Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones

cornflakes. Mr Piper has to do this by smell and instinct, since he can hardly see the floor.
    “Kill him!” the boy whispers as they tiptoe. “You’re a hero. You can’t be a coward!”
    “Oh, can’t I just!” Mr Piper whispers back. The shelf they are now behind gegins to move too. They tiptoe on, through tins of dogfood and mushy peas. “There are no such things as giants,” Mr Piper explains as they go. “This is some kind of illusion.” The latest shelf moves, and they scuttle behind another.
    Now a low rumbling begins, getting gradually louder. If Mr Piper were not doing his best to know better, he would swear it was the giant laughing with triumph, because the giant is moving his prey shelf by shelf into a corner where the upended freezers spill out squashed butter and squinched cartons of yoghurt. They will be trapped in that corner.
    The boy sighs. “Do me a favour, Tan Cou – er – Mr Piper. Pretend there is a giant. Pretend we’ll be dead in a minute unless you do something.”
    Mr Piper’s foot slips in yoghurt. He goes down with one knee in a pound of butter. The giant’s rumbles becomes a roar. The boy’s advice suddenly seems excellent. Mr Piper swings his axe round in threatening circles as he kneels.
    The laughter stops. The blurred shape of the giant, on all fours against the windows, looks at them with its bushy head tipped on one side. Then a vast arm stretches. Mr Piper scrambles round on his knees and chops desperately at the huge hand reaching out at him.
    “Throw tins at his face!” he gasps to the boy. “Get him to stand up!”
    “Good idea,” says the boy. He picks up a tin and hurls it, and another. His aim is good, but he is not strong enough to worry the giant, who just comes crawling towards them.
    Mr Piper throws a tin himself and chops again with his axe at the reaching hand. The giant gives a roar that buzzes the windows. They snatch up tim after tin and bombard the giant’s head. The giant, kneeling hugely opposite, keeps on grabbing at them. Mr Piper chops at his fingers every time he does, keeping him at bay. He feels hopeless now. He can only see the reaching fingers when they are almost too close. He cannot see properly to aim tins. The boy keeps hitting, but this does not worry the giant at all. On the rare occasions when Mr Piper’s tins hit, they make him rear up and bump his head on the ceiling.
    “What’s up there?” pants the boy. “Anything that might help?”
    As far as Mr Piper knows, there is the supermarket manager’s flat up above. He is hoping that there are iron girders in the ceiling, on which the giant might be induced to brain himself. But they run out of tins just then. Mr Piper scrambles backwards to the nearest shelf and seizes a packet off it at random. Beside him, the boy hurls a large cheese. It misses, because the giant moves his bushy head aside. He moves it into line with the packet Mr Piper has just thrown.
    It turns out to be a packet of flour. It succeeds beyond Mr Piper’s wildest hopes. It hits the giant in the eye and bursts all over his face. The giant howls, so loud it hurts their ears. He claps both fists to his face and, most unwisely, rears up on his knees. The great, bushy head goes straight through the ceiling. The giant howls again and falls over backwards, smashing two sets of shelves underneath him. And things begin to rain down on the giant through the hole in the ceiling. First comes a large sofa, then a television, followed by a squad of armchairs. While the giant is gasping from these, there is a pause, full of sliding noises. Then a kitchen table falls on him, followed by a washing machine, a big refrigerator, a dishwasher, and finally a heavy gas oven. The gas oven hits the giant in the stomach and knocks the breath out of him with a WHOOF that blows all the tiolet paper into the air. Mr Piper picks his way among the fluttering streamers of it until he is so close that even he can see he is standing by a steep,