The wealth of the mill brought comfort, but it could not bribe the Fates.
When Astrid lost their first child, the blood in the bedsheets broke something deep inside the Giant's mind. He wrapped the tiny, unformed life in linen. He walked out into the howling, blinding blizzard alone, carrying a shovel.
He dug the grave in the frozen, unyielding earth. His hands bled. Every strike of the shovel was a strike against his own failure. "I have the knowledge of a thousand years," he screamed in his mind. "I can bend the river! I can forge steel! Why couldn't I save my own blood?!"
He dropped to his knees in the snow. He needed Allah. He needed to pray. But the sky was completely grey. The stars were hidden. He was a million miles from home, and he had no idea which way Mecca was.
So, in the freezing wind, the 105-kilogram Giant turned to the North and bowed his head to the snow. Then he stood, turned to the East, and prayed again. Then the South. Then the West. He prayed in all four directions, his tears freezing into ice on his beard, hoping that at least one of his whispers would reach the Creator.
The guilt was suffocating. He felt a primal, violent rage at his own helplessness. He stood up, grabbed the heavy oak handle of the shovel, and smashed his own forehead against the thick wood. CRACK.
Pain exploded behind his eyes. Blood trickled warmly down his dark brow. He hit his head again, punishing himself for failing Astrid. He wanted to scream, to tear the trees out of the ground by their roots.
But then he remembered who was waiting inside. Astrid. She was hollowed out, empty, and terrified. "If I break," he realized, the cold wind biting his bloody face, "she shatters."
Bilal took a handful of snow and wiped the blood from his forehead. He forced his breathing to slow. He plastered a gentle, warm smile onto his face—a mask made of pure willpower.
When he walked back into the warm house, Astrid looked up, her eyes red. Bilal knelt beside her. He let out a soft, reassuring laugh, pulling her into his massive chest.
"It is okay, my Queen," he whispered, burying his bleeding head in her copper hair so she wouldn't see his wounds. "We are young. The river still flows. I am here."
He held her until she slept. And as he stared at the fire, he accepted the burden: he would carry the terror so she wouldn't have to.