“Would you just look at them!” Kenny gasped, pulling up in a lay-by that gave them a glimpse of the road ahead, for about half a mile further on, a group of at least six giants barred their way.
Kalman’s heart sank as he peered at the wall of giants that stood threateningly across the road.
Larry turned white. “Oh boy!” he muttered, his face the colour of chalk, “they’re really out to get us, aren’t they!”
Inside the van, fear now replaced the atmosphere of easy friendship that had grown between the Jelly Beans and the stag.
“It’s too dangerous for me to stay with you any longer,” Kalman observed. “Don’t worry, I’ll get out here and take to the hills.” He flung the giants an assessing glance, knowing that the van wouldn’t stand a chance if they were to attack it. “It’ll be all right,” he assured them, “when they see me on the hill, they’ll leave you alone.” He looked at them grimly. “I’d hoped that we might get closer to Ballater before they stopped us but at least I’m rested now.”
“But Ballater’s miles away,” Larry protested. “The giants might still catch you!”
“Hang on! Don’t get out here,” Kenny said, swiftly reversing the van and driving back the way they’d come. “We passed a lay-by a while back that gives onto the mountain,” he explained, “and further up I noticed a pass. If you cross it, I reckon you might save a bit of time, for the road takes the long way round. Show him the map, Larry.”
Larry fished in the glove compartment and drew out a rather tattered ordnance survey map. Folding it to where they were on the road, he pointed to the pass and a way across the mountains that would, indeed, cut a huge chunk from the stag’s journey.
Kenny drew up when they reached the bottom of the grassy slope that rose towards the break in the mountains. “That’s the way to go,” he said, nodding towards the pass. He switched off the engine and clambered out to open up the back of the van for the stag. Kalman backed his way down onto the road, feeling the stag’s hooves scrabble to get a grip on the tarmac. His antlers proved more of a problem but by carefully turning his head Kenny finally extricated the increasingly panic-stricken stag.
Once clear of the van, the stag lifted its head and stretched its legs with a sigh of relief. The mountain air was fresh and clean and it was glad to be free of the confined space inside the dreadful machine. Concentrating his mind, Kalman calmed the stag and brought it under his control again. Seeing the anxious faces of Larry and Kenny, he felt a twinge of remorse at having put them in such a position and knowing that their danger was real, he stepped forward, gently resting the stag’s head on their shoulders. They thought it was his way of saying thank you for their help but it was more than that, for he was using more of his precious magic to give them what protection he could.
“Thank you,” Kalman said, “you’ll never know how grateful I am to you. But you’d better hurry for the giants are on their way already.”
Despite the approach of the giants, Larry and Kenny watched in fascinated wonder as the great stag leapt swiftly onto the rough grass and heather of the mountainside and headed up the steep incline towards the pass that would take it deeper into the mountains and closer to Morven. Larry’s eyes clouded with unaccustomed tears as he clambered into the van and watched it through the windscreen. “I’ll never forget that stag, Kenny,” he said as he watched it bound upwards, “it was a miracle, like.”
“What we’re needing is another one then,” Kenny snapped, pulling out of the lay-by and looking worriedly in the rear-view mirror. “Here come the giants!”
He’d left it a bit late for, even as he took off along the narrow road that hugged the side of the mountain, the giants closed in on the van, roaring and shouting in strange gravelly voices that raised the hair on the back of their necks.
Kalman, however, had made a gross miscalculation in assuming that the giants would see him on the mountainside. They only had eyes for the van and it soon became apparent to Kenny and Larry that the giants didn’t know that the stag was no longer there. Totally petrified, Kenny put his foot to the floor and the engine screamed in protest as they rocked and bucketed their way round the many hairpin bends in the road. It was then that a press helicopter soared into view and, as the cameras rolled, horrified viewers all over Scotland saw the giants charging after the speeding vehicle.
“Use the loudspeaker to warn them,” shouted the pilot suddenly to the TV crew for he could see more giants rising from the mountains ahead of the van. It was well and truly trapped. Kenny, with a face as white as chalk, stepped on the brakes as he saw the huge figures appear in front of him and Larry grabbed his arm in terror as the giants closed in on them. Controlled by Lord Jezail, the giants had their instructions. The van had to be destroyed … and that was what they did.
The giants didn’t try to push the car off the road or deliberately thump it with their great hands — they gathered together in a roaring crowd round the van and collapsed on top of it, burying Kenny and Larry under a massive heap of rocks, stones and rubble.
The crew in the helicopter filmed the entire thing, the machine hovering helplessly as clouds of dust filled the air. Alerted by the TV crew, however, rescue services were already on their way and by the time the fire engines, police cars and ambulances arrived, the dust had settled. Apart from the clatter of the helicopter’s rotors, everything was quiet. The giants had finished their work.
No one held out much hope for Kenny and Larry. “It’ll be a miracle if they’re alive under that lot,” one of the TV crew said, as the helicopter swooped and banked, unable to get as close as they would have liked to the side of the mountain. “They didn’t stand a chance. Their van must have been flattened.”
It took some time for the team of men to remove the rocks, passing them from hand to hand until the van’s bright fluorescent paintwork emerged. There was a sudden cheer as the men worked with renewed energy to clear the remaining boulders and gasps of amazement from those in the helicopter as the van doors were prised open and Kenny and Larry staggered out into the road.
“It’s incredible,” the newscaster said, his voice shrill with relief. “They both seem to be fine. I can see them walking and talking to the firemen. They’re waving to us! What an ordeal!”
Kenny and Larry were treated for shock at the local hospital. Outside, reporters and television crews were kept firmly out of the way until the following morning when they’d agreed to give a press conference. Offers for their story, however, were already flooding in.
“One paper’s offering us fifty thousand pounds to tell them what happened,” Larry said, totally gobsmacked. “Just think, Kenny,” his eyes were alight with excitement, “with that amount we could really make something of the band! Maybe hit the big time even!”
“It’s a miracle that you survived at all, you know,” one of the nurses told them as they got ready to leave the next morning. “The firemen can’t understand how the rocks didn’t flatten your van completely. You can thank your lucky stars that you came through it all without a scratch!”
“It was the stag’s magic that saved us, wasn’t it,” Larry whispered as the nurse waved them goodbye and they set off along the passage towards a waiting policeman. “I’m sure of it.”
Kenny nodded. “We’d better no’ mention the stag to these reporters, though,” he cautioned, thinking of the forthcoming press conference, “for there’s no way they’d publish our story if we start talking about magic. They’d just think we were basket cases.”
“Aye,” Larry agreed, “best to stick to us being the Jelly Beans and looking for gigs in Aberdeen.”
“Up with the Jelly Beans!!” grinned Kenny, suddenly triumphant. “Larry, mate,” he grabbed him by the shoulders and looked into his eyes, “Larry, mate! I think our luck is finally changing!”