Don't Let the Fairies Eat You (12 page)

Hot breath brushed her hand once more, though Canja could barely feel anything now besides the pain. “Would you save your mother?” Krampus asked.

Canja swallowed heavily. “Yes,” she whimpered. Pointed teeth dug into the middle finger of her right hand, squeezing and pinching until the finger was torn free. Canja’s throat was too dry for much more crying or wailing, and bones crunched behind her.

Hot breath brushed the bleeding hand. “Would you save yourself?” Krampus asked.

Canja sobbed, dragging the words from her mouth, when another voice answered for her.

“That is enough, my servant,” bellowed a voice as mighty as the sky. “See to bestowing my gifts.”

Krampus backed away from Canja, bowed deeply, and he and the wagon vanished into the darkness from which they’d come.

A white-haired, white-bearded man of great height and grand attire, his white and green robes fitted with holly and mistletoe, knelt next to Canja. His gentle fingers loosened her bindings at a touch and his hand led her injured one into the snow, where the cold numbed the pain. “You are quite brave,” said the Yuletide King. “You will survive the wounds of this night.”

“What about my family?” Canja managed to ask through her sobs.

“They will survive as well, though they will sleep while your gift is given.” The Yuletide King reached into a great leather pack on his back and retrieved a small box wrapped in brown paper and red string, which he laid next to Canja. “When the morning comes, you may open this. Be well, my child. All is forgiven.”

The king kissed Canja’s forehead and his whiskers tickled enough that she laughed like the pain was gone, as if her seven digits were still part of ten. Peacefulness and warmth overtook her for a time as the Yuletide King went on his way, and soon too did Krampus.

But first, Krampus did as his king instructed and went where his king had instructed, as if he was still a goat carrying the king’s person and presents. He emerged from the darkness in Canja’s kitchen, where the two vagrants remained, plundering cupboards and store-boxes alike, devouring all they touched like a cloud of locusts. Chicken skin, bread crumbs, and bits of turnip dribbled from their lips as their grubby fingers rummaged.

“Think I might have had my fill,” said one. “Might be a good time for fun.”

“Yes,” Krampus hissed.

The two men drew their daggers, because many men think a man’s weapons will protect him against forces of the wild. They dug into Krampus’s flesh as if he was still a goat, and his flesh ate the daggers in the way that darkness devours anything that isn’t light. Then Krampus’s teeth and claws and darkness dug into the men, rummaging through their bellies, where the family’s meal was found. At once, all was replaced in the cupboards and store-boxes, in dishes and on countertops, as if none of the food had ever been touched. Then the wounds the men had given to the family by club, rope, and fear were returned to them, stripped from Papa and Tanya’s heads and lashed onto the men’s now-bloody scalps.

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.

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?”