THE STORY GIANT
BY
BRIAN PATTEN

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.’

‘Aren’t you afraid of it being stolen?’ asked the thieves.

‘Not in the slightest,’ said the farmer. ‘Anyone who tried to steal this magic chicken would drop down dead immediately.’

‘Then how much do you want for it?’ they asked.

‘You can have this one as a gift,’ said the farmer, handing it across to them. ‘I’m sure I can find another sooner or later.’

The thieves couldn’t believe what a fool the man was. They thanked him and took the chicken off with them, convinced it was worth a fortune. On their way back to town the thieves started to mistrust one another, each man wanting to have the chicken to himself.

‘I’ll hold it.’

‘No, I’ll hold it.’

‘Give it me.’

‘It’s mine.’

And so on.

They grew furious, drew knives and began fighting.

Soon one of the thieves lay dead, stabbed through the neck, and the other lay groaning on the earth, badly wounded. ‘Go and tell the people in my village I’m dying and need help,’ croaked the surviving thief, taking the chicken from the bag and releasing it. The bird went scurrying off in a panic.

The mortally-wounded thief waited for the chicken to return with help, but of course it never came back, and all the time blood was running from his wound like water from a tap. Before long he, too, died.

And that’s how the farmer killed two thieves with a chicken.

When he finished the story Hasan grinned at the others. ‘Imagine! Killing two thieves with a chicken.’

Maybe it was the way he told his story, but no one else seemed to think it was quite as funny as he did, and when Betts jumped in and began discussing what, if anything, it meant, Hasan told her she was being ridiculous. But Betts was keen to find a meaning, if only to impress the Story Giant. ‘It’s about how greed can blind you,’ she said. ‘It’s about how it can make you do stupid things. Can you think of anything more silly than the idea of an intelligent chicken? What do you think, Liam?’

Liam could think of a lot of things sillier than a chicken – half the population of the world, for example. But he simply shrugged and nodded in agreement. If anyone other than Betts had asked him, he would have said he couldn’t care less, but he liked the way Betts looked.

‘See, Liam agrees with me,’ said Betts.

But Hasan was insulted that his story had not gone down as well as he’d hoped, and soon a squabble had broken out between him and Betts.

Liam watched them, saying nothing. Dressed in black jeans and a white T-shirt over which she wore a bottle-green jacket Betts was exactly how he imagined Americans should look. But perhaps she wasn’t so cool after all, he thought. He couldn’t see the point in her arguing with Hasan, who was so much younger than her.

The Giant couldn’t see the point of them arguing either. ‘Stop standing on each other’s tongues,’ he admonished. ‘That’s the way wars begin.’

HOW WARS BEGIN

THREE CHILDREN FROM DIFFERENT COUNTRIES FOUND SOME money outside a shop and decided to go in and buy something.

The first boy was Greek. He said, ‘I’d like some zacharota.’

The second boy was from Italy. He said they should all buy something he called dolci with the money. The third boy who was from France insisted they had bonbons.

Within minutes they’d started to fight. From being the best of friends they’d suddenly become the bitterest of enemies. They were squabbling and pushing one another all over the shop and arguing about what to spend the money on.

When the shopkeeper finally separated them he put a bag of sweets on the counter and said, ‘Next time, before you start fighting, I suggest you find out what it is you are fighting over first.’

‘Is that it? asked Hasan. ‘The whole story? I don’t understand it.’ ‘They all wanted the same thing,’ said the Giant. ‘They were all asking for sweets in their own language, but they didn’t know it. Most stories are to do with conflicts of one kind or another,’ he explained. ‘Whether it’s a conflict between armies or children in a sweetshop, or even between our own emotions. It is often what makes us want to read and hear stories – we’re all keen to know the outcome of whatever the conflict is. I’ll tell another story,’ said the Giant, ‘this time about a different kind of conflict.’

THE LITTLE MONSTER THAT GREW AND GREW

A SOLDIER RETURNING HOME ALONE FROM A GREAT BATTLE found a monster blocking his path. It wasn’t much of a monster. In fact it was quite pathetic. It was small, its claws were blunt, and most of its teeth were missing. The soldier had won all the battles he had ever been in and was considered something of a hero.

He decided he would deal with the rather feeble-looking monster there and then.

He had run out of bullets, so using his rifle as a club he brought the creature to the ground with a single blow. Then he stepped over it and continued along the path. Within minutes the monster was in front of him again, only now it looked slightly larger and its teeth and claws were a bit sharper.

Once again he hit the monster, but this time it took several blows to bring it down. Again he stepped over it, and again, a few minutes later, the monster appeared before him, bigger than ever.

The third time, no matter how much he hit the monster it would not go down. It grew larger and more ferocious with each blow the soldier aimed at it. Defeated, the soldier fled back down the path, with the monster chasing after him. Yet by the time it arrived at the spot where he’d first seen it, the monster had returned to its original size.

When another traveller appeared on the path the soldier stopped him and warned him of what had happened.

‘Maybe we can fight it together,’ he suggested, ‘then we will overcome it.’

‘Let’s just leave the feeble little thing where it is,’ said the traveller. ‘If you pick a quarrel with something unpleasant when you don’t really have to, then it simply grows more unpleasant. Let’s just leave it alone.’

And so they did. They walked around the toothless little monster and continued unhindered along the path.

‘Well, I guess even Hasan would agree there’s a meaning in that story,’ said Betts. ‘The soldier became obsessed with the little monster, who stands for our worries, but if he’d not tried to fight it, it wouldn’t have grown, and he wouldn’t have had a problem in the first place.’

So far the Indian girl, Rani, had said nothing. She’d enjoyed being in the Castle and in the Giant’s presence so much that she’d hardly given the other children a moment’s thought. With its windows looking out onto the rainy moorland and its hundreds of polished shelves and countless books, the library was the most wonderful room she’d ever been inside.

When she did begin watching the older children, the first thing she noticed was how much richer they seemed in comparison to herself. Liam was stocky and strong; Hasan verged on being fat and Betts, for all her slimness, glowed with health. Although Liam and Betts would have disagreed, she imagined them as all coming from fabulously wealthy homes.

How different their worlds must be to hers!

She wondered if they could imagine the terrible stream of life that flowed daily through her home city – the small boy without hands who clip-clopped along the broken pavements with blocks of wood tied to his arms and who sounded for all the world like a horse, or the skeletal old rickshaw drivers, almost too weak to work, who slept day-long under the dusty trees. And there were those who were even worse off, men who could easily be mistaken for bundles of rags, men whom even the beggars scorned.

Rani’s parents worked as servants, but although she owned little more than the clothes she stood in, she’d had more education than most children of her caste, and the thing she was most proud of was her reading. Not even her parents could manage as well as she. Her favourite reading by far was a simplified version of a book called the Panchatantra. She was determined to tell one of the stories from it.

She turned from the window she had been gazing out of, and taking a deep breath, faced into the room and said, ‘I too can tell a story.’

Hasan, Liam and Betts were so surprised to hear her speak that their conversations froze in mid-sentence.

Encouraged by the way the Giant smiled at her, Rani hurried across the library and, smoothing down her dress, dropped down beside the fire at his feet.

‘Yes, I can tell one. It is from our very famous book, the Panchatantra.’

‘The what?’ Betts looked down at the young Indian girl, amused by her enthusiasm.

‘The Panchatantra. It is one of the great, great books of Indian literature. It is our masterpiece,’ Rani said with pride.

With her delicate hand she beckoned the other children to sit beside her, for that’s how stories were told, she knew, sitting and sharing in a circle.

‘It contains the best stories in the world,’ she said when they’d joined her.

‘What about our stories?’ asked Hasan. ‘Aren’t ours as good?’

‘Tell us, Rani,’ said the Giant. ‘And Hasan, hush.’

‘Well,’ said Rani, ‘in the last story, the soldier is returning home from a war, but in mine a poor man is wondering what the point of wars might be.’

THE TRAMP AND THE OUTCOME OF WAR

A TRAMP HAD BEEN WANDERING LOST FOR WEEKS THROUGH a strange country that had been devastated by war. The war had been over for many years, but it had been so terrible that neither the land nor the population had recovered. Crops had been burned, once-fresh streams had been polluted, and the poor people had fled their homes taking everything they could carry with them. There was nothing for the tramp to eat or drink except the grubs he found under stones and the dew he licked from the grass at dawn. He was going mad with thirst and hunger and knew he would soon die unless he found food.

He had no idea why there had been a war. It was something he brooded over simply to help keep his mind off hunger. Every time his stomach rumbled, every time his lips cracked, he tried to think instead about the reason behind the war.

Wandering beside a small wood one day he heard a noise that disturbed him. Frightened, he crouched in the tangled roots of a giant oak tree and listened. Thump-a-rump-rump, thump-a-rump-rump.

The sound was repeated over and over again, and seemed to be coming from the far side of the wood.

The tramp edged his way slowly and carefully through the wood to investigate the noise. He was amazed at what he found on the other side.

The sound was being made by the seed heads of poppies being blown against the skin of an old war-drum. He had discovered the very place where the last of the country’s great battles had been fought. And on this battlefield, among the worm-eaten butts of rifles and the skeletons of soldiers, was a wonderful sight.

There were apple trees and plum trees, pear trees and cherry trees, wild asparagus, and all manner of strange fruit and vegetables.

When the two armies had fallen, the fruit and other foods they’d carried with them into war had rotted into the earth. The soil had been nourished by the decomposing bodies of the dead, and in time an orchard had sprung up among the ragged skeletons.

The tramp sat on the old war-drum and began eating a delicious plum.

‘I may never discover the reason for the war,’ he thought to himself, ‘but the outcome is obvious. The end result of all this carnage and misery has been to feed a single tramp.’

The Giant was delighted that Rani, the most timid of the children, had suddenly blossomed. He knew the story already – it would have been too much to hope that his unknown tale could turn up so quickly.

He remembered back to when he’d first heard it, when the world had seemed almost new to him. He’d lived elsewhere then. In Kashmir, in a remote region of snow-capped mountains near a tribe that – because in those days he had not been so expert at concealing himself – had spotted him from time to time. They’d called him the Yeti, and thought him still there.

He had heard a very different version of the story back in those days. He tried to remember exactly how long ago it had been, alarmed at how moth-eaten his memory was becoming.

Had it been two – or even three thousand years ago? Whichever, the story had existed before then, even before written language as the world now knew it had been invented. His second memory of the story was seeing a Himalayan priest copying it down from a local tribesman. And how long ago had that been? Two or three hundred years before the birth of Christ? About that. Copying it had been a laborious task for the priest. The poor peasant had had a stutter.

And had it been only eleven centuries ago that he himself had passed the story on to a travelling scholar, some of whose texts still existed in Islamic museums to this day? The man had written in Sanskrit, an ancient language the Giant loved. And now here was the same story again, tripping lightly off a child’s tongue, mangled, simplified, but recognizable all the same.

Rani telling her story re-affirmed for him his belief that the Castle he had created was indeed a special place. If children like Rani were not able to tell their stories, how would any stories survive? Without re-telling they would stagnate and die, or be entombed forever in a forgotten language. All things perish if they are left unnourished, he thought: stories without retelling, humans without love.

His delight in hearing the story again lifted his spirits, and he began to remember some of his own favourite tales. There were four in particular that shone in his imagination. He cleared his throat.

‘I’ve four small jewels to share with you,’ he announced. He closed his eyes, and resting his head back in the chair he addressed the room.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL

A YOUNG PANDA WAS SITTING UNDER A TREE CHEWING A bamboo shoot. It was a very inquisitive panda and like many very young creatures was always asking questions that were almost impossible to answer. Questions such as, ‘Why is water wet?’ and ‘Why does fire burn us?’

One day it wondered what the difference was between Heaven and Hell, and because there was no one around to ask, it decided to find out for itself.

The young panda went to Hell first. It was like a gigantic café, full of round tables. At the tables were groups of pandas, snarling and screaming at each other across bowls of the most delicious bamboo shoots imaginable. In their paws they held chopsticks so long they found it impossible to feed themselves. Whenever they tried to pick up some food all they managed to do was poke each other in the eye. They were all starving and miserable.

Next the young panda visited Heaven to see what that place was like. It was surprised to see the same tables, and the same bowls of delicious bamboo shoots. These pandas also had very long chopsticks, but instead of looking miserable they were all smiling and licking their lips. They were having the most wonderful time imaginable, for instead of trying to feed themselves, which was impossible with such long chopsticks, they were feeding each other.

When it returned home the young panda decided Heaven and Hell looked pretty much the same, and that selfish pandas created their own Hell, and generous pandas created their own Heaven.

WHEN IMMORTALITY WAS LOST

DIFFERENT CREATURES HAVE ENDED UP LIVING THE WAY they do because of something that’s happened in their past. The dove, for example, leads a comfortable enough life in a dove-cote, being fed seed and coming and going at will. Presumably this is because it was so helpful to Noah when he was on the Ark.

Other creatures didn’t have such good luck in the past. Take the owl, the mole, the frog and the moth. Once they had lived together in a large orchard and wanted for nothing. Then one night a traveller came asking for shelter, and they offered him the use of a silver tent they kept for guests down by the river. Now, this guest was rather special, for with him he carried a jar that contained the Elixir of Life – immortality itself.

Some say the stranger was an angel, others are not so sure. Whichever way it was, he was a restless sleeper and that night, without knowing it, he knocked his precious jar into the river, and immortality was lost forever.

In the morning everyone was horrified to find the jar gone. Not knowing it had been carried away by the river, they all set about searching for it. The owl searched amongst moss-quiet ruins and in gloomy woods. The mole burrowed under the earth. The frog looked down dank wells and under stones. The moth searched in cupboards, looking up the sleeves of suits and in the folds of dresses. It even searched for the Elixir of Life in flames. None of them ever found it. But they still live the same way today; they are still searching.

SUPREMACY

ONE PERFECTLY CLEAR NIGHT A YOUNG GLOW-WORM crawled from a crevice in the vineyard wall and saw the stars for the first time. Naturally, it mistook them for glow-worms like itself.

‘I never knew there were so many of us!’ it thought. It sat staring at the stars the whole night long and when dawn came and the stars vanished it thought itself the sole survivor.

Then the sun rose, and the glow-worm retreated back into its crevice and peered out in even greater astonishment, for it believed that the sun was an even bigger glow-worm. It concluded that of all living things, glow-worms were supreme.

A man who had been studying the glow-worm smiled to himself, thinking how deluded the little insect was. ‘But then, how can something so insignificant know that it is Man who is the supreme life-force on the planet?’ he thought.

He reached into the crevice to pick out the glow-worm and as he did so, he pricked his finger on a thorn. A fatal microbe entered the tiny wound and as it multiplied and went rushing towards his heart, it thought, ‘How deluded the man is, to think himself as powerful as a microbe!’

JOHN AND PAUL

A MAN HEARD A RUMOUR THAT DEATH WAS COMING TO THE town in which he lived to search for a man called John. He was terrified that it might be him Death was after, for his name was John. Of course there were lots of men called John in the town, but he decided to take no chances. Within an hour of hearing the rumour he packed his bags and set off for a distant town, where he took up lodgings above a café in a small out-of-the-way street and changed his name to Paul.

The moment he’d settled in, he went down to the café and ordered food. He was hardly seated before Death came and sat at a table beside him.

‘Aren’t you supposed to be in a different town tonight?’ the man asked.

‘Yes,’ said Death, ‘but I’ve one more call to make here first.’

‘And who might you be looking for?’ asked the man.

‘For someone called Paul,’ said Death. ‘I believe he has just arrived here from another town.’

The children found the Giant’s last three stories impossibly sad. Instinctively, they understood the relevance of the stories to him, for they were all, in one way or other, about dying.

As the night progressed so the Giant’s preoccupation with the consequences of not finding the missing story grew. He tried his best to hide his fear from the children, not wanting to upset them. But it was not possible to conceal entirely the enormity of his plight. Resting on the arms of his chair, his great hands trembled slightly, the veins twitching as he tried to accommodate the pain that came and went, flashing on and off like the beacon of a lighthouse on the edge of a dark, unforgiving ocean.

Rani and Hasan had been sitting apart from Betts and Liam, whispering and occasionally looking over at the Giant, obviously discussing him. It was not the missing story that preoccupied them, but something else. Eventually, they came and stood beside his chair where, egged on by Hasan, Rani asked, ‘Are you a real giant?’

The Story Giant screwed up his face in a show of mock concentration and said, ‘Well now, Rani, let me think about it. I am over three feet taller than the tallest human being who has ever lived – does that make me a real giant?’

‘But in fairy-tales …’

‘In fairy-tales we are nasty pieces of work, aren’t we?’

‘You are much taller in fairy tales, though. At least as tall as a house.’

‘Or even taller,’ said Hasan. ‘I’ve seen pictures of giants as tall as office-blocks.’

‘The mistake about our size came about because people once took us for something else,’ said the Giant. ‘Many centuries ago, before people knew about dinosaurs they were puzzled by the huge bones they were constantly digging up. Because they knew countless legends and myths about giants they decided that the bones must be ours. And why not? At least they had heard about us. The bones were proof that we were indeed monstrously tall. Does that answer your question?’

‘You mean people actually thought dinosaur bones were giants’ bones?’ asked Hasan in disbelief.

The Giant nodded.

Rani was satisfied with the explanation of the Giant’s less than fairy-tale size, but Hasan wasn’t. He went off to search the library shelves for books on dinosaurs.

What he found was something quite different, but equally fascinating.

It was a rather strange ghost story …

THE MAN WHO BORED PEOPLE TO DEATH

ANDREW COFFREY WAS AN INSENSITIVE BORE. HE WOULD tell the same story over and over again, and whatever he said would always somehow or other end up being about himself. There was hardly a sentence he spoke without an ‘I’ in it, or a ‘me’ or a ‘mine’. He was totally – but totally – insensitive to other people’s feelings. If someone said to him, ‘I’ve just suffered a tragic loss,’ he would reply, ‘Oh yes, but can you guess what happened to me today?’ Then off he would go.

One evening he was riding home on his horse when to his surprise he found himself lost. This baffled him, for he took the same path day after day, and even if he had been asleep his horse would have known the way. The darker it grew the more hopeless his situation became, and he was relieved when he saw a small cottage outlined on the horizon just ahead of him.

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