Winter's End, Part 4
This is the fourth part to a longer story. Catch up on parts one to three here!
Spring
It is a beautiful crown – perhaps her favourite of all the thousands she has crafted over the years. Then again, she thinks the same of every crown she makes. No two are the same, though most bare Tamber’s antlers. She reaches down and scratches the jackalope behind his long ears in thanks.
The creature nuzzles her ankle. Those stumps upon his own crown will grow tall in a few short weeks, reaching their full glory just as the last of his winter coat shakes free.
The jackalope stiffens abruptly. Tamber’s sudden shift from relaxed to alert is her first warning, and then she feels it herself; a cold that does not belong in her time, different from that of the snow, the ice, the air. A feeling of being watched.
The fingers gently cradling the crown now tighten protectively.
She looks up. There he stands, near silhouetted against the bright white of the meadow. He is more than a man and yet not so, godly, yet little more than a ghost of the woods. A ghost of Winter.
His skin is blue with a cold he does not seem to feel. Frost has hardened his clothes; a robe the colour of ice, thick winter boots lined with white fur, his hands gloveless and pale. Ice clings to his beard. Snow laces his eyelashes and dusts his deep blue hair. He seems to drift in and out of focus; one moment his physical presence solidifies, the next she can see the snow in the meadow behind him, through him. When he lifts his hand, it is like looking through melting ice.
She rises on unsteady legs. Tamber paws at the ground and glares at the wraith with his bright yellow eyes. The animosity emanating from the ghostly creature sends a shiver down her spine. But there is something else in his expression too – curiosity.
The wraith’s eyes drop to the crown in her hands and its lips part briefly as though to speak. No words come out. It raises its gaze again to meet her own.
She does not know what to do, how to react. Though she has seen humans before, their encounters have always been from afar – to come so near a goddess is to court danger, even if that goddess is the life-giving Spring. This is clearly no human. No man has ever had eyes so blue.
She knows him. Has done since the moment she first felt his presence. How could she not recognise that coldness?
But what she does not understand is how he can be before her. He ought to be away in his castle by now, nearing the edge of sleep if not already passing over it.
She lifts the crown, preparing to place it on her head and so solidify her new rule of the valley and the mountains that cradle it. The wraith holds up a placating hand and opens its mouth again.
“Wait,” it says, the words forming a cloud of mist in the air. His voice is so quiet she is not sure he spoke at all. “I only wanted to see you.”
He is fading fast now, melting back into the snow, fading into the air. The meadow strengthens behind him. Soon he is little more than the faint blue outline of a god.
“Take care of the world,” he says, and then he is gone.
Spring cocks her head to the side and then straightens abruptly as though to shake away the strange feeling this meeting has left in her chest. With hands that shake as they never have before, she places the crown upon her head, and with that act claims the valley as her own.
Winter
She sits in the safe haven between the roots of the fallen tree. Her head is lowered, focused entirely on the crude wooden crown in her hands. It is nothing like the intricate circlet of icy spires he makes for himself every year, but he cannot deny it holds its own beauty.
She is young, just as he has always imagined her to be whenever she had fleetingly crossed his mind. But unlike the goddess in his thoughts, this Spring has no sharpness to her. There is determination, yes. Power, a sense of ferocity. But what radiates from her most is love. A gentle touch, and an overwhelming abundance of life.
He takes a step forward. His presence is so faint that he leaves only the shallowest of footprints in his wake. Yet his arrival is still felt. The jackalope at her feet stiffens and affixes him with two narrowed, amber eyes. Suddenly he is grateful the creature has recently shed its antlers. The next moment Spring herself lifts her gaze to his. Her grip visibly tightens around the crown.
She stands, her expression warring between fear and defiance. She knows who he is, and she knows he is trespassing in what is now her realm.
His eyes assess her just as she assesses him. Hair the colour of roasted chestnuts falls down her back in a mix of loose braids and unbound tresses. Her skin is pale, flushed pink with the cold, and when she exhales her breath becomes a fine cloud. Her long cloak is lined with fur and sewn with flowers and seeds. In its threads he sees the valley embroidered in the glory of her season. Gone are his white snows and blue ices; instead, the world is awash with lush greens. There are flowers and animals everywhere, and the lower slopes of the mountains are swathed in heather. He barely recognises it.
His gaze drops to the crown, her power, once his, and then returns to her vivid green eyes. As she lifts it to her head, he holds out a hand, hoping she will wait, hoping she will give him more time. The remaining vestiges of his power are slipping and soon he will have nothing. He will return to his castle, his chair, his wolf, and fall into oblivion. Suddenly he does not want to go, and he is frightened.
For the first time he has looked upon Spring and now finds he cannot look away.
“Wait,” he says, his voice quiet. She pauses. “I only wanted to see you. Take care of the world.”
He does not know if she hears the last part – his attempt to assure her that he means no harm – for his time is up. He fades to nothing, and wakes seated in his chair in the safety of his own home. His heart is racing with the exertion of his wraith’s journey.
Erebus has been pacing back and forth in agitation at his master having gone where he could not follow. When he sees Winter’s hand move and hears his sharp intake of breath, the wolf is at his side in an instant, pushing his muzzle into his master’s hands and sniffing the air for signs of injury.
Weariness takes them both without warning. Erebus slumps at his master’s feet. Winter cannot keep his eyes open a moment longer. This season he does not drift asleep but lurches into the darkness as though some great beast has wrenched him back into oblivion. His last, wavering thought is of her.
Continued in Part 5