Yet it couldn’t, as far as he knew. He wanted to at least tell Ann how he felt, yet he expected that she was just acting a role, and would have no actual desire to eat a little boy as a giantess. Somehow, the sight of a very pretty lady pronouncing the fate of being eaten had made it immeasurably appealing to Humphrey and Humphrey alone. The only other person who might have responded the same way was Pixi Smith, and he had shrunken himself by eating Wonderland cake and then been eaten by his teacher Louise hundreds of years earlier. As Louise had never been found out, and had gone on to live a private but very enjoyable life, there was no way that Humphrey would ever have learned about Pixi.

From then on, Humphrey’s daydreams and fantasies were all to do with being eaten. He began to notice ladies’ mouths in ways that had never caught his attention before. A few months later, he went walking in the woods one day and came to a field and found an actual beanstalk. He had no idea that Jack had actually planted one of Willie Tinkerer’s Wonder Beans hundreds of years earlier and brought this beanstalk into being. All he knew was that this looked like a beanstalk, and there might just be a giantess at the top. He wondered if he might actually meet one as pretty as Ann. If he told such a woman about Ann, and the longings that Ann’s pantomime performance had stirred in him, maybe just maybe she would be prepared to play out the role herself and eat him.

Suddenly it was something to hope for. Humphrey began the long climb up the beanstalk. It seemed to encapsulate everything he’d envisioned after seeing the pantomime. He’d never seen the movie, but the sights of his own land growing smaller far below him, and the look of things in the clouds above made him come to an incredible realisation.

“Maybe Ann found the beanstalk first, climbed it and then made up a story about a giant lady eating a little boy. That would explain how the beanstalk could be so real. But sadly it means that there won’t be any giants up there,” he thought, “Well I’ve come this far, and I can still imagine there are giants up there. I might as well finish the adventure and see how high this beanstalk goes. If only there really was a land of giant ladies at the top. Ann is so clever to think of all that.”

Humphrey soon came to the clouds, which obscured the rest of the beanstalk, and continued to climb until he came to a sight which surprised him again: He stepped off the beanstalk onto a beautiful garden plateau, and in the distance, although not that far away by giant standards, he saw a picturesque giant sized castle.

“There really must be giants up here after all,” he thought, “Ann didn’t make that part up either… Maybe she didn’t make any of it up. Maybe there really is a Mrs Grimble up here. If it’s all true, then the real Mrs Grimble must have really eaten Jack, and that means she’ll want to have me for dinner too. I can’t wait to meet her. I hope she’s as lovely as Ann.”

Humphrey made his way over to the castle and came to a very high step. It took him quite some time to climb it, and then he found himself in front of the towering door. There was simply no way that he could open the door, no way that he could knock on it audibly. He tried knocking, but the sound was negligible to whoever lived inside. He finally lay down on the step, convinced that all he could do was wait for someone to come out.

A little later in the morning, he heard giant footsteps approaching the door from the inside. Humphrey sat up in expectation and looked up, as the door opened inwardly, and then he had the surprise of his life.

In front of him, Humphrey saw two giant black shoes. He looked up a little more, and saw the lower portions of two giant legs. He could not see any knees, as he looked up further, to see a long dark skirt, and above that, a black jumper which made the giantess look more cuddly than ever. Finally, craning to look past her neck, he saw the stunning smiling face of Ann! She was now a giant.

Humphrey stepped to the back of the large stone step, so that he could look at her from a better angle.

“You can’t escape that way, little boy,” said Ann, with the same infectiously smiling face that he had seen in the pantomime, “I’m going to eat you all up.”