Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback (31 page)

It was time.

Justus stepped into the library doorway, his weight bent to

accommodate the bow, a bear-killing arrow nocked and ready to fly.

Would an artist render this grand moment some day? If so, Justus

knew it would be wrong. The artist would clothe Justus in a hunter’s garb, perhaps even a noble’s. Not a corset and the tattered remnants of a skirt, garters, and stockings. The Justus of the painting would have a beard and no lipstick. And the Monster of the painting, Justus knew, would be the snarling beast he had failed to carve.

The real Monster was already there, crouched on all fours before

Justus’s worst sculpture. Justus wasn’t used to working on such a large scale, or with unfamiliar instruments, but Monster was admiring it

with a focus that should have been reserved for a master.

“Do you like it?” Justus asked.

“I was wondering when you were going to stop torturing your

voice like that,” Monster said, not looking up.

“How long have you known?”

Monster smiled, still studying the lines of the sculpture. “I asked

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that Rigmora check your body for further wounds, and she was

surprised to find you healthy in places she didn’t even know you

had.” Monster laughed, then continued. “I love the carving. If you

really were going to kill me, I should want it over my grave.”

“I’ll carry it there myself,” Justus said, his voice breaking. “I wish I didn’t have to do this, Monster. I truly call you friend, and despite this betrayal, I’ll never lie: I loved you.”

“If you call me friend, stay your hand but a moment. I promise I’ll

not move from this spot,” Monster said.

“Agreed,” Justus said. He blinked rapidly, shepherding tears away

to keep his vision sharp. His arm ached with the need for release, and so did his heart, but he would let Monster have his last words.

Monster reached under his neck and in one fluid movement, he

pulled his head off. It fell back like the hood of a cloak, revealing a breath-taking young woman with a face the color of spring petals

and eyes like the sky. The laundry girl, Pia.

The rest of Monster was now only a cloak, and she casually tossed

it over the statue, clad in a plain shift and woolen stockings with

holes at the toes.

Justus fell to his knees on the rug, setting the bow aside and

staring. Was she a witch? Enchanted?

“As it happens, Karin,” Pia said, “You’re worse at playing assassin

than you are at playing girl. I killed the Greve five years ago.”

“He came to me, in the night,” Pia said, blowing the steam away

from her gleg. They sat on the sofa in the library, alone but for the crackling fire.

“I sharpened the curtain rod on the stone under my bed, because

after the first time I knew I couldn’t stand it again. I poked a hole in the blankets, and when he came near, I harpooned him just beneath

his ribs.” When Justus’s eyebrows rose, she nodded. “Yes, those

wounds are from me. Just as these are from him,” she said, rubbing a hand over her left shoulder.

“The Greve howled and tore at me, but I was quick. When I

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ducked through the door, he tried to leap after me, but the curtain

rod stuck across the frame, and I ran up into the attic while he tried to maneuver through. I knew he could follow the trail of blood, but

perhaps if I found a small enough space, one where he couldn’t reach me, I could hide there until he bled to death.”

She spoke matter-of-factly, as if it was something fifty years ago

rather than five. She was still too young for lines on her face, but he could see where they would appear: creases at the corners of her

mouth, in her dimples, and at the edges of her eyes, which half-

mooned when she smiled.

“I waited until nightfall, crammed into a dusty nook in the north

tower, before I ventured back to my room. He’d died there, unable to pull the rod free—but I didn’t find the beast. I found a man wearing a cloak.

“I knew better than to put it on, but I had an idea. My grandmother

once said you could summon a witch if you hold an item of hers

and call to the north. That night, I woke to an owl scratching at

my window. When I opened the window, I found the witch in the

courtyard. She was a strange and beautiful woman, with white hair

longer than she was tall and billowing gray robes.

“At first I was afraid of her, but when I explained about the Greve, and told her my plan, she came inside. We had tea. It was supposed

to be a curse, she said, for a terrible man that someone should have killed sooner. You know the rest of that story. She modified the cloak so I could take it off and put it back on as often as I liked. Despite what everyone thinks, for the past five years, I assure you I have not been raping and eating young women.”

“What, not even the one who carved that awful wooden eyesore?”

Justus gestured to his failure.

“I have other plans for her. But with the first four girls to come

to me, I told each of them they were unfit to be eaten, and exiled

them to higher education, apprenticeships, or suitable marriages in

other countries. None of them know my secret—they cannot, or they

might betray me to the common people.”

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“The people wouldn’t kill you if they knew,” Justus protested,

shaking his head. “You could tell them.”

“It’s not about being killed,” Pia said. There was diamond in her

voice, hard and sharp. “It’s about saving their sacrifices. They were so willing to let go of us instead of banding together and killing the Greve. Well, let them, then! If they can do without those women, so

they shall, and I will continue to find better use for them elsewhere.”

Justus wanted to argue with Pia; he wanted to defend the people

of his village. But he remembered when he asked about hunting the

Greve, how people told him to be quiet or he’d get himself killed and the rest of them in trouble.

“Of a girl called Gudrun . . . ” Justus said, trailing off hopefully.

“She’s in China, studying under a master painter.”

Justus’s soul flickered and burned like a lamp coming to life. “She’s my sister.”

“You look alike, though of course she’s prettier. In that dress, I

thought I might have a hard time marrying you off.”

“And now?” Justus gestured at his clothes, spares from Valfrid. The

shirt and trousers were both drab and black and had to be rolled up, but at least they wouldn’t trip him in snow.

“Despite your sassy mouth and clumsiness, I don’t think it will be

so difficult after all. Would you like to see my notes on you?”

Intrigued, Justus nodded, and Pia rose, cupping her gleg in two

hands as she strode down the hall. Justus followed her through the

chilly corridor, his mug in one hand, the other guarding against his slipping waistband.

They paused at the locked door through which Pia had disappeared

the other night. She let Justus through with a set of clanking iron

keys.

Brilliant sunlight stabbed through the windows of Pia’s workroom,

illuminating a museum of shrines. Each isolated table held collections of scribbled notes, copied pages from books with underlined passages, and even a few rudimentary drawings. The ceiling arched away into

darkness but for cathedral-like skylights of stained green glass.

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Pia invited Justus to look closer with a swooping gesture of one

arm. He skimmed the notes, looking for something he recognized.

He hadn’t learned enough to read well yet, but he could tell not all the words were in Swedish. Justus stopped at the fourth shrine and ran

his fingers over an ink drawing of a rabbit in some reeds, carelessly scrawled on a scrap of paper. Gudrun’s daisy-shaped signature

curled around the rabbit’s visible paw. Some of the letters here were scribbled in strange characters nothing like those he’d learned from Valfrid.

Gudrun was still gone, as much as if she’d been devoured. Justus

wasn’t sure where China was, but he knew what lay between: bandits

and pirates, desert, sea, and jungle. His fists clenched, and he thought about telling Pia what he thought of her stealing his sister.

Her cool fingers slid over one of his fists, gentle pressure coaxing his hand open. “Her mentor says she most enjoys painting the birds,

and that she makes their tails too long and refuses to change it. One is to arrive for my private collection sometime later this year. You may have it.”

Justus swallowed. “I don’t want her to be gone, even if she’s alive.”

Pia nodded. “I also dislike it when my guests leave. Yours is next,”

she added, indicating the next table.

Justus glanced at it. His collection was smaller than the others,

and had many observations crossed out and re-written. Most of it

was incomprehensible, but here and there he spotted words he knew.

Karin. Castle. Brave.

Justus met Pia’s gaze. “I can’t read it,” he admitted.

Pia smiled. “It says, ‘I’m thinking of offering Karin a position as

guardian of the castle in my absence—she’s brave and skilled.’ What

do you think of that?”

“I don’t understand. You’re leaving?” Justus looked down at the

paper again to mask his disappointment.

“Never for good, but I can’t simply dispatch these young women

off to unknown places,” Pia said. “I must spend time making

connections, through letters, gifts, and sometimes visits. While I’m

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gone, the castle staff is unprotected. I’m willing to stand for what I’ve done, but I don’t expect them to do the same.

“I was about to ask you if you’d stay on as their protector when I

found out you weren’t a woman. Then I waited for proof that I could

trust you, and I got it: you would even kill someone you loved if it would guard the lives of my rescued women, Justus. We’ll find no

better protector.”

“I’m honored,” Justus said. His gaze snagged on one of the notes,

weighted by the two halves of his broken arrow. Sudden emotion

kicked through Justus’s heart like a silver frog through a murky pond.

He pointed. “That paper has a heart drawn on it. What does it say?”

Pia smiled, raising one eyebrow. “When you can read that sentence,

perhaps you’ll find it better than you imagined.”

••

Cory Skerry
lives in a spooky old house that he doesn’t like to admit is haunted. When he’s not peddling (or meddling with) art supplies

and writing stories, he explores the area with his two sweet, goofy

pit bulls. His retirement plan is for science to put his brain into a giant killer octopus body, with which he’ll be very responsible and

not even slightly shipwrecky. He promises. You can find sketches,

incriminating photos, and more of his stories at coryskerry.net.

••

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•

I have a strong Norwegian lineage, so I thought it would be

interesting to mine Scandinavian folklore for this story. The hard

aesthetic of the Northern tales has always appealed to me: the trolls and the goblins, the brutal choices, the way night and winter feature so prominently. In “The Giant Without a Heart in His Body,” found

in the story “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” the giant is very much a relic of the pre-Christian story traditions; its harsh fate is emblematic of the way Christianity absorbed the relics of the pagan

traditions, and turned them to its own purposes. I thought it would

be interesting if the hero of the story had gotten lost in his journey, and found himself settled into a new era. How would he view his old

story, if called back to it again? Would it have the same resonance for him? And what happens when it’s time for the story to finally come

to an end?

Nathan Ballingrud

•

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•

Ivar looked through the ice-starred window of his kitchen and saw

the crow perched on the fencepost near the barn, like a sharp-

angled hole against the white expanse of snow. His own beard had

itself become snowy since the last time he had seen the crow, his own face as weathered and creviced as earth. He watched the crow, and he felt the old feeling. The water on the range began to bubble and boil, yet he stood there, still as stone.

Olga’s chin settled onto his shoulder from behind; he felt the

weight of her body press against him, her breath against his cheek.

“Old man,” she said. “The water’s boiling away.”

“Is it? I’m sorry.”