THE VALLEY OF THE FOUR GIANTS: RETURN

"Am I...?"

"No, of course you aren't," laughs the Photographer, gently, "But you must lie still."

The room is a studio. There is an easel in the corner with an old cloth draped over it. A red leather chair is angled towards the French windows where sunlight streams in in sharp straight beams that catch the dust. All around the room, canvases are angled against the wall, some dotted with paint, some with pencil marks. Across the walls, between the white wood, there are sepia photographs; small oval shaped images in frames of white. Stern-looking families stare back at me. There's a wooden desk, mahogany I think, next to a wooden chair which the Photographer has pulled towards the bed. She sits primly in it, looking at me.

"What happened?" I ask.

"You were lucky," she says. "The lightning hit one of them, the tall one. The Maker said he couldn't be entirely... accurate... but nonetheless, he did fall into the forest. The other one ran away, I think."

"What? But why? I was... and... and how did I get... here?"

"Ah too many questions for now, dear. It is worth saying though, that in many ways, you aren't really... here... at all."

"I know, it is confusing, but it will make sense one day. As for the why? Why that was down to you, Matt!"

She laughs.

"What?"

"See, it's confusing already," she smiles in the sunshine. "You said the Maker's name and he heard you. Even when hope is lost, when you'd given it up instead of giving it in... The Maker still heard you. Now close your eyes. It is time, after all."

"Time for what?"

But she doesn't answer. Everything is black again, as though a blanket has fallen softly over me, and she is gone. I feel the rain trickling down my face and the soft mud of the forest floor. Slowly I sink deep into the darkness of sleep.