Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

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?”

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? 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.

H?kon hopped closer, head cocked to the side. “What are you doing?”

“This was never the giant’s Story, H?kon. 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.”


H?kon 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?”