a minute,' Sophie said. 'Where do you get these dreams?'

  'I collect them,' the BFG said, waving an arm towards all the rows and rows of bottles on the shelves. 'I has billions of them.'

  'You can't collect a dream,' Sophie said. 'A dream isn't something you can catch hold of.'

  'You is never going to understand about it,' the BFG said. 'That is why I is not wishing to tell you.'

  'Oh, please tell me!' Sophie said. 'I will understand! Go on! Tell me how you collect dreams! Tell me everything!'

  The BFG settled himself comfortably in his chair and crossed his legs. 'Dreams,' he said, 'is very mysterious things. They is floating around in the air like little wispy-misty bubbles. And all the time they is searching for sleeping people.'

  'Can you see them?' Sophie asked.

  'Never at first.'

  'Then how do you catch them if you can't see them?' Sophie asked.

  Ah-ha,' said the BFG. 'Now we is getting on to the dark and dusky secrets.'

  'I won't tell a soul.'

  'I is trusting you,' the BFG said. He closed his eyes and sat quite still for a moment, while Sophie waited.

  'A dream,' he said, 'as it goes whiffling through the night air, is making a tiny little buzzing-humming noise. But this little buzzy-hum is so silvery soft, it is impossible for a human bean to be hearing it.'

  'Can you hear it?' Sophie asked.

  The BFG pointed up at his enormous truck-wheel ears which he now began to move in and out. He performed this exercise proudly, with a little proud smile on his face. 'Is you seeing these?' he asked.

  'How could I miss them?' Sophie said.

  'They maybe is looking a bit propsposterous to you,' the BFG said, 'but you must believe me when I say they is very extra-usual ears indeed. They is not to be coughed at.'

  'I'm quite sure they're not,' Sophie said.

  'They is allowing me to hear absolutely every single twiddly little thing.'

  'You mean you can hear things I can't hear?' Sophie said.

  'You is deaf as a dumpling compared with me!' cried the BFG. 'You is hearing only thumping loud noises with those little earwigs of yours. But I am hearing all the secret whisperings of the world!'

  'Such as what?' Sophie asked.

  'In your country' he said, 'I is hearing the footsteps of a ladybird as she goes walking across a leaf.'

  'Honestly?' Sophie said, beginning to be impressed.

  'What's more, I is hearing those footsteps very loud,' the BFG said. 'When a ladybird is walking across a leaf, I is hearing her feet going clumpety-clumpety-clump like giants' footsteps.'

  'Good gracious me!' Sophie said. 'What else can you hear?'

  'I is hearing the little ants chittering to each other as they scuddle around in the soil.'

  'You mean you can hear ants talking?'

  'Every single word,' the BFG said. 'Although I is not exactly understanding their langwitch.'

  'Go on,' Sophie said.

  'Sometimes, on a very clear night,' the BFG said, 'and if I is swiggling my ears in the right direction,' - and here he swivelled his great ears upwards so they were facing the ceiling - 'if I is swiggling them like this and the night is very clear, I is sometimes hearing faraway music coming from the stars in the sky.'

  A queer little shiver passed through Sophie's body. She sat very quiet, waiting for more.

  'My ears is what told me you was watching me out of your window last night,' the BFG said.

  'But I didn't make a sound,' Sophie said.

  'I was hearing your heart beating across the road,' the BFG said. 'Loud as a drum.'

  'Go on,' Sophie said. 'Please.'

  'I can hear plants and trees.'

  'Do they talk?' Sophie asked.

  'They is not exactly talking,' the BFG said. 'But they is making noises. For instance, if I come along and I is picking a lovely flower, if I is twisting the stem of the flower till it breaks, then the plant is screaming. I can hear it screaming and screaming very clear.'

  'You don't mean it!' Sophie cried. 'How awful!'

  'It is screaming just like you would be screaming if someone was twisting your arm right off.'

  'Is that really true?' Sophie asked.

  'You think I is swizzfiggling you?'

  'It is rather hard to believe.'

  'Then I is stopping right here,' said the BFG sharply. 'I is not wishing to be called a fibster.'

  'Oh no! I'm not calling you anything!' Sophie cried. 'I believe you! I do really! Please go on!'

  The BFG gave her a long hard stare. Sophie looked right back at him, her face open to his. 'I believe you,' she said softly.

  She had offended him, she could see that.

  'I wouldn't ever be fibbling to you,' he said.

  'I know you wouldn't,' Sophie said. 'But you must understand that it isn't easy to believe such amazing things straight away.'

  'I understand that,' the BFG said.

  'So do please forgive me and go on,' she said.

  He waited a while longer, and then he said, 'It is the same with trees as it is with flowers. If I is chopping an axe into the trunk of a big tree, I is hearing a terrible sound coming from inside the heart of the tree.'

  'What sort of sound?' Sophie asked.

  'A soft moaning sound,' the BFG said. 'It is like the sound an old man is making when he is dying slowly.'

  He paused. The cave was very silent.

  'Trees is living and growing just like you and me,' he said. 'They is alive. So is plants.'

  He was sitting very straight in his chair now, his hands clasped tightly together in front of him. His face was bright, his eyes round and bright as two stars.

  'Such wonderful and terrible sounds I is hearing!' he said. 'Some of them you would never wish to be hearing yourself! But some is like glorious music!'

  He seemed almost to be transfigured by the excitement of his thoughts. His face was beautiful in its blaze of emotions.

  'Tell me some more about them,' Sophie said quietly.

  'You just ought to be hearing the little micies talking!' he said. 'Little micies is always talking to each other and I is hearing them as loud as my own voice.'

  'What do they say?' Sophie asked.

  'Only the micies know that,' he said. 'Spiders is also talking a great deal. You might not be thinking it but spiders is the most tremendous natterboxes. And when they is spinning their webs, they is singing all the time. They is singing sweeter than a nightingull.'

  'Who else do you hear?' Sophie asked.

  'One of the biggest chatbags is the cattlepiddlers,' the BFG said.

  'What do they say?'

  'They is argying all the time about who is going to be the prettiest butteryfly. That is all they is ever talking about.'

  'Is there a dream floating around in here now?' Sophie asked.

  The BFG moved his great ears this way and that, listening intently. He shook his head. 'There is no dream in here,' he said, 'except in the bottles. I has a special place to go for catching dreams. They is not often coming to Giant Country.'

  'How do you catch them?'

  'The same way you is catching butteryflies,' the BFG answered. 'With a net.' He stood up and crossed over to a corner of the cave where a pole was leaning against the wall. The pole
was about thirty feet long and there was a net on the end of it. 'Here is the dream-catcher,' he said, grasping the pole in one hand. 'Every morning I is going out and snitching new dreams to put in my bottles.'

  Suddenly, he seemed to lose interest in the conversation. 'I is getting hungry,' he said. 'It is time for eats.'

  Snozzcumbers

  'But if you don't eat people like all the others,' Sophie said, 'then what do you live on?'

  'That is a squelching tricky problem around here,' the BFG answered. 'In this sloshflunking Giant Country, happy eats like pineapples and pigwinkles is simply not growing. Nothing is growing except for one extremely icky-poo vegetable. It is called the snozzcumber.'

  'The snozzcumber!' cried Sophie. 'There's no such thing.'

  The BFG looked at Sophie and smiled, showing about twenty of his square white teeth. 'Yesterday' he said, 'we was not believing in giants, was we? Today we is not believing in snozzcumbers. Just because we happen not to have actually seen something with our own two little winkles, we think it is not existing. What about for instance the great squizzly scotch-hopper?'

  'I beg your pardon?' Sophie said.

  'And the humplecrimp?'

  'What's that?' Sophie said.

  'And the wraprascal?'

  'The what?' Sophie said.

  'And the crumpscoddle?'

  'Are they animals?' Sophie asked.

  'They is common animals,' said the BFG contemptuously. 'I is not a very know-all giant myself, but it seems to me that you is an absolutely know-nothing human bean. Your brain is full of rotten-wool.'

  'You mean cotton-wool,' Sophie said.

  'What I mean and what I say is two different things,' the BFG announced rather grandly. 'I will now show you a snozzcumber.'

  The BFG flung open a massive cupboard and took out the weirdest-looking thing Sophie had ever seen. It was about half as long again as an ordinary man but was much thicker. It was as thick around its girth as a perambulator. It was black with white stripes along its length. And it was covered all over with coarse knobbles.

  'Here is the repulsant snozzcumber!' cried the BFG, waving it about. 'I squoggle it! I mispise it! I dispunge it! But because I is refusing to gobble up human beans like the other giants, I must spend my life guzzling up icky-poo snozzcumbers instead. If I don't, I will be nothing but skin and groans.'

  'You mean skin and bons,' Sophie said.

  'I know it is bones,' the BFG said. 'But please understand that I cannot be helping it if I sometimes is saying things a little squiggly. I is trying my very best all the time.' The Big Friendly Giant looked suddenly so forlorn that Sophie got quite upset.

  'I'm sorry' she said. 'I didn't mean to be rude.'

  'There never was any schools to teach me talking in Giant Country,' the BFG said sadly.

  'But couldn't your mother have taught you?' Sophie asked.

  'My mother!' cried the BFG. 'Giants don't have mothers! Surely you is knowing that.'

  'I did not know that,' Sophie said.

  'Whoever heard of a woman giant!' shouted the BFG, waving the snozzcumber around his head like a lasso. 'There never was a woman giant! And there never will be one. Giants is always men!'

  Sophie felt herself getting a little muddled. 'In that case,' she said, 'how were you born?'

  'Giants isn't born,' the BFG answered. 'Giants appears and that's all there is to it. They simply appears, the same way as the sun and the stars.'

  'And when did you appear?' Sophie asked.

  'Now how on earth could I be knowing a thing like that?' said the BFG. 'It was so long ago I couldn't count.'

  'You mean you don't even know how old you are?'

  'No giant is knowing that,' the BFG said. 'All I is knowing about myself is that I is very old, very very old and crumply Perhaps as old as the earth.'

  'What happens when a giant dies?' Sophie asked.

  'Giants is never dying,' the BFG answered. 'Sometimes and quite suddenly, a giant is disappearing and nobody is ever knowing where he goes to. But mostly us giants is simply going on and on like whiffsy time-twiddlers.'

  The BFG was still holding the awesome snozzcumber in his right hand, and now he put one end into his mouth and bit off a huge hunk of it. He started crunching it up and the noise he made was like the crunching of lumps of ice.

  'It's filthing!' he spluttered, speaking with his mouth full and spraying large pieces of snozzcumber like bullets in Sophie's direction. Sophie hopped around on the table-top, ducking out of the way.

  'It's disgusterous!' the BFG gurgled. 'It's sickable! It's rotsome! It's maggotwise! Try it yourself, this foulsome snozzcumber!'

  'No, thank you,' Sophie said, backing away.

  'It's all you're going to be guzzling around here from now on so you might as well get used to it,' said the BFG. 'Go on, you snipsy little winkle, have a go!'

  Sophie took a small nibble. 'Uggggggggh!' she spluttered. 'Oh no! Oh gosh! Oh help!' She spat it out quickly. 'It tastes of frogskins!' she gasped. 'And rotten fish!'

  'Worse than that!' cried the BFG, roaring with laughter. 'To me it is tasting of clockcoaches and slime-wanglers!'

  'Do we really have to eat it?' Sophie said.

  'You do unless you is wanting to become so thin you will be disappearing into a thick ear.'

  'Into thin air,' Sophie said. 'A thick ear is something quite different.'

  Once again that sad winsome look came into the BFG's eyes. 'Words,' he said, 'is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me all my life. So you must simply try to be patient and stop squibbling. As I am telling you before, I know exactly what words I am wanting to say, but somehow or other they is always getting squiff-squiddled around.'

  'That happens to everyone,' Sophie said.

  'Not like it happens to me,' the BFG said. 'I is speaking the most terrible wigglish.'

  'I think you speak beautifully' Sophie said.

  'You do?' cried the BFG, suddenly brightening. 'You really do?'

  'Simply beautifully' Sophie repeated.

  'Well, that is the nicest present anybody is ever giving me in my whole life!' cried the BFG. 'Are you sure you is not twiddling my leg?'

  'Of course not,' Sophie said. 'I just love the way you talk.'

  'How wondercrump!' cried the BFG, still beaming. 'How whoopsey-splunkers! How absolutely squiffling! I is all of a stutter.'

  'Listen,' Sophie said. 'We don't have to eat snozzcumbers. In the fields around our village there are all sorts of lovely vegetables like cauliflowers and carrots. Why don't you get some of those next time you go visiting?'

  The BFG raised his great head proudly in the air. 'I is a very honourable giant,' he said. 'I would rather be chewing up rotsome snozzcumbers than snitching things from other people.'

  'You stole me,' Sophie said.

  'I did not steal you very much,' said the BFG, smiling gently. 'After all, you is only a tiny little girl.'

  The Bloodbottler

  Suddenly, a tremendous thumping noise came from outside the cave entrance and a voice like thunder shouted, 'Runt! Is you there, Runt? I is hearing you jabbeling! Who is you jabbeling to, Runt?'

  'Look out!' cried the BFG. 'It's the Bloodbottler!' But before he had finished speaking, the stone was rolled aside and a fifty-foot giant, more than twice as tall and wide as the BFG, came striding into the cave. He was naked except for a dirty little piece of cloth around his bottom.

  Sophie was on the table-top. The enormous partly eaten snozzcumber was lying near her. She ducked behind it.

  The creature came clumping into the cave and stood towering over the BFG. 'Who was you jabbeling to in here just now?' he boomed.

  'I is jabbeling to myself,' the BFG answered.

  'Pilfflefizz!' shouted the Bloodbottler. 'Bugswallop!' he boomed. 'You is talking to a human bean, that's what I is thinking!'

  'No no!' cried the BFG.

  'Yus yus!' boomed the Bloodbottler. 'I is guessing you has snitched away a human bean and brought it back t
o your bunghole as a pet! So now I is winkling it out and guzzling it as extra snacks before my supper!'

  The poor BFG was very nervous. 'There's n-no one in here,' he stammered. 'W-why don't you Heave me alone?'

  The Bloodbottler pointed a finger as large as a tree-trunk at the BFG. 'Runty little scumscrewer!' he shouted. 'Piffling little swishfiggler! Squimpy little bottle-wart! Prunty little pogswizzler! I is now going to search the primroses!' He grabbed the BFG by the arm. 'And you is going to help me do it. Us together is going to winkle out this tasteful little human bean!' he shouted.

  The BFG had intended to whisk Sophie off the table as soon as he got the chance and hide her behind his back, but now there was no hope of doing this. Sophie peered around the chewed-off end of the enormous snozzcumber, watching the two giants as they moved away down the cave. The Bloodbottler was a gruesome sight. His skin was reddish-brown. There was black hair sprouting on his chest and arms and on his stomach. The hair on his head was long and dark and tangled. His foul face was round and squashy-looking. The eyes were tiny black holes. The nose was small and flat. But the mouth was huge. It spread right across the face almost ear to ear, and it had lips that were like two gigantic purple frankfurters lying one on top of the other. Craggy yellow teeth stuck out between the two purple frankfurter lips, and rivers of spit ran down over the chin.

  It was not in the least difficult to believe that this ghastly brute ate men, women and children every night.

  The Bloodbottler, still holding the BFG by the arm, was examining the rows and rows of bottles. 'You and your pibbling bottles!' he shouted. 'What is you putting in them?'

  'Nothing that would interest you,' the BFG answered. 'You is only interested in guzzling human beans.'

  'And you is dotty as a dogswoggler!' cried the Bloodbottler.

  Soon the Bloodbottler would be coming back, Sophie told herself, and he was bound to search the table-top. But she couldn't possibly jump off the table. It was twelve feet high. She'd break a leg. The snozzcumber, although it was as thick as a perambulator, was not going to hide her if the Bloodbottler picked it up. She examined the chewed-off end. It had large seeds in the middle, each one as big as a melon. They were embedded in soft slimy stuff. Taking care to stay out of sight, Sophie reached forward and scooped away half a dozen of these seeds. This left a hole in the middle of the snozzcumber large enough for her to crouch in so long as she rolled herself up into a ball. She crawled into it. It was a wet and slimy hiding-place, but what did that matter if it was going to save her from being eaten.