by Darryl Fabia
Lastly, Krampus gave the men his gift of winter, for they were given nothing by the Yuletide King except the privilege of Krampus’s company. With shaggy claws clenching their throats, the men were dragged screaming into the darkness, where blood painted the once-white snow.
No one knows what became of them, whether they were eaten by fairies whom had briefly been goats, or eaten by Krampus who was once a goat. Or, perhaps their flesh became the flesh of Krampus, forced to accompany the Yuletide King and to visit children’s wrongs upon them, to punish them, to eat them, to threaten them with being stolen away forever … and sometimes, to give them a generous chance.
Delicacy for a Giant
In the time of giants, the wilderness days of old, Arrain lived all her childhood days on the Mammoth Coast. While other peoples migrated, chasing herds and being chased by the giant-kin, Arrain’s people built wooden homes by and on the water, eating fish most of time, and mammoth when the herds migrated over the beach twice a year. They scarcely saw a giant or fairy-kin, except perhaps a dane, a sea giant, some evenings under the full moon.
Arrain never wanted to leave, but then Jav, a hunter, came through with rare blades made from panther tusks, skins of the shaggy mammoths from the chilly north, and eyes of the wet creatures said to live in world’s deep darkness that gave waking dreams to whomever ate them. He had much to trade, and took supplies and tools, but what he wanted most was for Arrain to be his bride. Her domestic nature was unlike most women for her time, for she could sew and clean and cook, while most women did hunting along with the men except when with child. She was quite a prize for a man like Jav, and he was willing to pay generously to have her. Arrain’s father assented.
The wedding was a great celebration which Arrain endured dutifully. Jav was kind and attentive, and by the time he was ready to leave, the medicine woman Oda said Arrain had a child growing inside her. “It’s tiny yet, just a weak bit of life,” she told the young mother. “You take good care and come fetch me when the babe sees the world. Always remember the way home.”
Arrain promised she would. She and Jav walked south a long ways, through woods, hiding in thickets and in trees, and all the way he told her about living away from the coast. He taught her what was good to eat and what wasn’t, what places to sneak through and which to run though, and which of the fairy-kin would expect tribute.
After they reached the end of the woods, crossed a river, and passed through a meadow, they came to a cave hidden beneath a hill, a day and a night’s journey from the Mammoth Coast. Spears of wood and bone mounted the mouth of the cave like sharp teeth and stores of food, water, and animal furs were stowed in the very back. Jav warned Arrain of times when leaving the cave was safe and when wasn’t, and told her to never listen to voices that might call from outside, no matter how alluring, promising, or threatening. Sometimes he left for a week or so, returning with new food or furs, and she was always overjoyed to have him back, for at those times she could almost forget how much she missed home. They seldom laughed, but they loved, and for a time, they lived peacefully.
Then the baby was born.
Arrain’s mother had told her of the pain and bloody mess that was childbirth and she still wasn’t prepared, but at least she knew it was normal. For a day or so, she believed her son was weak only from his dramatic entry into the world. As the early days passed, she realized the child was sickly. He gasped for breath, seemed hurt when she picked him up, and ate barely anything, often spitting up his mother’s milk and the sweet fruit nectar she poured between his lips.
“Best not to name him,” Jav said sadly. “He likely won’t survive a week.”
To lose a firstborn was a bad omen among most peoples and Arrain would not surrender her child to Death so soon. “The medicine woman Oda will know how to help him.”
“The boy can’t leave the cave to see the witch. He cries at the light and shivers in the night’s breeze. He would bring down on us all kinds of beast, fairy, and giant.”
“Then you’ll have to visit her,” Arrain said, holding her husband’s hand. “I’ll give you more sons, but first we must save this one. Bring her back or bring back her wisdom of how to keep our firstborn.”
Jav looked out at the dangerous night beyond the firelight of the cave, seeming frustrated. “I’ll leave at dawn.” He had little to pack, but made sure to put what was valuable in a sack, not knowing what the medicine woman would demand of him in return for saving his son. “I’ll return soon. The Mammoth Coast is not far.”
Arrain waited by mouth of the cave during the day, and by the fire during the night, holding her sickly child to her breast. He cried for hours on end and slept fitfully the rest of the time. “Your father has reached Oda by now,” Arrain whispered at the second dawn. “Another morning and you’ll be well again.”
The day passed and the boy grew weaker, but his crying grew stronger. As the sun set in the distance, Arrain felt a shaking in the cave. A couple spears knocked loose from the cave mouth and the light vanished from outside before the night was supposed to come. Arrain clutched her baby close, watching warily. An enormous foot slammed down into the meadow outside, shaking the cave, and an enormous voice followed.
“I hear, beneath me, a fresh babe’s cry. My belly rumbles the question, where can I find this delicious child?”
Arrain said nothing, even holding her breath, but the nameless boy whimpered and screamed.
A great eye filled the mouth of the cave and a giant’s nose rubbed the dirt. He was a giant of the burl kin—thick-muscled, stubby-horned, stocky compared to other kinds of giants—and the way drool pooled in the dirt around the cave’s spears said he was a hungry burl. “Long ago, my brothers and kin would say, Bomvr, the fresher the child, the better the taste. Let me crush him on my tongue and taste his sweet juices.” Arrain said nothing and the giant’s face left the cave mouth. “My belly rumbles to know, what are you waiting for?”
“I am waiting for my husband,” Arrain said softly. “He’s a great, dangerous hunter.”
Bomvr the burl giant sat heavily in the meadow. “Then I will wait as well.”
Arrain watched the woods past the giant’s rump and feet for any sign of Jav. Her husband would see the creature before he reached the clearing in sight of the cave, and she hoped he had some hunting secret in the back of his mind for killing a giant or tricking it away. Even if he could distract the monster and run, Arrain would have to leave the baby behind—his cries upon leaving the cave would draw the giant’s attention.
Dawn came and there was no sign of Jav, but the giant remained outside and the baby went on crying. “My belly rumbles with every whimper and squeal,” Bomvr said in the mid-morning. “My belly rumbles like the child’s temper,” he said in the afternoon. “My belly knows you can fill your belly with another once you’ve filled mine,” he said in the evening.
In the night, he leaned close to the cave again. “My belly is losing patience. Let him out to me by morning or I will break this hill.”
Arrain was weary by then. She normally refilled Jav’s food stores, gathering fruits and nuts out in the wild, but she hadn’t left the cave since the baby’s birth and now she found her supplies running low. The baby still wouldn’t eat, yet she refused to give him up. “If I can only stall a little longer, your father will be back,” she whispered to her child. “Perhaps he’s only waiting for a chance to come to us. If we can get you well, we can leave and it won’t matter that the giant’s here.”
“Giant!” she called from behind the spears that guarded the cave. “I’ve decided you can have my baby, but unfortunately he’s sick. I can’t have you eating a sick child or he’ll taste sour, and maybe get you sick as well. Bring me Oda, the medicine woman from the Mammoth Coast. She’ll heal the little boy and we’ll prepare him as a tender treat for you. I swear on my child-giving belly, we won’t run away.”
Bomvr thought this sounded good and accepted Arrain’s oath, as promises were stronger in those
days. She told the giant the directions to her old home and sent him on his way. She couldn’t run off with the baby, at the risk of his dying in the outside weather, but she could leave for long enough to gather a little more food for herself. Bomvr’s steps reached much farther than hers and he wouldn’t take a whole day to travel. She hoped he would pass Jav on his way there and back, and maybe Jav would realize something was wrong at home. “But perhaps something has happened to you father,” Arrain told her nameless son, and she wondered why the giant had shown up when he did despite the baby’s having cried for so many days beforehand.
The giant soon returned in the daylight, carrying a little old woman in one hand. She showed no fear on her face as he released her at the mouth of the cave, and Arrain embraced her lovingly when they met for the first time in many months. “Oda, I’m so sorry to have had to see you this way,” Arrain said. “My child is too sick to take to you.”
“Yes, I heard,” Oda said.
“You saw Jav?” Arrain asked. “Where is he?”
“He’s in the forest to the west of here. I saw him a day or two ago, when he came to the village, demanding half his furs and trade items from your father. He said your father had earned half for Jav’s taking your maidenhead, but he wanted the rest returned for being traded a wife who can’t give him a proper, healthy son.”
Arrain’s heart nearly stopped. “All this time I’ve been waiting, running out of food, running low on sleep, losing hope for my poor baby while the giant slavers at my home, and he wasn’t coming back?”
“He went off into the wilds, to go on hunting as before,” Oda said. “He told us you’d be coming on your own soon, once the baby was strong enough to travel.”
“He knew the boy couldn’t leave,” Arrain said. “He knew I expected him to come back.” She wanted to rip at her skin, tear out her hair, run screaming after him for what he’d done, but instead she put her baby down gently and bowed at Oda’s feet. “With the right medicines, could you help my baby?”
“I can,” the old woman said. “But it will take until tomorrow morning, and then you’ve likely noticed the giant sitting outside, waiting to eat your offspring.”
“I’ll handle him, so long as you take care of the child,” Arrain said. She moved to the edge of the cave, where Bomvr waited like before. “Giant! Thank you for bringing the woman who will make the baby healthy, but now we need yellow fruits from a tall tree that grows in the west and a man in the same place who is the best at tendering this kind of baby. Again, I swear we won’t run away. Trust me, this will be best for your tongue.”
The giant agreed again, and after hearing Arrain describe Jav, he headed west. By the evening, he had returned with Arrain’s husband squirming in his hands and tossed the hunter into the cave. “This man wouldn’t hold still like the woman,” the giant said. “He is somewhat broken. I hope he’ll serve your purposes for bettering my meal nonetheless.”
“Yes, absolutely,” Arrain said, glaring at Jav.
Both of his legs seemed to bend the wrong way and one of his arms showed its bone through a tear in the skin. He was too shocked to speak when he saw Arrain’s face, which was fine, as she didn’t want to hear him. She stuffed a shred of mammoth skin deep into his mouth and pulled a spear from the ground. Normally, Jav would have been strong enough to snap the spear in half and easily overpower his wife, but he had only one good arm to him, and a swing of the spear’s shaft quickly broke one of its bones, rendering it useless like the other.
Jav’s screams muffled against the mammoth skin at the spear strike. Arrain dropped the spear and bent his ruined limbs, folding his legs and arms against his chest, curling him into a ball. “Hush, my baby,” Arrain said softly, in the same soothing tone she’d used on her infant son. It worked about as poorly on Jav, but she went on humming and cooing while Oda brought what Arrain needed. The disabled hunter looked to Oda with wild eyes, as if she’d help him, but the woman he’d called a witch only sneered and handed sinewy thread and a bone needle to Arrain.
“You’ve dishonored our people,” Oda said. “The punishment your wife gives is sanctified on the Mammoth Coast, for faithless husbands have been drowned in this manner.”
Arrain first sewed Jav’s lips together, so all his mumbling came out like a baby’s whimper in the night. After that, she tied his bent arms to the sides of his chest like a mantis, and then tied his calves to his thighs. Then Arrain shaved her husband’s face and wrapped him up tightly in the skin of a big cat.
“First the yellow fruits the giant has brought,” Arrain said, cutting rinds and stuffing the juicy fruits into the cat skin.
“Then the herbs that make men sleepy,” Oda said, pulling green and red leaves from a pouch. She often used them to calm her patients when one of her people needed treatment.
“Then sweet nuts, left over from our stores, and sweet nectars that were for my son.” Arrain roasted the nuts, wrapped them in the calming herbs, and stuffed them over the fruits. She then poured the nectar over Jav’s face, chest, and on the outside of the cat skin. “Now it’s all for my husband.”
Lastly, Arrain ran a torch around the outside of the bundle to bring the scents out in the smoke, and then dragged her husband by his skin blanket to the mouth of the cave. “Giant!” she shouted. “My baby is ready for eating, but you must eat him slowly, and you must now swear to me. I have had another child with the man you brought earlier. You may have the one who cried, but let me get away with the other. You won’t be disappointed—this one is delicious.”
“My rumbling belly swears, this is the only one of yours I will eat,” Bomvr said. He plucked up the bound, muffled Jav with two fingers and popped the bundle into his mouth, where his tongue slapped it around, soaking up the juices. Then he crushed Jav against the roof of his mouth, mixing blood with the nectar, and slowly sucked at the morsel until he felt it was nearly dry. His teeth crunched down when the meal at last seemed finished and he swallowed with a sigh of relief. “My belly is pleased.”
Arrain watched the giant sit down, his head wavering from side to side, and then finally he dropped on his back and began to snore loudly. “In the morning, we’ll leave with the baby,” she told Oda.
Oda worked through the night, rubbing the baby’s back with special herbs, making him drink a sour medicine, and hour by hour, he seemed to grow stronger. His breathing deepened, the paleness left his skin, and before dawn he was able to feed off his mother’s milk at last. Arrain couldn’t stop thanking Oda, promising her gifts and tribute when they returned to the Mammoth Coast.
“Let’s return home bthen,” the old woman said, and they snuck out of the cave beneath a red, brightening sky, carrying what little remained of Jav’s valuable furs.
They gave the meadow and woods a wide berth, not wishing to disturb the sleeping giant, yet as they were about to vanish over a hill, the big burl awakened and turned to Arrain.
“My belly says and my tongue agrees, that was the finest bite I’ve ever tasted, and I’ve never had so small a morsel fill me so greatly,” Bomvr bellowed. “Little woman, you must come back to my castle and feed me. It is a grander place than you’ve ever known. You and your new baby will always be safe and there is always more than enough food for a human’s appetite.” He scooped the young mother and her child into one hand, leaving Oda alone in the grass, and began stomping to the south.
Arrain held her child close to her chest, frightened that the giant had gone back on his word. “Your father married me for my food as well,” she said to her nameless child. “How will we escape this one?”
After three hours of travel, over mountains and lakes, through forests and valleys, Arrain saw the great black castle and realized there would be no escape. Bomvr built his fortress of stone between two mountains. Its doorway stood tall and wide enough for the giant to fit through, but it had a high step that no man on the floor could hope to leap over, and rainfall had made its sides too slick to climb.
Past a ruddy hallw
ay and a room of stone seats and tables, the giant brought Arrain to a room of fire pits and wooden pens for sheep of all sizes. “You’ll want for nothing,” Bomvr promised. “I will bring all you need to make my food the tastiest and my kin will envy me for having you. I will bring men if you please, your family, anything. I will be a good lord to you, sweet-maker.” The giant laughed loudly and his home quaked. “My belly rumbles with happiness.”
As the giant laughed, so did Arrain’s little boy, for the first time in his life. She hugged him to her chest, seeing the healthy color in his cheeks, and agreed to submit to Bomvr’s desires. She promised to cook for him and to make all as he desired so long as he brought her the right ingredients. Her little boy would be safe and healthy, and she need never give her heart to a giant, so there was no need to worry that he would break it in betrayal. “I will work for you, giant,” Arrain conceded.
“Excellent,” Bomvr said, grinning wickedly. “My belly must question—what is your skill in cooking up a man?”
“I have little experience, giant,” Arrain said. “But I’m a fast learner, I swear.”
Legs
Jektov shouldn’t have been alive. In a time when knights hunted witches in the woods and villages of the cold lands, or fought in the snow against invaders from the west, a man seemed useless when he didn’t have legs anymore. He might as well have come out of his mother saying, “Break my skull in with a stone.” He often watched the knights ride past, into the Whispering Woods in the south, or the Wicked Woods to the east, or the Whistling Woods of the north, on the hunt for witches, werewolves, and sometimes rusalki if any river with a history of death ran between the trees.