The Giant Who Kept the Door

How it begins

The giant asked Wren to scratch his nose.

She had come to measure a door.

"With what?"

"The long branch."

The branch was a pine tree.

Wren looked at the giant's hands. One pressed against the mountain. The other held a door taller than the village church.

"Could you move one?"

"No."

"Why?"

The giant considered this for so long that a cloud crossed his face.

"I promised."

Wren set down her tools.

She made bells for ferries, farms and people who wanted strangers to announce themselves. The mountain council had hired her to cast a warning bell above the old door.

They had not mentioned a customer.

"What is your name?"

"Halm."

"What is behind the door, Halm?"

He looked embarrassed.

It was an alarming expression on a face large enough to contain a waterfall.

"I used to know."

She climbed onto a fallen rock and inspected the frame. Generations of travelers had carved warnings around it. Some were prayers. Some were advertisements for inns farther down the pass.

One very old inscription had been almost covered by a sign promising hot soup.

Wren scraped away the edge.

UNTIL THE STORM HAS PASSED.

The sky above them was clear.

"How long have you been here?"

Halm counted on fingers he could not move.

"Many winters."

Wren took a piece of cloth from her bag and tied it to her longest measuring pole.

"Lean down."

He lowered his head.

She scratched his nose.

For a moment, the mountain shook with relief.

Then, from the other side of the door, somebody knocked.

Three careful taps.

Halm closed his eyes.

"They've done that before."

"Have you answered?"

"I thought it would be disloyal."

Wren laid the measuring pole on the ground.

She had made bells all her life to tell people somebody was waiting.

For the first time, she wondered how often a warning was simply an unanswered introduction.