My name is Fiona Novak and I’m the hereditary proprietor of a large plot of woodland. I’m not a first time poster— around this same time last year, I uploaded several retellings of the happenings around my forest. If you want to get to know me and my family, it’d be a good place to begin.
If you were around the first time, it’s very nice to see you again. I was planning on giving you an update sooner, but life got in the way and then I just happened to be pregnant, and… well.
Last year, I had some issues with wannabe cryptid hunters visiting and dying in my woods. I’m glad to report that this hasn’t been a problem since.
Nowadays, my household consists of me and my little brother Casimir. He’s doing quite well, though he’s not around right now— he’s currently traveling, making amends for some things he’s done in the past. More on that later. There’s also my boyfriend, Jacek Hettmann. He grew up in a black mill, then he became the Devil’s valet but recently fell from grace a bit due to his involvement with me. Long story. Jacek stays over a lot, though he still needs to work so he’ll be gone for a couple days at a time. That’s good, actually. It’s given us time to adjust to one another.
I also normally have an eldritch entity lying dormant in my body. We call it the Evening Redness. I loaned it to Casimir because I was hoping it might protect him on his trips for the time being. I’ve gotten so used to having it with me that I feel quite empty without it. Vulnerable, even.
Of course, I cannot omit the aforementioned newest member of my family. My son, Anton, or Tosha, as I call him. He was born in October, after making me miserable for nine months. My sisters both have kids already, and they told me I was going to forget all about the pain, but I haven’t yet. I’ve actually been having nightmares about being back in the delivery room, so, uh… that can’t be good.
Aside from that, Tosha’s alright. No discernible personality, but I suppose it’s too early for that. He’s developing surprisingly fast. I read that babies only start crawling about six months in, but Tosha’s recently started dragging himself around on his belly and he’s making progress towards pushing himself up onto his hands and knees. He’s a lot stronger than he ought to be. I dread the day he starts teething.
So this happened while I was home alone with my son. Gus, the one employee I didn’t let go, stopped by the house that afternoon before going back to making his rounds on the property. I spent the day reading to Tosha— mostly fairy tales. Not the clean versions, of course; the boy needs to be raised right. I’m hoping to introduce him to the intricacies of the supernatural as organically as possible. He should not be confused about his home or his own nature later on. To that end, I’ve dug up all the books my mother read to me when I was small.
I was sitting in the living room with Tosha on the couch in front of me, and I was reading the fairy tale where a man throws a knife into a tornado to catch a dancing demon. It was already dark outside, and the snow was falling from the sky in thick, wet flakes. The frost had painted floral patterns on the windows, and the fireplace was quietly crackling behind me. Once I had concluded my narration, I set the book aside, rather proud of my performance.
“Any questions?” I asked my son, but he only stared back at me
“Moral of the story, don’t be greedy and also don’t mess with things you don’t understand.” I patted his little belly. “Mommy doesn’t always practice what she preaches.”
Tosha grinned.
I knew he didn’t understand a word I was saying, but sometimes, it certainly felt that way. My son’s smile has a strange way of cheering me up. Probably just some sort of animal instinct, but it’s nice even so. I gave him another pat, then stood up to grab the cup of tea. I’d only been gone for twenty seconds, but when I came back, Tosha had turned to stare out the window with an unsettling intensity.
“What’s up?” I asked, following his gaze.
Anton looked back at me with wide eyes, his mouth slightly agape. He let out a soft “guh”-sound that I couldn’t decipher, so I sat down again. I took a sip of steaming tea before placing the cup on the TV table in front of us. “Wanna hear some more stories?” I picked up a different book, one with Norse tales. I hadn’t opened that particular one since I was a young girl, so I was surprised when I found several loose sheets of paper tumbling out. “Hold up,” I told Anton as I began leafing through them.
They were all drawings, images of various creatures sketched in fine lines. I recognized the Yule Lads— Spoonlicker, Doorslammer, and the others. Next, my eyes landed on the horrid grimace of their mother. Gryla, the child-stealing giantess. I hastened to shove the picture back where I couldn’t see it. Why would my mother draw her? And when? Had she made this sketch before or after her youngest was torn apart by that monster?
My chest throbbed with a dull, half-forgotten pain.
Marian.
I had only been a small girl when I saw the revolting old crone hold my kid brother’s severed head by her clawed, crooked fingers. The memory is still fresh in my mind. I don’t think the vision will ever be gone. Gryla remains a terror of my childhood.
A little gluggering noise from Tosha pulled me back into the present. I gave him a half-hearted smile which he reciprocated, making my stomach twist with that same soupy, affectionate warmth. “Look.” I held up the slightly less terrifying sketch of the Spoonlicker. “That’s one of the Yule Lads, see? We might catch a glimpse of him or a brother of his one of these days.”
Tosha looked up at the picture with wide, uncomprehending eyes.
“Yeah, this is my first time seeing this, too. I knew your grandma liked to draw but…” I glanced over the assortment of papers before me.
Tosha flopped over, wriggling closer to the TV table. I stopped him short of falling off the couch. “You want to look at the others?” One by one, I held out the sketches of the other Yule Lads for him to see. “They might come by this time of year. They fool around in people’s homes and stables, steal food, slam the doors, mess with the livestock… They’re not from here, mind. I don’t know how they can travel between continents, but I’m guessing since they’re not human, they can go anywhere they please.”
The sound of snow crunching outside caught my attention. Like footsteps drawing near.
“Jacek?” I called out.
No answer. No key turning inside the lock.
Why was I hearing these footsteps at all? For that kind of noise to pass through the walls, they had to be… incredibly heavy. I slowly rose to my feet, knees quivering. I must have already had some kind of clue, a sneaking suspicion, for my throat was too tight and my eyes felt dry. I motioned for Tosha to stay put, which he likely didn’t understand.
I made my way over to the window to peer outside into the evening gloom. The fresh snow had settled on the meadow, feeding the already thick layer from the day before. The patio stairs, the grass, the treetops— everything was blanketed in white. And there, in front of the porch, illuminated by the dim lanterns decorating the handrail, I spotted footprints in the snow.
They were big.
My heart was pounding. In the back of my head, the memory of my younger self inching towards my little brother’s room in the darkness played like a movie. I pressed my eyes shut, forcing myself to take several slow, cleansing breaths. The image of little Marian’s headless corpse faded from my mind, and the panic subsided. Normally, the Evening Redness would talk me through such an anxiety attack, but it wasn’t with me. I shot a glance at Anton. He was right where I’d left him, drooling on the sketch of the Spoonlicker. I placed him in the little playpen in the corner of the room.
“Just give me a second,” I whispered to him, faking a smile. He mirrored the expression, pawing at the light green sheet of his pen’s mattress. Oh, blissful ignorance.
I rushed to lock the back door and all the windows, then sprinted up the stairs to do the same on the upper floors. I was quite breathless when I returned to the living room. My stomach sank when I saw the look on my baby’s face. Tosha was cowering in his crib, eyes locked on the window across from him, the one facing the porch. I leaped over to it, but when I looked through, I couldn’t see a thing. After reassuring myself that the front door was firmly shut and had all of its locks in place, I plopped down on the couch, letting out a sigh that had all the air escaping from my body. I grabbed my cup of (by now cooler) tea from the TV table and chugged it right down. It soothed me, and it gave my shaking fingers something to hold onto.
I reached for my cell phone and punched in Gus’s number. He picked up almost immediately.
“Can you come round to the house, please?” My voice came out, more shrill than anticipated.
“Is something the matter?”
“Yeah, I-I think so. There might be… there might be someone here. Something.”
“Something bad? Uh… worse, I mean?”
“Yes. Just, please, come to the house, but be careful. If you see it skulking around here, stay far away. Don’t let it see you. Text or call me when you’re close so I know it’s you.”
“What do I do if I see it?”
“Hide.” I paused. “If you can, get… get Aleksei.”
“You want me to bring the Leshy?”
“If at all possible.”
“Got it. But it might take a while. I’m on the other side of the lake right now.”
Damnit. That’d be a good twenty minutes.
“Be safe,” I breathed, ending the call. Half an hour. I set aside my phone, picked it up again, and called Jacek. No answer.
Okay. No biggie. I knew he’d traveled to another time zone to stop a secretly devil-worshiping politician from getting assassinated, so he was probably either asleep or elbow-deep in blood. I didn’t need him anyhow. I could confront the fears of my youth on my own well enough.
Tosha started making distressed noises, so I picked him up for a cuddle. He kept eying the papers on the coffee table, so I showed him the pictures again, this time not omitting the drawing of Gryla. Seeing the uncannily accurate likeness of the giantess staring back at me made me sick to my stomach, but the effects it had on my son were even more intense.
Anton immediately started crying, and then, confirming my worst suspicions, he lifted his tiny little hand and pointed at the window. If I hadn’t been so terrified, I would have marveled at how intelligent my baby was, warning me like that.
“Did you see her?” I asked him, lifting him up so we were face to face. “Did you see her?”
No response, of course not, but there was something affirmative in his expression. Maybe I was just imagining it, I can’t really describe it, but once again, I got the impression that this kid was much smarter than he ought to be. But there were more pressing matters at hand.
“Okay. We’ll get through this, Tosha, alright? I swear we will.” I gave him a soft kiss on the cheek. “Nothing’s gonna happen to you.”
The words had barely left my mouth when I heard three long, heavy knocks on my front door. I stood up, emitting a shaky breath. Gus hadn’t texted me yet— this was not him.
She just had to get confrontational while I was still by myself, didn’t she. I wondered if she knew. Wondered if she remembered me.
After placing Anton in his playpen, safely out of sight from the entrance, I stepped up to the door and placed my ear against it. I could hear slow, rattling breaths coming from outside. Then, a voice.
“Are you home, good lady?”
I recoiled in terror. Her voice was just as grating and awful as I remembered. I stood up on my tiptoes to get a look through the peephole. I had known full-well what would await behind it, but when I saw her, my heart stopped nevertheless. Her face, warped by the door viewer, looked even more horrifying. She had pushed her pasty, revolting visage all the way up to her side of the viewer, like she was trying to peek in at me. Her long tongue was lolling out, repeatedly licking her wide, cracked lips— she was visibly salivating. Her bulging, bloodshot eyes burned with hunger.
“I can smell your sweet flesh, good lady. And the little morsel inside.”
My throat had gone painfully dry. My mind raced as I thought feverishly of something to say. Finally, I choked out, “Get lost!” What was meant as a command sounded flimsy and wavering. “You are not welcome here, and I will not feed you!” I added, a bit more firmly.
“I will only take the morsel. I swear.”
“You will not take anything, in fact, you’re going to fuck off right back to where you came from!”
“My dear lady, please reconsider! Oh, if you knew how my belly aches… If you knew how wonderful he smells…”
Marian.
“FUCK OFF!” I barked, tears welling up in my eyes. Tosha had started crying behind me, and I had to yell to drown him out. “Stay away from my son or I swear I’ll—”
“You’ll what, madam?” Gryla’s voice had lost her smarmy undertone. “I could cut your meat to ribbons and lick the skin off your body like sugared cream. Perhaps I’ll sever your head and take it home to cook in a stew. I might pop both of those lovely little eyes. Would you rather that happen than me swallowing the babe in just a single gulp? He would hardly feel a thing.”
I let out a cry of wrath and anguish.
“Please be sensible, dear lady. I only want the morsel. We need not fight. I need not tear down your door. But I will if I have to.”
I was about to scream at her again when I realized that Tosha had abruptly stopped his weeping. I snapped my head around, finding him sitting upright in his pen, an out-of-place smile on his bubbly round face. I frowned, then glanced over at my cell phone which was still resting on the coffee table. Even from where I was standing, I could see the screen was lighting up with several texts. My chest felt light and steel-strong at the same time. “Just you wait until my son’s father comes home,” I said through the door.
Before she could answer, we both heard it.
A roar, so loud and guttural that it echoed across the meadow. I jumped over to the window, pressing my nose up to the cool glass just in time to see an enormous figure barreling towards the house from the forest’s edge. Gryla’s hunched over form shifted away from my door as she turned around. She seemed to be considering what to do, but as the massive, arboreal beast with the majestic antlers, bark skin and threateningly lowered snout came bounding towards her, she appeared to settle on retreat. Before my very eyes, the old giantess disappeared, vanishing into thin air without leaving a single trace.
The Leshy came to a skittering halt just shy of my porch. He reared his gigantic, deer-like head, emitting another furious roar. I unlocked the door with trembling fingers before grabbing Anton from his pen. When I stepped outside, Aleksei was waiting at a respectful distance from the entrance. Now in his human form, he still stood imposing and proud, but decidedly less terrifying. He was clad in fur, and his labored panting sent crisp white clouds rising into the chilly winter air. Beneath his full brown beard, his face was flushed red.
“You really came running.”
“Of course I did,” he replied in-between gasps for breath.
“Thank you, Lyosha.”
“Don’t call me that.” He didn’t sound like he meant it. His gaze flitted down to the baby. “There’s the heir,” he said, the hint of a smile ghosting over his face. “Hello, Anton.”
“For your information, I wouldn’t think you any less lordly if you talked sweeter to him.”
Aleksei bent down to get on eye level with the child in my arms. He tried— tried— to speak in a soft voice this time. “Hello, Tosha. Baby-heir.” He straightened up, tilting his head at me. “Better?”
I laughed, then jutted my chin at the open door. “Let’s go inside. It’s so cold out here.”
“The cold doesn’t bother him, Fiona. You know that, right?”
“It bothers me.”
“That’s new.”
“Yeah, well, I popped this kid out just a couple months ago and I’m feeling precious, so either you come inside or we’ll be talking through the window from now on.” I glared and he raised his hands in submission, trailing after me as I headed back inside.
We sat down on the sofa and I handed Tosha to him. He pressed the tiny baby to the broad expanse of his chest, meeting his watery, round-eyed gaze with something akin to an empathetic pout. There was trust in the way Anton nestled into Aleksei’s big arms.
“Smart little soul,” the Leshy said, noting my expression. “Knows his blood.”
“That he does,” I replied, hands folded in my lap.
“You must be shaken.”
“That… was Gryla. She’s been here before. Over twenty years ago. And she ate my youngest brother.” It was hard to speak through the lump in my throat. “I would have fought to the last breath for our child, Aleksei, I swear. But I can’t do that sort of thing on my own right now. I shouldn’t have sent the boys away. It’s left me unprotected, I realize that now…”
“I’m here.”
“You wouldn’t… stay, would you? It’d only be until Jacek’s returned. Or Cas.”
“Fiona, I will stay for as long as you want me to.”
My shoulders slumped as I let out a deep sigh. “Thank you.”
Aleksei glanced at the closed door. “Your guard will be on his way to us, as well. When he found me and told me that the crone was here, I didn’t wait up for him, of course.”
“It’s good that you didn’t.”
“I shall let him in when he knocks.” Aleksei regarded me with a raised brow. “I would have you in bed, Fiona.”
“I told you we can’t do that again; Jacek would—”
“I meant, I would have you get some sleep.”
“You phrased that weird on purpose!”
“Wanted to see what you’d say.” He beamed at me, clearly pleased with himself. “Go rest.”
“I thought we were past you ordering me around.”
“Why would you think that? Go already. You look spent.”
“I feel it, too. But I’ll, uh… I’ll sleep here on the couch, if that’s okay.”
“Please, it’s your home; do as you will. But yes, I’m fine with you sleeping beside me. You can put your little feet in my lap, if you want. Although… turn on that box with the moving pictures for me first, would you?”
I said sure and got the TV running before draping myself over the sofa and allowing for my eyes to fall shut. When I woke up, Aleksei was gone and Gus was keeping watch in a chair by the window.
So my baby almost got eaten by an ancient giantess. How’d your Yuletide go?