The ocean crashed and thrashed and blasted and punched and thumped and walloped and whipped their skin. The waves of the storm smacked their bodies so hard that their bones shook in their sockets. Tim was clinging to life, his net fastened to the mast at the boat’s middle. He felt the explosive sting of fear in his heart, as if there was a wasp’s nest trapped in his chest. The net might snap any moment, and he would be sucked into out into the raging waves, out into a wild abyss of nothingness.
This is my end, he thought. George can’t save me now. Where am I going? What do I do? What do I do?!
The ocean bellowed.
The Great Stag was chained to the inside of the boat, locked to rusty metal rungs. The storm had woken him from a restless sleep, and he lay there, not moving an inch. His eyes stared up into the pelting rain and Tim did not know if his father had recognised him or not.
Jip, Koogy and Squiddly were pumping with adrenaline. Their minds were no longer on the hand-cast bronze cooking pots with waterproof coating and a year’s supply of fishing bait that they would surely win if they made it home with the stags on board. No, their minds were driving with the basic instinct of survival. We must live, we have to live! This can’t be it. This can’t be the end.
The co-mates gripped the Great Stag’s chains, wanting to shut their eyes and disappear, but knowing they had to open them and face the swirling waters around them.
Tim tucked up into himself as tight as he could, and waited. This cannot be my end, he thought. Could father save me? No, he didn’t even recognised him. In a final moment of despair, Tim cried out to the Soul of Nature, “take me home! Take me home to the mountain!”
With that, he gave up. He stopped crying out. All he could think now was how his love was a long way away, out of reach. As Tim faced a dismal end, he saw how a great love is like the great sea. It can hold you safe in its body, healing your cuts and making you forget your heavy weight. Or it can carry you away against your will, pulling you down into deep and breathless dark.
***
The sunlight blazed through his eyelids and stirred him from a deep sleep. It was wet. He tried to stand, but his bones ached, and he was covered in something…. the net. He was in the net on the boat, in a pool of water. How long have I been asleep? Where am I? His stomach rumbled, and it felt like weeks since he had last eaten. There was a storm. It came back to him now. He thought, Have I died? Where are the men on the boat? They were nowhere in sight. The boat was on a beach somewhere.
He turned around and met the eyes of his father staring right at him. Neither of them could speak. They wanted to, but they couldn’t. Then the Great Stag blurted out a single word, “Tim.”
“Yes,” said Tim.
They can’t have been more than a metre apart, but it felt as if there were miles between them. The Great Stag was locked in his chains, but he pulled himself up – first his front legs, then his hind legs, with the chain clanking at every move. He was huge, with horns that towered into the clouds. He moved closer but Tim flinched backwards into the bow of the boat.
“Let me get you out of that net. I can help you,” the Great Stag offered.
“I don’t need your help,” Tim told him.
“Let me help you,” his father pleaded.
“I don’t need your help,” Tim insisted. And then the anger in his heart began to fade.
He waited for a moment. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, to find out about how the herd were, what had happened since he left.
Before he could do anything, his father came towards him and tore open the net by catching it on his horns and ripping it up into the air.
“Thank you,” the young stag said. Can I stay here with him? Shall I go home to my herd? No... He knew he had to go now, he knew he had to escape, and find a way back to his home with George.
The Great Stag knew he was going, and that this was the last time he would see him. He could only say, “Take care, my son.”
Tim leapt off the boat, onto the beach. There, lying there in the sand, were the three men from the storm, snoring and stirring. He had to run now, but where? Anywhere away from them.
He ran from the beach up into a forest, though he didn’t know where he was going. The flowers gave off a sweet scent that filled the air. They smelled familiar… Tim stood very still for a moment. He had been here before. This was home. He was at the bottom of the Green Mountain. The Soul of Nature had brought him home to his mountain, and…
Sprinting up through the forest, and and up the mountain, Tim came to their hut. It was still there, the world that had been taken from him. The cooling embers of a recent fire were still breathing beneath the cooking pot. Where was George? What if he’d left to find him? How long had he been gone? Days? Weeks? It could only have been a few days, but it felt like a lifetime.
He was too late. George has definitely gone looking for me, he thought. Certainly, probably, maybe, maybe not… Tim careered around the mountain like a creature possessed. At that very moment, he remembered the words that George had once told him:
When the world is spinning so fast,
And you don’t believe this can last,
Remember me, by the roots of the tree,
My heart is steadfast. Wait and see.
The big, twisted tree! Tim dashed through glades, bolted over banks and leapt across ravines until he made it, breathless, to the clearing. There, before Tim’s eyes, was a giant that looked a lot like George but seemed smaller, curled up on the ground. Tim’s heart dropped. Was this his love? It had to be George, but he had never seen him like this before. Why didn’t George see him? Tim couldn’t speak, as his heart thudded in his head. Look up, he willed, look up!
“George!” Tim cried, stuck to the spot. George did not move. “George!”
George looked up.
“It’s me. It’s me.”
For a moment that seemed like an eternity, the world was a dizzy mix of sensations. George’s heart could not believe what his eyes saw before him. And then, slowly, the world around them turned golden.
The End
The Legend of the Giant and the Stag 