THE VALLEY OF THE FOUR GIANTS: END

In an instant I'm alive.

I duck, move and roll across the grass, my head spinning with fire.

An arrow zips through the air behind me. It thuds into its target. I scramble to my knees, just in time to see the Photographer fall backwards to the ground, one giant arrow protruding.

Her double throws down the heavy bow and runs towards me. We stand and watch.

First the hands. They balloon into bulbous fingers. A leather boot creaks and pops as a foot expands out of it. Then the whole body inflates, wheezing into a growing mound of ugly giant, her head morphing and expanding into the dead and grubby face of Lustfulness.

A small bottle rolls into the grass from her open fingers.

Her eyes flicker at me for just one moment, and then as though trying to whisper one last thing to me, one last question... but Lustfulness is already gone.

The Photographer looks at me.

"How did you know?" she asks, breathlessly.

"Boots," I smile, "She was wearing both boots."

The Photographer lifts her skirts daintily. One stockinged foot is caked in mud. She laughs.

-

"NOOOOO!" cries Hopelessness. The balloonists are rounding on him again as he backs towards the burning trees. He slices as they dart between his legs.

"Uselessness! Look!"

Uselessness swings his staff and peers over the brow of the hill.

"Find Loneliness. This is not over!"

"It is over!" cries a balloonist. "You've lost!"

Hopelessness roars.

-

"We have to get out of here," she cries. "They'll soon come for you."

"Where are we supposed to go? Look at the forest - it's burning everywhere, all of it!"

"You're right," says the Photographer. "But they'll find you. And if they bring... it... back, we won't be able to hold them off."

Her eyes flash. "Yes. They have a maker too - a kind of a king, a monster from the earth. He's too strong for any of us, and if they call him..."

"But they already..."

"What?"

"They already did. I saw him. He's already here."

"Impossible."

"He had a sword that was bright like the sun, and he came out of the ground. I saw him."

"The flash of light, the green smoke. Of course. Matt, we have to run. Now."

We run.

-

"No use old bean," says one of the balloonists. "It's wedged in."

"We can pull it out!"

"I don't think so. It's as though it's part of the tree. Leave it."

"We can't leave it! If that thing comes back, it'll be unstoppable with that!"

"There's no time."

A shadow falls. The smoke swirls. From nowhere, a great claw of a hand swipes and roars out of the fumes. Spindly, earthy fingers latch around the hilt of the bright, burning sword. The air sizzles with electricity.

Then the creature stands, ripping the sword from the broken tree as it cracks loudly into splinters. Balloonists scatter in all directions.

"Run!" they cry. And over the hill, they are gone.

-

"There!" cries Hopelessness. The creature bellows into the air, making the burning trees tremble with fear. Uselessness thumps the earth, Loneliness slides an arrow into her bow, and Hopelessness grips his sword and runs. The earth-creature, the great and terrible maker-of-giants raises his shining weapon into the air. From somewhere, a familiar but awful trumpet sounds as the Giants run towards the burning forest.

-

She's ahead of me. My heart pounds in my throat. The heat sears into my face as we approach the fire. I hear it whoop and crackle.

Thud.

The staff thumps into the earth.

She stops. Then she turns. I turn. The great shadow of Uselessness towers over me. Hopelessness and Loneliness are behind them.

"Matt," she calls. "You can do this."

"He can't!" laughs Uselessness. "He can't do nothing."

The staff thunders the ground again.

"You can," she says. "As long as you have... hope."

"And there is none of that," booms Hopelessness. He's limping but still clutching his sword. Behind him Loneliness stands, gripping the last of her arrows as she scoops up the bow.

"Now finally, surrender your hope. Give it to us. You cannot win this. Even your Maker has abandoned you, fool."

The sky bursts. The Photographer clutches my hand and I feel hers trembling in my grip. Standing around us are the three remaining giants, their shadows cast through the smoke. There, with them, brighter than a thousand suns, is the vast creature from the earth, the terrible maker of giants with his sword glittering above his head.

"Give me your hope." he rasps slowly. The earth under my feet feels as though it is retreating in terror. The foul breath swirls through the air.

The Photographer looks at me. I feel her grip tighten, words passing unspoken between us. Her eye glistens with tears. I look down at the floor.

"I shall not ask again. Give me your hope."

My bag slips gently from my shoulder. I reach inside. So far I've come, I think. So far. And I have failed. She has failed. Even the Maker has failed. There is nothing which can be done.

My fingers clutch the edges of the photograph. It feels smoother than it did. The corner feels stiff, newer somehow than when she first gave it to me. So long ago, this nebulous hope - so long it has been growing, changing and developing... and so long have I held on to it, fought for it, clasped it with all my strength. Now, finally, I had no choice. I had to give it up.

I look up at the faces of my adversaries. Like stone towers they soar into the sky. They had always been taller, stronger, more powerful than I could have imagined.

Hopelessness, with his sword, so often slicing between my emotions - what I thought I deserved, what I knew I didn't, what I believed and what I couldn't. He stands growling like a lion against the smoke-filled sky.

Uselessness, forever thumping the ground of my failure with the staff of despair. I had beaten him, but he had returned, and now would convince me that victory would never be possible.

And Loneliness - she who had whispered through the night and fired her silent arrows one by one into my heart. My arm still bore the wound, and my spirit had been pierced by her lies. She stared at me, silhouetted but bristling with power.

Lustfulness. Dead, but not forgotten. Her poison seeped into the earth where she had fallen. She was beaten, but to what end. My Hope is lost.

The Giant-King growls at me. Electricity seems to ripple around me as I bring the photograph into whatever remains of the daylight.

I close my eyes and hold it out. The Four Giants have won.

-

"Matt," whispers the Photographer. "Open your eyes."

I do.

"Look," she says. "Look at it."

I do.

I quickly glance at her in disbelief. She glances back at me. There's the faintest hint of something in her eyes, a far-away feeling of an emotion I recognise, a face I... know. She flickers, looking away, up at the Giant-King, determination upon her face.

I feel the corners of my mouth twitching, perhaps into one final, desperate smile.

Then with a trembling hand, I hold out the Photograph. I take a deep breath.

"This," I declare quietly, "This is not for you."

He sneers.

"I'm surrendering my Hope. But I am not surrendering it... to you."

"At last! Foolish!" he spits, ignoring me. The others cackle into the air. A rush of wind sweeps around the circle and the burning forest is swept into a fresh burst of crackling fire.

The creature bows, thrusts the spindly fingers of his left hand towards me and snatches the photograph from my shaking grip. It's ridiculous in his fingers - tiny, like a postage stamp! He pinches a corner of it between two muddy talons and swings it near to his gleaming yellow eyes. The other giants raise their hands triumphantly to the sky.

The Photographer looks at me.

I look at her.

She grips my fingers.

I dig my boots into the earth.

-

At once, suddenly from nowhere, there's a flash.

The Giant-King recoils.

"What?" he cries, incredulous. His eyes are wide.

Hopelessness raises his sword.

"It can't be!" screams the creature. His mouth opens in shock. Then, before any of the others can react, the photograph, the hope, the same Hope I have carried, explodes into life; sparks of electricity in all directions fly like lightning bolts, flashing, burning, dancing around between his terrible fingers.

He panics. His eyes land upon me with hatred, terror and disgust. But it's already too late! He can't let go. The blinding lightning leaps from hand to hand, from finger to finger. A bolt jumps out and strikes him in the chest. He stumbles backwards, causing the earth to shake as he roars in agony.

In a rush the other giants race to help but as they grow closer, the light strikes them. Uselessness gets a bolt in the eye, Loneliness lets her bow fall once more the to the ground, and Hopelessness shouts in agony. From giant-to-giant the photograph strikes, rippling blue lightning around the circle.

"Aaaagh! How can it... argh," they cry. Fire leaps between them, a storm of hope, blackening and charring their terrible forms, again and again, bolt after bolt.

We stand and we watch.

Thunder claps loudly above us and we roll to the ground.

One-by-one the earth shakes as the four final giants tumble and roll to the floor, burned from the inside out, screaming in pain as the lightning streams.

For the longest time, the noise is unbearable. Thunder, fire and smoke. They writhe, each of the four great carcasses shuddering in final despair and agony.

And then nothing.

They are.

Gone.

We stand.

A small square of old photographic paper flutters from the sky and lands on the earth near my feet. I scoop to pick it up, and rise, shaking my head in disbelief.

"You will always have hope, Matt," whispers the Photographer. And she throws back her head, her hair tumbling behind her, and laughs into the sky.

"What... happened?" I say bewildered.

She smiles, sweetly and kisses me once on the cheek.

-

The rain falls steadier now, from the downpour that followed the storm. We wander through the blackened stalks of the trees where the forest once was. Steam rises as though it were the misty morning of a new dawn.

"So, the Maker knew... all along?" I asked. Rain drips through the scarred branches.

"Of course! He knew that Hope was in you. He put it there!"

"And I was trying to hold on to... something," I said, laughing. She slipped a wet hand into mine.

"We all are, Matt," she said. "But when you surrender Hope to the Maker of Hope, then He'll always be with you. It's who He is. That's why you couldn't see the photograph until the end. You had to give up the thing that you were clinging on to."

The rain is stopping. A delicate smell of earth and ash fills the forest and somewhere, for the first time in what has felt like forever, a bird begins to sing.

A shaft of sunlight falls through the trees. It catches the Photographer and lights her face and her hair with a golden glow. Her eyes glisten as she turns and smiles at me.

In the distance, we hear the balloonists cry to each other through the woods as they find each other. "What ho!"... "I say, you made it!" they beam, their voices carrying through the trees.

The Photographer and I laugh together and hold hands as we pick our way through the trees.

"Is it time then?" I ask.

She nods silently. Then with the softest of glances, she looks back and beckons me to follow her.

There, walking through the smoldering trees, bathed in the evening light of the cool of the day is a figure I know, whom I instinctively know somehow from the deepest of my dreams. The sun, now beaming through the canopied wood falls upon him as though he were drawing it towards himself, and reflecting it throughout the recovering world.

He smiles.

Together we walk towards him, and together, the Photographer and I, we leave the Valley of the Four Giants finally, behind us.