Once upon a Summer Day

7

Though kept warm by his quilted eiderdown bedroll, once again Borel did not fall into deep slumber, but instead was wakeful throughout the darktide. Needless to say, he did not dream, for dreams come to those who pass into deep sleep, a state that completely escaped Borel.

The restlessness of the prince affected the Wolves as well, and they spent much of the night rising and turning about and then settling into the snow again, only to lift their heads at every stir of their master and at every small sound, be it the fall of an icicle or a plunge of snow from a pine or the cracking of rock in the winter cold.

Borel finally fell adoze just ere dawn, yet Loll came and licked his face to announce the coming of the sun and a winterbright day.

Stiffly, Borel arose and added wood to the remaining few glimmering coals of his fire, and he made strong tea to revive his alertness. Shortly thereafter, he broke camp, then he and the pack began trotting through the Winterwood, with its snow-clad pines and ice-clad deciduous trees barren in their winter dress, trees that in the ordinary world would awake with the coming of spring, yet these trees rested perpetually in the forever winter of this realm. Shrubs and grasses and other plants slept as well, for among the Forests of the Seasons, each woodland was eternal in its aspect: the Springwood was ever burgeoning; the Winterwood ever resting; the Autumnwood ever bearing; the Summerwood ever flourishing. Somehow, these mystical realms seem to maintain one another in concert, each by some numinous means giving unto the whole the essence of that which was needed to remain in a constant state of existence. The Winterwood provided slumber and rest that all such life needs; the Springwood infused all with the vitality of awakening life; the Summerwood gave to the whole the sustenance of coming to fullness; and the Autumnwood spread the fruitful rewards of maturation throughout. Jointly, they ran the full gamut, though each separately remained unchanged as well as unchanging.

And so the realm of the Winterwood slept under blankets of snow and claddings of ice.

And as in any winter realm, within this woodland there were storms and blizzards and gentle snowfalls, days bright and clear and cold or gray and gloomy or dark, days of biting winds howling and blowing straightly or blasting this way and that, of freezings and hoarfrost so cold as to crack stone, of warm sunshine and partial thaws and a bit of melt, and of snowfalls heavy and wet, or falls powdery and dry.

It was a world of silence and echoes, of quietness and muffled sounds, and of yawling blasts and thundering blows.

It was Borel’s realm-wild and untamed and white and grey and black, with glittering ice and sparkling snow, with evergreens giving a lie to the monochromatic ’scape-and he loved it most dearly, for never were any two days the same, and never were they different.

And across this icy realm did Borel and his Wolves lope, clots of snow flying from boot and paw alike. And as they trotted, a track left behind, within the ice of the ice-clad trees, and within the ice of the icicles, wee Sprites followed along, some merely to turn and look and note the progress of the prince and his pack, others to somehow shift from ice-clad rock to ice-clad tree to icicles dangling down as they kept pace with Borel or gleefully raced ahead. These were the Ice-Sprites: wingless and as white as new-driven snow, with hair like silvered tendrils, their forms and faces elfin with tipped ears and tilted eyes of pale blue. They were completely unclothed, as all Sprites seemed to be, and they had the power to fit within whatever shapes ice took. And their images wavered and undulated and parts of them grew and shrank in odd ways and became strangely distorted as they sped through the uneven but pellucid layers of frozen water, the irregular surfaces making it so, rather as if they were passing through a peculiar house of mirrors, though no reflections these, but living beings within.

As he ran, Borel glanced at the Sprites and smiled, and thereby acknowledged their presence. For they were of his demesne and subject to his command, though he seldom asked ought of them.

It seems that in all the Forests of the Seasons, wee beings love to pace alongside travellers passing by, though now and again something or someone comes along that causes them to flee in terror. Yet in this case it was Borel and his Wolves running through the Winterwood, and Sprites accompanied them by passing from iced rock to clad tree to coated limb to frozen stream to anywhere ice clung, and they did so without seeming to have to travel the distance between: they simply were here, and then were there, all as if there were no intervening space. And as far as Borel knew, they spent their entire existence within layers of ice.

The sun rose into the clear blue sky above, and tiny gleamings of shifting color were cast from the crystalline snow unto the eye. And across this ’scape trotted Borel and his pack, now and again passing through stark shadows cast by boulder and limb and bole to come again into the glitterbright day. And crows and ravens called through the woodland, for oft did they spend days or even weeks in the winterland. Treerunners, too, chattered and scolded and scampered along barren limbs, for they as well often came through the twilight borders unto this realm. It was as if they were compelled to bring nuts and other fare from the Autumnwood and place these stores in hollows and holes within this cold forest.

As he had done in the Summer- and Autumnwoods, oft did Borel pause at streams and, with Ice-Sprites scattering aside, he would break through the frozen surface and quench his thirst, Wolves at his side lapping. But then he would take up the trot again, and continue on deeper into the snow-laden forest.

He stopped as the sun gained the zenith, and all rested for a while, but before the sun had travelled two fists along its arc, Borel was up and running again.

At times his progress was slowed by deep snow, and often did he break trail for the Wolves, though at other times they broke trail for him. On the prince and the pack ran as the sun fell through the sky, and at last dusk came upon the land, yet Borel did not pause, but kept going.

Night came upon them, and still they coursed onward for a candlemark or so, and in the glow of a luminous full moon rising they passed across the ice of a river and followed a trail up a long slope leading to a great flat atop a bluff overlooking the wide vale below.

As Borel and the Wolves crested the rise, they came into the lights of a great mansion. Yet, unlike stone-sided Summerwood Manor, the walls of this hall were fashioned of massive dark timbers cut square, and its roof was steeply pitched. A full three storeys high, with many chimneys scattered along its considerable length, the manse spanned the entire width of the flat. All along its breadth the windows were protected with heavy-planked shutters, most of them closed as if for a blow. Even so, enough were open so that warm and yellow lanternlight shone out onto a stone courtyard cleared of snow. Atop the high river bluff it sat like a great aerie for surveying the wide world below.

As the prince and the pack crossed the flat and came unto the courtyard, ’neath a sheltering portico great double doors were flung wide, and some ten bundled servants, all men, stepped forth and formed a double line.

Borel and the Wolves slowed to a walk, and as he passed through the short gauntlet all the men bowed, and Borel nodded in return, while the Wolves, noses in the air, tails wagging, scented friends of old. At the head of the line a slender, dark-haired man dressed all in black straightened and stepped forth and smiled. “The Sprites told us you were coming, my prince. Welcome home.”

“Arnot,” said Borel, acknowledging the steward of Winterwood Manor.

Borel strode inside, followed by his Wolves and then the men, the great double doors swinging to after, and they passed along a short corridor to come to a great welcoming hall. And there assembled were the rest of the mansion household-maids, servants, footmen, seamstresses, bakers, kitchen- and wait-staff, laundresses, gamekeepers, and others-men to the left, women to the right, and they smiled in welcome and bowed or curtseyed accordingly.

Borel stepped across the heavy-planked floor to a wide marble circle inset in the wood, within which was a great hexagonal silver inlay depicting a delicate snowflake. As his Wolves gathered about, smelling the air, their tails yet awag for here were many friends as well, Borel said, “Thank you for this warm welcome,” and all within the hall applauded his return.

After a moment, to one side Arnot raised a hand, and when silence fell he asked, “What would you have of us, my lord?”

“For my Wolves a fair bit of cooked meat will do, not overdone, mind you, along with a few bones to gnaw,” replied the prince. “As for me, I would have a warm bath and a good hot meal and then a pleasant bed, for I have come far these last four days and need a good long sleep.”

At these words, and with a gesture from Arnot, the staff bustled off-some to the kitchen, others to Lord Borel’s quarters, and still more to the sculleries and other chambers-for there was work to be done.

The prince and his Wolves were home at last.