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.