Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

“Of course I remember. Continue, crow.”


“He spoke to her as the giant slept, the thin bars of the cage between them. She revealed that his heart was kept in a different place, and so he was invulnerable to death. If he would promise to free her from her imprisonment, she would help him to discover the location of his heart, so that he might slay the giant and free them all.

Do you remember this part of the story?”

“She did as she promised.”

“She sang sweetly to him again, on that night and on many nights thereafter, feigning love, until at last he revealed his heart’s hiding place.”

“In a lake. Beneath a church.”

“And the hero went out to find it.” H?kon fluffed his feathers, allowing himself the indelicacy of a dramatic pause. “And then he lost his way.”

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? The Giant in Repose ?

“I lost nothing, crow. I grew bored of a search that had no object.”

H?kon nipped his ear. “How can you say that? The object was always understood!”

“Not by me,” Ivar said. “Not as the years grew.”

“Speak for yourself, prince. I know my function.”

“What of Olga? What becomes of her now?”

“She is not part of this Story,” said the crow. “She never was. Now look ahead.”

Ivar did as he was told. The land in front of him rose in a sheet of rock, topped distantly with ice, and fell away on his left into a fjord, the glacial water as hard and bright in the sun as the purpose that had first stirred him from his father’s castle. Along that declension of earth, rising from the grass like something grown, approached by neither trail nor road, was a small wooden church, barely bigger than Ivar’s own shack, its steeple sturdy and proud, a shout of faith rendered in wood. There was no snow at this level; the land was decked in the indulgence of summer.

Ivar himself was young again, the muscles in his body gathered in his chest and arms, his hair long and black again, his beard full. He felt the full throat of the world in his chest, and breathed to fill it.

“Very well,” he said. “Let us see what’s inside.”


The interior was warm and lit by a vast bank of candles which covered the wall behind the altar. The pews and the shelves were of polished wood, dustless, the book on the altar open and inscribed in an ancient Nordic script. Ivar paused and stared at the illumination on the page, which depicted the Angel of Death standing outside a closed door, a sword held loosely at his side.

H?kon leaped onto the altar and angled his head at the picture.

His feet gripped and ungripped, repeatedly, like a nervous child. “A favorable omen,” he said. “The giant’s end is at hand.”

“So it would seem.”

Ivar turned away from the book, looking over the church’s interior.

A strong wind wrestled the building, and the wood creaked under its ? 272 ?

? Nathan Ballingrud ?

pressure, seeming to list from side to side. It felt like being in the hold of a galley, and Ivar wondered what he might see if he opened the door to the outside world.

“Who keeps this place, H?kon?”

“It is the house of the Lord, Ivar. Surely that’s obvious.”

“But who keeps it? Is Christ Himself dusting these shelves and lighting these candles? Does He heat soup over the fire? Will I find Him drowsing on a cot in the back?”

The crow peered at him. “You must be careful of blasphemy, my prince. You yourself have been drowsing on that prairie in the new country. The church, like the giant in his cottage and like your father in his castle, is maintained by the Story. It was a fog of dust and spiders until you looked upon it from the hill.”

Ivar sat in one of the pews, and settled into thought.

“The Story awakens to you, and you to it. Look at yourself, Ivar.