Once Upon A Time (8) Winter’s Child

by Cameron Dokey

  I twisted in my father’s lap so that I could look into his eyes.

  If my first memory is of being cold, my second is of my father’s eyes. They were a deep and piercing green, like the needles of the evergreens that grow in the woods that mark the boundary between our kingdom and the lands beyond my father’s realm.

  Always, it seems to me that I feel my father’s gaze, even now that death has closed his eyes. Watching over me with love and concern, promising that, in the end, I will find the way to solve the puzzle of my own existence, to right all the wrongs not of my own creation and, at the last, even find the means to mend my own wounded heart.

  “I can choose my own name?”

  “Absolutely,” my father vowed. “You were not born to be called Sorrow.”

  His eyes kindled now with a bright green flame. “Just think, Deirdre,” he went on. “You have a chance almost no one else is granted. The opportunity to choose your own name, one to match who you truly are inside.”

  “But how will I know what to choose?” I asked.

  “Excellent question,” my father replied. “All I can tell you is that you will know when the time comes. In the meantime ...”

  My father’s eyes began to sparkle with laughter, which always made my heart sing with joy.

  “We could start to compile a list of possibilities,” he said. Making lists was something my father did a lot. It could be because he was a king or just because that’s who he was. I’ve never quite been able to sort this out.

  “Ermyntrude, for instance. Now there’s a name to be reckoned with,” my father went on. “Three syllables, a nice round name. And I’ll bet you wouldn’t have to share it with too many other girls.”

  My father paused and raised his eyebrows. If the game were to continue, it was now up to me.

  “What about Hortensia?” I proposed. “That has four syllables.”

  My father nodded, as if I’d made a very astute point. “Esmerelda,” he said. “Also four. Or what about Gudrun? Only two, but when I was a lad it was very popular. Gudrun is a name with staying power.”

  “Penelope is nice,” I said.

  “Zahalia,” my father countered.

  “Oh, Papa, I know,” I suddenly exclaimed. “Brunhilde. I should have thought of it before. ‘Brunhilde’ is a name that always gets a reaction.”

  To my surprise and dismay, it got a reaction from my father I hadn’t anticipated. He made a face, as if he’d tasted something sour. I watched as the laughter faded from his face, and the sadness moved to the front of his green eyes once more.

  “Your mother had a cousin named Brunhilde,” he said. “She was the maid of honor at our wedding.”

  And just like that, the game was done.

  “I’m sorry, Papa,” I said quietly. “I didn’t know.”

  My father reached out to twist the end of one of my pale locks around his finger, and then he gave it a tug.

  “Of course you didn’t, Little One,” he said. “So you’ve nothing to be sorry for.” He lifted me from his lap, set me on my feet, and then stood up.

  For a moment, I thought he would say something more. That at last he would speak of her, my mother, his wife, the woman who had changed the course of both our lives. But he did not. Mine was the heart with ice inside it, but even as a child I knew my father’s heart carried a wound far greater than mine. A wound that was beyond even my power to heal, a wound he would carry into the grave itself.

  “I should get back to my study,” my father announced. He bent to give me a kiss, then turned to go. “Speaking of names, I need to review the list of all the foreign ambassadors I’m going to meet tomorrow, and then I’ll have to remember to ask Dominic to ...”

  Dominic was my father’s steward, his right-hand man. I could tell from the sound of Papa’s voice that his thoughts had already traveled far ahead of his body. I could only hope he would forgive me for calling them back.

  “Papa,” I burst out, after he’d gone no more than a dozen steps. “Come back. I have to ask you something.”

  “Gracious, Deirdre,” my father said, snapping back to the present and turning around quickly at the fierceness of my tone. “What on earth is the matter, Little One?”

  “It’s her name, my mother’s name,” I said, and with that, I suddenly discovered I was crying. “I have to know it, don’t you see? So I don’t add it to the list by accident. I don’t want her name. I don’t want to be like she was.”

  “Deirdre,” my father said.

  I think that was the moment when I grew up, for in the two syllables of my own name I suddenly heard and understood something I previously had not. My father hadn’t just bestowed the name of Sorrow on me. He’d also bestowed it on himself.

  “Joy,” my father said. “Your mother’s name was Joy.”

  Then he turned and walked away. This was the last time we spoke about her.

  SIX

  Though my father and I never discussed names again, that afternoon marked the beginning of my fascination with them. I began to make a study of names, collecting them much like other children collected coins or stamps or dolls.

  It wasn’t simply the sound of a name that appealed to me, though I did enjoy this: the way a name felt inside your mouth as you formed its syllables, the space it occupied in the air when you pronounced it. But there was also the way a name and the person who bore it got along together. For this, or so it always seemed to me, was the heart of what a name is all about.

  Was the fit between a name and its bearer seamless and comfortable? The castle baker was called Amelia, for instance, a name that seemed to suit her quite well. It sounded soft coming and going, like a flourish of icing on a fancy cake, but in the center there was a core of strength, the press of bread being kneaded against its board. Amelia.

  Or did the name sit uncomfortably upon its wearer, did it chafe and rub? My father’s steward could enter a room so soundlessly you’d never know he was there until he cleared his throat. Yet he was called Dominic, a name that always sounded to me like the sharp clatter of heels along a hall of flagstones.

  Had Dominic known his name did not suit him and deliberately set out to cultivate a set of traits to counterbalance this? Did his name cause him discomfort? Did moving silently help to ease this pain? Did we grow into our names, and if so, could we grow out of them? Did we shape them, or did they shape us?

  The names that interested me the most were the ones that belonged to people who paid them no attention at all. The people who carried their names around like sacks on their backs, never really recognizing the power of the name they bore. Such an interest was hardly surprising, I suppose. Did I not carry the name Sorrow all because my mother had overlooked the power of her own name and forgotten that she was named Joy?

  And so I quietly continued my pursuit of names as the years pursued me, until at last, the day of my sixteenth birthday arrived.

  You know what happened already, of course. How I dressed myself in a gown of finest linen, sheer as gossamer. Upon my feet I wore a pair of crystal boots. But what the stories never remember is that it was my father who put the staff of ash wood into my hand. It was he who threw the snow-white cloak around my shoulders.

  The stories also fail to share that Amelia baked me the largest cake anyone had ever seen, the inside as dark and rich as fertile earth with an outside covered in snow-white icing. It was so large there was enough for every single person in the kingdom to have a piece, so sweet it brought a tear to each and every eye.

  The stories fail to tell how, after eating their pieces of cake in celebration of my birth, the people of my father’s kingdom faded away, like snow upon warm ground, until only my father and I were left— the king and his daughter, the princess, the Winter Child, standing outside the gates of our ice palace. My father fussed a little with the lacings of my cloak, tying the strings so that they lay tight against the base of my throat.

  “Papa,” I said, astonished I could speak with the lump that
filled my throat, a lump made up of all the things I feared I had forgotten to say but would never have the chance to now.

  “I don’t even need a cloak. I’m never cold. Please, stop fussing.”

  “I’d like you to wear one anyway,” my father answered. He tweaked the cloak, adjusting it so that it hung perfectly straight from my shoulders. “Neither of us knows how long a road you must travel, Little One. A cloak may be useful along the way.”

  After all these years, he still called me Little One, the nickname he’d given me as a child so that neither of us would have to spend our days listening to him call me Sorrow.

  “There may be days when your heart feels cold, though your body does not. On those days, it will be good to have something to draw in close around you.”

  “And this?” I asked, gesturing to the staff of ash wood he’d placed into my hand.

  “So that you can imagine I am with you on your journey,” my father said at once. “And when you need to, you can lean upon me.”

  Suddenly, I found it almost impossible to breathe.

  “I don’t want to,” I choked out. “I don’t want any of this. I don’t want to leave you, Papa.”

  “Ah, Deirdre,” my father said, drawing me into his arms.

  For sixteen years I had been so careful never to speak those words. I might have asked a thousand questions about it, but not once had I truly railed against the fate my father and I both knew could not be avoided. But standing with my father before the gates of the palace on my sixteenth birthday, I could hold in my true feelings no longer.

  I did not want to leave. I did not want to be a Winter Child.

  The thought of mending all those hearts was daunting enough, but there was something more, a sorrow that would come to my father and me alone. I would not change. From the moment I set out to fulfill my Winter Child’s destiny, I would not grow one day older until my task was done.

  But my father was as mortal as the rest of the world was. He would continue to age, to feel the passage of time. Once I left him to set out on my journey, I would never see him again, not in any way that felt familiar to me now. His mortal life would be over before my task was complete.

  “If I could have spared us the pain of this parting, I would have,” my father said. “But there’s no way to do it. There hasn’t been since the day the North Wind first snatched you up in its arms. A parting of this nature would have come upon us even if you had not been called to be a Winter Child, Deirdre. It comes to all parents and children, to all who truly love.”

  “If you’re trying to make me feel better, it isn’t working,” I managed to say.

  And suddenly, my father laughed, a bright, clear sound. It seemed to carry on the cold air, as if setting out ahead of me. And I knew that, somewhere along my journey, I would remember that even in our moment of greatest sadness, I had made my father laugh.

  “I want you to listen to me now,” my father went on. “This is going to be a lecture, so pay close attention.”

  I couldn’t quite manage a laugh, but I attempted a smile.

  “I’m listening,” I promised.

  “The world is full of change, Deirdre,” he told me. “That is its nature, for the very globe itself spins around. It is never still—always moving, therefore always changing. Today is the day that the curve of the earth will catch us in its spin and whirl us apart. But I will never truly leave you, just as you will never leave me.”

  My father placed a hand on the center of his chest. Suddenly understanding, I reached to cover his hand with one of mine. And so we stood together with our hands pressed against his heart.

  “You will be inside my heart,” my father said, “just as I will be in yours. Even when my heart ceases to beat, I will be with you. You will never be alone and neither will I.”

  How I wanted to be brave!

  “But it won’t be the same,” I whispered.

  “No,” my father answered simply. “It will not. Nothing stays the same, Deirdre. That, too, is part of life. Sometimes, pushing against change only makes it push back twice as hard. But even the most bitter fruit may contain something sweet at its core. A taste you would never have encountered if you had not been willing to endure the bitter first.”

  He looked at me, his green eyes steady. I held my breath, waiting for him to say more. But it had never been my father’s way to offer more words than were needed, just as it was not his way to offer false comfort. And so I knew that the next words spoken would not be his; they would be mine.

  “I can do it, Papa,” I promised.

  And then, finally, I saw the bright sheen of tears in my father’s eyes.

  “I know you can,” he said. “I have never doubted that.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m going to like it,” I went on.

  “I’ll tell you a secret,” my father said. “I’ve never cared for it very much myself.”

  The sound of my heart beating was loud in my ears. I could feel the winter sun on my back, even as the cold air stung my nostrils. A bird called in the sky overhead, and another answered from far off. A small wind, a curious wind, suddenly arrived to investigate the hem of my cloak. My father and I did not move. But I felt the world begin to shift and turn around me. The path that I must follow was unfurling at my back.

  “So,” I said.

  “So,” my father echoed.

  And with that, I took a single step back. I felt a quick, hard pain spear my heart. I saw a spasm shoot across my father’s face, and I knew he felt the same pain.

  “I love you, Papa,” I said.

  “And I love you,” my father replied. “I have loved you every day of your life. I will love you for every day of mine and more. My love will never diminish, no matter how many steps you take throughout the world, no matter how many years you wander until your task is done.”

  “I will love you as long as I draw breath,” I replied. “And the moment I stop breathing, I will find you. Wherever you are.”

  “I will be waiting for you with open arms,” my father said.

  I took a second step back, and then a third and a fourth. With each and every step I took, I felt my heart give a painful tug. It seemed to me that I could almost see what caused it: the invisible line that connected my father’s heart to mine. Thin as spider’s silk, incredibly strong. It would stretch between us always, winding around the earth like a map of my wanderings. Never breaking, never releasing its hold.

  “Don’t look back when you turn to go,” my father said. “Set your face to the path and keep on going. Will you do this for me?”

  “Only if you’ll do the same,” I said. “Please don’t stand here and watch me walk away from you.”

  “On the count of three, then,” my father said.

  “No, five,” I said quickly. “Make it five, Papa.”

  I saw my father smile for the very last time.

  “Five, then,” said my father. “Are you ready?”

  “No,” I answered with a shaky laugh. “But you can start counting anyhow.”

  “One,” my father said, as his eyes stayed steadily on mine. I gripped the staff of ash wood tightly in my right hand, feeling every groove, every whorl. Trying to ignore the fact that my palm was slick with sweat in spite of the coldness of the day.

  “Two,” said my father. “Three.” I heard the soft shush as a nearby tree branch let go of its burden of snow and it fell wetly to the ground.

  “Four.” My stomach muscles tightened. Just one count more. One syllable, and I would turn away from my father forever.

  “Five,” my father said softly.

  At that moment, the wind snuck beneath my cloak and tugged it out behind me. The lacings pulled against my throat.

  No! my heart cried. Not now. Not yet. Not ever.

  But even as my heart protested, my mind accepted the truth. I did not have a choice. Again the wind tugged, and this time, I let it turn me. The pain in my heart was so sharp I thought it would surely split in two.r />
  Through my pain, I heard the scrape of my father’s boot heel. I knew that he had kept his promise. This was what finally gave me the courage to take a step. My first upon my quest as a Winter Child.

  Away from the palace made of snow and ice I walked, away from all I knew and loved. The wind was like a guiding hand at the small of my back, as if to make sure I would keep going.

  SEVEN

  Story the Fourth

  In Which Some Paths Cross and Others Merely Walk Side by Side

  How long did I wander? How many hearts did I meet, how many hearts did I mend before I encountered Grace and Kai? Good questions, all. The trouble is, I can’t answer them.

  It will help if you remember that I have a somewhat unusual relationship with time.

  I was on my journey, fulfilling my quest, performing my duties as a Winter Child. As long as I did this, I would not age. I would stay precisely as I was.

  Therefore, keeping track of time served no purpose. Some years felt long, other years felt short. They weren’t what mattered anyway. What mattered were the hearts I found and mended, one by one.

  I can tell you that by the time the wind, who was my only companion, brought me the sound of the name “Grace,” I had crossed the world and recrossed it many times in my journey as a Winter Child. Along with my age, my interest in names remained constant. The longer I journeyed, the more hearts I encountered, and the more I began to see a pattern forming:

  Those whose names fit them least on the outside often were the ones who carried a wounded heart on the inside.

  Occasionally, though only very rarely, I also came across someone else: a person whose inside and outside were such a perfect match they almost had the power to mend hearts themselves. So is it any wonder that, when the wind brought me the sound of a girl named “Grace,” I hurried to see what she looked like?

  Grace.

  What a lovely possibility-filled name. Possibility for generosity, for forgiveness. If there was an opposite to Sorrow, it seemed Grace just might be it. So I hurried to see her, following the wind, and discovered that this Grace was not alone. She had a young man with her, and even eyes much less perceptive than mine could have seen that these two were in the midst of a quarrel.