Once Upon a Winter's Night fs-1

by Dennis L McKiernan

  “Yes, my prince,” replied the steward. “ ’Tis Lord Kelmot and his sons.”

  “Bring them forth.”

  Lanval tapped a small gong, and at its sound two liveried footmen swung wide the doors to the throne chamber, and Camille gasped again, for marching inward came three tiny beings, no taller than a foot or so. And they were accoutered in brown leather breeks and brown leather boots, straps of leather crisscrossing their otherwise bare chests. Brown was their hair and hanging down their backs, with a strip of leather across each brow to hold it out of their eyes. Quivers of arrows were strapped to their thighs, and bows were affixed across their backs, and each one carried a spear in hand. In spite of their diminutive stature, quite savage they looked, and their strides conveyed a feral fierceness.

  The woman on her knees scuttled aside. “Protect me, my lord,” she wailed.

  Yet the three tiny beings marched straight to the foot of the dais and looked up at the prince, their eyes widening at the sight of the mask, but the one in the center glanced at Lanval and received a nod of assurance.

  And now Camille could see that ritual tattoos of swirls and lines adorned their arms and chests and faces; what they meant, she could not say, yet it added to their savage aspect.

  “You slew her man?” asked Alain.

  “Aye, my lord,” replied the one in the center, his hand tapping the arrows at his hip.

  “I told you,” screeched the woman, then flinched as all three tiny beings glowered at her. “See, even now they would slay me, too, and I haven’t done-”

  A raised finger from Alain silenced the dame. “Lord Kelmot,” said Alain, addressing the one who had spoken, “you slew him because…?”

  “Because, Prince Alain, he slaughtered three of our lynx: at the first one, we said to him that he might have made a mistake. At the second one, we told him ‘No more.’ At the third one, we killed him.”

  “See, I told you!” wailed the woman. “All for the skin of a cat, all for-”

  Again the prince silenced her with a raised finger. “My lady, the lynx is protected within the Summerwood. In fact, in all the Forests of the Seasons. Your husband Fricor, if I recall, was a poacher brought before me apast.” Alain glanced at Lanval, who nodded. The prince turned back to the woman. “I told him at that time to forgo such ways, and it seems he did not heed. I deem justice here has been done by the Lynx Riders.”

  “Oh, but what’ll I do?” moaned the woman. “Why should I have to go without for the disobedience of my man?”

  Kelmot turned toward the dame. “You are the one who skinned the cats and scraped and cured the hides.”

  “And cooked and ate the meat,” spat another of the tiny folk.

  “And these were lynx!” exclaimed the third, then hissed and raised a clawed hand at the woman, who scuttled farther away.

  “Ah, Madam,” said Alain, “so then you are not completely innocent in this.”

  “Would you have me starve?” wailed the dame.

  “None starve in the Summerwood,” declared Lord Kelmot, “not with the bounty of the Autumnwood at hand.”

  Now Alain turned to Camille. “My lady, what punishment would you advise I should decree against this dame?”

  Camille but barely contained her dismay at being asked to judge the woman, down on her knees and wringing her hands and moaning. Furiously, Camille thought, and then she said, “My Lord Prince Alain, I would have you give her a gold piece”-protests rose to the lips of the Lynx Riders, but Camille spoke on-“and banish her from all the Forests of the Seasons.”

  “No!” wailed the dame. “I would then have to work for my food and-”

  “Silence, woman,” said Alain. He gestured toward Camille. “So she has said; so shall it be. You are banished forever from the Forests of the Seasons. You may take with you only those things which you can carry.” He then looked at tiny Kelmot. “My lord, would you and yours see that she is gone from these borders within a twelveday?”

  “Gladly, my lord,” replied Kelmot, then he glanced at Camille and smiled, revealing a mouthful of catlike teeth. “A most fair judgement, my lady.”

  And thus was justice done.

  “Love,” said Camille down the length of the table, “altogether a year and some months have passed since the Bear brought me here, and yet it seems but yester, for these have been the happiest days of my life.”

  “A year and some months? I didn’t know, and I am quite happy, too.”

  Camille smiled, but silently added, Save for the cloud which hangs over thee.

  “Speaking of the months that have passed, have you ever wondered about time?” asked Alain.

  “Time, my lord?”

  “ ’Tis a great mystery to dwellers of Faery, for here it holds no sway.”

  “How so, my lord, for do not events occur, things grow, days pass in Faery? And if so, then what is that but a measure of time?”

  Alain laughed. “Ah, Camille, you are too clever by far, yet this is what I mean: indeed things do grow and days pass, but nought in Faery becomes overly aged, with the attendant infirmities that does bring. People do not wither and die of time’s rade, do not pass away into the dust of the years. All things in Faery simply are.”

  Camille frowned. “But Alain, people do grow old in Faery. Look at Andre; he is a man of age.”

  “Ah, but that is because he spent overlong in a place outside Faery, out in a mortal land where time does rule, and his age caught up to his years.”

  “Oh,” replied Camille. “But what of those such as Jules? He is but a lad. Will he not age in Faery, not grow into his manhood?”

  “Ah, there is the mystery of it, Camille. Jules will indeed age-though at a slower rate than in the mortal lands-up until he reaches his prime, and then he will not go beyond.”

  “All part of the magic of Faery?”

  Alain nodded. “Indeed.”

  Camille paused and laid down her fork beside her plate. “Which reminds me, Alain: is the harvest eternal in the Autumnwood? If so, then how can that be? When grain is reaped, when crops are picked, what happens then? I mean, without winter to rest, spring to renew and seeds to be sown, and summer to ripen, how can autumn bring forth a harvest?”

  “ ’Tis another mystery, that, my love,” replied Alain. “I think Borel’s winter demesne does somehow allow all the Forests of the Seasons to rest, and that Celeste’s Springwood somehow permits the renewal of all, as well as the sowing of-what? — not seeds, but rather crop. Too, my Summerwood somehow allows the ripening of the bounty that is to come, while Liaze’s demesne takes from them all and provides an eternal harvest. Things plucked or reaped in the Autumnwood-or in the other Forests of the Seasons as well-simply seem to… reappear.-Oh, not instantly, but after some while, and not as long as anyone is watching; but one day it will be there, as if it had been there all along, somehow overlooked or unseen. Beyond that, I cannot say aught, for ’tis of Faery in the Forests of the Seasons we speak; I add, however, that elsewhere in Faery, across its far-flung realms, other conditions apply, some of them quite uncanny.”

  “My, but these are strange rules which govern this part of Faery and the life herein,” said Camille, taking up her fork and spearing more of the delicious asparagus.

  Alain said, “You speak of rules, my darling, as if there were many, but I know of only two.”

  “Two?”

  Alain nodded and stood and walked to her end of the table. He leaned down and peered at her with his grey eyes through his grey silken mask, then he kissed her, and said, “The first rule of life is to live, Camille, but the prime rule of life is to love.”

  She reached up and pulled him down for another kiss, this one decidedly more lingering.

  Alain then strode back to his end of the table and sat, and Camille said, “The reason I spoke of the year and some months that have passed, beloved, is that I would like to visit my family and see how they have fared, especially Giles. I think I would need but a sevenday at Papa’s cott
age, seven days to catch up in all.”

  Alain took up his goblet of dark ruby wine and sipped. He set the glass down and said, “I will arrange for it to be done.”

  “Would you not come with me?”

  “My love, the Bear will be your escort, though I will send couriers ahead and have Borel and his Wolves accompany you through the Winterwood so that what happened there shall not occur again.”

  Camille hid her disappointment that he would not be with her and said, “Very well, my lord.”

  A handful of days later, after a night of passion and a tender and tearful adieu just ere dawn, in midmorn Camille set forth with the Bear from Summerwood Manor, she riding once more, he again laden with bundles, a cottage just beyond the far edge of Faery their goal.

  As they came to the oakwood lane, Camille turned and waved au revoir to those who had gathered on the portico to see her off-Blanche, Lanval, Jules, Andre, Renaud, the seamstresses, and others of the household staff-all of whom Camille had come to love dearly. “I shall return in a moon or so!” she called, though whether they could make out her words, she did not know. And she faced front once again, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Across the Summerwood they went, as the sun traced an arc through the sky, and late in the day they came to the pool where the Waterfolk-otters had played, but they seemed wholly absent this eve, for none whatsoever were in sight. Even so, remembering, Camille did not shed her clothes to swim or bathe. At this place, as well, a camp awaited them, pheasant on the spit above the fire. Once more she and the Bear shared a pleasant repast, and then the bear waddled up to the dewberry briars on the hillside above and again sat among them and feasted.

  The following day just after sundown, they came to the twilight border where the Summerwood ended and the Autumnwood began. Here another firelit camp awaited, with another meal on the spit above: several trout, altogether enough for Camille, though the Bear afterward rooted about ’neath fallen logs for whatever under there it was he ate.

  The next morn they entered the Autumnwood, where the Bear’s fur became grizzled reddish brown, and they passed back along the way they had come months agone, and they took sustenance from the plentiful harvest. As evening fell, no campsite awaited, for, in this realm, game acook above a fire was not needed, or so did Camille reason.

  On the second day in the Autumnwood, as the Bear topped a hill, on another knoll in the near distance stood a white Unicorn. “Oh, Bear, look there’s a Uni-”

  With a toss of its tail, the Unicorn snorted and spun and trotted away, disappearing down the far side of the knoll. Tears welled in Camille’s eyes, for now she truly knew what Fra Galanni had meant about being unsullied, and what Agnes meant about being pure; no longer having her virgin’s blood, Camille was dismayed by the Unicorn’s rejection, and it seemed somehow unfair.

  On this day as well, at the top of a vale above a field of grain, they again had passed the huge man sitting with his back to a tree, a scythe across his knees; and, as before, he had gotten to his feet and bowed low as the Bear and Camille had passed.

  In midafternoon of the third day within that demesne, they once again reached a twilit border, this one leading into the Winterwood.

  The Bear stopped at the bound, and he whuff ed when Camille asked if they would make camp at this place. She spent the dregs of the day finding a suitable stream to fill the waterskins she had insisted on bringing, for, as she had told the Bear, she would not abide again the brimstone-foul water of the ice-clad pools within the realm to come.

  The next dawning Camille awakened to the cold nose of an animal nudging her cheek. “Bear!” she shrieked as she bolted upright, only to find a Wolf shying back. Laughter rang across the daybreak, for Borel and his pack had come. Yet chuckling, Borel said, “Best put on your cold-weather gear, Sister mine, for where we go ’tis quite chill.”

  Into the Winterwood they fared, into that tangle of twisted and broken trees, the skies above dismal, the light dim, ice and snow and shattered rock and crags looming alongside. The Wolves ranged fore and aft and on the flanks as well. Occasionally the Bear, his fur now white, paused and sniffed the air and grunted, but what he may have scented, if aught, Camille did not know. Even so, with a Bear and a Wolf pack and Borel-he armed with a long-knife strapped to his thigh and his bow in hand, arrows in a quiver at his hip-Camille felt quite safe.

  “Still,” she asked, “why do we come this way?”

  “It is the most direct,” replied Borel.

  “And you say that other places in the Winterwood are quite beautiful?”

  “Aye, Camille. Only in this region is the land cursed.”

  “Cursed?”

  “Indeed. Cursed long past, but by whom, I know not. ’Twas all part of some enmity against my sire, I deem, mayhap by those responsible for his and my dam’s disappearance.”

  “Oh,” said Camille, as onward they went, the dim day growing old.

  Just ere sundown they stopped to camp, and Borel set his Wolves on guard, then made a fire. Camille discovered that the water in her waterskins had frozen solid through, all but the one she had been using, and that nearly empty. But in a pan from one of the bundles Borel melted snow, and the water, although not sweet, was not brimstone-tinged either.

  Beyond the stark mountains the sun fell, and night came over the icy realm. Something, some glimmer, plucked at the edges of Camille’s mind, yet she couldn’t quite capture the elusive thought, and it slid away un-snared.

  She sat awhile talking to Borel, and ghostly tendrils of a spectral ice-fog coiled in among the broken trees to encircle the campsite… the icy wisps barely held at bay by the fire.

  Of a sudden there came a thin wail, and Camille looked about, trying to locate the source. And then “What’s that?” she cried, leaping to her feet and pointing.

  Rising up from the snow-laden ground came creeping a nearly transparent hand, claw-fingered and grasping, followed by an equally lucent arm.

  Borel snatched his bronze long-knife out from its scabbard and slashed through the emerging limb, but the knife slid right through with no effect whatsoever, and still upward came whatever it was, the transparent top of a head now showing, wearing a cap faintly tinged with red. And then its face broke through and a terrible cry wailed forth from its snag-toothed mouth.

  “Oh, sweet Mithras!” cried Camille. “ ’Tis a Goblin come out of the ground!”

  The Bear roared and clawed at the being, with absolutely no consequence as it continued to emerge. Dodging the Bear’s slashing swipes, Wolves, too, darted in and back, fangs gnashing through with no result.

  “Borel, another!” cried Camille.

  And behind them a second transparent Goblin came forth from the frozen soil. And another and another and another, all oozing up, all unkillable, all wailing, all “Mithras, oh Mithras,” cried Camille, now knowing what had eluded her mind, “we’ve camped on the killing ground of months past; these are Redcap ghosts!”

  Borel snatched up a burning branch from the fire and lashed it through the spectres crowding ’round, yet it, too, had no effect.

  In spite of the fire, the long-knife, the roaring, clawing Bear, and the leaping, slashing Wolves, still the wailing wraiths crowded closer, for nought seemed to affect them at all.

  And a wave of weakness whelmed over Camille, and she staggered back against a twisted tree, clutching it merely to remain upright; it was all she could do to not faint. And still the ghosts ghoulishly crowded ’round her, and she felt as if her very life was being sucked away on the shrill and ghastly keening. “We’ve got to flee,” she called out, her voice feeble, but her legs would not obey. “Flee,” she repeated, now mumbling.

  But then a bitch Wolf stopped her leaping and slashing, and she looked at the spectres and cocked her head this way and that and listened to their ghostly wails; and then she raised her muzzle into the air and began to sing, her mournful howl cutting across the frigid night. And the nearest wraiths flinched away. Another Wolf bega
n to sing, his voice joining hers. Ghosts reeled back. A third Wolf took up the refrain, and one more and another, and soon all nine Wolves, the entire pack, were singing in the night. And the spectres mewled in agony and clutched at their heads, slapping their hands over their ears, their own ghastly wails dwindling, dwindling; and even as Camille lost her grip on the tree and swayed and fell to her knees in the snow and then collapsed onto her side, ghosts about her began sinking back into the frozen earth, unable to withstand the mournful dirge of the Wolves driving them down and away. The last thing she saw was the Bear standing over her as blackness took her mind.

  Camille became aware of a gentle jouncing, and she came to on a travois being drawn by the Bear. At her side walked Borel, his face haggard and wan. Dismal daylight seeped down from the gray sky above.

  She tried to raise up but fell back, and feebly whispered. “Where, what-?”

  “Be still, Camille. They nearly did you in,” replied Borel.

  “But how?”

  “They say ghosts steal life from the living, as if trying to recapture their own, and they were primarily clustered about you.”

  “What of you, the Bear, the Wolves?”

  Borel managed a weak smile. “Oh, I was leeched, yet not as were you, for even though my long-knife did them no harm, I ween ’twas their memories of blades apast kept most away from me.”

  “And the Bear, the Wolves? Did the wraiths steal the force of their lives?”

  “Nay, Camille. It seems ghosts prefer pure Humans.”

  Camille’s eyes closed and she whispered, “But I am not pure.”

  “What, Camille?”

  Her voice was now faint, fading. “Ask the Unicorn.”

  When Camille next came to, she was lying on a bed of evergreen branches. At hand a warm campfire burned, and a brace of rabbits cooked above the flames. Dizzily, she sat up and looked about. The Bear, now black, sat nearby, as well as Borel and the Wolves, some of the latter alert and warding, others quite sound asleep. New green leaves swayed in a slight breeze above, and water ran down the slope and toward the valley below. While upslope and to the rear a wall of twilight loomed.