Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(90)

? 274 ?

? Nathan Ballingrud ?

“We are on the right path, crow,” he said. “The darkness is only a verse. To know the Story, we must know it all.”

The crow settled at this admonishment.

They continued for a passage of time that neither could measure, until at last their boat nudged against something submerged, and circled around to the right, like the spoke of a wheel. H?kon cawed in alarm and took wing, becoming just a sound of muscle and feather in the dark air over Ivar’s head. Ivar turned the flat of the oar to slow their momentum, and after a tense moment the boat settled into stillness.

Ivar stood, peering into the black, while the crow settled again into the bottom of the boat.

“Sit, my prince!”

“Hush.”

He poked into the water with his oar until he hit something hard and unyielding.

“There.”

He dropped the oar into the boat and extended his hand into the water. He had to reach deeply, leaning nearly halfway over, the water creeping up to his shoulder, before he encountered the yield of flesh, and across it heavy links of chain. Ivar grasped a link and heaved; the boat listed hideously and H?kon launched into the air, crying in alarm, but then Ivar eased himself seated again as he hauled his prize to the surface.

It was too dark to see anything, so he passed his free hand across it: an open eye as large as a wagon’s wheel; a fleshy nose; an open mouth, the teeth cracked and akimbo around the chain which wrapped around the gargantuan head and extended down to the body, still hanging in the dark fathoms below.

“God in Heaven,” said Ivar.

“What is it?”

“A giant. Dead.”

“What?” The crow seemed outraged. “Have we been robbed of our glory?”

? 275 ?

? The Giant in Repose ?

“I don’t think so. Hold a moment.” With that, he leapt over the side of the boat and into the black water. The chill of it nearly stopped his heart, and if he had been the old man he had woken as that morning, it might have done so. But he was young and strong again, a Nordic prince engaged in a mighty action, and so he pulled himself down the length of the dead giant, drifting free again, as the cold eeled its way into his brain and the increasing depth pressed against his ears, until he arrived at the bound hands and the large box they clutched.

He pried the fingers free of the box with his flagging strength, and he dragged it through the water behind him, crawling up the giant’s body with his free hand. It seemed to him that he ought to move with urgency, and yet his ascent was languid, almost reluctant. Never had he known such darkness, or such quietude. Something inside of him rose to it, like the ocean to the moon.

H?kon greeted his arrival with a shout of joy. Ivar wrestled the heavy box aboard the boat, then followed, where he lay gasping and exhausted. Some time passed before he had the strength to sit upright and address himself to the rescued box. He passed his hands across it, still blind in the darkness, and felt the hard wood and metal clasps, the holy cross raised in relief across its top. He felt the purpose of its construction.

“The giant did not hide his heart here,” he said, after a moment. “It was taken from him. Imprisoned here.”

“What difference does it make?”

“I don’t know.”

Ivar rowed them back to shore, where they beached beside the row of candles.

“Open it!” cried H?kon, fixing a greedy eye upon the prize.

Ivar did so. There was no lock—at least none meant for him. Inside was the giant’s heart: surprisingly small, as is the way with these vast brutes, only about as large as the head of an ox. It was covered in damp soil; tiny white taproots extended from it in all directions, looking for something to root themselves into. Ivar knew that he could take it into his hands and crumble it like clumped earth. He scooped it ? 276 ?

? Nathan Ballingrud ?

out of the box, and felt the heat of it. It beat once, dislodging a small cloud of dirt.

He stared at it.

“What happens next?”

But even as he asked the question the heart beat a second time, and then a third, and Ivar saw not through his own eyes, nor dwelled in his own body, but discovered himself in the giant’s mind, instead.

“You have me, Christian man,” came the giant’s voice.

The giant had lived in a cottage once. But then the world moved into another age, and his home was reclaimed by the mountain.

There were no more trolls to feast on. No more villages to terrify and dismay. True, there were enough Christians now to carpet the whole earth with their crushed bones and pasted jelly—the very air stank of them, there was nowhere to draw a clean breath anymore—but age and sloth had laid the giant low, and the hills had grown over his body. His great shoulders sprouted wildflowers now, his sunken head become a precipice which little Christian children climbed upon and leapt from, landing in a clear pool of water where the river paused in leisure before continuing its seaward journey. All of his might and terror were subsumed into the ground, where he would have expired in the way of his brothers, had the spark of him not been imprisoned in a distant box, under a distant water.