Winter's End, Part 8
This is the eighth part to a longer story. Catch up on the previous parts here!
Spring
It is by chance that Spring hears the truth of Winter’s death. The villagers no longer hold the festival of Turning in her name – not now she fails them. Not now there is little to celebrate. At first they, like Summer, were glad to be free of Winter’s cold grip. They enjoyed the long months of warmth, revelled in a bountiful harvest season, and then their joy faltered when no lambs arrived in the spring. With each false year that passes, their complaints grow. The harvests fail, and crops die in once fertile land. Every year sees fewer and fewer lambs. The summers grow hotter with no snow or ice to bring balance. Hunters return home from weeks in the woods with thin game or empty hands.
Spring, who has always kept herself apart from the villagers as all gods should, now gives them a wider berth than before. She keeps her own company save for the ever-loyal Tamber as she walks the valley and tries in vain to coax a little greenery back into the world. Her efforts almost always fail, and when they do, she drifts aimlessly for hours, searching for the slightest spark of life.
Sometimes she walks the empty halls of Winter, free to enter, to come and go as she pleases. The wolves moved on long ago and all the ice has long melted away. When she is not in Winter’s castle, she wanders the mountains and the woods.
It is during one of her journeys into the woods that she hears the voices of the hunters. They are heading back to the village empty handed once again. Angry voices carry far in the deadness of the forest. They speak of actions taken, regrets, of wrongs done to the world. Any other day she would turn away, retreat into the shadows, but she hears them speak of Winter and she is abruptly frozen in place. She listens. Blood pounds in her ears as the hunters argue over the cause of the valley’s demise. There are those who think all gods have turned against them, but many voices speak of something else. Vengeance, punishment for the life those hunters took in the halls of Winter.
She does not need to listen further. She can hear the ghost of Erebus howling in her ears.
In her library she paces. Books are pulled from the shelves. She pours through them in a heartbeat, tosses each one over her shoulder, then moments later retrieves them from the floor and returns them to their proper place. One thing she is sure of. One thing brings a bloom of hope into her heart.
A god killed by mortal hands is not a god destroyed.
Winter remains, somewhere, and she believes she may know how to find him. The fear is there, of course. The journey to the godsplace, the oblivion of their dreams, of his dreams, is one that just might break her. But she must try.
Spring stands at the window and looks out over the valley. It is so changed from the world she once knew that now she hardly recognises it. Even the evergreens are losing their needles. Beyond the treeline, a thin grey wolf looks up at her window and bows its head, either from reverence, or because it is simply too tired to hold it up any longer. Now is the time for her journey to begin.
She presses her palm briefly to the glass in farewell, and then turns from her valley, takes a seat away from the window. It is not yet time for her to leave – Autumn has not long departed, and Summer is months away, but if Spring does not go now, she may not make it. She needs all the strength she can muster.
Tamber hops up into her lap. She holds him close for comfort. Then, with a last, fleeting look at the large window and the empty, lordless castle on the distant mountain, Spring closes her eyes.
Spring Again
The world is slow to relinquish its grip, but she feels with clarity the moment she is loosed from the physical plane. She opens her eyes. The valley of her dreams is awash with green. The trees are parading in their verdant cloaks and the swathes of emerald grasses in all the meadows waver in the gentle breeze. Pollen and warmth float hand in hand in the air. Overhead the skies are the bluest she has seen in a long time, though light rainclouds are gathering above the distant mountains.
Flashes of colour dart between the trees; birds not seen in the valley for years now. Their feathers are iridescent in the gentle sunlight of spring. Tamber – or rather, a shade of Tamber for he cannot fully join her here – lopes along at her side. Dream Tamber is a lighter brown. His movements are easy and joyous, free from concern. Not at all like the shrinking being in her physical lap a world away. He has not been himself since the loss of Winter.
Spring turns her attention to the castle of Summer in the southern mountains. It is barely visible in her dreamscape, having never been of much importance to her before. Her focus was ever her own season until she first saw Winter’s wraith. Now, as she heads for the abode of her successor, the castle grows more solid upon the mountain. Its sandstone turrets are bright in the sunshine. The whole façade exudes heat.
Spring passes through the valley. She revels at the flowers that bloom straight from the ground to greet her; in the whisperings of the trees about her and the dappled light they cast upon her path. She has not seen the mortal valley so garbed in life in what feels like an age, and yet she cannot allow herself to linger now.
She hurries on and finds herself too soon approaching Summer’s door. The warmth in the air is more extreme closer to the castle. The sandstone steps up to the door sink their heat into the soles of her boots. She pauses on the topmost step, fingers all but burning around the large handle, and takes one last look at the valley she must leave behind and the safety it promises, then steps through the door into a valley thick with the heat of high summer.
Beyond the door is not a castle, but the same view of the valley she has just left. The difference is that this valley is bright with the sunlight of Summer’s rule. The greens are still present, but they have lost their lush hue in favour of one that has a yellow cast, a certain dryness. Not a single cloud mars the blue sky.
She steps down into the woods and at once feels her strength failing. It is too soon. She has only made it through her own season and a mere few feet into Summer’s. The sense of wrongness is palpable, like invisible hands trying to push her back into her own dreamscape. For this is the sleeping world of Summer, and here she is trespassing.
The valley does its best to cast her out. Midway between the castles of Summer and Autumn, she stumbles. Her hands dig into the hot earth. She curls them into fists.
A presence permeates the glade in which she kneels. It fills her head with light. She looks up, a grubby hand the only shield she has between her eyes and the glory of Summer. The goddess stands in flowing robes of gold, a nod to the sun from which she draws her power. Her eyes are bluer than the skies above, her irises rimmed with gold. Sunlight all but dances off her dark skin and is caught up in her coiled hair.
She looms over the intruder, and for a time Spring feels the burning fates readying themselves to sear her into oblivion.
Continued in Part 9