As Verena stared at the mirror, it seemed to flicker, and the image of the cackling, masked girl disappeared.

Verena blinked. Had she imagined that? What was going on? Was it because she was worried that the dress didn't fit her? Did she hallucinate the weirdo in the mirror who could wear the dress?

"Sis? Are you alright?" Tiggy's low gravelly voice cut through her thoughts. Her giant sister was gazing at her, her brown eyes wide and anxious.

"It doesn't fit!" said Verena. "This lousy dress doesn't fit. I need to lose more weight for the county pageant! I need to!"

"Nonsense. You're the perfect shape," said Dad.

"You gotta be sensible," said Tiggy. "That dress is too tight. You don't need to lose weight, and the silly pageant is not worth getting upset over…"

"What do you know?" snapped Verena, still thinking of how effortlessly Mirror Girl could carry off this dress. And why was Tiggy calling the pageant silly? "I didn't ask for your opinion!"

Tiggy blinked, and then she actually stuck out her bottom lip.

"Girls…!" said Dad.

Verena immediately felt her insides squirm with guilt. She went over to her sister and kissed her green cheek. Tiggy always had a faint whiff of bad meat and her warm skin had a slightly oily feel.

"Sorry," said Verena, "but pageants are my area of expertise."

Tiggy blinked again, then she nodded. "Yes. I don't think I'll ever win a beauty pageant."

Verena cupped her sister's green face in her hands. "We're so different, but I love you anyway. So let's see a smile."

"I love you," said Tiggy, her blackish green lips twitching to form a smile.

"That's better," said Dad. "I can tell that dress is too little, because Maths and spatial reasoning are my areas of expertise. So, Verena - put it away."

Verena did put it away, but she thought of how Mirror Girl could wear it, and that thought still rankled…

00O00

The next evening, Verena went with a group of her cheerleading friends and inner circle to a big sleepover. Fortunately, Tiggy's old friend Jax came round to keep her company.

When Jax arrived in the field behind their house, Tiggy's green face split in a wide grin and she knelt down so that they could embrace.

Tiggy had brought a large hamper with a chicken picnic for herself. Raw chicken that was already attracting flies. She had also taken great pains to make Jax sandwiches, even though it was difficult for her to cut things small. She put the sandwiches in a little wicker hamper with cakes, fruit, golden eggs and ginger bear.

"These golden eggs are great, Tiggy," Jax told her as he munched a chocolatey egg. "Are you sure you won't try one?"

Tiggy twirled a strand of her fiery red hair between fingers like green bananas. "Hm. Maybe just one."

She popped the sweet in her mouth, smiled, then gagged and spat it out. "Aw. Can't even try one."

Jax leaned against her as he ate the sandwiches and she nibbled the meat off a chicken leg.

"Hear about the Giant Slayers?" said Jax. "Right nutters. Trying to start a branch here. No one wants to hear their nonsense."

Tiggy wrinkled her shiny green nose. "They sort of frighten me."

"They think they're living in the Jack and the Beanstalk story, but the wrong version. Our version's the right one. Let's play!"

"I dunno…" said Tiggy.

Had the existence of the Giant Slayers put her off Jack and the Beanstalk altogether?

"Aw, please?" said Jax. He gave her the beseeching look, where he made his eyes look big and sad.

Tiggy sighed and shook her head so that her long red hair rippled and bounced. "Never could resist that look."

They started the routine of playing their particular Jack and the Beanstalk game. Tiggy left her pearl necklace by the picnic hamper and Jax snatched it up and ran off while Tiggy put her large green hands over her eyes and counted. Jax shinnied up the chestnut tree and hid amongst the golden-brown leaves. When Tiggy finished counting, she looked around. "That naughty Jax has stolen from me again!" she said loudly. "Where is he?"

She strode through the copse at the back of the field. "Where oh where is that sweet little Jax? If I catch him, I'll cuddle him! I will…"

She stopped by the chestnut tree. "Why'd you nick my pearls, Jax?"

"I'm not here!" said Jax, laughing.

Tiggy smiled at that, that cute smile where she showed the top row of her white teeth. She tapped her chin. "Not here? Hm. Where oh where could you be then?"

"I'll climb higher!" said Jax. "Like climbing a beanstalk." He scrambled onto a higher branch. Tiggy could always be relied on to react to stuff. "I might fall. Like the giant."

"Nooo! Don't fall! Get down from there!" Said Tiggy, her brown eyes wide and agitated. She reached up into the foliage for him with her huge green hands like banana bunches, but he quickly scrambled higher. "Careful Tiggy," he teased. "Don't rock the tree."

She put her hands to her head and bit her dark green lip. "Just get down. Don't fall."

"Everything's fine…" he shinnied down the tree trunk and then rolled onto the crackling dry leaves of the copse floor. He closed his eyes and groaned. It was cute how gullible Tiggy was. She leaned over him, her breath stinking of raw chicken blasted his face. "Jax, Jax, are you OK?" Her low, husky voice trembled with her worry.

He sat up suddenly. "Gotcha!"

She pouted and folded her muscular green arms, turning away from him. "Not funny. Not funny at all."

He stood up. Since she was still in a sitting position, they were now similar heights. He put his arms as far as he could around her broad shoulders. "Don't be like that, Tiggy."

"You're being mean," she said.

He brushed his lips against her green cheek. The gesture he had always made to apologise to her, ever since he was little and Tiggy was not so huge. "Turn that frown upside down."

Her blackish lips twitched to form a smile and he sat himself on her lap as he had been accustomed to since they were both three years old. She put her arms around him.

Only Tiggy was so quick to forgive Jax for teasing her. He leaned against her and gestured at the golden-brown foliage above. "The leaves are nature's own firework display."

"So pretty," said Tiggy happily.

"Autumn's my favourite season," he added.

"Yeah. You're an Autumn boy. Your russet hair was made for this season. So's your complexion."

"Oh. You mean my freckled face makes me look like an Autumn boy?"

"Freckle are just so cute," said Tiggy happily. "I'll always love them. Mum has a lot of freckles. And Sis has them too. I love them and I love you too, even though you wind me up. That's three people I love who have freckles."

"Maybe you can paint some on your face for SpooksEve."

On second thoughts, that would look strange on Tiggy's green face. Tiggy must have thought so too, because she gave a rumbling chuckle at the suggestion.

"On SpooksEve, we can go out together again and show everyone who owns the Jack and Giant story. Not the stupid Beanstalk Brigade. Our stories are better. You don't need a mask to be a giant. I suppose I'd need a Jack puppet mask though."

"No! Why'd you want to cover your cute little face?" asked Tiggy.

"Time to think up what mini-play we do when we go door to door," said Jax.

Tiggy was always content for Jax to make up stories which they would act out when they played in the garden, or put on acts for people in the tradition of SpooksEve. If they knocked on a door and people liked their act, they'd get candy. Jax could eat it and Tiggy couldn’t, but Tiggy didn’t mind.

"What'll we say this time on SpooksEve?" asked Jax. "Perhaps you say, 'I smell Jax. He's trying to run away and he's really sweating.'"

"I like the smell of your sweat," said Tiggy happily.

"Sweat is just sweat," said Jax.

"I can tell people apart by the way they smell," Tiggy reminded him. "You smell sweet."

"Yes," said Jax. "And that's good. Suitably weird. So you can say: 'I've sniffed Jax out and caught him.'"

"An' I'll say, 'Now I've caught him, we're best friends and we're having a sleepover,'" said Tiggy.

"Well we can work on it," said Jax. "We have a good start. Better than those old Jack the Giant Killer stories. Take the one in verse form where he goes out stalking them by the lake. It makes it sound like he's looking for trouble. Saying: 'On a killing spree… you will die by me…'"

He looked up at Tiggy. His friend wrinkled her shiny green nose in disgust. "Yeah, it's horrible. Makes me feel a bit sick."

After that, they played a game where they searched for giant clay worms in the spongey soil at the bottom of the large garden. The rainbow ponds were nearby. They included an orange pool, a turquoise pool, and a pink one. A giant clay worm poked its blind head out of the soil and wrapped itself around Tiggy's bare green arm as she scrabbled about on all fours in the loam.

"A big'un." She giggled. "Tickles."

There was a small splash in the pool of pink water, and a little silvery face surrounded with hair like waterweed broke the surface. It was a water sprite. It stared at them with its little black eyes. "Ho there, boy. Ho there, ogress."

"Hello!" said Tiggy, smiling and waving, her fiery hair partly covering her face.

Jax touched her shoulder. "Half-ogress actually. And a great girl. Get it right."

Tiggy grinned.

"Pedant," said the sprite. "You'd both better be alert. Trouble is coming your way. Your evil namesake, Jax."

The sprite disappeared.

"The sprite knew my name. Weird," said Jax. "And what was it drivelling about? Trouble coming our way indeed!"

Tiggy put back her head and sniffed the air. "Wait. There's someone here…"

A figure emerged from the trees, cloaked and hooded. He was wearing a smiling, painted mask. A Jack the giant killer mask. He raised a curved knife in one hand!

"I'll seal your fate giant. On this lakeshore, you will die by my blade."

00O00

Verena was not enjoying the sleepover with her fellow cheerleaders. A girl named Barb was irritating her with her prattle.

"Daisy kind of spoils the look of the team," said Barb, in her annoying, nasally voice. "You can see she has an overbite she could open beer bottles with."

As if Barb would dare say that to Daisy's face!

Verena rolled her eyes. "Really Barb? You want to pick on her for that?"

"Well I'm just saying," said Barb. "And then there's that Princess. She wants to be captain, even though she doesn't have your moves. She’ll stand against you. She’s almost as pretty as you, but she doesn't look as cute or innocent like you do. I think she looks like a skank. Would you want her to beat you."

"If the school votes for her, I’ll definitely step aside," said Verena coldy.

Barb went off to pester someone else with her annoying backbiting and mean comments. Verena couldn't fathom what made a girl be so obnoxious all the time.

Verena went to mingle with a crowd of the team and their admirers, but she was bothered by the niggling thought of that dress that was too small. She glanced at herself in an ornate mirror in the corner. Dad said she couldn't wear the red dress because it was too small. But Mirror Girl could wear it. She tried to dismiss Mirror Girl from her thoughts. That line of thinking could not go to good places.

At that moment, Verena heard Barb hissing at a group of girls who had their heads together. "She has that freaky ogre for a sister," hissed Barb. "Can you even imagine their mother mounted by a two-tonne monster? I don't even want to think about it. Is this the family we want representing Crystal Valley?"

Verena felt hot rage surge up in her at this backbiting of her mother and sister. She felt her jaw tighten and she balled her hands into fists and whirled around, baring her teeth at Barb. "How dare you…!" she shouted.

Then she heard a cackling from the mirror in the corner. Mirror Girl had appeared again. Her expression was unreadable under her flawless mannequin mask, but she was hooting with demented laughter, and now she raised a knife in one slender hand!