Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(87)

The crow appeared as young as he ever was, his feathers glossy black, his beak sharp as a blade. He turned his head to the side and fixed Ivar with a bright, black glare.

“H?kon,” said Ivar, coming to a stop beside the post. “I never thought to see you again.”

“I’ve found the church,” the crow said, as though countless years had not elapsed since last they spoke.

Ivar found it suddenly difficult to breathe. “Forget it,” he said.

“I cannot. You rendered me a service in another age, and I am bound to repay it.”

Ivar sighed. He looked over his shoulder at his little house, at the farmland stretching around it beneath the piled snow. He had come here with Olga many years ago, when he had long surrendered hope of finding the church, leaving Norway for this new world with a tide of his own countrymen. They found in the deep winters a comforting echo of home. Even if the land looked nothing like it.

He looked at the crow again. “Fine then. You’ve told me. Consider your debt repaid.”

H?kon flared his feathers and jerked his head. He paced sideways along the fence, paced back again. “That’s not how it works. You know that.”

Ivar put his own hands on the wooden fence. They were old, short-fingered, broad. He was still amazed to watch the fall of his own body. He had been young, raven-haired, and strong, for the length of an age and beyond. For as long as he’d stayed true to the Story.

? 268 ?

? Nathan Ballingrud ?

And then he’d come to America.

“Look at you, H?kon. Still so young. Your feathers are as black as Odin’s eye. And I’ve grown old.”

“You have abandoned the Story, and so you’ve aged. Everyone has aged, waiting for you to come back to it,” said the crow. “Only I have not, because only I’ve been faithful to the tale. Return to your purpose, Ivar.”

The sun hovered low in the sky. The day wore thin. How wonderful would it be, he thought, to push it up into the sky again.

He remembered the directions procured for him by the princess, who whispered flattering lies into the giant’s ear. “His heart is at the center of a lake, beneath a church, chained to the image of love.”

Behind him Olga would be pouring the boiling water into the bath. A skirl of smoke lifted in lazy coils from the chimney, rising like a prayer into a low winter sky. He had farmed this land with her for forty years. Raised a daughter and a son with her. Together they were drifting into the strange waters of old age, and he had come to believe that they would reside together beneath the earth, in whatever realm waited for old Norwegians far from the path which God had set for them.

He was reluctant to leave, but the pull of responsibility, and more than that the pull of the old Story, were impossible to resist. If he did not come back, he could at least find consolation in the knowledge that Olga would not have to live long in loneliness. The earth would call her soon.

“Where is this church? I haven’t the means to return to the old country.”

“The church is in the Story, my prince. There is no need to cross a sea. Only a need to listen.”

As they walked away from Ivar’s house, into the field of snow, H?kon rode on the old man’s shoulder, his talons gripping hard the heavy winter coat, and told the Story.

“Once there was a king with seven sons. He loved them so much ? 269 ?

? The Giant in Repose ?

that he could not bear to be out of their company. So when the time came for the sons to marry, he sent six out into the world to find seven wives, and kept the youngest at home, lest the loneliness for his children uncouple his soul from his body. The sons ranged across the land and had many adventures, at the end of which they found a palace with six beautiful princesses. After a period of courtship the sons set upon their journey home with their six beautiful wives.

Transported as they were by love, they had forgotten their youngest brother.”

Ivar grunted, but did not interrupt.

“They came upon the house of a giant, which was a mountain fashioned into the likeness of a cottage. The icy peaks were its shingles, the untamed countryside its porch. The chimney which released the smoke of the great kitchen fire was lost in cloud. The sons were remorseful of their forgotten promise and sought to make amends by presenting their brother with the giant’s head as a trophy.”

“A fine substitute for a woman’s love!” spat Ivar.

“If you don’t mind,” said the crow.