Winter's End, Part 3
This is the third part to a longer story. Catch up on parts one and two here!
Spring
She turns from the shrine with flowers in hand and continues down the mountainside. Her cloak trails behind in the snow. Every step she takes brings another touch of warmth to the places she passes. It is still weak, for now, but in a few short weeks it will have shaken the snow from the world and coaxed new leaves from the trees. It will have called to the bulbs sleeping deep in the earth and bid them nose their green shoots into the open air between root and rock and path.
A clearing at the foot of the mountain opens into a broad swathe of meadow. The great expanse of white stretches all the way to the trees on the other side. If she continues across the meadow and along the welcoming path, she will eventually come to the fallow fields of the mortals and, beyond those, the village itself. They will be preparing for their festival. A feast to celebrate her long-awaited return.
She has never attended herself, knowing that the festival is just as much to give the people joy as it is to welcome her back into their world. Instead, she prefers to watch from afar – either from her castle or from the treeline where they will not see her.
Now, in the meadow, she crosses to the far side, Tamber loping along behind. His long paws leave deep prints in the snow.
A sapling waits at the edge of the wood, barely alive after the long winter. A rowan tree. She curls her fingers around its thin trunk, little more than a glorified stem, and feels the life thrumming within. It will serve.
Deftly she takes its spindly branches, ensuring it feels no pain at the loss, and then imbues the tree with strength until it grows new limbs to replace those she has claimed for herself. The tree will forever bear her mark. It will stand on the cusp of that meadow for age after age and no woodcutter’s axe will ever bring it low. She feels the subtle tinge of pride in its trunk as she releases her grip.
A fallen tree lies a short way into the wood. A storm pulled up its roots an age ago, and now the great being that once was now serves as her temporary refuge from the cold. She sits in the hollow of its roots, visible to none while she works, but able to see any who approach if she needs to. There is no fear driving her actions, only a desire for solitude so she may focus on her work.
In her lap lie the flowers and the sapling’s branches. The wood is still supple, green with youth and new life. She gently curves those limbs. She weaves them in and out of one another and adds a new branch here and there until she holds in her hands a crude circle. A crown. She tucks and binds the crocuses, breathing new life into them and watching with joy as their cut stems fuse with the wood of the rowan. When the last flower is in place, she looks down at the jackalope at her feet.
He has been waiting patiently. The change is upon him – a few patches of white fur left behind along their route have revealed the brown of his summer coat beneath. His antlers, heavy now on his small head, are ready to be shed and grown anew. So ready that the gentle touch of her hand is enough to loose them from his head, leaving growing stumps in their wake. These antlers she affixes to her crown.
She holds this year’s creation delicately in her hands as Tamber gratefully presses his cold nose to her knee. They have been bothering him since he woke and now he feels light and free.
Winter
Winter stands at the window, so close his breath clouds upon the glass pane, freezes to ice, and turns the valley into a thousand fractured worlds. For the first time in his long life, he curses the cold. It has blocked his view of the forest. Each pane of glass he looks through freezes over.
Yet he can still sense her in the distant wood. She and her companion leave deep tracks in his lovingly laid snows – a sensation he has never given much thought to until now. He is usually half asleep, ready to drift off into oblivion for the next three seasons until he may return, feeling the last vestiges of his power slipping away with every creature that wakes, every bud that blossoms, every river that thaws.
This time he is awake. Drowsy, yes, weak even, but awake. He can feel the dark void calling to him. It tugs on the back of his mind, telling him it is past time for him to be gone from the valley. He cannot submit just yet.
A need has taken root inside his chest, and it grows stronger with every passing moment. One glimpse of his long-time rival is not enough – this speck of a girl he surrenders his realm to in a never-ending cycle. But he cannot go to her weak now as he is. Should he leave the safety of his halls, sleep might strike him down in the forest and he would be powerless, unprotected from the advance of Spring and the scalding heat of Summer he never wishes to feel.
He would not survive long enough to rouse himself at the end of Autumn’s decay.
Winter returns to his chair. Erebus once again curls over his legs, but the wolf is alert, aware of his master’s disquiet. Seated, safe, Winter closes his eyes and fights the weariness to imagine himself in the snows beneath those pine trees. A wraithlike image of himself, an incorporeal creature of blue ice, detaches from his godly form, and then he is away, passing in one breath through the window and out over the forest.
He has no power in this form, but that matters not. He needs no power – he only wants to see.
And see he does. In this shape his senses reignite and flow into the cacophony of life that fills the world. Once more he can hear the creaking boughs of the trees laden with snow. He can feel the currents of the air and knows without looking where every single airborne bird is in the sky over the valley.
Most importantly, he can feel the passage of Spring through his surrendered lands. She may be a scar on his world, yet for the first time he does not begrudge her his power. He can feel her creating as she walks; new bulbs beneath the hard ground, daffodils nearing their crowning, a vibrant life flowing back into long-dormant trees. In the echoes of their minds, he sees them as they are in the seasons he sleeps through; covered in green, not the skeletal things Autumn leaves in his wake year on year.
He soon finds what he has been looking for – tracks in the snow. He follows silently, feeling each step Spring takes on the path ahead. Then the footsteps stop in his mind. The wraith of Winter finds himself in the middle of a glade and hurries to the trees before he can be seen in the open. He follows what tracks remain, wondering why they have stopped until he reaches a fallen tree and spots the hem of a cloak sewn with flowers and seeds. Crooked roots hide her from view, but he knows he has found what he seeks.
He stands on uncertain airs, waiting, wandering. Should he step forth, or flee?
Continued in Part 4