Once Upon a Winter's Night (2 page)

T
hey lived in a one-room, stone cottage on the edge of Faery, there where the world ends and the mystical realm begins, there where golden sunshine abruptly becomes twilight all silver and grey, there where night on one side instead on the other is darkness, sometimes absolute, sometimes illumined with a glorious scatter of bright stars and silvery moonlight, sometimes illumined by small, dancing luminosities atwinkle among hoary trees, there where low, swampy lands and crofters’ fields and shadowed forests on this side change on that side into misty fens and untilled meadows and deep, dark, mysterious woods.

There at the edge of Faery . . .

There at the edge of the world . . .

There where they lived in days long past, when the mystical yet touched the real.

 

They were a large family—father, mother, six daughters, and a son—scratching out a mean living from a meager plot of land on this side of the marge where the world ended and Faery began. Yet the meek father and bitter mother and their six daughters—ranging in age from twenty to sixteen and in manner from whining to cheerful and sweet—and their uncomplaining young son of nine managed to eke out a bare existence from the scant land and to make do with what they had. Although they had enough to eat, beyond that they did not live well, working the poor soil, laboring hard, father and mother and daughters. As to the son, he was quite sickly, yet even he did what he could, though he did tire most easily and seemed always out of breath. It was but a scrape of land, standing remote at the edge of the world, and passed down through generations from poor fathers to equally poor sons. Neighbors they had none, the nearest croft miles away, the town even farther. None of the daughters was married, and no dowry did any have, and no suitors came to call, living in poverty and isolation as the daughters did. And so they were yet maidens all, though in face and form quite fair, especially the youngest with her golden hair, who often sang in a voice that would put the larks to shame as she worked in the field near the woods, there on the edge of Faery.

But then . . .

. . . Once upon a winter’s night . . .

 

“Oh, Papa, listen to the wind howl,” said Camille, raising her head from the hand-carved game of échecs over which she and Giles pondered, some of the shaped pieces arrayed on the squares of the board, other pieces sitting to one side, captured and no longer in play.

“Howl indeed, and I am freezing,” grumbled dark-haired Lisette, eldest of the six sisters, hitching the blanket tighter ’round her shoulders, then huddling closer to the meager fire and reaching out with her cold hands.

The chimney moaned as would a lost wraith, and the bound thatch across the sparse beams above rattled and thumped and shook like a rat in a terrier’s jaws, and dust drifted down to swirl about in the darts of air whistling in through chinks in between stones in the walls.

“Move back, Lisette,” snapped Joie and Gai nearly together, the twins in their shared blanket crowding inward, Gai adding, “you are taking all the heat for yourself.” Colette and Felise chimed in, agreeing, at the same time crowding inward as well.

“Now, now, mes filles,” began the father, “do not bicker. Instead—” but his words were cut short.

“Complain they should, Henri,” snapped the mother, Aigrette, her downturned mouth disapproving, her glaring blue eyes full of ire as she pulled at the blanket she shared with him. “I told you time and again this summer to mortar the gaps, but you didn’t, and now the wind blows as fiercely within this hovel as it does without.”

As the tempest rattled the plank door, through the firelight the father looked about the mean dwelling, with its hard-packed clay floor and rough, field-rock walls and its aging and thinning reed roof. This single room was all they had, a fireplace in one corner, now crowded ’round by the family on three mismatched chairs and a wobbly, three-legged stool and a small, splintery bench. Near the fireplace stood an inadequate worktable for the preparation of meals, such as they were, with a wretched few pots and pans and utensils hanging from the beams above. Several rude shelves on the wall at hand held a small number of wooden bowls and dishes and spoons. A water bucket sat on a shelf as well, a hollowed-out gourd for a dipper hanging down from the bail. To one side of the fireplace stood a tripod holding a lidded iron kettle dangling empty. Swaying in the shadows above, strings of beans and roots and turnips and onions and leeks and other such fare depended from the joists. Ranged along the walls stood a cot for the boy and three beds, two of which were stacked—upper and lower, shared by three girls each—and in the center of the room stood the table on which they ate, one short leg propped on a flat stone to keep the whole of it from rocking. Pegs here and there jammed into wall cracks held what few garments they owned, and by the door a meager coat for braving the cold hung over a single pair of large boots. In one corner a coarse burlap curtain draped from a rough hemp cord, behind which sat a wooden chamber pot, in truth nought but a bucket, though it did have a lid.

The father sighed and stroked his care-lined face, for they would spend much of the remainder of the winter jammed together in this insufficient, single room—bickering, fighting, glowering at one another in sullen ire, or sunk in moody silences—for in the cold season the out-of-doors was brutal, and the meager clothes they wore would not protect them from the bone-deep, bitter chill. Even indoors as they were, they kept warm only by huddling within well-worn blankets, and these they had to share.

As the wind shrieked ’round the house and battered as if for admittance, in the dim shadows beyond the clustered fireside arc of family Camille said, “Giles, I shall win in four moves.”

“What?” exclaimed the lad, staring at the board, perplexity in his hazel eyes. “You will? Four moves?”

Reaching out from the blanket they shared, Camille slid a miter-topped piece diagonally along three unoccupied squares and into the occupied fourth. “Hierophant takes spearman. Check. Now, Frère, what is the only move you have?”

Giles studied the board and finally said, “King takes hierophant,” and he smiled his crookedy smile.

“Yes,” replied Camille. “Then my warrior takes this spearman. Check.”

After a moment, Giles said, “This spearman takes your warrior.”

Camille nodded. “Now, with that spearman moved, tower takes tower. Check.”

“Oh, I see,” said Giles. “Then I have no choice but to move my king here, but then you reveal the mate by—” Of a sudden, Giles broke into racking coughs.

Camille wrapped the blanket tighter around Giles’s narrow shoulders, yet he gasped and wheezed, unable to gain his breath. “Here,” said Camille, helping the boy to stand, “let me get you closer to the fire.”

As Camille shepherded Giles toward the hearth, “You just want to steal our warmth,” declared Lisette. “Well, I for one do not intend to move.” An immediate squabbling broke out among the girls, the mother joining in.

Sighing and without saying a word, the father stood and yielded up his place, leaving the blanket he had shared wrapped about his wife.

But before Camille and Giles reached the vacated space, there came a hard pounding on the door, the cross-braced planks rattling under the blows, the barricading bar jumping in its wooden brackets.

Startled, the girls looked at one another and then at the father, who had jerked about to stare at the entry.

“Who could that be?” whispered Lisette. “Thieves? Brigands come to rob us? Kidnappers come to grab up one of us for ransom?”

“Ha!” snorted the mother. “And just what would they get, these thieves and robbers, these kidnappers? Rocks? Dirt? Straw?”

Again the pounding came.

“Papa,” said Camille to her father, even as she huddled closer to Giles, “perhaps you had better see who it is; they may need shelter from the storm.”

Looking about for a weapon, finding none, the father stepped to the door and pivoted the bar up and aside on its axle. Glancing back at Camille and receiving a nod, he placed a shoulder against the rattling planks to brace against the wind and lifted the clattering latch and eased the door on its leather-strap hinges open a crack, putting his eye to the narrow space as a snow-bearing sheet of wind swirled in.
“Ai!”
he wailed and slammed the door to and crashed the bar down into its brackets.

“What is it, Papa?”
cried the children at the fire as they leapt to their feet and clustered, all clutching one another for support, the mother standing and shrinking back against the trembling knot of girls.

“A Bear! A white Bear!” wailed the father, backing away from the barred planks. “A great white Bear of the North!”

As the father retreated and the girls and the mother pressed even tighter together, and Camille held on to wheezing Giles, once more came the massive knock, the planks and bar shuddering under the blow, there at the cottage where the mortal world ended and the realm of Faery began.

S
ilence fell, but for the storm, and but for Giles’s racking cough. Moments passed, none daring to say aught, none daring to move, except to stare wide-eyed at one another. Finally, Lisette whispered, “Perhaps it’s gone.” Yet no sooner had the words passed her lips, when again came the thunderous pounding, and all the girls but Camille screamed, she to wince and clutch Giles tighter, the lad yet gasping and wheezing with his cheek pressed against her breast.

“Papa,” asked Camille, “how large is the Bear?”

“Huge,” quavered the father, backing away from the entry.

“Large enough to smash down the door?”

“Oh, yes, Camille. Quite easily.”

“Yet he does not,” observed Camille. “Here, Papa, take Giles.” She gave over the lad and blanket to her sire.

“What are you going to do?” cried the mother.

“I’m going to see what it wants,” replied Camille, stepping toward the door.

“Oh, oh,” cried Joie, clutching her twin, “now we shall all be killed.” At this the girls began to weep, and huddled even closer together.

But Camille rotated the bar about its end axle and cautiously opened the door.

With the blizzard shrieking all ’round, the frigid squall howling inward and threatening to blow out the meager fire, a huge white Bear stood on the doorstone, its paw lifted as if to strike the planks again, the wind rippling its fur.

In the fluttering light cast by the struggling blaze, Camille, her loose golden hair aswirl, called out above the blast, “What is it you want, O Bear?”

The Bear raised its head up and turned it aside and stood very still, revealing a leather canister affixed to a strap about its neck, the cylinder a foot or so long and some three fingers in diameter.

Leaving the door to swing wildly in the wind, Camille knelt and with trembling fingers unfastened the tube, her heart beating frantically, for she was fearful of the Bear’s great claws and teeth, though if the creature decided to attack there was little she could do to defend herself or her family within. The moment the canister was free, the Bear backed away a step or two, Camille suppressing a gasp of startlement at the great white beast’s sudden move. But the Bear stopped and once again became still. Camille then stood and, shivering with cold or dread or both, stepped back into the cottage and grabbed the door and latched it shut. Inside, she heaved a great sigh of relief and slumped against the wind-battered planks, the storm howling to be let in again.

“What is it?” cried the father, he and Giles now huddled with the others, spinning snowflakes yet swirling through the air within and drifting down to the clay floor.

“It is a message tube,” said Camille, pushing away from the door and moving to the table. She held the leather canister up for all to see, her hand yet trembling with residual fright. “Now and again by courier, Fra Galanni would receive one similar to this”—she glanced back at the rattling door—“but never one borne by a Bear.”

Camille twisted off the cap and shook out a scroll from inside and set the canister down on the board.

“What does it say?” asked Aigrette, the mother moving opposite.

“It is sealed, Maman,” replied Camille, showing her mother the fix of green wax holding the scroll closed, wax impressed with an ornate signet depicting a wide-branching tree—an oak, perhaps.

“Well, open it, for surely it was meant for us, else the Bear would not have brought it here.”

Camille nodded and broke the seal and unrolled the parchment. The message it bore was written in a very fine hand.

“Read it to us,” urged Lisette, now stepping to Camille’s side.

“Oh, do,” cried Colette, she and Felise rushing forward as well, the others crowding ’round the table after, including the father and Giles, the lad’s coughing finally come to a stop.

They all craned their necks to look at the writing, which none could read but Camille, for, unlike them, she had been taught by Fra Galanni to read and write. Her mother had bound Camille over to the elderly monk as a servant girl at the age of eight, and she had attended him for nearly four years, until he had died of the ague.

Tilting the letter toward the firelight, the better to see the script, Camille quickly scanned down the scroll and sharply drew in a breath. She looked up at her father.

“Come, come, daughter, what does it say?” he asked.

Camille looked again at the letter and, her voice slightly quavering, read, “To the parents of the girl who sings in the field ...”

Camille looked up from the page. “Papa, let the Bear in.”