Giants Dance: Rhyme and Reason

A new book from Stuart France and Sue Vincent

“…The boy speaks softly to the tree, caressing the ancient yew with the hands of a lover, seeking acquiescence and blessing. His frame is slight yet there is an air of quiet strength, melody in the whispered words. A knife glints in the sunlight. He feels an answer and smiles. Grateful.

From the bushes a youth emerges, strong, well-muscled, gleaming in the morning, armed with spear and bow. He points, sharing laughter with his pack, young wolves hunting, their prey found and ridiculed.

Woman’s work, this magic; a boy not fit to be a man. He cannot hunt, cannot cast a spear.

Jeering, fear-fuelled laughter prowls the glade, stalking their prey.

The boy turns. Holds their eyes. They fall silent one by one.

The young wolf stands alone, raising the spear against the fosterling, defensive, threatened by his silence.

A cry, a hand raised against a blow that none can see… the spear is cast wide and they run.

The boy turns back to the tree, chanting softly, seeking forgiveness. The knife flashes, the branch severed, the staff cut.

He takes the spear, binding its head to the head of the staff, lodging it deep in the wood where the branches forked.

A spear does not have to be cast to find its mark…”

“THE INFINITE HIGHWAY

If you always return to where you came from,

then your destination is halfway between where

you came from and where you are going to.”

““Look what I’ve got!”

Wen is looking extremely pleased with herself.

She appears to be holding an ordinary length of string.

Wen looking pleased with herself whilst apparently being ordinary means she is up to something extraordinary.

It is very difficult for me to become excited about an ordinary length of string but it is very easy for me to become extremely apprehensive when that ordinary length of string is being brandished by the redoubtable Wen.

“Pretend you’re describing, ‘the fish that got away’.”

“Say what?”

“The fish that got away. How big was it?”

“This big,” I say holding both forearms upright a body width apart.”

Wen does something unfathomable with the string in an eyeblink. And a gnat’s eyeblink later the string is taut around my fingers, yoking both of my hands together.

“Remember this?” says Wen.

“I think so.”

“What is it called?”

“It’s called Cat’s Cradle isn’t it?”

… “It is called Cat’s Cradle,” says Wen, “and get this, there are eight forms, one of them the exact reverse of another, two of them repeated, one repeat at the beginning and end of the sequence the other repeat before and after the inversion, and one of the forms, the inversion, which comes in the middle, is called… The Manger!”…

And Wen calls me insane…”

It began with a walk over the bracken covered hillsides of Derbyshire to a lonely stone circle, almost forgotten. It was just a walk…until the hawk flew from the tree and once again the visions began.

Plunged into a realm beyond reality, further than history, deeper than time,  Don and Wen begin to unravel the hidden messages hidden in plain sight, concealed by habit and acceptance, an extraordinary magic framed within the small things of ordinary life.

Follow a journey across the Heart of Albion and become an Initiate of the mysterious verity of verse.

Illustrated in Full Colour

Giants Dance: Rhyme and Reason

Stuart France and Sue Vincent

Available in Full colour paperback and for Kindle

Amazon US, Amazon UK and worldwide

• ISBN-10: 1493675672
• ISBN-13: 978-1493675678