The Story Giant

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 (#ulink_06d64a53-5b8b-53e4-bbd0-ca3bf1dec1c3)

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 (#ulink_113bd3ff-f2da-5948-a1a2-ca7c4422d7d4)

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.