The Story Giant

Dedication

For Linda Cookson

And in memory of Adrian Henri

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Part One

The First Story

The Man Who Killed Two Thieves With a Chicken

How Wars Begin

The Little Monster That Grew and Grew

The Tramp and the Outcome of War

The Difference Between Heaven and Hell

When Immortality was Lost

Supremacy

John and Paul

The Man who Bored People to Death

The Spirit-Foxes

Hope

The Clothes That Were Invited to Dinner

A Simple Trick

Degrees of Sorrow and Happiness

The Shadow

A Handful of Corn

The Lamp

The Place Ahead

The Monster in the Desert

The Dragon Slayer’s Mum

Tiddalik the Frog

The Owl’s Trick

Brer Rabbit and Brer Alligator

The Talking Skull

Man is Cunning, and Cunning is Man

The Human Tongue

The Band of Gold

Worry

Three of a Kind

Death and the Trickster’s Name

The Unfinished Story

Dame Goody’s Eye

Part Two

The Scent of Knowledge

Gratitude

Jan Coo

Wistman’s Wood

The Man Who Listened to the Lion

Fear

The Chicken That Laid a Goat

A Girl in the Rain

The Trickster’s Knife

Slad, Not Vlad

The Man Who Threw Away his Child

The Man Who Followed his Dream

Wealth

Mrs Beppo’s Magic Bag

Death and the Poet

The Owls That Could Not See Beyond the Ruins

The Story Giant

Keep Reading

Source Notes

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Part One

The light of imagination transcends decay

THE STORY GIANT

Around the Castle he had woven an illusion of ruins that blocked it from the sight of mortals. To anyone out on the moor, the Castle appeared no more than a jumble of ancient stones and a few tall, roofless walls overgrown with lichen and ivy. The Story Giant was all but invisible, and his voice was often mistaken for the wind blowing over the tumbled stones.

It was how the Story Giant wanted it, how it had always been. He had created illusion upon illusion, mixing the real and imagined till they were one and the same. He was from a time before the ancient pharaohs. He had been intelligent when people were little more than apes, and had come into existence whole, as he was now. The Story Giant had never experienced childhood, yet his food and drink were the stories told and dreamt by humankind from its infancy onward. He was the custodian of those stories, and his castle was their storehouse.

Before writing had existed it had been hard to keep track of the world’s growing pool of knowledge and folklore. People forgot things. But not stories; they remembered stories. Into even the simplest story they had learnt to pour their understanding of each other and of the world around them. And the giant had learnt to sip wisdom and information from the stories, like wine from a glass.

But there was one story the Story Giant did not know. For thousands of years he had tramped the earth, always believing it would turn up sooner or later, carved in runes on an ancient stone, or found among the pages of a forgotten book. But it never had. And only tonight had he finally realized its importance.

Now, the thought of not finding the story filled him with dread.

In a city called Patna in Northern India a young girl called Rani curled up on the lattice-patterned floor of a small iron balcony and fell asleep. The clamour of the rickshaws and human traffic below her carried on into the claustrophobic, marigold-scented night, but Rani heard nothing. Having worked all day and a good part of the night in the steamy laundry of a hotel in a wealthy part of the city, she was exhausted. She slept deeply, dreaming of a cool, far-away castle in a land of gentle rain.

Hasan El Sedeiry’s father and mistress had been out most of the evening at an embassy dinner in Riyadh, and though he’d begged to stay up until their return the house-servants were set against it. They would not bend even the slightest against his father’s wishes, and so here he was, high up in his little minaret-like bedroom looking out over the mosques to the towers that edged the far side of the city.

He turned on the television, which was usually forbidden at this hour of the night, but it was an old film about goblins and giants and he’d seen it several times before. Sighing, he turned the room’s cooling system to a low setting so that its hum would not disturb him, and climbed into his bed.

Sometimes Betts Bergman found it difficult to sleep because of the red and blue neon lights that blinked on and off below the bedroom window of the Los Angeles apartment her mother rented. No matter how tightly she pulled the curtains some light managed to get through. Some nights it did not matter, but on other nights even the faintest glow was enough to keep her awake. Tonight was that kind of night. She switched on the bedside lamp, picked up a dog-eared book that had been a favourite when she’d been younger, and began reading. Ten minutes later she was asleep, the bedside lamp still on, her book on the pillow beside her, still open at an unfinished story about a giant.

Liam Brogan lay on his bunk bed in the converted fishing-trawler he and his father called home. The boat rocked almost imperceptibly as the incoming tide lifted it from the South Devon mud-flats where it was moored, and nudged its bow round to face the estuary mouth. Liam could hear the cry of owls and, less frequently, the barks of squabbling fox-cubs. The sounds were muted by beads of mist and the sea-fret that fell on to the woods and lay like a comforting blanket over his thoughts, most of which had to do with school, and a book of ghost-stories that had been confiscated from him during a maths lesson that afternoon.

The Story Giant woke and sniffed the air. Children had come again. He could smell four of them – two boys and two girls. They were puzzled, but not frightened, and he decided he would have no problem weaving them into a single, unifying dream.

But for the moment they were each still locked in their own private dream.

The one called Liam was in the Castle’s north wing, staring out of the thick mullioned windows at the falling snow.

Another child was leaning on a window-sill, looking down into a courtyard where lemon trees glowed in bright sunlight and a faint breeze rattled the polished green leaves. Now and then she would close her eyes, smile, and breathe in the lemon-scented air without a care in the world.

The third child, Hasan, was in the library pulling out books with which he immediately grew bored. He did not bother to replace them, no doubt thinking that one of the servants would do that later.

There was another visitor somewhere, but the Giant could not yet locate her.

He put down the book he had been reading and stood uneasily, his bones brittle and stiff with age. He descended a broad stone staircase flanked by wooden banisters, sections of which had crumbled away, leaving only sharp iron railings standing like rows of warriors’ spears.

He lumbered on, through corridors and rooms abandoned to the workings of woodworm and time, until finally he came to the Castle’s massive entrance hall. He pushed open its iron-studded door and stared out upon the moor.

It was neither snowing nor sunny outside. There were no lemon trees, there was no sound of rattling leaves. Instead, the moorland stretched in sombre isolation from one horizon to another. He sniffed the night air. The smell of heather and all the varied scents of the night drifted on the wind. He imagined he could even smell the moonlight that covered the gorse and bracken with an imitation of frost. He breathed in deeply once again, wondering if tonight would be his last chance to gaze upon the mortal world.

For the Story Giant was dying. The process had begun some time ago, and tonight, for the first time, he sensed that it was nearing its end. With each snuffle of the badger and hoot of the owl, Death rode faster and faster through the night towards him. Ahead of him, Death sent his messengers, world-weariness and pain. The Giant was not dying in the same way as most mortals die. There was no fear for himself, no on-going fight to stave off the inevitable decline into darkness. Rather, there was the kind of curiosity someone might feel about a sealed room they had passed endlessly without seeing inside.

But the Story Giant did not want to die. He knew that he needed to continue – not for his own sake, but for the sake of the stories he had nursed and cherished down the centuries. It was not Death he feared, but the consequences of death. He had caused the stories to be reinvented over and over again. Each retelling and twist had kept them alive and vibrant. His fear lay in the knowledge that if he were to die the Castle would die with him, and the millions of stories it contained would perish for want of retelling.

For that reason alone it was imperative he lived on. He knew there was only one thing that could save him. Somewhere there was a story that could rescue him from Death. It was the single story he did not know. Without it oblivion beckoned. But what was it? And where? And how had it had managed to evade him over so many centuries?

The Story Giant closed his eyes. And as he did so, a faint hope began to stir. He thought of the four new children who had suddenly appeared – tonight, on the very night he had finally accepted that he and the castle faced extinction. Could their arrival be a kind of omen? Could it be that one of the children knew the story – the tale that would bring with it salvation?.

His mind soothed by the moorland scents and by this one hope, the Story Giant pulled shut the door and turned his back on the night. It was time to weave the children together.

He made for the library where the child Hasan was now asleep, his head resting on a pile of discarded books.

Liam turned from watching the falling snow and stood with his back to the window. From a corridor up ahead of him he heard a voice whisper, ‘It’s weaving time, Liam. It’s weaving time.’ He followed the whisper, his tread on the cold flagstones muted by the dust of moths and the snow blowing in through fissures in the Castle’s dilapidated walls. The voice ceased the moment he arrived outside an improbably high door.

Standing at the window staring down at the lemon-trees had given Rani a thirst. She was convinced that somewhere in the Castle was a nice cool glass of lemonade just waiting for her to drink it. She set out to find it, and in a blink was standing outside an unusually tall door behind which she knew – absolutely knew – the lemonade was waiting.

Betts Bergman found herself in what she took to be a private theatre. There were several rows of seats and each seat could have accommodated two people with room to spare. Oil-lamps hung from the high ceiling, operated by a system of pulleys. The neglected stage was deep and square. Its threadbare curtains were imprinted with golden masks and hung half-open. On the edge of the stage, propped against a stack of old play-scripts, Betts found a note.

Unsurprisingly (she was surprised by nothing in her dreams) it read, ‘Please go to the room with the tall door on the third floor.’ Somehow she found she knew the way, but being a bad time-keeper in her waking life, she was the same in her dreams, and was late arriving. When she rapped on the door a deep, gentle voice like none she’d heard before said, ‘Come in, Betts.’

Behind the door was a large private library. It was cluttered with old sofas and battered leather armchairs. Three of the walls were covered in book-shelves that reached up to a high, vaulted ceiling. More books were piled up on desks and tables. No corner was free of them. Contemporary paperbacks were jumbled up with old leather-bound volumes; pamphlets and comics jostled for space with beautifully illustrated editions of the rarest books.

A stocky, tough-looking boy with untidy curly hair, dressed in an old-fashioned duffel coat a few sizes too big for him, was standing staring sullenly at something – or someone – hidden from Betts’ view by a decorative screen. Sitting in a chair beside him was a tubby boy with beautiful olive skin, yawning and managing to look both mesmerized and bored. To his right stood a dark-haired girl holding a glass of lemonade. She was younger than the others, small and fragile and dressed in a long purple dress over which she wore a threadbare pink cardigan.

Betts walked further into the room and saw the focus of their attention.

Sitting hunched beside the fire in a throne-like chair was what appeared to be a giant. He was not a giant in the huge, fairy-tale sense. There was nothing fearsome or monstrous about him. It was simply his size that startled Betts.

Because he was seated she could not judge his true height, but she guessed him to be somewhere between ten and eleven foot tall. He had a smooth high forehead and thick, flame-coloured hair. Though he was kindly looking, the skin on his cheeks was pitted and scarred, and his hands, which clutched the arm-rests of the chair, were knotted with age. Into the mantelpiece above the fire grate was carved an inscription that read: The light of imagination transcends decay.

It seemed the Giant had already been talking a little while, answering a question that had been asked before Betts had entered the room. He nodded, acknowledging Betts, then continued to speak.

‘Usually I leave people who dream themselves into this place alone and they wake without knowing I exist,’ he said. ‘If I had done the same with you, you would all have wandered about this castle passing through each other as unaware as moths passing through shadows.’

‘Then why didn’t you leave us alone?’ It was the rough-looking boy in the too-large duffel coat who’d spoken.

‘Because never before have four such very different children arrived here simultaneously,’ the Giant said. ‘It is a unique event in the history of my Castle. Why, you have even defied the logic of time-zones to appear here as you have.’

The Giant told them a little of his history, reassuring the children that they had no need to fear him. Then he spoke about the missing story and its importance, and of his conviction that they were all, in some mysterious way, connected to it. ‘It’s something I feel deep in my bones. Otherwise, why would you be here?’

He gazed into the fire, silent for a while, his great hazel-coloured eyes fixed on the flames. When he looked up again his voice was distant and sad.

‘You know stories from separate ends of the earth,’ he said. ‘Is it too much to hope that among them is the one I long to know?’

Betts stared at the Giant in amazement.

‘You mean you’ve no idea what the story’s about?’ she asked.

‘If I had the faintest idea I would have discovered it by now. Tonight might be my last chance to find it, and …’

He stopped. The pain that had been plaguing him for months passed through him like a wave of splintered glass, then was gone again.

‘And?’ Betts prompted him, unaware of what he had just experienced.

‘And I need to hear stories, I need to tell and share them. It is the reason I exist,’ he said.

‘But what if we don’t know any stories?’ Liam again, still sullen and defensive.

‘Oh, but you do, all of you do. They are hidden in the depths of your conscious minds, and while you are here you will feel compelled to tell them. This is no ordinary place,’ said the Story Giant. ‘This whole castle is built out of Imagination. It is where stories take on lives of their own. It is where the fox learns to speak with a human tongue and where the rabbit learns cunning. It is here where barriers between logic and fantasy evaporate and one flows into the other.’ The Giant looked from one child to the next. ‘All this is done through the power of stories,’ he said. ‘Let me tell you a tale that might illustrate their mysterious nature.’

And so the story-telling began.

THE FIRST STORY

‘ONCE UPON A TIME,’ SAID THE GIANT, ‘A YOUNG EXPLORER found himself the guest of an ancient tribe in a remote area of Central Africa. Each night when the tribe gathered to eat and drink and tell stories the explorer joined them. No one from the outside world had recorded the tribe’s stories, which stretched back to the most primitive of times, and the young explorer felt himself to be in a unique position.

‘After exchanging greetings and sharing food, the village elder, a man of about seventy, began telling one of the tribe’s favourite stories. It was one of the oldest tales known to the tribe, and concerned a lion that whispered advice into a man’s ear.

‘The explorer recorded this and many other stories. He was very pleased with himself, and when he returned home he boasted over and over again about the wonderful stories he had discovered. Among the people he boasted to was an older explorer, who asked him, “What was your favourite story?”

‘The young explorer replied that his favourite had been a story about a lion whispering advice into a man’s ear. “The story is unique,” he said. “No other explorer has recorded the tribe’s stories.”

“‘I too have just come back from a long journey,” said the older man. He described how he had spent his time wrapped in furs, shivering on the edge of a bleak, icy desert a world away from the humid, life-buzzing jungle of his young colleague. He explained that he too had come back with a collection of stories that the tribe he’d visited considered unique to its own culture.

‘“And which one was your favourite?” asked the younger explorer.

“‘It was a story about a lion whispering advice into a man’s ear,” said the older man.’

‘One of the tribes must have got the story from somewhere else,’ said Hasan.

‘But how?’ asked the Giant. ‘Neither of the tribes had ever travelled. They were separated by thousands and thousands of miles, by mountains and oceans and deserts. Both countries were land-locked, and both said their story was old even before the invention of boats, let alone more modern forms of transport.’

‘Then how did they know the same story?’ persisted Hasan.

‘I believe the story was old before either tribe existed,’ said the Giant, ‘and that the explorers had simply been talking to different branches of the same tribe.’

‘Which is?’

‘Humankind.’

‘Neat,’ said Betts. She had been standing in a corner, propped up against a bookcase, listening with one ear while flicking through a book. ‘Is that the point of your story, then?’ she asked. ‘That we are all different branches of the same tribe?’

‘I don’t think there’s ever just one point or meaning to any story,’ said the Giant. ‘Just as there is no right way or wrong way to interpret them.’

Hasan felt irritated with Betts for interrupting what he thought was his own private conversation with the Giant: after all, he had been in the library first. ‘I’ve got a story as well,’ he said.

‘Then by all means tell it,’ said the Giant.

Hasan hesitated. ‘But what if it’s not the one you are looking for? Will I be sent away from here?

‘Of course not,’ said the Giant.

Still Hasan hesitated. He enjoyed being the centre of attention, but was uncomfortable in such an informal atmosphere among a group of strangers. He was the son of a strict and powerful man, used to doing exactly what was expected of him, and what was expected of him was being in bed asleep, not sharing other people’s dreams. He suddenly noticed he wasn’t even wearing his pyjamas any longer, but was in his day clothes. It was all rather muddling. He was afraid of being rejected by these people, even if they were only dream people. For a year now he had lived with this fear of rejection, of being spurned and left alone. Ever since … but he could not bear to think about the tragedy that had befallen him. He knew he would burst out crying if he did. And showing his emotions was another thing Hasan found difficult.

‘But if I did have to leave here, what would happen?’ he persisted.

‘You would simply wake up in your own bed and remember us all only as the dream we are,’ said the Giant. ‘No harm would come to you.’

This reassured Hasan. ‘I’m only telling my story because it’s funny,’ he said, feeling he was regaining control of his strange situation. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

And so he told his story.

THE MAN WHO KILLED TWO THIEVES WITH A CHICKEN

A FARMER OVERHEARD TWO NOTORIOUS THIEVES PLOTTING to rob him that very afternoon. Having nothing to rely on but his wits, he quickly rushed home and said to his wife, ‘We’re about to be robbed. Cook a meal of lamb and apricots, but don’t let anyone see you prepare it. As soon as you’re done, hide it away. When the thieves I’m expecting arrive, tell them I’m out in the fields with something precious. The moment they set off to find me lay the dinner on the table with two extra places.’

After giving his wife these strange instructions the farmer took one of the two chickens he kept in a cage in the yard, tied it up in a bag, and rushed off into his fields. Sure enough, the thieves turned up a while later and his wife, who by then had cooked and hidden the meal, sent them off after him.

When the farmer saw the thieves approaching he didn’t give them a moment to think. ‘Well timed!’ he called. ‘I was just about to stop work and have a meal. I must send a messenger to my wife to tell her you’ll be joining us.’

‘What messenger?’ asked the puzzled thieves, looking about them. ‘You’re quite alone here.’

‘Alone? I’m most certainly not alone,’ said the farmer. ‘I have this magic chicken with me.’ He pulled the chicken from the bag, held it to the ground by its neck, and instructed it: ‘Go and tell my wife to prepare a meal of lamb and apricots for our honoured guests.’

The moment he let the frightened chicken go it scrambled off, and with a great clucking and flapping of wings vanished over a hedgerow.

The thieves thought the farmer quite mad, but when he led them back to the farmhouse they were astonished. There was the meal, exactly like the one he had ordered, waiting for them.

The thieves were burning with curiosity about the chicken and after the meal they asked to see it.

‘I’ll fetch it right away,’ said the farmer. A few moments later he returned with his second chicken, which to the thieves looked pretty much like the first one.

‘Don’t you think it’s wonderful having such a fine chicken?’ he asked, dangling it enticingly before their eyes. ‘Why, sometimes it even lays golden eggs.’