Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(91)

Of Ivar’s six brothers and their wives, there were now only twelve mossy rocks, arranged in a curious line which excited the imaginations of the locals. Perhaps it was a kind of Stonehenge, they thought, or the remains of an ancient fortification. Time and weather had erased their faces, and any indication of what they once had been.

“Tell me,” said the giant. “Did you find my wife?”

Ivar thought of the huge, drowned corpse, the way it had clutched the box to itself. “I did,” he said.

“Then at last I know her fate,” the giant said, his voice quiet. “I am pleased that she is free of this fallen world.”

“And Bergit? I do not see her. What is her fate?”

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? The Giant in Repose ?

“The wench betrayed me,” the giant said. “I should have eaten her as I had intended.”

“Did you?”

“I could not. She was part of the wretched Story, just as I was. Just as I am. We have been waiting for you to do your part. She is buried in this hill with me, a rag and a bone, with a guttering flame still lit within her. I know this because I can hear her keening in the night.”

“I am meant to force you to free my brothers and their wives. To free Bergit as well, so that she may come home with me and be my wife. I promised my father I would do these things.”

“Do them then, wretch. Do them so that I may rise from this place and render you over my cooking fires.”

“You are no threat to me, giant. Nor will you be ever again.”

Ivar returned the heart to its box.

H?kon hopped closer, head cocked to the side. “What are you doing?”

“This was never the giant’s Story, H?kon. He was imprisoned by it.

He lost his wife to it. His own story ended long ago.”

The crow paced, considering this. Finally he said, “I don’t see how that matters. Did you tell him to free the other princes and their wives?”

“No.”

“What? Why not?”

Ivar turned where he sat, resting his back against the boat, looking out onto the candlelit water, the emptiness beyond it. “Crow, I don’t know what to do.”

H?kon leaped onto Ivar’s leg, took a step forward. He was rather a large bird, and Ivar felt some misgivings about provoking him. “You do what you are meant to do, my prince! What else? You release your brothers and fulfill your promise to your father. You marry the lovely Bergit, and you enjoy the vigor of youth. You return to the Story, as you’re meant to do! What is this ‘I don’t know what to do’ nonsense?

Preposterous is what. Do this, and I will carry news of it to your ? 278 ?

? Nathan Ballingrud ?

father, so that he may ready the castle for your return. I’m sure that that is my function here.”

“And what of Olga, my wise friend? Hm? What of my wife?”

“Well . . . ” The crow seemed genuinely at a loss for a moment. “She is old, my prince. Her remaining years are so few. Bergit is young and beautiful. Just like you now! Or at least she will be when you command the giant to release her. Think of the handsome children you will have. Think of the pride in your father’s eye.”

Ivar did think of those things, and they were good. He thought of the promise he made to his father, which he had neglected, to his shame. He thought of his brothers, their hearts cresting as they returned home with the women they would build families with, their eyes full of life’s coming bounties. And he thought of lovely Bergit, terrified and imprisoned, whose cleverness procured for him the information he needed to save her, and all the rest. It would be a sorry thing indeed to turn his back on them all.

But then at last I know her fate, the giant had said, with the sadness of long centuries alone in his voice. I am pleased that she is free of this fallen world.

Ivar closed the box’s lid. He pushed it out into the water, where it drifted some distance before it sank.

H?kon was speechless. It is difficult to look into a crow’s eye and read emotion there, but Ivar found this one to be quite expressive.

“I am quite fond of Olga,” Ivar said quietly. “I think I would miss her more than I could bear.”

“But the Story . . . oh, my prince . . . ”

“Crow, it is time to acquaint ourselves with endings.”

H?kon fulfilled his function after all. He carried Ivar’s message away from the church, where the warmth of summer was already giving way to a chilly wind, across the mountains to the neglected castle of his father. The castle, like the giant’s cottage, had fallen to time. A battlement here, a row of flagstones there, and a half-collapsed tower were all the remained of the once proud structure, scattered in the ? 279 ?