Picking the Ballad's Bones (24 page)

Henrie didn't get the
time. The creature lumbered up to him like an elephant (though
Henrie had never seen an
elephant
,
Julianne supplied the image) and intoned in a rasping and
nasal voice flatter than a Bronx cheer, "Some meat, some meat, ye
King Henrie, some meat ye gie to me!"

And Henrie, who had had no
supper himself, lifted
the
spit with the by now rather charred deer on it
and was preparing to lay it on the table to slice her off a piece
when the deer, spit and all, was snatched from his hands and the
creature gobbled it down faster than Julianne could have eaten a
corn dog.

King Henrie's mind was
full of images of his arms and legs sticking out of that ugly mouth
as those great teeth broke his backbone. His head was light and his
knees felt like noodles.
"Offer her the
other deer,"
Julianne prompted, more
hesitantly this time.
"She's obviously
famished."
The deer wasn't enough,
however, for Henrie had no more than started toward it when a great
hand with every finger as big as Henrie's forearm reached down and
scooped up the deer and devoured it with horrible gnashings and
mucousy snufflings, the blood dripping down the monster's chin the
whole while.

When she had eaten the second deer,
the woman eyed Henrie indignantly again, as if he had only given
her two watercress sandwiches with the crusts cut off after she'd
been working on a chain gang for a week. "I've given you our catch
for the day," Henrie said. "What other meat's in this house, lady,
that ye're na welcome tee?"

"Kill your steed and serve him up to
me," the creature roared down at him, pointing to the
door.

Henrie's horse neighed and leaped,
pawing the air, his eyes wild with fright, sides heaving, and came
down again with a crack of bone against wood as his leg hit the
tree and he screamed again, falling to his knees. "My poor Berry,"
Henrie cried and rushed to the horse's side. The horse looked up at
him with a pitiful rolling eye.

Juli told him,
"I know the giant doesn't look it, but she is a
human being and your subject, Henrie. She is so huge, it must take
an enormous quantity of food to fill her. And the horse has broken
his leg. You don't have any way to fix it,
do you?"

"And besides she'll eat me
alive if I don't,"
Henrie said and with
tears, half of fear and half of remorse, raised his sword to do the
deed, lowered it, and raised it again.

"Come on, Henrie, I'll bet
you've hesitated less when you've had to kill a man,"
Julianne said. She was originally a farm girl and
had tended to be practical about animals when she wasn't being a
vegan. Henrie's arm fell and the light died in Berry's
eyes.

Henrie dragged the carcass
to the door and tried not to watch as the giantess plunged into the
horse's belly, eating everything but the skin and bones with
choking
gulps until, within a matter of
minutes, she was sitting back wiping gobbets of raw horse flesh
from her mouth
with
the back of her massive hand.

She opened her mouth and a
blast of charnel-house breath hit him like a blow.
"Maybe she's going to say thanks and
goodbye,"
Julianne suggested.

But she said, "Mair meat, mair meat,
ye King Henrie! Mair meat ye gie to me."

"But she's
eaten
it
all,"
Henrie groaned, to
himself as he thought, and Juli said,
"Then remind her of it, but be polite. She's probably had to
face a lot of rejection in her life."

So he said again, since he was too
frightened to think of new and original repartee, "And what meat's
i' this house, lady, that ye're na welcome tee?"

And she looked down at the two hounds
that slunk shivering and slavering on his heels so close they were
like to trip him and his heart sank as she said, "O ye do slay your
gude gray houndes and bring them a' to me."

"They've been with me since they were
puppies," Henrie said and Juli felt the love and fear pound him
like the tide. The dogs whined and cried piteously.

"If you don't kill them,
she may eat them alive, Henrie. I know it's not kind and the dogs
have been your friends for so many years and they love and trust
you and it's a
betrayal but see how scared
they are? You can't fight her
—
you shouldn't fight her. Do you
think her life has been as easy even as the lives of your dogs?
I'll bet big as she is she's like Frankenstein and can't show her
face for people trying to kill her. Dogs probably bite her and
chase her
everywhere. Henrie, how can you,
with all your privilege,
know what it's
like for her?"

He didn't think
anything else
but
he looked away as he plunged his knife into the
neck of one dog and then the other so quickly that they died
without another whine. Bitterly, he bowed and let the monster woman
scoop up first one and then the other of his faithful hunting dogs
and with much slurping and smacking of lips over bloodied fangs
destroy their bodies.

Julianne knew she was onto
something when she compared the woman to Frankenstein's monster,
even if Henrie didn't understand the allusion since Mary Shelley
wouldn't invent the monster for another several centuries. She had
some idea of how the monster woman must feel, ugly, stupid because
no one was brave enough or kind enough to teach her anything and
instead abandoned her totally to survive by her own devices. How
could such a woman be expected to know how Henrie felt about his
horse and dogs when she had probably never had a friend in her
life?

"Mair meat," the monster intoned.
"Mair meat, ye King Henrie, mair meat ye gie to me."

"No friends, eh?"
Henrie addressed the tail end of the thoughts of
Juli's that filtered to him.
"Then she may
as
well be mine since I've lost or been
forced to betray all of
my others."
But aloud he asked with some sarcasm but mostly
sadness, "And what's the meat in this house, lady, that I hae left
to gie?"

"O ye do fell your gay goshawks and
bring them a' to me."

There was only the one, up on the
rafters, but as Henrie called it, the monster snatched it out of
the air, breaking its neck and eating it, its tiny bones crunching
like popcorn and the bloody feathers floating gently down from her
mouth.

"Now,"
Henrie thought when she opened her mouth again and he saw
with horror the feathers sticking to her tether-stake teeth,
"I must slay her or be eaten myself for there's
no thing of flesh left in this house but me."

"You mustn't jump to
conclusions. Don't you want to hear what she has to
say?"

"In a word, no, but I have
no choice."

"Some drink, some drink, ye King
Henrie! Some drink ye gie to me!"

"That's not so
hard,"
Juli
said.

"I
suppose it isn't really, but I sair wanted to get
drunk,
should I survive this
experience,"
the King said,
"or else have something to marinate myself in
should she decide on me for the next course."
Aloud he said, "And what drink's i' this house, lady, that
ye're na welcome tee?

"O ye sew up your horse's hide and
bring a drink to me," the woman commanded.

"Sew!"
Henrie exclaimed.
"Sew! Who does she
think she is? Why can't she just drink it out of a barrel like any
ordinary giant? I can't sew!"

"Yes, you can,"
said Juli, who did know how.
"Use a piece of the bird bone and some of the sinews left on
the bone. All primitive people know about stuff like that."
But the job was slippery, sticky, and gruesome
and King Henrie's hands were cold and blue where they were not red
by the time he had the sack of bloody hide sewn up and passed a
pipe from the wine barrel into the skin for the misshapen woman to
drink from.

All of his pains were as unnoticed by
her as those he'd suffered from the loss of his horse, hounds, and
hawk. She gulped the wine down in one long chugalug, draining the
skin, and belched, wiping her great yawning gob, then said, "A bed,
a bed, ye King Henrie! A bed ye make to me!"

"There's not a bed
in
this hall,"
Henrie thought.
"We were
going to sleep on the rushes but they're all covered with blood and
manure and entrails now."

Aloud he said, "And what's the bed i'
this house, lady, that ye're na welcome tee?"

Though her eyes were crooked and red
and set in holes as black as mine pits, they evidently saw very
well that there was no regular bed to be had for she replied, "O ye
maun pu' the green heather, and make a bed to me."

"She may be friendless as
I seem to think but she's used to servants,"
Henrie thought grimly, but he braved the wind and pulled the
heather, great double armfuls of it and lugged it back indoors and
laid it in the least nasty corner by the fire, kicking aside the
fouled rushes and laying down half the ground cover from the forest
until he judged that it was enough for her.

"It's going to just smoosh
out as soon as she lies down, "
Julianne
told him.
"Don't you have any kind of a
coverlet or something to lay down for her? It's cold in here
too."

"Freezing to death seems
an easier way than what I've feared all night and if I don't
volunteer, the demon will
demand it
anyway,"
Henrie said, and spread his cloak
over the rushes and invited the beastly woman to lie
down.

She had no intention of letting him
off so easily however. He was not going to freeze after all. "Now
swear, now swear, ye King Henrie, to take me for your bride," she
said.

"Oh, God Forbid!" King
Henrie said aloud and Juli
hissed
silently,
"Henrie, for pity's sake, get a
grip on your
self"
and he cried, but silently as well,
'Whoa!
This is absolutely out of the
question! God forbid that e'er the like betide that that fiend from
hell should lay down beside me."

"She might stink and you
may catch a few bugs but she'd be pretty warm,"
Juli pointed out.
"Take the outside.
If you absolutely can't stand it or if you hear your friends
coming, you can always get up again."

"If I'm alive,"
he replied, but he lay down beside the monster,
who smiled cavernously, grunted, and, making the floor tremble
again, began to snore.

Henrie was so exhausted from all the
killing, hauling, sewing, fear, and just plain being depressed
about having to butcher his favorite animals that he didn't have
any more energy and fell into a deep sleep.

In his sleep he felt the sunlight
streaking through the open front door warm the side of his face,
but the silence was what finally woke him. No more wind howled
through the night, no more snores rumbled the earth. Instead, warm
sunlight and soft zephyr breezes tickled his whiskers and blew away
all of the stench of the night's activities, replacing it with the
fragrance of the fresh heather and wildflowers.

Moreover, the great weight beside him
had lifted. He turned, reluctantly, to see where the giantess was
and what she was up to. In her place, between himself and the wall,
lay the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

"I've outlasted the
nightmare and come into a dream,"
Henrie
said and Julianne said,
"Hmph! You
wouldn't have bitched and moaned so much about killing your horse
and dogs for her!"

"Aye, she's worth any
amount of trouble, "
Henrie said, and
aloud he said, clearing his throat, "Oh, weel is me. How lang will
this last wi' me?"

And the beauty at his side
rolled over and said in the monster's flat Bronx cheer voice, "E'en
till the day ye die. For I was witched to a ghastly shape all by my
stepdame's skill till I should meet with a courteous knight wad gie
me a' my will."

"Of course you were," Henrie said,
twirling a lock of her golden hair around his finger, and though he
thought she was very beautiful Julianne realized the girl just
looked like her embodied self on one of her better days.

Julianne wondered if it was time to
twist the ring yet but Henrie, remembering the monster shape,
didn't make any moves on the beautiful lady until his false friends
returned later in the day with reinforcements, to retrieve what was
left of his body as they thought.

Henrie and the girl told them what had
happened and he was promised the pick of the litter from Jamie
Lochlan's pregnant bitch and the best foal in Lord Buchan's stable,
and everyone remarked about how all a man really needed to survive
sometimes was enough gold to have the right things and enough
charity to give them away. And they leered at the girl standing by
Henrie's side. And she smiled back, linking her arm with that of
her true love, and delicately spat out the feather that still
lodged on the tip of her pointed rosy tongue.