Shadows of Winterspell

by Amy Wilson

  The roots beneath my feet lurch suddenly, and I’m sent sprawling into the trunk of a slender, still young oak tree, my shoulder jarring hard against it. My breath plumes out in a cloud of steam, and ice crystals fall all around me. A tiny golden shape rolls towards me from the upper reaches of the bank, and I stretch out over the cold earth to grab it as the tree whispers to me of days in the sun.

  It’s an acorn.

  My heart thumps as a flicker of a memory washes over me: my mother, wearing something like this around her neck, its chain catching in her pale hair, smiling as we crouch to pick wild strawberries together . . .

  The image is so vivid, it takes me a while to find my feet. I feel like I’m back in that moment, back with her. Yanny stoops to help me up.

  ‘What happened?’ he asks, as I brush myself down and pocket the acorn. My hands are trembling, my mind still clinging to that golden summer day. ‘You’re a liability in here . . .’

  ‘I tripped,’ I manage, wrenching myself back to the present. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You can stop saying you’re sorry,’ he says, his tone strangely gentle. ‘None of this is your fault.’

  I stare at him. Does he know why I feel so sorry? Have they already guessed that I’m the child of that long-gone fae queen and her tormented husband? That I am this ridiculous Lost Prince who is supposed to know what the heck they’re doing and somehow find the cursed palace and stop these nightmare shadows?

  ‘Well, I’m sorry anyway,’ I say, and he nods, holding the faelight higher as the shadows creep in closer. They reach for me, and I can feel myself unravelling in here. I clutch the acorn in my pocket.

  ‘What happens if the shadows get you?’ I ask.

  Yanny flinches but keeps walking. ‘If you let them too close, they mess with your head – take you back to things you’d rather forget. If the Stag is around, they’re stronger. Then their claws can scratch; their teeth can bite. And they’re killing the trees, all the time, more and more.’

  ‘Killing them?’

  ‘Lack of light, not good for anything,’ he says, but he clearly doesn’t want to talk about it any more, and the silence between us is awkward after that, so it’s a huge relief when we finally reach the edge of the forest, and I can see my house in the distance. Peg has lit all the lamps, and there’s a flicker of silver where the barrier cuts through the night.

  ‘They’re waiting for you,’ he says with a smile.

  ‘Did you never see our house before today?’

  ‘No,’ he says, staring at it now. ‘I probably never would have, if you hadn’t shown me earlier. Even now, it’s a little bit warped-looking. She’s a powerful woman, your nan.’

  ‘Will you be OK getting back?’ I ask, looking back into the darkness of the forest with a shiver.

  ‘Easier without you, probably,’ he says with a grin, turning to head back into the forest.

  ‘See you tomorrow!’ I call after him, watching him go, until he’s just a thin light in the distance, and Winterspell is thick with writhing, howling shadows. They are men, and bristling wolves, birds, and bats, and tiny insects that cling to the trees. They are wild horses with manes flying, and now a towering stag behind them, his vast antlers proud. He pulls the night sky into his form, and there are stars there too, winking beautiful.

  ‘Bright thing,’ I hear him whisper, still clear in the distance, and the smiles of all the shadows are moon soft as he steps towards me. My blood rushes cold through my veins as he calls to me, and there’s a tiny corner of my mind shouting at me, but he is louder. He is intoxicating. ‘Come closer . . .’

  I tread towards him, fighting through young ash, and he rears up with a great bellow, his antlers clashing with the outstretched branches of the trees. And then there are claws on my legs and my back. I scream, and Teacake lands on my shoulder, her fur standing up on end, her tail wrapping around my neck with a bristle of static.

  ‘Ouch! Teacake!’

  Her green eyes flare. I stare at her, and then into the forest. The shadows’ smiles are not soft now. They are full of teeth. I back away, and they roar, and my knees buckle beneath the tide of their rage, but Teacake swats at me and yowls in my ear, and so I know – I know to turn away. To keep walking, against the pull of their desire, through the mist-thick grass and back to the house. Home to Peg, and to Nan, shivering and half out of my mind with the horror and the pull of those shadows.

  There will be hell to pay, but at least it will be the kind of hell that loves me.

  Nan is waiting by a smouldering fire. For a moment, it’s hard to see her, and then she blooms into full view, curled into her armchair. Her arms are folded, and her eyes are narrowed.

  ‘Estelle Brigg,’ she says.

  ‘Hey, Nan,’ I chirp.

  Peg, in his usual spot on the mantelpiece, shakes his head wearily.

  I smile sweetly. ‘How’re you doing?’

  ‘Don’t Hey, Nan me!’ she says, floating a little up into the air. ‘Worried, Estelle – that’s how your old nan is. Peg had the sense to tell me where you’d gone and with whom –’ Peg gives me an evil grin – ‘so I knew you weren’t alone and lost in there. But, Estelle, this is not good enough. You were forbidden from going to school, but there you are. And you were forbidden from the forest, for very good reason, and off you pop on a jolly with your friend!’

  ‘It wasn’t a jolly!’ I snap, my skin still flaring from the close encounter with the shadows, my mind flitting back to Yanny and his weary parents. ‘It was a visit with a friend, and you can’t expect me to avoid the forest forever.’

  ‘I absolutely do expect you to avoid the forest,’ she says, her hair puffing out in bright white streaks. ‘You know what happened the last time we were in there, Stella – we were lucky to get out alive!’

  ‘But we did get out! Other people live in there. They have torches to get through the shadows, they fight them, and we just sit here, hiding in our safe place doing nothing!’

  ‘Torches through the shadows?’ she says. ‘I suppose you mean faelight. How close to the shadows did you get, Estelle?’

  I do wish she’d stop calling me Estelle. Once is quite enough of a telling-off.

  ‘Well, they’re everywhere, so they got pretty close,’ I say, folding my arms. ‘Why don’t we have a faelight? Why haven’t we tried harder?’

  ‘We do have a faelight,’ she says, glimmering at the edges with a faint, silvery light of her own. ‘We have an old lantern. And we have me – and we have you. The moon sprite in us means we have our own light, Stella. But it still isn’t enough! The lantern cracked; the shadows nearly took you whole!’

  ‘But would they have?’ I demand. ‘Would my father really let the shadows kill me?’

  ‘Your father! It is his fault all this is happening! He is blind to it, Stella, hidden away in that palace. He sends his shadow out in search of you, but he sees nothing. Nothing but his own despair.’

  ‘His shadow?’

  ‘He could always do it.’ She sighs. ‘And I named him Ellos, which means stag, so that is the shape his shadow takes.’

  I sit down with a thump on to the bench, my stomach hollow.

  ‘Stella?’

  ‘I saw it.’

  ‘You saw the Stag?’

  The room is utterly quiet, save for the ticking of the clock. The air grows thick with it.

  ‘How close did he get? Did he speak to you, Stella?’

  ‘He . . . might have said something about a bright thing,’ I say.

  She rises from her chair in outrage. ‘Oh, STELLA! What have you done?’ She puts her hands up to her mouth, staring at me.

  ‘You never told me his shadow was out there! That it was looking for me!’

  ‘I was trying to protect you – I promised your mother I’d keep you safe, and that stag, that creature who was your father, he is long gone, Stella. He died the day your mother died; he caught the Plaga himself, and it weakened him, and then the grief . . . he is not my Ellos. He is not a c
reature who can care for you, and so I kept you away, as much as I could, to keep you safe. You’re not thirteen yet, you are not in your full power, Estelle. You’re still a child!’

  My mind is a fog of too many things whirring. I sit on the bench and wrap my fingers around the warm, solid edge of it.

  ‘How is it safe to keep secrets? Why were you trying to keep me imprisoned here? Did you really think I wouldn’t ever find the company of humans, or fae? Did you want me to be alone here forever?’

  ‘You are not alone!’

  She’s shouting now, and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard her do it. Peg covers his ears, as the fire starts popping, and Teacake curls up into a ball on the rug.

  ‘I am here. And Peg. And this little cat of yours!’

  ‘But no friends, Nan. No people!’

  ‘Mrs Mandrake is people,’ she mutters, but the heat has gone, as quick as it came, and now she just looks tired, and I feel bad.

  ‘Speaking of secrets,’ she says after a moment. ‘Peg tells me this Yanny is one of your school friends.’

  ‘Ah . . . yes. He is.’

  ‘Then there is magic at the school?’

  I wince. ‘Some of the kids are from Winterspell. I didn’t know that when I started.’

  ‘But you found out. And you lied to me.’

  ‘I just didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to worry you.’

  ‘Didn’t want to worry me!’ She snorts. ‘You’ve worried me since the day I brought you here. All of my care, and you just waltz in and put yourself right in the middle of it all. This is why I warned you against going, Stella – it’s too soon. I knew it would be trouble.’

  ‘Well I’ve done it now, and there’s no going back,’ I say, my fingers finding the golden acorn in my pocket. ‘I’m glad I’m at school, and I’m glad I’ve been into Winterspell.’ I take a deep breath. ‘I think I miss them, Nan.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My parents! Being in Winterspell. I remember things in flashes . . . I wish I knew more.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ she says, her eyes glowing. ‘I wish it too. I’ve wished it many times over the years.’

  ‘But we don’t talk about them much.’

  ‘I suppose we don’t,’ she acknowledges, twisting her hands together. ‘Well, then. Your mother was a moon sprite, like my own mother. She made the most beautiful dreams – and most of the charms that I brought with me and strung out there on the fence. And your father is known, apart from anything else, as the wood sprite fae king who made the bridge that crosses the River Bat, deep in the forest; who linked up all the charms and invented warning systems, that I have used to keep us safe from him. They were happy, before the Plaga struck. You were happy.’

  Fingering the acorn in my pocket, I think of the whisper of the oak tree, that memory of summer days, and how its roots threw me over. ‘Is his tree still alive?’

  ‘It’s in the forest,’ she says. ‘It’s an oak, still young.’ She sighs, and her sadness looms over us both.

  ‘I think I saw it,’ I say.

  ‘Perhaps you did.’ She shakes her head. ‘They can survive without us far better than we can live without them. But for now, have you not had enough adventure?’

  ‘No! I’ve hardly begun, Nan! We should live in the forest. We should drop all this glamour and go in there and fight with the rest of them. I want to know who I am! I don’t even look fae . . . What about wings – and horns?’

  ‘Wings and horns!’ she exclaims. ‘As to that, you can thank me. You don’t have to use your own glamour to go into the town, or to school, because I did it for you years ago.’

  ‘But what am I, underneath all of your glamour? What do I have that you have hidden?’

  ‘I forget.’

  ‘NAN! How can you forget?’

  ‘All of my energy is spent on the here and now, Stella! You will come into your magic, and when you do, the glamour will fall. That is always how I intended it. I . . .’ For a second, she looks utterly lost. ‘There are many choices in raising a child. I can’t say I’ve always made the right one.’

  ‘It’s terrible in the forest,’ I say after a while, when the fire is low, and Peg is ‘awake’ again. I’ve decided to tell them both a bit about Yanny and his family, and as I do, I feel again the gnawing worry that showed in his parents’ eyes.

  ‘And their wings – his parents’ wings – are faded and all folded away. And the kids’ wings are like shadows – like they’re not really there at all.’

  Nan considers, her face drawn with tiredness. If I demand too much of her, will she leave? I know she wouldn’t mean to, but if she gets too thin, would she just disappear?

  ‘I suppose it may be part of the shadow curse. Since the shadows took over, there is little light, little to eat. They have always concealed them, of course, when they’re glamouring, but in their own world . . . I don’t know, Stella. I can’t fix it all . . .’ She stares at me. ‘And you’re still so young. I wanted to protect you from it. Who knows what you’ve set off now. You should’ve just stayed away. I was charged with bringing you up safely.’ She says it almost to herself. ‘I tried to find the palace. For years, I dragged you in there. I thought that if we found him, we could wake him to reality, but I saw how much it took from you – how strong the shadows were around you. Your presence made it worse. We had to stay away. And now you go walking right into their lair!’

  ‘Maybe . . . it’s time,’ I say, keeping my voice low.

  She winces. ‘You’re still a child.’

  ‘What does that mean? That I’m powerless? You know that’s not true, Nan.’

  ‘But you don’t know enough. You aren’t strong enough.’

  ‘So I’ll keep going to school – to learn. And to have friends.’

  ‘You’ll stay away from the forest? Please, Stella – promise me you’ll stay away. You may be right; the time may be drawing closer. But looking at you now, I don’t think it’s here yet.’ She fixes her gaze on me. ‘I don’t think you’re ready to face your father. Memories are wonderful things, they are precious, but he is not the same fae king that you have in your mind. He changed, Stella, more completely than I have ever seen any creature change. You must be ware of him, and of that stag shadow of his. Will you hear me, Stella? Will you be ware? Have your school, have your friends, but don’t let them know you’re the child of the Shadow King – and stay away from that forest!’

  I look down at myself. Covered in mud and bits of bramble, my hands shaking, my stomach a horrible, empty dark place where fears have gathered deep as shadows. I don’t know how to fight them, yet. I don’t even know how to keep from falling on my face in there.

  ‘Do you think they’d hate me if they knew who I was?’

  ‘They wouldn’t hate you,’ Nan says, drawing closer. ‘They don’t know you, Stella. They don’t know my lovely girl, for all that she is. But they might be unwelcoming. Until you are strong in your power, all you’ll be is a reminder of him.’

  ‘I’ll stay away for now,’ I whisper, closing my eyes and seeing flashes of monstrous teeth and claws.

  When I open my eyes, she’s gone. I stand up and dig my hands into my pocket and draw out the golden acorn. It’s almost identical to my own silver one. I bring the chain out from under my shirt and hold them side by side. There’s a twist in the air, and they snap together. The gold one disappears, and when I hold the silver one up to the light, I can see new gold strands, a fine lace of them at the top of the acorn.

  ‘Well look at that!’ Peg whistles. ‘Your mother’s acorn – how did you find it?’

  ‘I think it found me,’ I say in a whisper. ‘I got tripped up by a tree – my father’s oak – and . . . there it was on the ground. I didn’t know it was out there to find. Did you know it was out there, Peg? Why didn’t you say anything? What does it mean?’

  ‘Couldn’t. Not my place. And what would you have done, anyway? It came to you when the time was right, as these things do. You’re only j
ust big enough to discover these things now.’

  ‘I’ve been bigger than you for years!’

  ‘That’s on the outside,’ he sniffs. ‘I’m talking about the inside.’

  The Troll

  Glitter-skinned and solid as the oak in form and quiet determination, the troll is a peaceful creature, known for its wisdom more than for its fight. It has strong, powerful wings, but it rarely uses them, for the motion causes great upheaval. In dire circumstances, however, there is no better creature to have on your side. The troll is a cunning strategist and not afraid to use all that he has, if only the cause is great enough.

  Mr Flint, with his sweeping, glittering wings, is in a temper, his eyes glowing like coals. In fae ethics, everyone gets very intense about fae politics and the situation in the forest, and I try to keep my head down, but today’s lesson seems to be mostly about instilling fear, and Mr Flint is very good at that.

  ‘You are here to learn how to assimilate yourselves, not because it’s a party out there in the human world . . .’ He catches a couple of the kids chatting and raises his voice. ‘But because your own world is a battleground. So you will learn to assimilate. You will learn to hide your magic with your glamour. And you will go out there, and you will make a difference!’

  ‘And leave our families in Winterspell?’ Tash demands. ‘And do what? I don’t want to assimilate. There is nothing I need from the human world!’ She flashes her silver teeth.

  ‘Silly girl,’ he growls. ‘You need to survive. You need to learn how their world works so that you can help your family, and everybody who will remain in the forest. You have a choice! Not all do. The centaurs, the goblins, many of my troll brethren – they do not have the ability to glamour. They need the forest to remain. You must help to influence others in that vein.’

  ‘The forest isn’t under threat from humanity,’ Yanny says quietly. ‘It’s under threat from the shadows.’

  ‘And we will win that battle,’ Mr Flint says, slamming a hand down on the desk. It cracks and then folds like a pack of cards beneath his touch. His eyes glow. ‘There is no greater priority among the fae council. What you must do is survive it so that we all may survive the bigger fight: to keep the forest whole.’