Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(88)

“Continue.” Ivar’s stride grew longer and more sure as he listened to the old story. His breath filled his lungs more easily, and a heat grew in his blood that he had not felt in long memory.

“The brothers called upon the giant to face them. After a few moments the door swung open, and the giant stared down upon them all with a frightful face, and all six brothers and all six of their wives were so terrified that they turned to stone where they stood, and their horses beneath them. The giant left them there, and went back into his home.

“After a year had passed the king began to despair of ever seeing his sons again. ‘It is well that I kept you here,’ he told his youngest, ‘for if I had lost you too there would be nothing left to tether me to this wretched world.’ But the youth was not content to spend the rest of his days hidden away like a prized trinket in his father’s castle while his brothers remained missing. He insisted that he go out and discover their fate, and bring them all safely home. Though his father ? 270 ?

? Nathan Ballingrud ?

protested, he wore him down in time, and at last he ventured down the same road they had embarked and been lost upon, promising his father that he would discover their fate and bring them home.”

“Brash youth,” side Ivar, but now there was pride in his voice.

“He had minor adventures of his own, including one in which he rescued a certain starving crow, who was then beholden to him.

Eventually, he found his way to the giant’s house, and in the garden he found his brothers and their six wives, their heads spattered with bird droppings and their ankles entwined by weeds. He crept secretly into the cottage at night and saw the giant talking to a girl in a suspended silver cage, who was as small to the giant as a canary would be to himself. The youth knew immediately that she would be his wife, for she was young and beautiful and she sang sweetly to the giant in a voice as delicate as the first cracking of winter’s shell.”

“Bergit,” Ivar said, his voice full and quiet. He was walking forcefully through the snow now, unhindered by age, like a horse breaking through the surf.

“Bergit the Lovely. You remember,” said H?kon, the approval plain in his voice.

“Of course I remember. Continue, crow.”

“He spoke to her as the giant slept, the thin bars of the cage between them. She revealed that his heart was kept in a different place, and so he was invulnerable to death. If he would promise to free her from her imprisonment, she would help him to discover the location of his heart, so that he might slay the giant and free them all.

Do you remember this part of the story?”

“She did as she promised.”

“She sang sweetly to him again, on that night and on many nights thereafter, feigning love, until at last he revealed his heart’s hiding place.”

“In a lake. Beneath a church.”

“And the hero went out to find it.” H?kon fluffed his feathers, allowing himself the indelicacy of a dramatic pause. “And then he lost his way.”

? 271 ?

? The Giant in Repose ?

“I lost nothing, crow. I grew bored of a search that had no object.”

H?kon nipped his ear. “How can you say that? The object was always understood!”

“Not by me,” Ivar said. “Not as the years grew.”

“Speak for yourself, prince. I know my function.”

“What of Olga? What becomes of her now?”

“She is not part of this Story,” said the crow. “She never was. Now look ahead.”

Ivar did as he was told. The land in front of him rose in a sheet of rock, topped distantly with ice, and fell away on his left into a fjord, the glacial water as hard and bright in the sun as the purpose that had first stirred him from his father’s castle. Along that declension of earth, rising from the grass like something grown, approached by neither trail nor road, was a small wooden church, barely bigger than Ivar’s own shack, its steeple sturdy and proud, a shout of faith rendered in wood. There was no snow at this level; the land was decked in the indulgence of summer.

Ivar himself was young again, the muscles in his body gathered in his chest and arms, his hair long and black again, his beard full. He felt the full throat of the world in his chest, and breathed to fill it.

“Very well,” he said. “Let us see what’s inside.”

The interior was warm and lit by a vast bank of candles which covered the wall behind the altar. The pews and the shelves were of polished wood, dustless, the book on the altar open and inscribed in an ancient Nordic script. Ivar paused and stared at the illumination on the page, which depicted the Angel of Death standing outside a closed door, a sword held loosely at his side.