Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(81)

The ground disappeared from beneath him. He caught a sickening flash of a rocky embankment and a foaming stream. Everything stopped.

Justus’s head spun, but the grip on his ankle drew him back to safety. Monster clung to a gnarled pine with one hand, his hoof hooked behind a boulder.

Monster turned Justus rightside up before tucking him close.

Monster’s arm was as big around as Justus’s torso, comforting and solid. Justus finally drew a shuddering breath and inhaled the musky scent of his rescuer. Monster smelled cleaner than Justus had imagined, clean and warm.

As Monster inched his way up the incline, Justus shivered, his fingers desperately clinging to clumps of mismatched fur. Tears streaked down his face, hot terror evaporating into the careless winter cold. I almost died.

“Why didn’t you cry out?”

Justus just shook his head. Even if the rock hadn’t knocked the wind out of him, he’d still been more worried that Monster would realize he was male, which would be a much slower death than a simple fall. He was already afraid Monster would finally discover him now—after all, Justus must feel different than a woman, compact and spare where a real maiden would have been light curves. Monster ? 250 ?

? Cory Skerry ?

said nothing, though, and when they reached the top, he didn’t put Justus down. Instead, he wrapped his other arm around Justus’s back.

“It’s all right. I won’t let anything happen to you,” Monster whispered.

Justus might have laughed at the irony if he did not believe the Greve meant it. Monster wanted to choose when and how his sacrifices died. Besides, he was full—he’d just eaten a turkey.

After a time, Monster fidgeted, shifting Justus to his other shoulder—and then laughed. “My, Karin, what’s this?”

The cutlass. Justus tensed, waiting for Monster to squeeze him until his spine cracked and discard his broken body in the snow.

“A girl must protect her honor,” Justus croaked.

Monster laughed again, and Justus relaxed against Monster’s warmth. It pained him to know that he owed his life to this creature, and yet this same creature had taken Gudrun’s.

“Best you don’t sleep yet,” Monster said, and shook Justus, who realized he had been dozing.

“Sorry.”

“You’ve not told me what you enjoy besides hunting and being read to,” Monster prompted.

Justus’s skull felt like it was full of hot bees, but he understood that people with head injuries who went to sleep too soon didn’t always wake up.

He forced his mouth to work through an answer. “Carving. I carve wood.”

“With a sword?”

Justus’s smile hurt his cold cheeks. “I’m not very good with the real tools, so perhaps I should try.”

“I’m sure you just need practice,” Monster decided. “You’ll be given an array of carver’s instruments, and any wood we have available.

Could you sculpt me?”

“Perhaps,” Justus said, and a thought pushed his drowsiness away, bright sunlight burning away a fog. He maintained his sleepy mumble, however, when he went on, “for a trade.”

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? Castle of Masks ?

“Oh? Name a price that’s not your freedom,” Monster said. Each word vibrated through the Greve’s chest to Justus’s cheek.

“I just want a bow and arrows that won’t crumble in your clumsy fingers,” Justus said.

“Agreed.” Monster chuckled. “When can I expect my magnificent sculpture?”

“A week,” Justus said. “Maybe two, if the wood is as poor as your table manners.”

“The wood will be as fine as your aim.”

Justus smiled, but his heart now hurt as badly as his head.

Justus spent the next two days in bed, sipping broth through swollen, bruised lips. The injuries made his necessary shaving a painful experience, but he admired the dark ring around one eye as he looked in the mirror. In all his life, Justus had never looked tough, but now, wearing a frilly nightgown while he lay on a bank of pillows in a lady’s lace-canopied bed, he looked as if he’d been in a real brawl.

When someone knocked, Justus swallowed and worked his voice into Karin’s high, husky tone. “Come in.”

It was Monster, carrying a small bag. “Here are your tools. I sent Valfrid to a good market for them. The wood is in the library, which has the best light. How do you feel?”