Chapter 9

The king and queen leave on a hunt.  Jill acts as though she is sad they are leaving and asks permission to explore the castle.  When they get to the kitchen, while they are waiting for the cook to fall asleep so they can escape through the cat’s special door, Jill looks through a cookbook and is horrified to see a recipe for manpie and marshwiggle stew.  They realize that they are to be cooked and eaten the next day at the Autumn Feast.  The cook falls asleep and the three make a run for it.   The hunting party returns just then and send the dogs after the escaping trio.  They find a hole in the rocks and crawl into it, not knowing that they have entered a steep tunnel which they fall through.

The question is how did the giants get dogs that were so huge or how did the little dogs survive with such huge giants.  Especially since these giants eat all kinds of things, including talking beasts.