The Story Giant

‘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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