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| Source: Wikimedia Commons |
The giant tosses feverishly in her sleep; a powerful virus
is snaking through her bloodstream and approaching the agèd brain which controls
the massive corpus that lies before me. The neural arcs that form the centre of
this wondrous creature are ancient: formed so long ago, that they may as well
be carved in stone.
Fitfully, the giant casts an arm out in her sleep, and the
chains that tie her to the bed rattle rustily; catching a fistful of her
tight-cropped red hair, she wrenches it out; with a bellow of pain, the giant
awakes and casts her eyes about fearfully. Nothing moves in the room, and blood
trickles slowly down the giant’s temples. Warily, she closes her eyes again and
drifts off into a troubled reverie that straddles the gulf between waking and dreams.
I, the observer, move forward slowly towards the giant and,
as I pass the enormous barred windows of the bedroom, chain lightning crackles.
I clamber up the enormous bedposts, and traverse the downy pillow; approaching
the giant’s eyelids, I pry one open and peer within: the giant’s dreams are
visible, floating on the surface of the cornea in a swirl of glinting silver
fluid. Catching hold of several strands of slippery solution, I imbibe them,
feeling them slip down my throat with a protesting wriggle. A flood of ecstasy
grips my tiny mind, overwhelmed by the giant’s thoughts, and I see as she sees.
****
The words won’t flow, the match won’t light: how do we get
home at night? The tightrope has never felt so tight; stretched between two
pillars on the opposite sides of an infinite gulf, the giant stumbles and
tumbles and crawls her way across, desperately shielding her eyes from the
yawning jaws of the chasm that threatens to become more than just an inky
blackness. This canyon has no bottom that can be discerned (she should know,
she dropped her shoe a half an hour ago, and has yet to hear a sound): no depth
or solidity which would allow her to stretch her mind around the
quasi-impossibility of such a creation’s existence.
And yet, clamber on she must. A rush of adrenaline seizes her
heart, and she rises up from her knees, releasing the wire from her hands and
standing on her feet; carefully, she places one foot in front of the other,
with delicate, trembling motions. Occasionally, allowing herself a dramatic
flair, she performs a cartwheel in mid-air and lands with both feet perfectly
poised on the wire; a mental crowd applauds her. But now, she must become
serious: this task ahead of her is a dangerous one, and privileged, for only a
few are ever permitted to attempt it. Screwing up her eyes, she focuses on the
job ahead: on she marches and forward she thrusts.
****
“Does my sassiness upset you?”
The giant, now a young woman, is wrapped in the embrace of a
female angel. A dark green toga is wrapped tightly around her, emphasising the
feminine swell of her hips. The angel laughs throatily, like the tinkle of a
silver waterfall, and her powerful white wings flap reflexively behind her
back.
“Ever the poet,” she whispers. “And no, not all; just don’t
be too loud about it. I’m still not sure what He thinks about all this.”
She grins cheekily at the giant, and moves her head in to
kiss her. Her halo glows brighter as the kiss starts, and remains so until the
giant draws back her head. They smile happily, wrapped in a cocoon of lamplight
and the halo’s glow.
Fiddling with the amber brooch holding the toga together,
she pushes the giant back towards the bed, moving her head in towards the
giant’s.
****
The dream becomes blurred at this stage, as the giant’s mind
shies away from the painful memories associated with that angel: in the
fractured dream, the angel sprouts sharpened horns, and her questing tongue
becomes a biting serpent. The improbability of this circumstance is clear: more
likely, the giant’s mind has concocted a metaphorical representation of her
emotions, evidencing the grief of a love shorn of legitimacy by His
pronouncement that it was unholy.
Shying away from such dangerous territory, I pry open the aging
giant’s resting eyelid and pluck out another strand of silvery dream. This
time, it slides down my throat almost willingly, and I feel the same rush of
ecstasy surround my brain.
****
The jagged remains of the shattered emerald crown sit askew
on the giant’s head, and she pauses momentarily on the battlefield to take
stock of the war’s progress. The dead of her race litter the battleground like
a poppy field in July, broken bones and offal staining the ground a horrendous
crimson; the Archangel Gabriel lies fallen under an oak tree in the distance;
his beautiful aquiline wings lie broken and crumpled, destroyed by the giant’s
vengeful mace. Michael plucks at Gabriel’s clothes and jabbers insanely,
renting his garments and howling at the moon; a love born aeons ago has been
torn ruthlessly apart by a broken heart.
Raising a war-horn of ivory to her lips, the giant sounds
the retreat. Those of her race that remain raise the tattered banners of their
royal houses in response, and the giants beat an ordered retreat. The angels’
trumpets sound in victory, and the golden voices of the remaining archangels
can be heard bellowing sharp orders; the angels form into separate columns and
begin the advance. The rout is in motion.
Harried and worried, the giants drop in number: hunger,
tiredness, and the inhospitable environment of the freezing lands that separate
Earth from Paradise take their terrible toll. Eventually, the giant queen is
the only one of her race left; sitting alone on a mountain top, she surveys the
trail of dead that she has left behind, and weeps bitterly. Michael approaches
her gently, with infinite sorrow and forgiveness in his eyes. Slowly, and with
extreme care, he places shackles on her wrists and leads her towards Him,
surrounded by a host of angels.
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