Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

“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.

H?kon 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.”

H?kon 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 H?kon 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 the coat from his shoulders and set it on its hook. He passed a hand ? 280 ?

? Nathan Ballingrud ?

over his weathered face, rubbing warmth into his cheeks. There was a splash from the kitchen, and he entered it to see dear, round Olga, naked as a nymph, reclining in the tub with the steam rising around her as though she were taking her constitutional in some Icelandic spring.