Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback (33 page)

More candles were lit in small rows along its shore, illuminating a

boat halfway pulled onto the sand. The crow hopped to a halt beside

it.

“It doesn’t make sense that it’s underground,” he said. “Why do

you need me?”

Ivar pushed the boat into the water and settled himself inside.

There was an oar lying alone the bottom, and he picked it up. “I

suppose it will become clear soon enough.”

“Where are you rowing it to? I can’t see anything out there.”

“Are you coming, crow?”

With obvious reluctance, Håkon fluttered onto his shoulder. His

talons gripped his perch more tightly than perhaps was necessary.

Ivar steered them into the gloomy expanse, the small circle of

candlelight receding behind them until it was only a tiny flare, a

lonely flame of life in the silent, encompassing darkness. They moved through the cool air, the water trickling from the oar and lapping

against the prow of the little boat. Håkon’s fear was strong, and he fluttered and clucked in growing agitation.

“I think we’ve gone the wrong way,” he said.

But Ivar had never felt stronger, or more confident in his purpose.

He wanted to leap from the boat and swim the rest of the way,

however far that might be, so great was his sense of strength, so great his need to spend it like an abundant coin. He wanted a foe whom he

could break in his hands, he wanted a woman whose body he would

open with his own. He was young and strong and the Story pulled

him the way that God pulls the soul.

• 274 •

• Nathan Ballingrud •

“We are on the right path, crow,” he said. “The darkness is only a

verse. To know the Story, we must know it all.”

The crow settled at this admonishment.

They continued for a passage of time that neither could measure,

until at last their boat nudged against something submerged, and

circled around to the right, like the spoke of a wheel. Håkon cawed in alarm and took wing, becoming just a sound of muscle and feather

in the dark air over Ivar’s head. Ivar turned the flat of the oar to slow their momentum, and after a tense moment the boat settled

into stillness.

Ivar stood, peering into the black, while the crow settled again

into the bottom of the boat.

“Sit, my prince!”

“Hush.”

He poked into the water with his oar until he hit something hard

and unyielding.

“There.”

He dropped the oar into the boat and extended his hand into the

water. He had to reach deeply, leaning nearly halfway over, the water creeping up to his shoulder, before he encountered the yield of flesh, and across it heavy links of chain. Ivar grasped a link and heaved;

the boat listed hideously and Håkon launched into the air, crying in alarm, but then Ivar eased himself seated again as he hauled his prize to the surface.

It was too dark to see anything, so he passed his free hand across

it: an open eye as large as a wagon’s wheel; a fleshy nose; an open

mouth, the teeth cracked and akimbo around the chain which

wrapped around the gargantuan head and extended down to the

body, still hanging in the dark fathoms below.

“God in Heaven,” said Ivar.

“What is it?”

“A giant. Dead.”

“What?” The crow seemed outraged. “Have we been robbed of our

glory?”

• 275 •

• The Giant in Repose •

“I don’t think so. Hold a moment.” With that, he leapt over the side of the boat and into the black water. The chill of it nearly stopped his heart, and if he had been the old man he had woken as that morning,

it might have done so. But he was young and strong again, a Nordic

prince engaged in a mighty action, and so he pulled himself down

the length of the dead giant, drifting free again, as the cold eeled its way into his brain and the increasing depth pressed against his ears, until he arrived at the bound hands and the large box they clutched.

He pried the fingers free of the box with his flagging strength, and he dragged it through the water behind him, crawling up the giant’s

body with his free hand. It seemed to him that he ought to move with urgency, and yet his ascent was languid, almost reluctant. Never had he known such darkness, or such quietude. Something inside of him

rose to it, like the ocean to the moon.

Håkon greeted his arrival with a shout of joy. Ivar wrestled the

heavy box aboard the boat, then followed, where he lay gasping and

exhausted. Some time passed before he had the strength to sit upright and address himself to the rescued box. He passed his hands across

it, still blind in the darkness, and felt the hard wood and metal clasps, the holy cross raised in relief across its top. He felt the purpose of its construction.

“The giant did not hide his heart here,” he said, after a moment. “It was taken from him. Imprisoned here.”

“What difference does it make?”

“I don’t know.”

Ivar rowed them back to shore, where they beached beside the

row of candles.

“Open it!” cried Håkon, fixing a greedy eye upon the prize.

Ivar did so. There was no lock—at least none meant for him. Inside

was the giant’s heart: surprisingly small, as is the way with these vast brutes, only about as large as the head of an ox. It was covered in damp soil; tiny white taproots extended from it in all directions, looking for something to root themselves into. Ivar knew that he could take

it into his hands and crumble it like clumped earth. He scooped it

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• Nathan Ballingrud •

out of the box, and felt the heat of it. It beat once, dislodging a small cloud of dirt.

He stared at it.

“What happens next?”

But even as he asked the question the heart beat a second time, and

then a third, and Ivar saw not through his own eyes, nor dwelled in

his own body, but discovered himself in the giant’s mind, instead.

“You have me, Christian man,” came the giant’s voice.

The giant had lived in a cottage once. But then the world moved

into another age, and his home was reclaimed by the mountain.

There were no more trolls to feast on. No more villages to terrify and dismay. True, there were enough Christians now to carpet the whole

earth with their crushed bones and pasted jelly—the very air stank

of them, there was nowhere to draw a clean breath anymore—but

age and sloth had laid the giant low, and the hills had grown over his body. His great shoulders sprouted wildflowers now, his sunken head

become a precipice which little Christian children climbed upon and

leapt from, landing in a clear pool of water where the river paused

in leisure before continuing its seaward journey. All of his might and terror were subsumed into the ground, where he would have expired

in the way of his brothers, had the spark of him not been imprisoned in a distant box, under a distant water.

Of Ivar’s six brothers and their wives, there were now only twelve

mossy rocks, arranged in a curious line which excited the imaginations of the locals. Perhaps it was a kind of Stonehenge, they thought, or the remains of an ancient fortification. Time and weather had erased their faces, and any indication of what they once had been.

“Tell me,” said the giant. “Did you find my wife?”

Ivar thought of the huge, drowned corpse, the way it had clutched

the box to itself. “I did,” he said.

“Then at last I know her fate,” the giant said, his voice quiet. “I am pleased that she is free of this fallen world.”

“And Bergit? I do not see her. What is her fate?”

• 277 •

• The Giant in Repose •

“The wench betrayed me,” the giant said. “I should have eaten her

as I had intended.”

“Did you?”

“I could not. She was part of the wretched Story, just as I was. Just as I am. We have been waiting for you to do your part. She is buried in this hill with me, a rag and a bone, with a guttering flame still lit within her. I know this because I can hear her keening in the night.”

“I am meant to force you to free my brothers and their wives. To

free Bergit as well, so that she may come home with me and be my

wife. I promised my father I would do these things.”

“Do them then, wretch. Do them so that I may rise from this place

and render you over my cooking fires.”

“You are no threat to me, giant. Nor will you be ever again.”

Ivar returned the heart to its box.

Håkon hopped closer, head cocked to the side. “What are you

doing?”

“This was never the giant’s Story, Håkon. He was imprisoned by it.

He lost his wife to it. His own story ended long ago.”

The crow paced, considering this. Finally he said, “I don’t see how

that matters. Did you tell him to free the other princes and their

wives?”

“No.”

“What? Why not?”

Ivar turned where he sat, resting his back against the boat, looking out onto the candlelit water, the emptiness beyond it. “Crow, I don’t know what to do.”

Håkon leaped onto Ivar’s leg, took a step forward. He was rather a

large bird, and Ivar felt some misgivings about provoking him. “You

do what you are meant to do, my prince! What else? You release your

brothers and fulfill your promise to your father. You marry the lovely Bergit, and you enjoy the vigor of youth. You return to the Story, as you’re meant to do! What is this ‘I don’t know what to do’ nonsense?

Preposterous is what. Do this, and I will carry news of it to your

• 278 •

• Nathan Ballingrud •

father, so that he may ready the castle for your return. I’m sure that that is my function here.”

“And what of Olga, my wise friend? Hm? What of my wife?”

“Well . . . ” The crow seemed genuinely at a loss for a moment. “She is old, my prince. Her remaining years are so few. Bergit is young

and beautiful. Just like you now! Or at least she will be when you

command the giant to release her. Think of the handsome children

you will have. Think of the pride in your father’s eye.”

Ivar did think of those things, and they were good. He thought

of the promise he made to his father, which he had neglected, to

his shame. He thought of his brothers, their hearts cresting as they returned home with the women they would build families with, their

eyes full of life’s coming bounties. And he thought of lovely Bergit, terrified and imprisoned, whose cleverness procured for him the

information he needed to save her, and all the rest. It would be a

sorry thing indeed to turn his back on them all.

But then at last I know her fate
, the giant had said, with the sadness of long centuries alone in his voice.
I am pleased that she is free of
this fallen world.

Ivar closed the box’s lid. He pushed it out into the water, where it drifted some distance before it sank.

Håkon was speechless. It is difficult to look into a crow’s eye and

read emotion there, but Ivar found this one to be quite expressive.

“I am quite fond of Olga,” Ivar said quietly. “I think I would miss

her more than I could bear.”

“But the Story . . . oh, my prince . . . ”

“Crow, it is time to acquaint ourselves with endings.”

Håkon fulfilled his function after all. He carried Ivar’s message away from the church, where the warmth of summer was already giving

way to a chilly wind, across the mountains to the neglected castle

of his father. The castle, like the giant’s cottage, had fallen to time. A battlement here, a row of flagstones there, and a half-collapsed tower were all the remained of the once proud structure, scattered in the

• 279 •

• The Giant in Repose •

foliage like old teeth. The old king lived in the tower, where he rarely moved, except at night, when the moonlight would draw him to the

window to watch for the return of his children.

This is how Håkon found him, his moon-kissed skull pale in the

window, the cobwebs hanging from his bony shoulders like a grand

cape. The crow landed on the sill beside the old king and looked

thoughtfully at him, a few grey hairs still wreathed around his head, the black sockets of his eyes gazing emptily back. The crow was old

himself now, the feathers around his beak thin and bedraggled, his

gnarled feet scaly with age.

“My king,” said the crow. “I bring news of your sons.”

Upon hearing it, the king turned from the window for a final time

and made his ponderous way across the room to a tumble of rocks,

which, long ago, he had arranged into something approximating a

throne. He reclined into it, hearing through the crow’s message the

voice of his youngest son: the most precious, the last to go.

I am sorry, Father. I have failed you. I cannot come back, and now

you must die alone. It is unforgivable. But know that you are loved, and honored still. Your grandchildren will know your name.

And the king died at last, the sorrow of his grievous loss

unanswered, but with the timbre of his son’s voice to ferry him gently on.

Ivar did not look behind him as he left the church, nor did he think it was odd that the spring weather had abruptly given way to deep

snow. The mountains and the fjords were gone. Before him was the

austere beauty of the Minnesota plain, and there in the distance was his home, its little chimney unfurling smoke into the icy-starred

twilight, while his fields slept beneath the snow until their season came upon them again.

His old joints creaked in the cold; the winter was going to be hard

on him.

He opened the door and stamped the snow from his boots, slid