The Story Giant

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 (#ulink_2843d29a-f4b0-5d91-8ec1-e10283c93315)

‘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 (#ulink_63f2ac7d-53d5-53a7-a60d-cbdcc87529b5)

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.’