Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(86)

Karin. Castle. Brave.

Justus met Pia’s gaze. “I can’t read it,” he admitted.

Pia smiled. “It says, ‘I’m thinking of offering Karin a position as guardian of the castle in my absence—she’s brave and skilled.’ What do you think of that?”

“I don’t understand. You’re leaving?” Justus looked down at the paper again to mask his disappointment.

“Never for good, but I can’t simply dispatch these young women off to unknown places,” Pia said. “I must spend time making connections, through letters, gifts, and sometimes visits. While I’m ? 261 ?

? Castle of Masks ?

gone, the castle staff is unprotected. I’m willing to stand for what I’ve done, but I don’t expect them to do the same.

“I was about to ask you if you’d stay on as their protector when I found out you weren’t a woman. Then I waited for proof that I could trust you, and I got it: you would even kill someone you loved if it would guard the lives of my rescued women, Justus. We’ll find no better protector.”

“I’m honored,” Justus said. His gaze snagged on one of the notes, weighted by the two halves of his broken arrow. Sudden emotion kicked through Justus’s heart like a silver frog through a murky pond.

He pointed. “That paper has a heart drawn on it. What does it say?”

Pia smiled, raising one eyebrow. “When you can read that sentence, perhaps you’ll find it better than you imagined.”

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Cory Skerry lives in a spooky old house that he doesn’t like to admit is haunted. When he’s not peddling (or meddling with) art supplies and writing stories, he explores the area with his two sweet, goofy pit bulls. His retirement plan is for science to put his brain into a giant killer octopus body, with which he’ll be very responsible and not even slightly shipwrecky. He promises. You can find sketches, incriminating photos, and more of his stories at coryskerry.net.

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I have a strong Norwegian lineage, so I thought it would be interesting to mine Scandinavian folklore for this story. The hard aesthetic of the Northern tales has always appealed to me: the trolls and the goblins, the brutal choices, the way night and winter feature so prominently. In “The Giant Without a Heart in His Body,” found in the story “East of the Sun and West of the Moon,” the giant is very much a relic of the pre-Christian story traditions; its harsh fate is emblematic of the way Christianity absorbed the relics of the pagan traditions, and turned them to its own purposes. I thought it would be interesting if the hero of the story had gotten lost in his journey, and found himself settled into a new era. How would he view his old story, if called back to it again? Would it have the same resonance for him? And what happens when it’s time for the story to finally come to an end?

Nathan Ballingrud

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The Giant in Repose


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Nathan Ballingrud


Ivar looked through the ice-starred window of his kitchen and saw the crow perched on the fencepost near the barn, like a sharp-angled hole against the white expanse of snow. His own beard had itself become snowy since the last time he had seen the crow, his own face as weathered and creviced as earth. He watched the crow, and he felt the old feeling. The water on the range began to bubble and boil, yet he stood there, still as stone.

Olga’s chin settled onto his shoulder from behind; he felt the weight of her body press against him, her breath against his cheek.

“Old man,” she said. “The water’s boiling away.”

“Is it? I’m sorry.”

“What are you looking at?”

He nodded. “The crow. Do you see it?”

She put her arms around his waist, which was wider now than it once was. “You stare at it like an old enemy. Did it insult you in some way?”

“Just the opposite.” He stepped away from her and walked to the door, where he fell upon the bench, pushing his feet into his boots.

He stood and shouldered himself into his coat.

Olga remained by the kitchen sink, the humor in her face giving way to concern. “What’s got into you, Ivar?”

“Finish the bathwater, woman. I’ll be back in a moment.”

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? The Giant in Repose ?

It was a long trek from the front door to the barn, and though the year was old and the snow was new, a hard winter was promised, and there would be a time coming when this trek could not be made without a rope tied around your waist, lest a blizzard swallow you whole. The Minnesota plains were flat and long, not like the robust countryside of Norway, where glaciers carved bright watery roadways through the mountains. There were no hidden kingdoms in this fertile land, unless they were the kingdoms of the sown seed and the ready harvest.