Duckling felt tired beyond belief. All her hopes had drained away, leaving nothing behind. She had no idea where to turn next.

But now the old woman spoke. ‘We cannot wake the Grimstone. But you can.’

Pummel took an eager step forward. ‘We can? How?’

‘It takes a sacrifice to wake such a sleeper,’ said the old woman. She sounded pleased, as if sacrifices were something she looked forward to.

‘We’ll do it,’ said Pummel. ‘Anything.’

The old man lowered his eyebrows in warning. He glanced at the old woman, then looked back at the children. ‘Do not be so quick to offer up your lives.’

Now it was Duckling who stepped forward, and Sooli too. ‘Our lives?’ they said, in unison.

The old woman smiled horribly. ‘The lives you would have lived. The stories that would have been yours.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Otte.

But the four Old Ones would not tell them, and when Duckling looked to the great Bayam for explanation, she shook her head. She didn’t know either.

It was only then that Duckling realised she was getting colder. The fire was burning low, and most of the wood was gone. On the edge of the circle of light, the Harshman was snatching things out of midair, or skewering them with his twisty fingernails and tipping them into his mouth.

‘He’s eating ghosts again,’ whispered Pummel. ‘He’s getting bigger.’

The four Old Ones didn’t turn. Instead, they watched Duckling and the other three children with unblinking intensity. It didn’t hurt so much now, but still Duckling wished they would look somewhere else.

Beside her, Pummel made a desperate sound, like someone struggling for air. ‘I’ll give up my – my story,’ he said, in a voice not at all like his. ‘Whatever that means. I’ll give it. I agree. Now, how do we wake the Grimstone?’

‘You must all agree,’ said the old woman, with another of those horrible smiles. ‘You came to us as six, so six must choose.’

The flames sank lower, and Duckling felt as if they were taking her courage with them. Give up her story? Give up the life she would have lived? Did that mean she was going to die? Or did it mean something else? How could she choose when she didn’t know what she was choosing?

The great Bayam stepped forward. ‘I have lived far beyond my given years. Whatever it is you are asking, I agree to it.’

Sooli stared at her with white-rimmed eyes. Then she nodded and said, ‘As – as do I.’

‘Aand meeee,’ said the cat, sounding as if she was choosing nothing more important than a place to sleep. ‘Agreee.’

Duckling and Otte looked at each other, and everyone else looked at them.

‘Hurry,’ whispered Sooli. ‘I do not think the fire will hold him for much longer.’

It was an impossible choice, and Duckling hated every single person there for forcing her towards it. She didn’t want to die. She wanted to live.

But Otte was nodding now. ‘I agree,’ he said, and his voice rose to a squeak. ‘I will give the – the life I would have led. The story that would have been mine.’

Despite the squeak, he sounded so brave that Duckling took heart. We’d probably die anyway, she reminded herself. The Harshman won’t leave me and Pummel alive, that’s for sure. At least this way we take him with us.

And with her knees and ankles and fingers and toes and every other part of her trembling, she said, ‘Me too. I agree.’

There was just time for Pummel to hug her, and whisper in her ear, ‘I’m really glad to have known you, Duckling.’

Then the Old Ones stood up. Or rather, one moment they were sitting, the next they were standing, though Duckling didn’t see them move.

On the edge of the circle of light, the Harshman stiffened, like a dog on the hunt. His twisty fingernails clacked together. His eyes burned brighter than any fire. ‘Give … Me … The … Heir,’ he whispered. ‘Give … Him … To … Me.’

The old woman stamped three times on the rock.

Beneath Duckling’s feet, the ground twitched, as a horse’s skin will twitch when a fly annoys it. The hollow where the fire burned grew a little deeper. The ridge where Duckling stood rose a little higher. All the parts of the rock underwent the slightest of changes. But when she looked at it again, she did not see a rock at all.

She saw a massive old man, lying on his back, sound asleep.

It was as if the sky had suddenly turned to milk. Or Duckling’s own fingers had become solid silver. Everything she thought she knew about the world was tipped up and tossed out, and she couldn’t breathe for the terror of it.

If she could have run, she would have. But her legs would not obey her, and besides, there was nowhere to go. It was the old man’s cheekbone she perched on, and the bushes at her back were his eyebrows. His body stretched far, far away from her into the darkness; his gigantic chest, the cloak wrapped around him, the feathers in his hair …

‘He’s – he’s the Grimstone?’ whispered Duckling, as squeaky as Otte.

Whatever he was, he wasn’t waking. That monstrous chest rose and fell; that mouth opened like an abyss. But the old man slept on.

‘C-can you p-please stamp again, Old Ones?’ asked Sooli in a tremulous voice.

‘We told you, we cannot wake him,’ said the red man. ‘You must do it. You must give him your gifts. Your powers. The Saaf magic must come together as one.’

After a split second of shock, Duckling was the first to move. Not because she wanted to, but because she was deathly afraid of not being able to move. Of letting her friends down. Of being the one who ruined everything.

It was only a single step forward, but it seemed to take years. There was a buzzing in her head, and her knees felt like water. ‘How – how do we give it to him?’ she whispered.

‘The same way it was given to you,’ said the red man. ‘With an open heart.’

Duckling’s heart was shut up so tight with fear that she didn’t think she’d ever be able to pry it open again. But she did her best. She stumbled across the giant’s cheekbone until she came to the trees that were his hair. (Their trunks swayed as he breathed; the shafts of his feathers gleamed like starlight.) Then she grabbed hold of a branch and held onto it as she crept down to the crater of his ear.

She wanted to say something, though she wasn’t sure what. Maybe to ask him to treat her breeze kindly. Or to beg him to leave Sooli and the great Bayam with at least some witchery, because none of this was their fault, and it didn’t seem fair that they should pay such a high price for it.

But there were no words left in her. So in the end, all she did was lean forward and blow as hard as she could, right into the giant’s ear, just as an old Saaf woman had once done to her in the Berren marketplace.

The Wind’s Blessing went out of her like a bird flying to a new nest, with the old one left ragged and useless behind it. And oh, how it hurt! The pain was so great that all Grandpa’s training couldn’t stop Duckling crying out. At the same time, the Grimstone twitched again, and she had to cling to the tree branch to stop herself being thrown into the darkness.

When the movement stopped, she climbed back up to her friends, aching with the sudden loss.

Sooli was the next to step forward. She was weaving something – or maybe she was unweaving. Whatever it was, tears ran down her face and she sobbed aloud, but she didn’t stop. Her fingers twisted and turned, they darted over her head, they scooped up her tears and added them to whatever she was doing.

She tied a knot. She bit through an invisible thread. She cried harder. Then she took what she had made (or unmade) and dropped it into the giant’s open mouth.

He swallowed. He twitched. In the darkness, something moved.

It was a hand as big as a house. It rose from his side and swept up his chest until Duckling was sure it would knock them all flying. But it stopped beside the giant’s chin and opened flat, palm upwards.

Pummel’s breath went out in the quietest of sighs. ‘The witchery was never really ours, was it,’ he said to Duckling. And he walked towards the giant’s hand.

When he was standing right between that huge thumb and the enormous fingers, he took the leather pouch from his pocket and placed it carefully on the giant’s palm. The great fingers closed over it. When they opened again, the raashk was gone.

Otte hopped forward with his mice in his hands. ‘I do not know how to give him my witchery. No one gave it to me; I have always had it.’

‘Your witchery is a strange thing,’ said the great Bayam. ‘I do not think it is part of Saaf. I think it is yours and yours alone, and unless you learn otherwise, you should keep it.’

She was approaching the giant’s hand now, just as Pummel had done, and her face was grave. She grasped that enormous thumb and pulled herself upwards. Then she walked across the palm until she was standing right in the middle of it.

‘Thank you,’ she said, turning to the children, ‘for what you have done. I honour you all. Especially you, Frow Cat.’ She touched her brow, her chest, her belly. Then she shut her eyes.

Before Duckling understood what was happening, the giant’s fingers began to close around her.

‘Wait!’ shouted Duckling, and despite her fear she ran past that gaping mouth and across the rocky chin, and grabbed hold of the thumb. ‘Wait! What are you doing?’

The thumb and fingers paused. The great Bayam said, ‘I cannot give him my magic. After five hundred years it is wound through every part of me. I cannot separate it from myself. Stand back, Duckling.’

She said those last three words with such an air of command that Duckling took an involuntary step back.

The fingers closed. When they opened again, the great Bayam was gone, and in her place stood the chicken.

A sob broke from Sooli. Something moved beneath Duckling’s feet.

It wasn’t just a twitch, not this time. The giant had woken.