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  Once Upon a Winter's Night

  ( Faery Series - 1 )

  Dennis L. Mckiernan

  Dennis L. McKiernan

  Once Upon a Winter's Night

  Foreword

  I don’t remember when I heard my first fairy tale or even what it was. It could have been Hansel and Gretel, for I did act the part of Hansel in a school play when I was but six.

  Nor do I recall when I actually read my first fairy tale, though I do remember checking out fairy-tale books from the library when I was nine or so. I read through the full spectrum of the Andrew-Lang-edited fairy-tale books, and I do mean “spectrum,” for the books were called The Crimson Fairy Book, The Red Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, and on through Orange, Yellow, Olive, Green, Lilac, Blue, Violet, Grey, and Brown: i.e., the spectrum.

  I loved those books, for, just as a Captain Future Quarterly had launched me into science fiction, these launched me into fantasy.

  But, you know, it is my contention that many of the old fairy stories were severely shortened as the number of bards dwindled, and the people who were left to remember and pass on the tales simply didn’t have the oratory skills to tell stories of epic scope. Too, we also know they were altered to help promote different religions from those in the societies where told, hence they were shortened merely to get the point across.

  And so, it is my thesis that back when bards and poets and minstrels and the like sat in castles or in hovels or mansions or by campfires, or entertained patrons as they travelled along the way, surely the original stories were much longer, with many more wondrous encounters than the later, altered versions would have them be. After all, in the case of a bardic storyteller, she or he would hold audiences enthralled for long whiles with accounts of love and seduction and copious sex and bloody fights and knights and witches and dragons and ogres and giants and other fantastic beings all littering the landscape of the tale as the hero or heroine struggled on.

  Don’t get me wrong, I am not putting down the altered versions of the fairy tales; after all, I loved them. What I am saying instead is I’ve always felt that many wonders were lost by the shortening and altering of each folk and fairy tale to fit a different song from that which the old bards and my Celtic ancestors would sing.

  For this reason, I decided to tell a fairy tale (in the traditional manner and style) as I would like for it to have been told had I either been one of those bards or one of those in the audience. Consequently, in telling the story herein, just as I think did happen in the past, I too have amended the tale, adding back those things-sex and fights and other such trappings-which might or might not have been in the original telling once upon a time long, long ago in a castle far, far away.

  The tale I chose is one of my favorites, one you can find in The Blue Fairy Book, one that is said to have come from the Norse. But, you know, I always thought that this particular story should have come from the vales of France-it is a romance, after all, and who better than the French to have started it? Hence, sprinkled here and there throughout my telling, you’ll find French words to give it that flavor. You’ll also find other languages scattered therein, but the seasoning of French is strong.

  By the bye, in my version of The Blue Fairy Book this story is but eleven pages long. I thought that much too short, and, as is apparent, I did lengthen it a bit.

  Dennis L. McKiernan

  Tucson, Arizona, 2000

  1

  Knock

  They 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 echecs 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, Frere, 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.

  2

  Offer

  Silence 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 …”

  To the parents of the girl who sings in the field: Greetings.

  Fear not the Bear, for he would do you no more harm than would I. Think of him as my ambassador, and offer him your hospitality ere reading on.

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

  “Bu-but, what if-”

  “The Prince of the Summerwood has so ordered,” said Camille, gesturing at the letter.

  “Prince?” gasped Aigrette, her eyes flying wide, a gleam of expectation within. “Henri,” she barked, “do as Camille says.”

  Sucking in air through gritted teeth, Henri loosed his hold on Giles and stepped to the door and lifted the latch and opened it wide, the wild wind and snow howling about to set the strings of beans and turnips and other such to madly sway, the pots and pans to clang, and the fire and wrapped ’round blankets to whip and flutter in the blow. “Enter, Monsieur Bear,” Henri called, his voice trembling, and then quickly stepped wide of the way. The great Bear ambled inward, the girls scrambling together and in a body retreating, Camille and Giles standing firm on the side of the table nearest the Bear, the mother cringing but remaining opposite.