“Why do I have to go?” I’m asking the same question yet again as the boat ploughs across the iron grey waters.

Mum looks at her feet. “I told you, Jett. I can’t support you anymore, but I’ve got you a scholarship at a great boarding school. You can finish your education there.”

“Land Ahoy!”

It’s the lookout yelling unnecessarily that the land is in sight. I can see it. The size of those cliffs! Towering like mountains into the sky. It’s awesome…

The harbour is grey, flat and very wide indeed.

“Where’s the school?” I ask when we’ve left the ship.

At that moment the ground begins to shake. With a bang, a colossal high heeled shoe lands beside me. It’s made of soft, purple leather. Realisation hits me like a bucket of ice water. It’s a lady’s shoe that belongs to a colossal lady! I only reach up to her ankle.

“Aethel? Is that you?” Calls Mum, yelling upwards.

The shoe shifts and I give a nervous cry. Why isn’t Mum afraid? I break into a cold sweat as I look up. Looking above us, twice as tall as our block of flats back home, is a giant woman dressed in flowing purple robes.

“Hellooo!” Her booming voice makes me tremble.

She crouches down on one knee and her great green face gets a lot closer, filling my vision like a grinning, green full moon coming down to Earth. The giantess has lurid yellowish-green skin and her face is framed with purple hair. Her eyes are a strange pinky colour. Her green face is split in a wide grin, revealing massive teeth that look white and weirdly sharp.

Oh gosh! She’s looking right at me.

“You must be Jett. Welcome.”

“This is Aethel. She’s deputy head of your new school.,” says Mum.

Aethel lays her enormous green hands down on the concrete, palms up. Her hands are each as long as me. I gape at her.

“He’s never seen a giant before, so he’s nervous,” says Mum. She turns to me. “Aethel has kindly volunteered to escort you to school.”

Aethel’s gazing at me with her great unblinking eyes and my knees are knocking. “Are you alright Jett?” Her voice makes the harbour reverberate. She picks up my suitcase in a great big green thumb and forefinger and places it in a pocket in her robes.

Mum curls her lip. “He’s being dramatic. Just pick him up.”

Her eyebrows knitted together. “I really don’t want to scare the poor dear…”

“That won’t be necessary.” My voice is trembling, but I climb onto the massive hands. Her green skin is soft and warm. I sit myself down in her hands. The hands smell rather bad. Like a strong scent of body odour.

The giantess cups her palms slightly and for a moment I’m terrified she will close those great green hands around me. Her fingers are massive. Like colossal, green bananas, each at least three feet long! But she’s only cupping her hands so I’m secure.

“Say goodbye to your mother,” says Aethel the green giantess.

I wave at Mum and she waves back. She’s remarkably cool at dropping me off with a giantess.

“I’m going to lift you now, my dear. Please be ready.”

The giantess lifts me and with a weird sinking sensation in my stomach, I feel myself lift and see the ground shrink beneath me.

From this great height, higher than a house, it’s even colder and windier. I struggle to fight down a wave of panic. The giantess begins to move, her heels clattering loudly on the ground. Everything around us is built on a staggering scale. Each building we see is the size of St Paul’s Cathedral or Canary Wharf. There are other massive green giants walking by. Everything is so frightening and alien.

“Welcome to our land of Glagxug, Jett,” says Aethel. “You are the first human to come to school here. We want to welcome more humans to live with us, but no one else seems willing. Isn’t it amazing that many humans fear giants?”

That doesn’t surprise me, but I dare not tell her so.

Now I see a giant iron gate, towering high into the sky.

Aethel’s hands are full with holding me, so she kicks one of the gates open with her great foot. The giantess is grinning down at me.

“Welcome to Bluestone Academy. You’re new home. It’s great to have you here.”

The campus is like an enormous, alien landscape. The main building is constructed of massive blocks of pale blue stone, the paths are edged with orangish grass and giant hedges with russet leaves. There’s a fountain in the courtyard carved to resemble a fish that looks like a giant whale. The jet of water issuing forth is a greater volume of water than any geyser.

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“We’re going to see the Headmistress. Yay!” Says Aethel.

What does she mean, yay?

We enter a vast hallway like some gigantic cavern.

Oh gosh, I can smell a musty stink of body odour, mixed with smells like sharp perfume and cheap aftershave. Do all giants stink?

Oh… there’s a crowd of green giants surging through the cavernous hall, but they all make way for Aethel. She approaches a towering wooden door and kicks it with the metal toe of her shoe.

“Enter!” says a loud female voice that could have come from a megaphone.

Aethel nudges the door open with her foot and brings me into the office, setting me down on the vast expanse of polished wood – a giant desk. I step off her green hands and onto the desk. I tremble as I stare up at the giantess looking sternly down at me. She has shiny green skin like Aethel’s but her features are sharper and her eyes are steely grey, like her hair.

“So, you are our new human student,” she says.

I nod.

“This is Jett, Zuzie,” says Aethel. “Please call him Jett.”

Zuzie glares at her. “Right you are.”

The Head looks down at me. “Welcome to our school. I am your new Headmistress. Aethel is my deputy. You start tomorrow morning. She takes a parcel from a drawer in her desk. “This is your uniform.”

The uniform is human sized, made specially for me. It’s a plain set of dark blue shirt and trousers.

“Um, how am I supposed to get around in this place when everything is so big?”

Zuzie curls her dark green lip.

Aethel giggles. “You’ll have help.”

At that moment, the door opens and another green giantess walks in.

She’s shorter than Aethel and has long, bright red hair. Her green face splits in a wide grin at the sight of me and her brown eyes seem to shine. She’s much younger than Aethel and Zuzie and she’s wearing a blue school uniform. She must be a giant girl.

“Right on time, Seffy!” says Aethel, grinning at the giant girl.

“Seffy here has volunteered to be your nursemaid,” says Zuzie. “She was the keenest for the job, so that’s qualification enough. Here girl…” She chucks a load of cloth at Seffy who catches it. What did the Head chuck at Seffy? Oh I see, it’s a giant baby sling. Seffy’s wrapping it around herself as she walks up to the desk and beams at me.

The light of the lamps high above shine off Seffy’s green nose and cheeks and glint off her red hair.

“Hello, I’m Seffy. Welcome to Bluestone.”

She grins at me. Her white teeth are oddly sharp. Like Aethel’s.

“Erm… I’m Jett.”

“I’m going to be like your big sister… I mean your helper, um … your good friend.”

“You can be all of them at once,” says Aethel chuckling.

“Seffy will make sure you don’t get in trouble,” says Zuzie tersely.

Seffy leans her great green face closer to me. “It’s dangerous for you to walk around the corridors because everyone has such big feet. I’m going to carry you from now on.”

She extends the sling. I look at it dubiously. Do I want to be carried about like a baby?

I gaze at Seffy. Her massive green face is as big as me and its wreathed in smiles, like this is the happiest day of her life. I can’t very well disappoint her by refusing to be carried.

“OK then…”

I hold up my arms and she picks me up in her green hands and slips me into the sling. Being in the sling feels bouncy. I’m strapped to Seffy’s chest and I can feel her heartbeat. It’s kind of soothing.

“You’re in good hands, little Jett,” says Aethel. She hands Seffy my uniform and suitcase and the giant girl puts them in her pocket.

“Well that’s all,” says Zuzie. “Don’t be late for assembly tomorrow, you two. Seffy – you’re responsible. Now go. You’re dismissed.”

“It’s very brave of you to be our first human student, Jett,” Aethel calls to me as we leave.

“Whew,” I breathe a sigh of relief at being out of the office. “Seffy… how am I ever going to fit in here?”

“I’m here to help, darling. I’ll take good care of you.” I’m strapped to her front so I can’t see her face, but her warm breath tickles my neck. Her voice is like a human girl’s voice, but husky. “Would you like a tour?”

“I’m a bit tired after the long journey and everything being so strange.”

“That’s alright, let’s go to our room.”

Seffy trudges up a massive blue stone staircase and enters a room with bright pink carpets.

“Cute, ain’t it?” she giggles.

There’s a massive pink bed the size of a small field and a giant table beside the bed. On the table there’s a bungalow. A real bungalow. I can see in the windows there’s a bed, a table and everything…

I explore the bungalow while Seffy prepares my bath. There is a battered couch, a scratched table, a cupboard with towels and old fashioned bars of soap, an old wooden table and chairs, a fridge…

At that moment Seffy lifts off the room, which it turns out is on hinges.

“Your bath, Jett. Tell me if it’s too hot or too cold. And here…” She places a pile of pyjamas on the floor.

I step aside as she places the bath tub on the floor. She’s filled it with warm water.

“OK… I’ll need some privacy please, Seffy.”

“Of course.”

She replaces the roof of the bungalow.

I splash about in the tub and when I’m dried and dressed in my pyjamas I come out again. Seffy’s washed herself too. She’s wearing a pink dressing gown that clashes with her hair.

“Tea time!” says Seffy. “We don’t exactly get loads of food, but you only need enough to feed a human, right?” she chuckles.

I wonder if that’s a saying the giants have, like ‘only enough to feed a mouse.’

She places a roughly carved wooden table near the bungalow and puts a clay platter on top of it. The platter has a cube of some kind of bluish meat, a cube of a purple vegetable, a cube of cheese and a bucket of blue milk.

I get some cutlery out of the bungalow and Seffy sits on a giant chair beside the massive table.

Seffy grins. “Your knives and forks are so teeny! So cute!”

The meat tastes like fish.

“What fish is this, Seffy?”

“Pond eel. They slither across the land to get to other ponds, so they’re easy to catch.”

Can I tell Seffy why I’m feeling uneasy? I feel like I have to tell someone, or I’ll burst.

“Seffy, you know I never even knew giants existed until today?”

She rests her elbows on the table and cups her chin in her hands as she gazes down at me with wide brown eyes. “Oh? I always wanted to visit the human world my whole life. More than anything. But I’m a sixty foot girl. I know how awkward it would be.”

“And another thing,” I said. “I think my mum doesn’t want me and that’s why she dumped me here in the land of giants.”

“Not true, she must be proud of you. You’re so perfect. Your brown hair… so wavy and soft, your little face… such cute spots.”

“I have freckles,” I reply, narrowing my eyes.

She grins. “You look especially cute in the pyjamas with the spotted pattern.”

At that moment there is a thunderous stampede from outside the room and a terrible banging on the door…