The Tollkeeper (Fairy Tales Behaving Badly) by Annie Eppa Page A

flowers, and welcomed his roughness, his girth. On some nights, their cries would echo through the camp. They clenched tightly around him, wailing their ecstasy while he pounded into their depths, spending on his cock many times before he himself was satisfied. He was not a gentle lover, and nobody expected him to be.
    Their king emerged the winner five years later, but there was little for soldiers to do in peacetime. The Mountain had left the army a corporal, and would have been given more honors by the king himself, but he had turned down his offer to remain and keep order. The Mountain had been very good at fighting, but the endless bloodshed he had witnessed in the last several years had soured his taste for the whole thing. He had done his part for king and kingdom, and now all he wanted was solace, and solitude.
    The king understood his need for wanderlust. He rewarded him with enough gold for a comfortable retirement, and promised him a small tract of land that he would set aside, for when the Mountain wished to settle down. “You are a strange one, Roland Trollsson,” he told the Mountain, “but I respect your decision, even envy you your freedom. Walk the world, my friend, and I hope somewhere in your travels you will find your peace.”
    And so the Mountain, the former soldier, once more became a stonemason, and traveled from city to city and village to village, where services of men like him were always needed. Now that he was a hero among the people, few turned him away. Those villages and small towns destroyed because of the war he now returned to, sought to rebuild. He was always good with his hands, and he could wield chisel and trowel with the same accuracy he had once wielded sword and shield, bow and arrow.
    He had first come across the stone bridge during his third year of stonemasonry, and in the following months where he would travel to and from the cities he would happen upon it many more times. It was a long bridge that had fallen into disrepair many years before, the locals said. There were several steps built into the ground beside it, leading down onto the banks of the large river. Here he found a small stone house, abandoned but intact.
    The closest village, Holden’s Cross, was a few miles away, and was too poor to afford its repairs, which was unfortunate. There were many villages here known for its small vineyards, which produced wine of limited quantity, but with first-class vintage. But they were surrounded on all sides by mountain ranges, and so trade between them and other cities had always been difficult. The easiest way would have been to travel past the bridge, into the town of Olyta, but they had no money, and the river was too swift and too wide to attempt. With no other alternatives they were forced to remain self-sufficient, or to barter among themselves. During years of famine, the Mountain knew, they would always be the first to suffer.
    This broken stone bridge pulled at him; the old stone house by the river attracted him. There was something about the mountains in the distance that gave him comfort, that there could be things more immense than he. Only here could he feel dwarfed, made to feel like he was the same as anyone else. Although he found very little work there, the Mountain constantly made excuses to stay longer than he needed to, attracted to the close-knit community that reminded him in many ways of the farm of his childhood. But the stone bridge offended him. Its brokenness did not belong.
    He took up his tools one day on a sudden whim, and began work on the bridge without telling anyone else. His efforts went unnoticed at first. As the bridge once more began to take shape, stone after stone finding their proper places, word began to spread inside the village, and even to a few others beyond.
    It took him the better part of the year to accomplish, alone, this monumental task. The king’s money had ensured he would not suffer for want, so he did not worry much about