Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(92)

? The Giant in Repose ?

foliage like old teeth. The old king lived in the tower, where he rarely moved, except at night, when the moonlight would draw him to the window to watch for the return of his children.

This is how H?kon found him, his moon-kissed skull pale in the window, the cobwebs hanging from his bony shoulders like a grand cape. The crow landed on the sill beside the old king and looked thoughtfully at him, a few grey hairs still wreathed around his head, the black sockets of his eyes gazing emptily back. The crow was old himself now, the feathers around his beak thin and bedraggled, his gnarled feet scaly with age.

“My king,” said the crow. “I bring news of your sons.”

Upon hearing it, the king turned from the window for a final time and made his ponderous way across the room to a tumble of rocks, which, long ago, he had arranged into something approximating a throne. He reclined into it, hearing through the crow’s message the voice of his youngest son: the most precious, the last to go.

I am sorry, Father. I have failed you. I cannot come back, and now you must die alone. It is unforgivable. But know that you are loved, and honored still. Your grandchildren will know your name.

And the king died at last, the sorrow of his grievous loss unanswered, but with the timbre of his son’s voice to ferry him gently on.

Ivar did not look behind him as he left the church, nor did he think it was odd that the spring weather had abruptly given way to deep snow. The mountains and the fjords were gone. Before him was the austere beauty of the Minnesota plain, and there in the distance was his home, its little chimney unfurling smoke into the icy-starred twilight, while his fields slept beneath the snow until their season came upon them again.

His old joints creaked in the cold; the winter was going to be hard on him.

He opened the door and stamped the snow from his boots, slid the coat from his shoulders and set it on its hook. He passed a hand ? 280 ?

? Nathan Ballingrud ?

over his weathered face, rubbing warmth into his cheeks. There was a splash from the kitchen, and he entered it to see dear, round Olga, naked as a nymph, reclining in the tub with the steam rising around her as though she were taking her constitutional in some Icelandic spring.

“Horrible woman,” he said. “That was my bath.”

“The water was getting cold while you were out there chasing birds, you old fool. I wasn’t going to let it go to waste. Did you catch it?”

“I did. We had a wonderful conversation, and then I let it go.”

“One bird brain to another. It doesn’t surprise me one bit.”

“Ach,” he said. “Have you used up all the heat yet? By God, I need some heat.”

“As it happens, I’m about finished,” she said. She rose from the tub, this plump old woman, this mother to his children and companion of his life, glistening like some bright mineral wrested from the earth, steam rising from her wet body as though she were a creature of some fabulous mythology, filling his home with heat as the snow fell softly beyond the glass.

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Nathan Ballingrud is the author of North American Lake Monsters, from Small Beer Press. Several of his stories have been reprinted in Year’s Best anthologies, and “The Monsters of Heaven” won a Shirley Jackson Award. He’s worked as a bartender in New Orleans, a cook on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, and a waiter in a fancy restaurant.

Currently he lives in Asheville, NC, with his daughter, where he’s at work on his first novel. You can find him online at nathanballingrud.

wordpress.com.

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Author A. C. Wise grew up obsessively reading and re-reading fairy tales from a lovely phone book-sized and phone book-style compendium containing several volumes of Andrew Lang’s fairy tale series with appropriately color-coded pages. Ever since discovering Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s retold fairy tale anthologies, Wise has aspired to writing (or rewriting) fairy tales of her own.

Fairy tales are a gateway, they hint at larger possibilities and worlds begging to be explored. They are skeletons wanting skin. Why did the heroine/hero/witch/evil step-relation/magical talking animal real y take that course of action? Fairy tales, as brilliant as they are in their own right, are also fresh stories waiting to be told. “The Hush of Feathers, the Clamor of Wings,” was born of the desire to give a voice to the cursed birds of the original story, while suggesting that not all of them might be innocent victims.

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