Brian Patten - The Story Giant

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.’

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.’

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.