The Borrowers Afloat

The novel follows a family of tiny people called borrowers, creatures who live hidden in the walls and floors of houses and survive by "borrowing" small objects and food from the humans above them. The family consists of Pod, Homily, and their daughter Arrietty.

The story opens with a frame narrative. Mrs. May, an elderly woman, stands outside a cottage she has recently inherited, speaking with Mr. Beguid, her lawyer. Inside, her young niece Kate has been talking for over an hour with old Tom Goodenough, a former gamekeeper widely regarded as the biggest liar in five counties. Mrs. May explains the borrowers and recounts an incident at Firbank Hall, her great-aunt's house, where the cook and gardener discovered the borrowers and tried to smoke them out. The borrowers escaped through a ventilator grating. Tom insists they later lived for years in this cottage. After Mr. Beguid leaves, Kate shows Mrs. May a rat hole beside the hearth and explains that Tom rescued the borrowers from Mild Eye, a gypsy who had tried to cage them. Tom brought them to the cottage along with Spiller, a wild borrower who lives outdoors rather than inside human houses. The narrative then shifts to the borrowers' own story.

Pod, Homily, and Arrietty enter through the rat hole and climb a matchstick ladder to the quarters of their relatives: Uncle Hendreary, Aunt Lupy, and their four children, who inhabit rooms between the lath and plaster of the cottage walls. Spiller, who guided them up, slips away before supper. Pod and Homily are given two cramped rooms above the cousins' level. Pod discovers he can borrow from the gamekeeper's bedroom through a gap in the wall, but Hendreary tells him to stop, since with only two humans in the cottage, the pickings are limited. Pod reluctantly agrees. Arrietty feels trapped, recognizing that this refuge has become another prison.

Weeks pass. Homily grows unhappy with Lupy's bossiness and the cramped quarters but stays quiet for Arrietty's sake. One evening, she finds Arrietty climbing up from below, having secretly been visiting young Tom through the rat hole. Arrietty reveals that both Tom and his grandfather are leaving in three days: The grandfather is going to the hospital, and Tom is going to stay with his uncle. Pod and Homily are stricken. Borrowers cannot survive without human beings. When humans close up a house and leave, it means famine.

A family conference is held. Hendreary counts nine mouths to feed and warns that once the house is locked, nothing can get in or out. Pod declares that the three of them will move out, reducing the household to six. Homily, though terrified, supports him. Arrietty is overjoyed and tells her youngest cousin about Little Fordham, a legendary model village with solid miniature houses, populated by plaster figures and visited daily by tourists who drop food scraps. Pod sends Arrietty to ask Tom for an escape route. Tom loosens a wooden patch at the base of the front door and pushes food through the rat hole, including a hard-boiled egg they save for the journey.

On the day the humans move out, the borrowers wait until Hendreary confirms the house is empty. When they try to leave through the front door, Pod peers through and sees the glowing eyes of Tom's lost ferret outside. The exit is blocked. Pod tells Homily they must beg Hendreary and Lupy to let them stay. But just as they prepare to go upstairs, Arrietty spots Spiller, who has entered through a drain in the washhouse floor. He reveals that the drain runs all the way down to the stream, a route the Hendrearys have never known about.

Spiller confirms that Little Fordham is real, two days downstream by river. He has a boat, a flat-bottomed wooden knife box fitted with a leather canopy. Among its contents are a red blanket and Pod's old nail scissor, which Spiller has sharpened. One live borrower already inhabits the village. Homily is reluctant about traveling by water but is won over by the prospect of many empty houses. They leave that night through the drain: Homily and Arrietty ride in a soapbox lid while Pod and Spiller wade behind.

The journey through the drain is long and dark. Partway through, someone at a nearby cottage runs a bath, and a wall of hot, soapy water comes roaring through. They cling to stick-barriers Spiller has wedged in place as the flood swirls past. Their candles go out, and the soapbox lid is swept away. When the water subsides, they continue on foot until Arrietty sees a bead of light ahead: dawn and the end of the drain.

They emerge onto a sandy beach, retrieve their belongings, and follow Spiller to his kettle, an old iron kettle wedged against the bank with a rust hole for a door. Spiller gives them his red blanket and departs upstream to load cargo, promising to return in about three nights. Two peaceful days pass. On the third day, heavy rain begins and continues for days. The stream rises dangerously, and they eat the last of their food.

Arrietty wakes to find the kettle spinning: The flood has torn it loose and they are drifting downstream. Pod cuts the lid free to reduce weight. The kettle eventually crashes into a midstream island, a mass of sticks and branches tangled around a submerged gatepost.

They settle on the island and wait for Spiller. That evening, Homily spots bait in the water, a worm on a fishing line. On the next cast, the hook catches Homily's skirt, and the fisherman jerks the line. Homily flies into the air with Pod and Arrietty clinging to her arms. They tumble back onto the sticks when the skirt tears away. The fisherman is Mild Eye. He strings a rope between trees on opposite banks and wades in, close enough to pull the island toward him.

Mild Eye lunges but overbalances, plunging into the water and pushing the island toward shore. As they drift close to the bank, they spot Pod's old nail scissor hanging from the severed rope on an ash tree, proof that Spiller climbed the tree and cut the rope to cause Mild Eye's fall. Ernie Runacre, a policeman, arrives and confronts Mild Eye about poaching. While the gypsy is distracted, Spiller brings his boat alongside. Pod helps Homily aboard, and Spiller pushes off into the current.

As they drift downstream by moonlight, Pod reports that Spiller has enough supplies to start them off at Little Fordham. Spiller went back to the cottage for his summer clothes, and Lupy, believing the Clocks, as Pod's family is known, to be dead, has gone into mourning. They hang their wet clothes on the knitting-needle mast and nestle into sheep's wool as Spiller steers them toward Little Fordham.

In a brief epilogue at Firbank Hall, Crampfurl, the gardener, reminds Mrs. Driver, the cook, of the time they pulled up the kitchen floor and saw tiny creatures. Mrs. Driver insists they were more like people than mice. Crampfurl does not share what prompted his question: That evening, from the bridge, he saw a tiny craft on the moonlit river with miniature garments strung from its mast and a pale face at the stern. The boat vanished under the bridge into the darkness. He decides not to tell Mrs. Driver, at least not tonight.