10) Frost

She wandered for days, following the moon and the sun and the moon, stopping to rest only when her body would go on no longer. Memory came upon her, and she cried and shivered and tried to lose her mind, hoping that insanity might be kinder than knowing. Her hair escaped its braids and her fine clothing became dirty. The little dog followed her, forlorn and worried, and stole eggs and bread for her when he could, but she refused it all, vomiting when she did make herself eat until finally she stopped trying. Sometimes, when she slept, she knew a sort of distant peace, the echo of a sweetness she had forgotten, but the nightmares always returned and she lived the violation far more often than its surcease.

The mountain came up in her line of sight one morning, blocking the dawn for a while, and she fixed it in her mind, thinking that the snows on its flanks might cool the burning in her blood. She walked until her slippers fell off in tatters, and her feet bled. She clutched the crimson cloak close to her body even when her fever raged high, and the little dog began hunting only for himself, always offering her the first part of the kill, but eating quickly when she did not respond to the gift of food. Finally he ceased even to hunt for his own supper, never leaving her for long as they began the long toil up the slopes of the mountain. Dawn came later and later, until the mountain finally filled almost half the sky and Bronwyn could climb no further.

Weeping without tears to shed, she collapsed, vaguely hoping that the snows would come soon. She thought that the salamander was wrong, and that perhaps she could die after all if she wished it hard enough.

She heard the trees whispering among themselves, and felt woody limbs curl around her, lifting her and the dog high into the air. She dreamed that the tree lifted its roots up like a lady’s skirts and made its way up the mountain. She dreamed of a time when a profound sweetness assured her that the wood would care for her if it could. And then she dreamed of nothing.

At long last, hands grasped her shoulders and she struck out blindly, remembering other hands that forced her down or gripped her cruelly. A voice spoke to her gently, a dark and rumbling voice that rolled over her like thunder, and raindrops fell on her cheeks and lips. She licked at the rain, and it was salty, tears to go with the voice, and she looked up at the shadow of the mountain and met the dark eyes of the Giant, reddened with emotion and sad compassion. He spoke to her again, but she did not understand anything but the little dog climbing over his trunk-like legs, looking up at their rescuer with pitiful hope that perhaps this stranger could make his mistress eat and grow strong again. Bronwyn was lifted like a babe and fainted before he took the first step.

The dog woke her when her mind finally stopped wandering in its painful limping circles. She smelled wood smoke, hickory and a bit of oak, and the burned feather smell of a partridge cooked too long. Rolling stiffly to her side, she saw a high-ceilinged round room, made of larger stones than she'd seen even at the palace, with tall wide windows that opened out into the sky. She lay between soft sheets in an enormous straw-tick bed. The dog gamboled around her in delight, and darted off the bed and across the room to the table and its sole occupant.

The Giant looked up at her, pausing in his writing for a moment, before he bent his head again and finished the line on the parchment. He capped the ink well and carefully set the quill aside.

"Are you hungry?" His voice was deep, the voice of mountains, and when he stood she could not help but cower down into the blankets, fear gripping her even as a small voice in her mind noted that he was merely very tall, not monstrously huge, and that she was a silly goose for fearing him.

"Just a little," she replied after a moment. She had no sense of fate in talking to him, no tug of purpose guiding her, only the empty gnawing in her belly.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"I have no little bowls or plates, miss, but I am carving them for you. For now will you make do with eating just a little from a large saucer?" He smiled at her kindly, pulling a tea-cup the size of a mixing bowl off a high shelf and spooning a bit of broth into it. The partridge began to scorch, and finally she could not stand it any longer, and wormed her way off the bed to move the spit off the fire.

She stood before him, dressed only in her shift, and fear washed over her again, gripping her heart until she could barely breathe. He was almost twice her height, and there were no salamanders here to save her; the fire was just fire. Her belly moved, and she looked down at herself, horrified. Her body had grown round with the child, prince of a man she hated, who invaded her even from beyond death. She began to shake and sat abruptly on the hearth.

The giant did not approach her, sensing her fear and perhaps a little of the rest of it. He slid the teacup across the hearth to her. "You will feel better if you eat," he rumbled softly, in tones one would use with a child or an injured animal. "Please eat, just a little, for the sake of this pup if not for yourself." The dog whined in response, wiggling himself under her arm. She smiled at the dog and her face felt stiff and cold, as if she had not smiled in eons. Carefully, she lifted the cup and sipped the broth. He sat again at the table, blowing on the pages of the book he'd been writing in. "Miss Bronwyn, it's not very good, I'm afraid. I know many things, but cooking is not one of those things." He was right. The broth was rich with juices, but had little flavor beyond the meat that had been boiled in it.

"How do you know my name? Do you know healing? Or midwifery?" She spoke in a rush, and he looked up at her again, his eyes cautious and too knowing.

"I heard of your need from a tinker who wrote me a letter. As for the rest, I know a bit of both, enough to know what you'd ask me next. I also know that if you are learned enough to ask me, you're also learned enough to know the babe is too far along to cure with herbs. Other means would likely kill you, also." The dog licked her ears away, his tongue cool against the memory of the tongues of salamanders.

"If only it would," she whispered. He did not reply, but watched her as she finished the broth in the cup. She was too weak to stand again, but did not remember how to ask for help. So she sat there, before his fire, watching the mundane flames flicker in their hungry consumption of the wood. After a long moment he lit a pipe, the sweet smelling tobacco lulling her and easing her fear a bit. Nothing in the palace smelled like the smoke from that pipe. The wood-pile was stacked on the other side of the hearth, the bites of the axe larger and deeper than any she'd ever seen.

"You should go back to bed," he said finally, the deepening shadows hailing the end of the day.

"He'll come for me," she said, the nightmare descending upon her as she gazed into the hearthfire.

"Miss, he may not come here. Please, look at me," his voice failed to rouse her. "Bronwyn," he said finally, firmly. She was startled into looking up at him again; he knelt close and she struggled to her feet, swaying as she tried to back away. He would hurt her so much -

"Nothing will harm you here, Bronwyn." She trembled and almost fell, and he reached out without thinking and caught her waist and back with a hand that reached almost all the way across her heavy body, but he was gentle, so very gentle. He froze and she thought of running away from him, of falling out of the cut glass windows in her palace room to find death in the abyss below the castle. "You are not in the castle any more, the King is dead, and you are safe, dear girl." Her vision blurred and she saw the giant's stone room and the walls of the castle at once, and blinked to see only the round room with sunset pouring golden and pink through the unglassed windows. He repeated the words of reassurance to her again and again as she struggled with the ghost of the palace, slowly relaxing against his chest as she sat across his lap. He stroked her hair and back and rocked her gently until she thought she might possibly begin to believe him.

At length he stood, tucking her into the broad bed. Almost exhausted beyond fear, she still crawled towards the wall as he stood, her body desperate to be as far away from him as she could. He did not pursue her, but pulled a stout rug from a cedar chest and spread it on the floor, lying down upon it. The dog jumped up onto the bed and curled into a small ball next to her head, groaning in ecstasy as his body settled into the straw mattress. He sighed and was quickly asleep.

Bronwyn listened to the breathing of the giant and her dog, waiting for the nightmare, for the sound of boot-heels on marble. The nightmare never came, and the only sounds were the breathing of her companions, the crackle of the fire, and the first notes of a nightingale's sonnet as sleep finally claimed her.