#hm. tried to hit a specific vibe with this one. don't know if i hit it

[thestuffedalligator]

The giant was in an iron cage that had once held an elephant in the menagerie.

Here in the dungeons, it was still too small for it to sit up in. It was lying on its side, knees drawn up to its chest, facing the opposite wall.

Gretta had been forbidden to see it. Well, no, that wasn’t right – nobody had even told Gretta that it was here. Her sisters and the staff of the castle had apparently been expressly forbidden to tell her, but Margit had a soft heart and told her the night before that they had finally caught the giant.

It stung that even her little sister had been told and that she hadn’t.

She didn’t sleep after that, and she spent the long morning looking for an opportunity to slip away. Now in the gloom of the dungeon, she stood in the entranceway and watched the slow rise and fall of the giant’s breathing.

She could feel the heart in her chest beating, a quick thud-dump, thud-dump, thud-dump that shook her whole body. Once upon a time the giant was a menace that had pillaged and ransacked the whole western coast of the kingdom. It was a story her mother had told her and her sisters and had made Margit burst into tears in the middle of the night–

“I know that heartbeat.”

Gretta froze. The words had been slow, and low, and had made pebbles on the stone floor shiver.

Chains started to jingle together. “That is a heart I’ve not heard beat in three long years,” the giant said as it started to turn in its cage. “I’d know it anywhere.”

The giant settled on its other side. In the low glow of the dungeon’s torches, its grin gleamed like rubies.

“Hello again,” the giant rumbled. “Do you remember me?”

Gretta swallowed. She remembered–

She remembered being lulled to sleep as the carriage rocked on the highland road. She remembered the door being pulled off its hinges with a shower of splinters. She remembered the grey hand as wide as a wagon wheel reaching out to her–

She remembered waking up with a long, delicate stitch along her sternum.

Her hand reached unthinking to feel the long scar under her shirt.

“Yes,” she said. “You’re the giant who put its heart in my chest.”

“I missed the sound of it. It’s beating fast, so very fast.” The ruby grin flashed again. “Are you frightened of me?”

Gretta stared. Then she set her shoulders and turned her chin up to a haughty angle. “I’m not frightened of an animal in a cage,” she said.

The grin vanished. “Fine,” it said. The chains rattled again as it turned to stare up at the ceiling.

“I want to know why you did it.”

There was a very long, thoughtful pause. For a moment she was worried it wasn’t going to speak.

“I’m sure you guessed,” it finally rumbled. “The queen did – she only caught me to confirm what she already knew. A giant cannot be killed while its heart is outside of its body.” Another sound of metal as it shrugged. “Other giants bury their hearts or hide them in an egg in a duck in a well in a church on an island. I wanted something more… certain.”

“And that’s why you chose me?”

The giant was silent. The heart in her chest continued to beat, thud-dump, thud-dump, thud-dump…

The giant sighed. “It was never meant to be you,” it said. “I meant to grab the seventh daughter.”

Gretta blinked. “Margit?”

“Oh yes. Sweet, simpering, insipid Margit, who still sings with the birds and cries over baby animals. The kingdom would’ve had a conniption over having to kill her to kill me – if they did, it would be such a heinous death that they would remember it for generations in song and story. And I would’ve gotten my immortality either way.

“Instead I got you.” The giant looked back at Gretta and gave her a look of such contempt she nearly reeled. “You,” the giant said again, and she had never heard the word said with more disgust. “Who cares about you.”

“Excuse me!”

“Sixth of seven daughters,” the giant said. “Not the eldest, not the youngest, not even a proper middle child. An extra. A spare. Worthless, except for maybe an interesting marriage.”

“You have no right to–”

“They’ll just kill you.”

The dungeon was suddenly deathly still.

“They won’t be happy about it,” the giant continued, turning to stare at the ceiling again. “They’ll be very somber and austere and I have no doubt that Margit will cry over you, as she does over all little animals about to die. But they’ll say that you’re more valuable dead than I am alive, and so for the sake of the kingdom you will be given the noble task of dying. And that will be the end of us both.”

Gretta opened her mouth. She closed her mouth. She opened her mouth again. “Is that it?! If you’re so sure, why don’t you – why don’t you break out of your chains? Ransack the castle? Run back to your mountain, do something?”

“What an odd thing to say,” the giant said. “You know that if I live, I can escape to murder and pillage and ransack again. Surely, any good princess would want only the best for their people.”

Gretta said nothing. The heart in her chest went thud-dump, thud-dump, thud-dump…

She could feel the giant’s grin. “The queen had me captured so she could confirm what she already knew,” it said. “It seems to me that you’re here to do something very similar.”

Halfway up the stairs from the dungeon, Gretta ran into her mother.

Gretta stared. Her mother blinked. Gretta considered her options.

She set her head at a haughty angle. “I know you caught it,” she said.

There was a very long, thoughtful pause.

“What did it tell you?” her mother asked.

Gretta looked at her mother. She looked at her mother’s hand on the hilt of her sword.

She felt the beat of her heart go thud-dump, thud-dump, thud-dump.

“Nothing I didn’t already know,” she said.

She ran away that night.