Brian Patten - The Story Giant

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.’