The Ways of Winter

by Karen Myers

  “My pleasure, auntie. I’ll see you at dinner.” He turned and led her mount down to the stables.

  “Auntie?” George asked, looking down at her.

  She colored faintly. “We got to talking about families,” she murmured.

  “I see,” he said. “You’re going to be sore. I recommend a good long soak in a hot bath, right away.”

  “Wise advice,” she said, as she took a few experimental steps.

  Brynach, Rhian, and Cydifor had followed George on foot from the stables. The two teenagers were trying to put Cydifor at his ease, rubbing off his country shyness, and it was beginning to work. George spotted grins on all three faces as they recalled the afternoon events.

  “Why are you two hanging around?” he asked. “Cydifor lives here, so he’s got an excuse.”

  Brynach said, “My great-uncle told me to come and make myself useful with the tree.”

  “Good of him,” George said. “Better, of you—you’re doing the work. Well, let’s get the darn thing into the house.” He bent to start removing the ropes.

  Rhian ran up the two steps to get the door. When she opened it, George’s dogs dashed by her to be greeted by excited barks as Angharad’s terriers rushed to the defense of the house.

  George looked up, dropped the rope, and took both the steps at once, passing Rhian into the hall. Angharad was just coming down the last treads of the stairs. He swept her off the final one into his arms and took advantage of the momentum to swing her around before setting her down. “You came!”

  She smiled at his enthusiasm. “Better finish bringing your tree in, dear.”

  With a start, George recalled what he’d been doing, and their interested audience. He gave her a mock bow with a quirk of his lips. “Yes’m.”

  He walked back out, past the grinning Rhian who was still holding the doorknob.

  With Brynach’s help he lifted the tree in its barrel end to the top step and knocked the last of the snow off of its branches.

  “All ready in there, Alun?” George called.

  “I suppose so,” came the reply.

  With one final effort, they duck-walked the tree into the hall, keeping it as low as possible to clear the ceiling, and dropped it on the round mat that Alun had prepared for it, next to the study door and opposite the bottom of the stairs.

  George straightened up with a creak. “Handles on that barrel next year,” he said, holding his back. After a few rotational adjustments to present the tree’s best side, he backed up to get a good look, snaking his arm around Angharad’s waist in the process.

  “So, what do you think?”

  “I think we have a forest in our house,” she said. “Nice aroma, though.”

  “You just wait until it’s cleaned up and decorated. You’ll see.”

  From the doorway Brynach said, “I’ll take the sledge back to the stable.”

  “Have you ever driven two horses in harness like that?” George asked.

  “No, but Rhian can help explain it to the horses. It’ll be fine.”

  “Alright. Thank you, and thank them all for me at the stables. And make sure those tools get back to where they belong.” They ducked out, leaving Cydifor and Maëlys standing in the hall.

  “George, will you introduce me?” Angharad said.

  “Oh, sorry. These are our guests until the traveling parties move on. My lady, may I present Cydifor, a musician from Tredin, and our neighbor Maëlys from Iona and Brittou’s place, seeking her husband.” To the guests he said, “This is Angharad who has recently done me the honor of becoming my wife.”

  Cydifor bowed low. “My lady, even in our little village, we have heard of your work.”

  George turned to Angharad, “I don’t understand how you managed it. How long can you stay?”

  “I had Huw Bongam send me the wagons when they returned this morning. He and I have an old arrangement for when I travel.” She looked at him sternly. “I do travel sometimes, you know. He holds the materials that don’t do well in bitter cold, keeps them for me in his attics. The finished works are preserved—a little chill won’t hurt them. All I had to do was refresh the spells and pack up. Empty the water from the pipes, and I’m done. I brought plenty with me to keep me busy.”

  She laughed at George’s look of confusion. “I’m here for the season, dear, or at least as long as this stretch of bad weather lasts, where travel is so difficult. Horses in the stable, dogs and cat here.”

  He could feel the smile beaming across his face. “Wonderful.”

  A sudden thought struck him. “Where will you work? Shall I clean out a room?”

  She shook her head. “I spoke with Ceridwen. She’s put aside an unused space beside the infirmary where my noises and stinks won’t bother anyone. It’s large enough for my needs and well-lit. All I need do is walk across the lane. I’m already moved in there.”

  He looked at her admiringly. “I think I’ll have you do all our travel planning. You’ve thought of everything.”

  Maëlys excused herself to change clothes and, George expected, soak away some of her unaccustomed exertions on pony-back.

  Alun brought bread and cheese from the kitchen, along with hot cider, and took it into the study. Cyledr followed him closely as if physically pulled along by the aromatic scent of cinnamon and apple.

  George joined Angharad and Cyledr in the study room and took a mug of hot cider from Alun. “Where do you all get cinnamon?” he asked.

  “It’s another import, of course,” Angharad said. “Much easier to buy from the human world than from our old channels to the far east.”

  “Yes, I imagine so. These things are so familiar to me I forget how exotic they must seem here.”

  A knock at the front door sent Alun back into the hall. He returned with Ceridwen and her newly arrived colleague whom she introduced to Angharad and Alun.

  “Eluned is going to Edgewood to take over the school and hospital arrangements there, and to do some research of her own once that settles down. I’ll be coming with her to help get things started again.”

  She turned to George, “Thank you for organizing that trip today.” She turned to Angharad. “You heard about it? We had many children, so much laughter.”

  Any human outdoor party like that would have had even more, George thought. Once again it struck him how few children there were in the lives of the fae. Over their long lives they might have many, but they were spread out over centuries and only young for a relatively brief time. There were proportionately so many more children in the human world. Only the special nature of these travelers, emigrating with families, would have concentrated even this many children into a small group.

  He wondered if the old slanders about the fae kidnapping human children had any truth behind them.

  Angharad replied, “I’ve only heard a bit about it so far, and the results are sitting in our hall. Come tell me more. I’m sure Alun would like to hear, too.”

  Ceridwen launched into a summary of the highlights, Eluned and even Cydifor chiming in from time to time. George watched them all silently, made sleepy by the warmth indoors. The smell of the fire, the cinnamon, and the tree, beginning to warm up and give off its sweet balsam scent, all mingled to give him a vivid feel of the season. Even the light from outside, glaring off the snow, felt right.

  He’d be spending Christmas here, in a couple of weeks. For the first time since he was a child, when his grandfather brought him back from Wales after the death of his parents, he’d be away for the holiday. It made him uneasy. At their age, each Christmas for his grandparents might be their last.

  “George?”

  He looked up as Ceridwen spoke. “Hmm? You were saying?”

  “I said, please explain to Eluned about this winter solstice event you’re celebrating.”

  “This will be hard to do briefly. It’s all tangled up,” he said, straightening in his chair. “It’s a German custom,” he glanced at her to see if she understood the human geographic
al reference. “A few hundred years ago, a long time for us humans, people in Germany started setting up trees to celebrate Christmas, December 25.”

  “That’s a Christian holiday, isn’t it?” Eluned asked, her deep voice contrasting with her fair blond face.

  “Yes, the traditional date of the birth of Christ, but then Christianity only goes back 2000 years, and as it spread the founders were careful to associate it with older pagan holidays to encourage conversions. It’s not a coincidence that the conventional date is so close to the winter solstice of December 21. The actual date’s unknown. It’s not clear if the tree is some sort of pagan echo or if it represents some Christian symbolism, now obscure.

  “The German custom became popular all over northern Europe and then spread widely to all Christian countries. In my native land, families have been doing it for generations, unless they adhere to a religion that considers it unsuitable. For most of us, now, the tree is a secular expression of the season. The date still has religious overtones, but not the tree itself, by and large.

  “It’s very much a family thing, with customs that differ in each family. It’s especially important for the children, the thing they long remember from their childhood. We give each other gifts, prepare a feast, and build family rituals around the ‘proper’ way to set up, decorate, and take down the tree and the memories of individual ornaments and what they commemorate. It’s all in fun but, like all rituals, these things take hold and give us comfort in our lives.”

  Eluned nodded.

  “After this tree settles in, I’ll start decorating it, and the house, too, with garlands on the banister and the mantles, and holly branches. They’re all green in winter, you see, part of the winter life renewal aspect of the solstice, pagan in feel if not in origin. We don’t have children, yet, but it’ll be like a rehearsal, figuring out what works here and for us.”

  “How long do you keep the tree?” Eluned asked.

  “Well, religion comes back into that. The traditional date is January 6, which we call ‘Twelfth Night,’ the twelfth day after Christmas. That’s Epiphany in the Christian calendar, when the infant Christ becomes manifest as a god in human form. Religiously or not, it marks the end of the Christmas season, and there are customs about making sure all the special decorations are removed by then.”

  Cydifor ventured a question. “Are you then a Christian? Won’t that be a problem for you, living here?”

  George rubbed a hand over his chin. “Well, I was raised one, most of us are, where I come from. How much I truly believe, I don’t really know myself. I’ll just say that this is a pagan tree for the season and not a religious expression, and no one should be concerned about it, one way or the other.”

  Eluned took the hint and changed the subject. After a few minutes, Ceridwen gathered her up. “See you at dinner,” Ceridwen called from the front step as they left.

  Cydifor bowed to George and Angharad in the hall by the fresh tree and went up to his room, and they were finally alone together.

  He said to her, quietly, “You know I have to go out to Edgewood again, to see about this new way that’s appeared where I shut down the old one? I’ll be back as soon as I can but I’ll probably be leaving tomorrow.”

  “Yes, I heard about it. Never mind, we’ll take it one night at a time.”

  “I’m sorry about the guests. If I’d known you were coming I’d…”

  “Doesn’t matter. Our door has a lock.” She smiled at him fondly.

  “We could always go up to change for dinner early, and test it,” he proposed.

  CHAPTER 6

  Gwyn stood by as Idris dispatched today’s courier to Edgewood. The stable area was crowded with people just returned from George’s Christmas tree excursion. Brynach and Rhian drove up the horses with the stone boat George had used to carry it, and joined the group. They all seemed reluctant to break up the after-party and return to their normal lives.

  Gwyn was surprised how pleased everyone was for the simple change in the routine, a chance to get out in the snow. We seem to have generated an unexpected bonus of goodwill, he thought. Even Cadugan had unbent enough to praise it as a way of bonding the travelers into a stronger group.

  As he walked back into the manor, he made a note to come look at George’s tree in a few days. He knew Christmas trees from his years living as a human, and he thought it would be a fitting gesture to get George an ornament, something from him personally. What would be good? He wanted it to stand for their bond as family, and it should be something that would last, as a keepsake should. He’d have to think about it.

  Still no messenger from Rhys or Edern, and nothing to account for it. He couldn’t take his mind off of that.

  With Rhys, Edern, and Rhodri at Edgewood, George found himself only one seat from Gwyn at dinner, Idris between them. When Idris stepped away for a moment, George got a good look at Gwyn and noted the worry on his face and his distracted manner.

  He leaned across Idris’s empty chair. “What’s bothering you, sir?”

  Gwyn looked up at the sympathetic voice. George could see him deciding not to fob him off with a meaningless assurance. “There’s been no courier from Rhys, yesterday or today,” he said. “I’ve sent mine, with instructions to find out what’s going on, but I don’t expect to hear back from him tonight.”

  He made a visible effort to lay the problem aside and smiled at George. “I’ve been hearing about your Christmas tree all afternoon. Seems to have been quite a party.”

  “Well, you know how it is, you’ve lived in the human world at Christmas,” George said.

  “Indeed. I look forward to seeing the results. And to hearing you explain the custom.”

  “I had a dose of that already this afternoon, with Ceridwen and Eluned.” He pointed his chin at the two of them seated beyond Gwyn, on the other side of Cadugan and Ifor. “Everyone seems to find it very odd.”

  “Don’t let that stop you,” Gwyn said. “It’ll do them good to shake them up a little with different customs.”

  Angharad on George’s other side touched his arm to draw his attention. Idris had reentered the hall, bringing a snow-covered rider with him.

  Gwyn rose, recognizing the messenger he sent out a couple of hours ago. They came up the steps of the dais and stood in front of the table, facing Gwyn. Everyone stopped talking.

  “My lord,” the courier said. “I couldn’t get through. The way is barred somehow, at the Edgewood end.”

  George wasn’t surprised when Gwyn didn’t stand on ceremony waiting for the meal to properly conclude. He swept his family and council from the high table down the steps and into his council chamber, bringing the courier along. Before he entered the room, he paused seeking Thomas Kethin in the great hall. When he caught his eye, he beckoned him along.

  Everyone took a seat along the table, and the messenger placed himself in front of the seated Gwyn, Idris standing behind him for support.

  “Now tell your tale in full and spare no details,” Gwyn told him.

  “My lord, we all knew there’d been no courier from Edgewood yesterday. The one you sent in would’ve been the next one to come back in our rotation, and when they told me at Eastern Shore that no one had come from Edgewood today either, I was well and truly alarmed.”

  Gwyn gave him his complete attention.

  “Before entering the way, I dismounted and found a long stick. It’s dim in the passage, as you know, and I used the stick as a blind man does, feeling the ground before me and leading my horse slowly. I also took the precaution of tying a rope around me that the guards outside held.”

  “What happens when you do that?” Gwyn said. “Isn’t it severed partway through?”

  “No, my lord. We couriers have done many experiments, professionally. We go through ways all the time for our work, and so we’ve accumulated some bits of knowledge that maybe others don’t have. The actual transition doesn’t happen until just before the passage stops. The end of a way passage after
the crossing is always no more than a yard or two in length, however long the interior, and we know the lengths of the interiors of all the common ways we use, and how they bend, if they do.”

  “I never thought to ask. I’ll talk more with your colleagues about this later. So, what did you find?”

  “I thought if I reached the transition point, I would untie the rope and the guards would know. If I was taken by surprise, it would come back cut. Thus there would be at least some information no matter what happened.”

  Gwyn nodded his understanding.

  “Of course, I wanted no surprises, my lord. I probed cautiously as I went along. As I approached the end, I knew I was still a couple of yards short and I looked very carefully. This was the point where I should have been able to see Edgewood clearly, just before crossing over. Instead I saw a dark place with a flicker of light, as if torches were somewhere nearby. It was not the grounds of Edgewood Manor. My stick, pushed along the ground, sank before the end crossed over and it was pulled from my hand. There is no change in level at the end of the way to Edgewood.”

  He let that hang in the attentive silence for a moment.

  “I backed up, turned my horse around and went back out as I came in. The guards knew I was coming by the slackening of the rope that they pulled in as I approached. I told their sergeant to block the exit of the way from their end and to set a guard and watch for a possible attack. If any of our people came out, they should send to tell you, or escort them to you. But I wanted to bring this news to you myself without waiting for morning. The roads weren’t long, and the snow on the ground reflected enough light to make it possible.”

  He stopped and stood composedly, waiting for Gwyn’s further questions. George admired his quiet professional competence.

  “Very well done,” Gwyn said. “You have our thanks.” His eye caught Idris, who nodded.

  A promotion coming, George thought. And well-deserved, too.

  Gwyn digested this all in silence for a few moments, and his council waited for him.

  “So, what does this mean? And how was it done?” he asked them.