Never After

He pointed with a finger the size of a young tree. “Go there, Elinore the Younger. Go there and meet my cousin. Your death at my hands would have been quick. If you fail the next trial, your death will be slow and fulsome.”

She curtsied again. “I would rather die quickly, if it’s all the same to you, giant of the kind eyes. Could you not kill me now, and save me a slow and fulsome death?”

“No, I ca

She curtsied again, frowning. “My mother says that it is easier to be kind to begin with, than to apologize later.”

“Your mother is wise. Now go, while I keep the crowd occupied.”

Elinore looked back where he motioned, and saw that some of the young men, growing brave, had started on the bridge. They were armed with sword and shield. Apparently they had decided the giant could not be as fierce as first thought, if Elinore could pass it so easily.

Elinore went to the other side of the bridge, and the wooden door in the gate. The moment she was off the bridge, the giant charged the noble young men, screaming and sweeping them to their deaths with his great club.

Elinore knocked upon the huge wooden door in the stone gate, to the sound of screams and fighting. She could not fight a giant, or save anyone foolish enough to try. She could only go on.

The door opened, silently, on well-oiled hinges. At first she saw nothing but a stony passageway. Then there was movement at the far end of the hallway. Something shifted in the shadows. She would have said something huge, but she had just seen the giant, and so the ogre seemed almost small.

“Where’s your sword, girl?” the ogre cried with his mouth full of sharp fangs, tusks like the boar’s head that hung on her father’s study wall.

“I have no sword,” she said.

“Then where’s your ax?”

She frowned at the ogre. “I have no weapon.”

“Then it will be easy to kill you.”

She nodded. “I suppose it will be.”

The ogre ran at her, with an ax that was bright and looked sharp enough to cut stone. Elinore didn’t wait, but closed her eyes immediately. Somehow dying from a fall, or a club, had seemed less awful than being chopped about by an ax. She did not want to see it, and tried desperately not to wonder how much it would hurt.

She had her eyes closed for a very long time, but no ax came. She opened her eyes, and found herself staring into the hairy, warty chest of the ogre. His great, gleaming ax was limp by his side. He was staring at her, intently, out of eyes that were almost as blue as her own.

“Are you not afraid of me, girl?”

“Yes, I am,” she said.

“Then why do you not fight me, or scream?”

“I am no fighter, and if I am to die this day, I will die without screaming.”

He leaned forward with his tusks and teeth, and growled, “I can make you scream.”

“Yes, you can. I’m sure you can.”

“You say you are afraid, girl, but you do not act it.”

“I am Elinore the Younger, and I have come to rescue Prince True or die in the effort.”

The ogre gave a harsh snuff, and his breath was not pleasant, as if he’d eaten too much garlic for di

“You may pass me, Elinore the Younger. My aunt waits for you in the next room. I would have cut you up and eaten you for supper tomorrow. My aunt will eat you while you are still alive.” And he leaned in close to add menace to the threat.

Elinore felt her pulse in her throat, because being eaten alive sounded even more awful than being cut up by an ax and cooked later, or knocked off a bridge by a giant, but she couldn’t go back. She had to go forward. Surely, eventually, someone would kill her and it would be done.

She curtsied to the ogre. “Thank you, ogre. I hope you have a pleasant supper tomorrow, but I am glad it will not be me.”

“You will not be glad,” he called after her, “once you see my aunt.”

Elinore went to the end of the stone corridor, and found a much smaller door. She hesitated with her hand above the curved metal of the door handle. She really did not want to be eaten alive. That seemed a worse fate than marrying the Earl of Chillswoth; didn’t it?

She stood there so long that the ogre came at her back, and asked, “Why do you hesitate, girl?”

“I am afraid,” she answered simply; “I do not want to be eaten alive.”

“You can go back,” the ogre said. “As you passed me and my cousin the first time, you may pass the other way.”

She turned and looked at him, and she could not see that her eyes were very blue and very wide, and full of a trust that was rare in one her age. The ogre saw.

“I may truly leave, and you will not harm me?”

“I have said before, you have passed our tests. My cousin and I will not harm you now.”

“But your aunt, behind this door, may eat me alive,” Elinore said, and she did not try to keep the fear out of her voice.

The ogre nodded. “She will if you fail her test.” He touched her yellow cloak with one dirty finger. “Who dyed this cloth for you?”

“I dyed it myself, with the help of servants, but I gathered the herbs for the dye.”

Elinore wasn’t certain, but she thought the ogre smiled around his mouth full of tusks. “Go forward, girl, if you have the courage. Go back, if you have not, but whatever brought you to us is still waiting for you on the other side of the bridge.”

She nodded. “The Earl of Chillswoth,” she said.

“I do not know that name.”

“If I fail your aunt’s test, will she really, truly eat me alive?”

The ogre nodded. “She will. She has. She likes her meat fresh and wriggling.”

Elinore shuddered, and swallowed hard enough that it hurt her throat. Was marriage to the earl truly a fate worse than that?

She remembered his hands on her. The moment in the dance when he had not just brushed her breast, but held it, caressed it. Her father would have had any of the young nobles beaten for such liberties, or at least thrown out of the banquet. She remembered how her skin had crawled, and her very being had shrunk from the touch, and the look in his eyes. Was it a fate worse than death? Perhaps not, but Elinore had come to die rather than marry the earl. She would do it. Even if the death were horrible, it would last only moments, and then she would be free. Marriage to that man could last years. She shuddered again, but not from fear of what lay behind the door.

She wrapped her hand around the handle, and said, “Thank you, ogre. You have been kinder than I would have ever dreamed.”

“You are welcome, Elinore the Younger.”

She let go the door long enough to give him a curtsy; then she opened the door, and found herself in an empty stone room, where the only light was a great fireplace against the far wall.

She hesitated only a moment, then stepped through in her impractical dancing slippers. She closed the door firmly behind her, and faced the empty firelit room. Her moment of fear was past. She was calm again.

“Your nephew the ogre has sent me,” she said to the emptiness. “I await your test.”

“You sound very brave,” said a woman’s voice from the shadows.

Elinore swallowed hard again, and could not keep her pulse from racing, but she answered firm enough. She would die bravely for the song they would write about her. It would be a shame to have them write a laughing ballad like they had for the one princess who died screaming.

“I am not certain I am brave, but I am here for your test.” She peered into the shadows, trying to see the woman, or ogre, for there was no room for a giant.

There was a shape in the dimness, but it was not a woman’s shape. Elinore’s eyes could not make sense of it, at first; then the voice’s owner stepped into the firelight, and Elinore did scream. She clapped her hand over her mouth to hold in the sound, but never had she dreamt of anything like what stood before her. It was worth a scream, or two.