Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales

by Goss, Theodora

  “I cannot. You rendered me a service in another age, and I am bound to repay it.”

  Ivar sighed. He looked over his shoulder at his little house, at the farmland stretching around it beneath the piled snow. He had come here with Olga many years ago, when he had long surrendered hope of finding the church, leaving Norway for this new world with a tide of his own countrymen. They found in the deep winters a comforting echo of home. Even if the land looked nothing like it.

  He looked at the crow again. “Fine then. You’ve told me. Consider your debt repaid.”

  Håkon flared his feathers and jerked his head. He paced sideways along the fence, paced back again. “That’s not how it works. You know that.”

  Ivar put his own hands on the wooden fence. They were old, short-fingered, broad. He was still amazed to watch the fall of his own body. He had been young, raven-haired, and strong, for the length of an age and beyond. For as long as he’d stayed true to the Story.

  And then he’d come to America.

  “Look at you, Håkon. Still so young. Your feathers are as black as Odin’s eye. And I’ve grown old.”

  “You have abandoned the Story, and so you’ve aged. Everyone has aged, waiting for you to come back to it,” said the crow. “Only I have not, because only I’ve been faithful to the tale. Return to your purpose, Ivar.”

  The sun hovered low in the sky. The day wore thin. How wonderful would it be, he thought, to push it up into the sky again. He remembered the directions procured for him by the princess, who whispered flattering lies into the giant’s ear. “His heart is at the center of a lake, beneath a church, chained to the image of love.”

  Behind him Olga would be pouring the boiling water into the bath. A skirl of smoke lifted in lazy coils from the chimney, rising like a prayer into a low winter sky. He had farmed this land with her for forty years. Raised a daughter and a son with her. Together they were drifting into the strange waters of old age, and he had come to believe that they would reside together beneath the earth, in whatever realm waited for old Norwegians far from the path which God had set for them.

  He was reluctant to leave, but the pull of responsibility, and more than that the pull of the old Story, were impossible to resist. If he did not come back, he could at least find consolation in the knowledge that Olga would not have to live long in loneliness. The earth would call her soon.

  “Where is this church? I haven’t the means to return to the old country.”

  “The church is in the Story, my prince. There is no need to cross a sea. Only a need to listen.”

  As they walked away from Ivar’s house, into the field of snow, Håkon rode on the old man’s shoulder, his talons gripping hard the heavy winter coat, and told the Story.

  “Once there was a king with seven sons. He loved them so much that he could not bear to be out of their company. So when the time came for the sons to marry, he sent six out into the world to find seven wives, and kept the youngest at home, lest the loneliness for his children uncouple his soul from his body. The sons ranged across the land and had many adventures, at the end of which they found a palace with six beautiful princesses. After a period of courtship the sons set upon their journey home with their six beautiful wives. Transported as they were by love, they had forgotten their youngest brother.”

  Ivar grunted, but did not interrupt.

  “They came upon the house of a giant, which was a mountain fashioned into the likeness of a cottage. The icy peaks were its shingles, the untamed countryside its porch. The chimney which released the smoke of the great kitchen fire was lost in cloud. The sons were remorseful of their forgotten promise and sought to make amends by presenting their brother with the giant’s head as a trophy.”

  “A fine substitute for a woman’s love!” spat Ivar.

  “If you don’t mind,” said the crow.

  “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 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 Håkon, 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.” Håkon fluffed his feathers, allowing himself the indelicacy of a dramatic pause. “And then he lost his way.”

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

  Håkon 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 we
ll,” 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.

  Håkon leaped onto the altar and angled his head at the picture. His feet gripped and ungripped, repeatedly, like a nervous child. “A favorable omen,” he said. “The giant’s end is at hand.”

  “So it would seem.”

  Ivar turned away from the book, looking over the church’s interior. A strong wind wrestled the building, and the wood creaked under its pressure, seeming to list from side to side. It felt like being in the hold of a galley, and Ivar wondered what he might see if he opened the door to the outside world.

  “Who keeps this place, Håkon?”

  “It is the house of the Lord, Ivar. Surely that’s obvious.”

  “But who keeps it? Is Christ Himself dusting these shelves and lighting these candles? Does He heat soup over the fire? Will I find Him drowsing on a cot in the back?”

  The crow peered at him. “You must be careful of blasphemy, my prince. You yourself have been drowsing on that prairie in the new country. The church, like the giant in his cottage and like your father in his castle, is maintained by the Story. It was a fog of dust and spiders until you looked upon it from the hill.”

  Ivar sat in one of the pews, and settled into thought.

  “The Story awakens to you, and you to it. Look at yourself, Ivar. You’re young again.”

  Ivar remembered hiding behind one of the chair legs in the giant’s cottage, the terrible stench of cooking flesh filling his nose, the split carcass of a troll hanging from one of the rafters, its ribs pale and naked in its own exposed meat. The beautiful Bergit in her cage, dangling above the carnage on the table as the giant thrust his head suspiciously through the clotted smoke, filling his nostrils with it. “I smell a Christian’s blood,” it said. Its voice was old and deep, like something assembled from the rock which rooted the mountains to the earth.

  Bergit had said, “A magpie flew overhead, and dropped a bone down the chimney. It went into the pot, but the smell lingers.” Mollified, the giant had returned to its grisly work, and Ivar nearly sobbed in relief.

  In the church, now, he passed his hand over the smooth wood of the pew in front of him. “Why would the giant hide his heart here? In a church?”

  “I suppose because it’s the last place anyone would look,” said the crow.

  Ivar was unconvinced, but could think of nothing to say. “Well. Let’s find it, then.”

  There was only one room in the church, so it did not take long to discover the trap door behind the altar, with a ladder descending into a natural cavern. Ivar descended carefully while Håkon swooped past him and glided to a rest at the bottom. The cavern was cool, and its walls were rippled with the reflection of water. Ivar turned to see a vast lake, as black as a sky, stretching deeply into the distance. More candles were lit in small rows along its shore, illuminating a boat halfway pulled onto the sand. The crow hopped to a halt beside it.

  “It doesn’t make sense that it’s underground,” he said. “Why do you need me?”

  Ivar pushed the boat into the water and settled himself inside. There was an oar lying alone the bottom, and he picked it up. “I suppose it will become clear soon enough.”

  “Where are you rowing it to? I can’t see anything out there.”

  “Are you coming, crow?”

  With obvious reluctance, Håkon fluttered onto his shoulder. His talons gripped his perch more tightly than perhaps was necessary.

  Ivar steered them into the gloomy expanse, the small circle of candlelight receding behind them until it was only a tiny flare, a lonely flame of life in the silent, encompassing darkness. They moved through the cool air, the water trickling from the oar and lapping against the prow of the little boat. Håkon’s fear was strong, and he fluttered and clucked in growing agitation.

  “I think we’ve gone the wrong way,” he said.

  But Ivar had never felt stronger, or more confident in his purpose. He wanted to leap from the boat and swim the rest of the way, however far that might be, so great was his sense of strength, so great his need to spend it like an abundant coin. He wanted a foe whom he could break in his hands, he wanted a woman whose body he would open with his own. He was young and strong and the Story pulled him the way that God pulls the soul.

  “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. Håkon 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 Håkon 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?”

  “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.

  Håkon 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 Håkon, 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 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.

  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.