During Edgar’s second year in the giant’s mouth, they rescued Farley. His arrival upset Meagan even more than Charles’s had, and she began muttering that she didn’t like having so many men around. On the other hand, she seemed to find Farley attractive, and once it became clear that he returned the compliment, she stopped fussing. They hollowed a home for him in the tooth above hers—the first in an upper tooth—and soon the two of them were visiting each other several times a day to consult on various ideas and projects.

Their masterpiece was a system of buckets for collecting fresh water whenever the giant took a drink. This freed them from reliance on the giant’s saliva, which was a great relief to everyone. Even better was when they could save some of the occasional flood of beer. Such a catch was always a signal for a party—which helped make up for the dangerous (not to mention putrid) belches that the giant inevitably unleashed an hour or so later.

Next to be pulled to safety, about six months later, were a pair of sisters, named Babette and Cleo, and their dim-witted brother, Herbert. The time had come to begin building homes in the teeth on the other side of the mouth. Babette and Cleo chose to live together. Herbert took the tooth above them.

Once their homes were complete, Edgar began thinking about doing some bridgework.

Before too many more years had passed, a thriving community had risen in the giant’s mouth. The people got on well enough, though there were occasional conflicts—as there always will be when you have people locked together in a crowded space.

To the surprise of no one save Edgar, he turned out to be the one who usually solved these conflicts, and eventually he was elected mayor of Giant’s Mouth Township. They gave him a jeweled scepter, which they had managed to retrieve one afternoon when the giant swallowed a king. (They had tried to save the king, too, of course, but his grip was weak and flabby, and he had not been able to hold on when Herbert reached out to him.) Many was the night Edgar sat in his tooth and looked out the window he had carved on the tongueward side, feeling warm and cozy at the sight of the lights twinkling on the other side of the giant’s mouth.

In this way, the years rolled on.

And then, one afternoon while he was setting a rope, Edgar was suddenly yanked from the giant’s mouth.

It happened because the giant, who was in a foul mood that day, became particularly irritated by the feeling of things moving in his mouth. Edgar was stringing a rope across the roof of the giant’s mouth in order to do some salvage work when the giant reached in and began to scratch at the roof of his mouth. Though the rope was less to him than a silk thread would be to a human, it caught on his fingernail. When he pulled his hand out, one end of the rope came free—and with it, still clinging to the end, came Edgar.