Chapter Text
It was a dark and stormy night. Again.
Outside the cottage, the river splashed with the sound of the falling rain.
“Once upon a time,” said Mel, “there lived a stonemason’s daughter called Katherine who was as beautiful as the moon. And though she was only little, gang, she was very brave. And what she liked to do was fight the Patriarchy.”
“What’s a Patriarchy?” asked Susan. Susan was a child as beautiful as sunlight, and pure of heart, which everyone agreed would serve her well in life, and in no way be a hindrance to achieving her career goals.
“Oh, it’s a terrible monster with many heads. Anyway–”
“Is it big?”
“It’s very big.”
“Does it breathe fire?” asked Sophie. Sophie was as beautiful as birdsong. She was also very quick and clever, which could be quite annoying for adults.
“It eats people,” said Hugh, slightly surprising everyone else. They'd all thought that he had fallen asleep in his chair. “It eats all sorts of people.”
“Wow,” said Susan, greatly impressed.
“And so Katherine went deep into the forest, to the court of the Giant King–”
“Giant King, as in he was a giant? Or king of the giants? Or just a really big normal king?”
“–because this forest was where the Patriarchy lived, kept close by the Giant King’s faithful servant, to test the court champions.”
Susan frowned. “The Giant King is like the Taskmaster, then? He has an Assistant?”
Mel waggled her eyebrows enigmatically.
“The Giant King is the Taskmaster,” Sue explained. “Same story. But Mel’s version is better. Listen.”
“Little Alex says the Taskmaster isn’t a story,” said Sophie. Little Alex was Sophie’s friend: everybody called him Little Alex, and nobody seemed to know why, because he was some years older than the girls and already quite tall. “He says it’s heretical to call things stories when they’re true. And heretical means… not good.”
“Oh, don’t listen to Little Alex,” said Sue.
“His mother is very devout,” said Mel.
“Annoying little prick, your mate, isn’t he?” said Hugh.
“Anyway,” continued Mel – who was used to having to tell stories in this manner – unruffled, “Katherine went to undertake the challenges of the Giant King, hoping to show herself worthy of fighting the Patriarchy. And when the time came that she proved herself, she went to fight it, alongside a dwarf, a giant, a minstrel, and a fool. But the Giant King’s servant, though cunning, was careless, and having forgotten Katherine, placed a comma in her way.”
“What’s a comma?”
“It’s actually quite unclear.” Sue folded her legs and clasped her hands contemplatively over one knee. “It seems to have been some sort of magical boulder, or wall, that only affects women.”
“And when Katherine called out to tell everyone what had happened,” continued Mel, “the dwarf mocked her, and the fool and the minstrel said nothing. But when the giant heard Katherine, he moved the comma for her, and so together they fought, and the Patriarchy went limping off into the forest, and the Giant King’s servant was humiliated, and promised to change his ways.”
“So is the moral of this story that… giants are good?” asked Sophie.
“The moral of the story,” said Mel, “is that with brave hearts and good friends you can do anything!”
“The moral is about how incompetent the very powerful can be, surely?” asked Sue.
“The moral of the story,” said Hugh, “is that despite Katherine’s brave heart and good friend, the Patriarchy is still out there, limping through the forest. And it still eats people.”
And so saying, he smiled at the girls.
“Be careful out there, kids.”
* * *
On the night that Alex was born, a storm had raged, and it had not ceased raging. The crops had rotted in the fields, and the cows grown thin in their sheds. Even the ducks, people liked to say, had drowned that year.
Alex privately thought this unlikely. But he was now grown to a youth, and though the cows still grazed the damp meadows, and the yellow ducks splashed and quacked in the reeds, the rains had not yet stopped.
“Because you were born the night that the old Assistant passed,” his mother explained. “You don’t remember how the kingdom prospered, when the Taskmaster was pleased. The pebbles in the river were not black then, but gold. And the sun shone. And everybody laughed all day.”
“I do laugh all day, though,” said Alex, and was ignored.
A wealthy woman and a pious one, Alex’s mother went often to the church in the woods to offer the Taskmaster gifts. Shining red beads; a brace of pheasants; a silver necklace. Each time, for as long as Alex could remember, the priests had carried her gifts away into the sanctuary, only to return with full hands and puzzled faces.
“Thank you, madam,” they would say each time, returning the gifts with obvious reluctance. “But it seems you have something still more precious to offer.”
And they would walk home through the wet pine trees, and Alex’s mother would pace and pray and wonder what she could offer that was more valuable than silver.
And though all her gifts were turned away, yet the ships that brought her fruit and cloth were never shipwrecked by the storms, and her fields never flooded, and her sheep grew fat.
“You bring me luck,” she told Alex, watching him play by the river with Sophie and Susan, trying to put the most ducks in a basket whilst obtaining the fewest duck-bites. The game's scoring system was complex and obscure. He liked it very much. “Come with me again," said his mother, cajoling, "to the church in the pine wood. I have beautiful furs to offer.”
As he had already got eight bites on his arms, and one on his ear, and was losing badly besides, Alex left his friends and his game and went with her to the church.
"You are almost a man now," his mother told him, as they walked. "Some day soon you will be married."
"I'm not sure I want to be married," he said. And was ignored.
"A bride should be wise, and beautiful, and rich," she said. "But the last is the least important. So I would not forbid it, if you married Sophie."
"Sophie's only little," laughed Alex. "And a heretic."
His mother only smiled, and said nothing more.
When they entered the woods Alex saw a pine-cone, and tucked it into his pocket. And when they entered the church, the priest carried the beautiful furs away into the sanctuary, and then carried them back again.
“Thank you, madam,” he began to say: but Alex’s mother, ashamed, fled from the church.
“Thanks,” said Alex, taking back the furs. “I haven’t got anything else to offer. Only this, er, this slightly damp pine-cone, I suppose.”
But the priest took the pine-cone.
“Not for us to decide, is it?” he said cheerfully. “This bit is easy street.” And he took the pine-cone into the sanctuary.
And the church being warm and dry, and Alex’s feet being tired, and everywhere smelling sweetly of smoke, he sat down beneath the altar, and closed his eyes.
* * *
Alex dreamed that his head was beaten with rocks until it smashed: until the entire world, everything he had ever known, fell out at his feet, and became a tiny pine-cone, burning in a great fire.
He dreamed that he was as small as Tom Thumb, held in the palm of the hand of a giant, whose face was as vast and beautiful as the face of a great cliff.
Alex! said the giant. Where are you? I’ve been looking genuinely everywhere.
Well, not everywhere, Alex replied, happy and sleepy and warm, and not at all minding that his head was stoved in. I’m just in the church in the woods. And then he remembered the pine-cone. And I think I’ve just insulted the Taskmaster with my gift, and now He’s probably going to smite me.
I doubt it, said the giant, as though Alex had told a very funny joke. Alex, you silly boy, what have you done? Where are you?
But the giant’s voice and face grew faint, as though obscured in strange mists, and then he vanished altogether.
* * *
When Alex awoke, his back hurt from lying on the stone floor, but his head was whole, and he felt warmer and more content than ever before in his whole life.
“Very sorry to wake you!” chirped the priest. “But you fell asleep at the altar. Widely regarded as a bit of a no-no.”
Oh, thanks, said Alex, and his voice sounded strange to his own ears. And the pine-cone?
“Went down a treat, yeah. Well done!”
Alex carried the furs home through the forest, thinking about a pine-cone more precious than silver, and about his own very strange voice.
So absorbed was he in these thoughts, that he did not even notice that the rain had ceased.
But when he arrived home and called out to his mother, he thought he sounded just the same as he always had. And that night the rain began again.
* * *
“Oh!” said Mel. “Little Alex Horne is back!”
But when they let him in out of the rain, he stood before the hearth and said nothing.
“What do you want, then, Little Alex?” asked Sophie, folding her arms and glowering, which Alex understood to be the way that little girls said they were pleased to see you.
“I have some questions,” Alex told them, “that I, uh, can’t exactly ask my mother.”
“Oh,” said Hugh. “Don’t worry about that. It goes away eventually, you know. Just keep plenty of clean linens on hand.”
Alex turned red all the way to his ears.
“About the Taskmaster,” he clarified. Mel and Hugh and Sue all stared at the boy for a very long time.
“Well.” Sue waved a hand, inviting him to talk. “Yes. Ask away, Little Alex.”
“You promise not to tell?”
“Oh, we can’t promise, because we don’t know what it is yet,” said Mel, kindly.
“But we’re good people, as heretics go,” said Sue. “You can trust us.”
“I went to the church,” said Alex. “In the forest. And I put a pine-cone in my pocket, just a completely ordinary one, and when I arrived at the church, He accepted it as a gift.”
He waited for their response. But they waited also.
“He’s never accepted any of my mother’s gifts!” said Alex. “Not even her silver necklace. None of them were precious enough. Are they– are they magical pine-cones? In the forest?”
“Are they?” asked Susan, suddenly interested.
“No,” said Mel.
“The forest is only full of Patriarchy and wolves, Susan, you know that,” Sue added. Alex nodded.
“And I fell asleep in the church, and I dreamed that I saw the Ta– the Giant King,” he said. “And He held me in his hand like a thimble.”
It was for this reason that Alex had come to Mel. In none of the priests’ sermons was the Taskmaster a giant. Only Mel’s stories called Him the Giant King.
“Well, pet,” said Mel, “what did he say?”
“He asked where I was. That’s why I thought maybe– I mean, I thought He knew everything.”
“Oh, no. Not at all,” said Mel. "Not. At. All."
“That’s why he needs an Assistant,” added Hugh.
“Right. He did know my name, though,” said Alex, slowly. "How did He know that?"
“Oh. Oh, dear,” said Sue.
“It’ll be alright,” said Hugh.
“Thanks for the warning, though, Little Alex!” said Mel.
“What warning?” asked Alex. “What did the dream mean?”
But he was ignored.
* * *
Alex did not discover the meaning of his dream.
And he did not dream of the beautiful giant that night, or the next, and soon he had forgotten Him almost entirely.
* * *
Some months later, a great company of soldiers and priests dressed in fine red and gold rode through the village, with brass trumpets and bright banners that fluttered even in the rain. And they went down every street, knocking on every door.
“What do you think they're looking for?” Alex asked his mother.
“Oh, certainly for heretics,” said the pious woman.
“Why?” asked the boy.
“To put them to death, I should think,” said she. And upon hearing this Alex went as fast as he could to the river, to the cottage where the three heretics and the little girls lived.
But although he had been a hundred times to the cottage, he could not find it; and though he walked up and down the river bank all day, he could not spy it; and eventually darkness fell, and he went home to the sleeping village and to his mother, who scolded him for getting his clothes so wet.
“Did they find the heretics in the end, though?” he asked.
“They found nothing,” she said. “As they left, I heard one of the company remark that they left disappointed.”
The wind screamed and howled all night, and drove the slates from rooftops: but Alex, exhausted, slept soundly through.
* * *
The next day, he went down to the river again, and found the cottage just as it had always been, and rejoiced to see his friends safe and well.
“All thanks to your warning, Little Alex!” said Mel.
“What warning?” asked Alex, and was ignored.
So he went with Sophie and Susan to race little reed boats downriver. He had an idea about putting eggs in them that he wanted to try.