Once upon a time, there was a giant who sat on a mountain at the centre of the world and looked at the sky. He had been there for as long as anyone could remember, even the oldest people in the villages around the mountain, who could remember when there were no electric lights on the streets and the laundry had to be done by hand and all the fields had to be ploughed with horses rather than tractors. Some of them said he was sitting there trying to remember something he’d forgotten and when he remembered whatever it was he’d roll down the mountain like an avalanche. Some said he wasn’t a giant at all; he was just a very big tree in the shape of a giant staring at the sky. Others said it wasn’t even a living thing, but a statue carved out of rock by a long-lost sculptor in the ancient past for reasons that could never be understood.
Most of the time the people didn’t think about the giant at all. They just lived their lives in the valleys and fields and riverlands around the mountain, farming the land, drawing electricity from dams along the rivers that poured off the mountain, building factories to make toys and kitchen utensils and outdoor furniture for eating on the lawn during the summer. No one ever went up the mountain to see the giant, though they lived in its shadow every day of their lives.
The only living thing that regularly visited the giant was a fox, who had been born and raised in a cave in a rocky cleft near the giant’s seat. The fox had played near the giant when he was a cub with his brothers and sisters, gambolling and chasing each other around the giant’s feet, scampering up his legs and sleeping in the mid-day sun on the giant’s lap.
Now the fox was grown, and he liked to wander all over the world, but sooner or later he always came back to the giant and the now-empty cave. In all that time the giant had never moved or spoken, but the fox knew the giant was alive. He could smell the life on him, and hear the long slow breathing, like endless sad sighs hushing across the mountainside on still days.
One day the fox was far from the mountain, sitting on the edge of the world and looking out at the sun floating in the sky as it drifted down to cross the underside of the little world. It was a small, flat, irregular world, a bit like a splash of pancake batter across a kitchen floor that had been scooped up and cooked and thrown in the air. The giant’s mountain was right at the centre, but it was surrounded by other mountains and hills and valleys and flat plains. Rivers rolled across the world like spiderwebs, chaining lakes in glittering necklaces across bogs and marshes and forests until they emptied into a wide shallow sea that filled almost a quarter of one side of the world. Towns nestled here and there, linked by roads. Cars ran from town to town, and planes from airfield to airfield, and boats chugged along the rivers and lakes and over the sea, and all around the world ran the edge, and beyond the edge was nothing but sky and stars.
The fox sat on a rocky outcrop that jutted out into empty space. There was nothing below or above or in front except stars, and as he watched, one of the stars began to fall. It fell right towards the little world, a great ball of hot burning gas and plasma. Terrified, the fox watched it grow as it shot out of the darkness of space and flew past the edge of the world where he sat, missing by hundreds of miles, but so close he could feel the heat of its passing.
The fox ran, yipping and barking.
“The stars are falling! The stars are falling!”
Nobody understood him of course, except other foxes because he was speaking in fox, but it didn’t matter. Everyone had seen the star fall, and those that hadn’t were soon told about it, and word spread across the world, and so did panic and fear and confusion and all the people and all the animals and all the insects and all the fish and even the plants were running or swimming or thrashing around asking, “What will we do? What will we do?”
For far up above in the night sky, high over the world, more stars had begun to fall in long silver streaks across the darkness, falling down towards the little world below.
There was no safe place in the entire world from the rain of stars. The fox fled to the one place he knew, the one place he remembered, where he had felt safe and secure and happy. He ran to the mountain and the cave near the watching giant.
When he finally reached the summit, exhausted and scared, the sun had risen over the edge of the world once more, but even in the light of day, the burning brightness of the falling stars could be seen cutting through the blue of the heavens. Bedraggled and limping from his long run, snout and tail drooping, he nosed through the heather and the rocks to the cave, when he suddenly realised that something was wrong. The giant was no longer sitting hugely across the high mountain slope. He was standing, vast and towering, somehow even bigger than the mountain he was bestriding.
“Hello, little fox,” said the giant, his enormous voice echoing down like thunder. “Are you okay?”
“Hello, giant!” said the fox. “You’re awake! Have you seen what’s happening? The stars are falling down!”
“I was never asleep!” said the giant. “I was awake, watching and waiting for this very day! Don’t worry, little fox! I’ll save you!”
When he heard this, the fox felt hope return, suddenly sure that his big, strong friend would protect him, protect the whole world from this terrible disaster.
Then something horrible happened. The giant reached out into the sky and his fist closed around the lamp of the sun, and he plucked it from the air and opened his mouth wide and dropped the sun into it and swallowed, and he grinned, golden light flooding out from between his teeth.
“There!” he bellowed. “That’s a start!”
“No!” cried the fox. “What are you doing?”
In reply, the giant stooped down, tore a chunk off the mountain and ate that too.
The fox fled as the giant ripped up more and more of the mountain and stuffed it down his throat.
“Come back, little fox!” called the giant. “Let me save you!”
The fox kept running. The giant followed behind, eating everything. He ate the trees and the rocks and the boulders and the birds and the badgers and the bees. He drank down streams and rivers and lakes. He crunched down houses and cars and factories and roads. He ate all the people, scooping them up in his fists and dropping them down his gullet. He grew as he ate, swelling and bloating, stuffed with all the things he ate. Entire fields and forests, valleys and bogs, boats and airplanes. He rolled them up and swallowed them all, and the whole time the fox ran ahead of him and he called for the fox to come back.
Soon there was nothing left except rock and dirt. He had drunk down the entire sea and given a mighty burp that shook everything like an earthquake. Now he was eating the very land itself while the fox, all alone, cowered and quivered and hid from him.
Up above, the falling stars were getting closer. The entire sky was filled with them.
In the end there was only a tiny chunk of rock left, floating in space, with the poor terrified lonely fox shivering on top. The giant swam through the emptiness and plucked the chunk like a piece of fruit from a tree. The little fox jumped out into space and the giant ate the last piece of the world.
“Oh no!” said the giant. “Little fox! You’re still here! Let me save you!”
“I don’t want to be eaten!” cried the floating fox, all his legs thrashing uselessly, a thousand stars bearing down on them. “Please don’t eat me!”
“Okay,” said the giant, now bigger than the world had been. “I won’t eat you.”
He cupped a palm larger than the sea and closed it around the fox, and the giant curled himself around the palm and around the fox, pulling up his knees and his elbows, floating like a baby in a womb.
“Goodbye, little fox,” said the giant, and the first star struck him. The little fox, snuggled safely in the vast palm, could feel the horrible blow run through the giant’s body. Then another, and another, and then a hundred blows all at once that seemed to go on and on and on forever and ever, until they finally stopped.
“Giant?” said the fox, but the giant said nothing, and would never say anything ever again, and the fox began to cry, and he cried for a very long time because his friend was gone and he was all alone and he didn’t understand what had happened to his world.
Soon he stopped crying and listened. There was a lot of noise coming from somewhere.
He climbed out of the giant’s palm and along his arm. It took a while because the arms were miles and miles long, and when he reached the giant’s shoulder and looked out across the giant’s back, because the giant was floating face-down in space, he saw a terrible mess.
The stars had exploded all across the giant’s back, leaving him broken and torn, but out of one great crater the sun was rising, bright and golden, drifting back up into the sky to go round and round once more. In the other craters the fox could see all the stuff that the giant had eaten, all the mountains and forests and rivers and towns, all jumbled in a big horrible ruin, but sheltered and protected from the rain of stars.
The fox could see all the people and the animals and the plants and the fish, all mixed up together, climbing out of the holes or diving into pools of flowing water, emerging onto the giant’s back; all the dirt and the stones and the hills tumbling out around them spreading across the giant’s body, jostling and fighting and arguing, angry at having been eaten by a huge giant, relieved and delighted to be alive, happy to see that the sky was now clear and the sun was back in its place.
Everything was wrong and everything was in chaos. The seas were sloshing around looking for somewhere to settle, the trees were bumping into each other arguing over where the climate would suit them best, the people were chasing after the dirt trying to get it to bed down somewhere so they could plant some crops. Clouds of insects were buzzing around and flocks of birds and herds of animals, all going back and forth trying to find somewhere to settle.
The fox ignored them all, and walked slowly across the new world until he came to the centre of it all, where the mountain had put itself back together once more, and he climbed the mountain until he reached the top, and he looked out over the world as it gradually settled back down again into a new shape, and he smiled, and he sat on the side of the mountain, and his breathing slowed to the sound of a long sad sigh, and he looked up at the sky, and he watched, and he waited.
