Winterbringers (5 page)

The Queen seated herself on her throne, soft as a drifting leaf. “Now, tell me why you have come to my Kingdom.”

As usual, it was Beatrix who found her voice. She told the
Queen how the crops had come close to failing for the last two years, and how cold and wet the weather had become, told her of the winter hunger we had come to dread, how the Laird claimed his share – a third of the harvest – even when we had hardly anything.

“And so we have come to you,” she finished, “to ask for your help. We thought that maybe, if you would let us take back something from here, we might take the summer with us, and maybe we could make the weather better for the crops and help the folk.”

The Queen sat, considering. Near her, a young man changed into a dragonfly and flew away.

“What do they call you, in your village, that would dare such a thing as this?”

“They'd call us witches if they knew; and then they'd kill us,” said Janet.

“Foolish folk they must be, to turn on those who would help them.”

“The church tells them they should. They're feared they'll go to hell if they don't follow its teachings.”

The Queen laughed. “Poor souls, to live in such fear and ignorance. Very well then; let us see if we can help them.” She thought for a moment, then called over a woman whose
plum-coloured
hair hung, curling, to her hips. She said something to her that we did not hear. The woman smiled and then she was a swallow, fluttering out of the nearest window.

“Will you take food and drink with us while you wait?” asked the Queen, and men bearing trays of pale polished wood set them down at her feet. There were bowls of summer berries and soft white bread and honey and cups of golden liquid.

I would have taken a cup and drunk, but Beatrix kept my hand pressed in hers and said, “We thank you for your hospitality, but we may not eat in your Kingdom or likely we will
never come back to our own.”

The Queen locked gazed with her for a few seconds, then smiled and said: “As you wish.”

At that moment, the woman with plum-coloured hair reappeared. She carried a tiny crystal phial, which she handed to the Queen. The Queen took the stopper out and held it up so that the sun flashed off the cut facets; then she stoppered it again and held it out to Beatrix.

“What's in it?” Janet asked. “It looks empty.”

“It is full of air from my Kingdom.”

“Air? Will that help us?”

Beatrix's hand tightened on mine and I felt myself grow cold. Janet's tongue could bring trouble anywhere. The Queen however, merely smiled at her ignorance.

“In you world it will be very … potent. Open the phial in your village and you will see.”

We muttered our thanks.

“We should go back to our own world now,” said Beatrix.

“Yes,” said the Queen, nodding, “for who knows how much time may have passed while you have been here?”

Her words sent a chill through my heart and I saw it reflected on the others' faces as we exchanged fearful looks. We got to our feet slowly.

“Thank you for helping us, Majesty,” said Beatrix, Janet and I repeating her words like an echo. The Queen of Summer waved her hand to dismiss us and it was obvious that she had already lost interest in our small concerns. It seemed clear we were to leave.

We walked slowly across the fragrant flowering grass to the doorway and paused to look back.

There was no one to be seen in the great hall of the palace, in human form at least. Here and there butterflies danced among the flowers, and there was a flash of blue as a Kingfisher took flight.

We quickened our pace once we left the palace, feeling the Kingdom grow wilder about us, as though the Queen's concentration had moved elsewhere. We looked back at the palace once more from the edge of the wood, then set off down the path through the trees, anxious now, hearing her words in our heads. WHO KNOWS HOW MUCH TIME MAY HAVE PASSED WHILE YOU HAVE BEEN HERE?

Silence closed in about us again as though the wood waited for something, its breath hushed. We dared not speak.

I remember that my legs shook with relief when we came down to the lily-strewn pool and the silvery jetty and saw the boat still there. Carefully, we climbed into it as quickly as we could. A Kingfisher feather floated on the water beside me and I picked it up, for a keepsake.

Janet pushed us away into the middle of the pool. “Take us home, little boat,” she said and sure enough the boat began to drift, going upstream this time, without oars or sail, pushing between trails of water weed under the gold-green tunnel of trees, under the silver-green tunnel of trees, the sky darkening until the clearest thing to our eyes was the glimmering white rope stretching away ahead of us.

The trees opened out and we came to where the rope was tethered to a branch. Wide-eyed, we stared at each other. Beatrix opened her hand and there was the crystal phial, safe and solid.

“What if years have passed in Pitmillie? What if no one knows us? Or what if we suddenly become old when we set foot on true soil again?”

“Look around you, you silly fool. It's all the same as when we got into the boat: same trees, same bushes. Look at the moon: it's hardly moved in all the time we've been gone. If anything, time has run quicker in her Kingdom than here.” Beatrix sounded exasperated and exhausted.

I had no choice but to believe her, but all the same, as I set my
foot on the earth of the river bank I screwed my eyes tight shut for fear that I should see my own foot crumble to bones and dust.

Beatrix got out with her precious cargo, then Janet. She untied the rope from the branch and dropped it into the boat.. The boat slid away from the bank and drifted away back down the stream.

“It wants to go back,” said Janet. “It is her thing now.”

We watched it out of sight.

“I knew you would come,” he said.

Josh stood very still.

“What does he mean, Josh?” Callie said beside him.

“I don’t know,” Josh lied.

“I dreamed about you,” said the man, “and in my dream, I called you.
Come back
, I said. I saw you through the ice, as I forced myself here. You saw me.” By his side, Josh heard Callie take in a quick, sharp breath. “Yours was the only face I knew, and I saw your face in my dreams and I called you.
Come back.
And you have come.”

Josh didn’t know what to think or say or do. He hoped he was having a nightmare. He tried to think of the relief he’d feel when he woke, but somehow he didn’t think this
was
a dream. What he mostly wanted to do was turn and run away from this strange man, but his legs seemed to have forgotten what to do. Besides, there was Callie.

She’d shown no sign of fear – in fact nothing but naked curiosity since they’d come into the cave. He looked at her now, saw her wide-eyed gaze flicking between their two faces.

“Who are you?” she said. Josh hadn’t even had the wit to ask.

“I am the Winter King.”

“Where are you from? Why are you here?”

He said nothing for a few moments. Instead he got stiffly to his feet and walked to the cave mouth to look out. He was a head taller than Josh, and strongly built, his greying hair
hanging to his shoulders. In the brighter light at the entrance they could see how intricate were the patterns dyed and embroidered into his clothing.

He looked at the grey sea out of his grey eyes, and Josh thought he had never seen a sadder face. Grief seemed frozen into it.

“Here. Careful – it’s hot.” To Josh’s surprise Callie handed the man a cup of coffee. He sniffed it before he drank, then sipped, eyes closed, concentrating on it as though it was something precious, until he’d finished every drop. There was a trace of colour in his pale face now.

“Thank you. What was that?”

“Coffee.” Callie touched his hand as he held the cup out to her. It was icy cold. “Would you like some more?”

He shook his head. “That is enough for now. I feel warmer than I have in …” He left the sentence unfinished, turned back into the cave and sat down again.

“I do not know your names.”

They told him and he nodded, committing them to memory.

“Where are you from?” Callie asked again.

“I have come from the Frozen Lands, where there are no trees, not a blade of grass, nothing but fields of snow and rivers of white ice and seas of blue ice, and white gulls crying.”

“Do you mean you’re from the Arctic somewhere?” Josh asked, though it sounded stupid to him even before the words had properly left his lips.

“No,” said the King. “It is no place that you know of.”

“Are you hungry?” asked Callie.

“Yes.”

She held out a leftover cheese roll to him. He nodded thanks and began to eat.

“Let’s go. He’s mad,” Josh muttered to Callie.

“Don’t you want to hear what he has to say about calling you? He seems harmless anyway.”

“No, I don’t want to – and you don’t know he’s harmless. You don’t know anything about him,” he hissed.

“That’s why I want to listen to him. You go if you want, I’m staying. I was taught not to run away from things.”

The final comment made Josh so furious that he was lost for words for a few seconds. When speech returned, it was to the King he spoke.

“Why did you call me?”

“I need help. I am grown too weak. I have waited too long.”

“What sort of help? Too long for what?”

“How much can you believe?”

Josh let himself slide down the rock wall opposite the man who called himself the Winter King until they both sat, facing each other. He felt, rather than saw Callie settle at his side.

“I don’t know. Tell us your story and we’ll see.”

He nodded and closed his eyes. There was silence for such a long time that Josh and Callie began to think he must have fallen asleep again, but eventually he began to speak.

“I have not seen her for so long. Sometimes I fear that I dreamed her face; but it is the memory of that face that made me keep trying to put right the wrong that has been done.

“I speak of the Queen of Summer, for the Winter King is chosen by her as her champion and her Consort, to hold the Black Winter through her power within the Frozen Lands. Together we subdued the forces of Winter, held back the ice and snow when they threatened the fragile folk of this world. She held the power of the sun in her two hands and conjured summer to force back the cold. In the Kingdom of Summer no snow fell or cold wind blew, and such was our strength together
that for half the year I could leave the cold white lands and live with her.”

He shifted slightly. “And then she began to sicken and her power began to wane and I had to leave her side for longer and longer to subdue the Winterbringers, and each time I returned to her she was a little weaker, her Kingdom grown a little colder. At first she tried to pretend that nothing was wrong, but her people knew; I knew. Some of her power, some of herself, had been stolen away, out of her Kingdom, and without it she was doomed to sicken and die.”

He straightened his shoulders as though to face a confrontation, and went on, “After a time I realized that my presence weakened her faster. At first it seemed that it would be enough if we no longer touched, and so we bore that, but after a time I could see that even to be near her drove the cold a little deeper into her bones, into her heart. I could not bear the thought that I was hastening her death, and so one morning I left her and went back to the Frozen Lands for good. I have not seen her face since.”

Silence spread over the cave floor. Josh had no idea what he was supposed to make of the fantastic story he had just heard, but he found himself unable to dismiss it as easily as good sense suggested he should. It tugged at something within him.

“How long is it since you saw her?” Callie asked quietly.

He thought. “Time is different for you and me, but as far as I can reckon it, it is a hundred and fifty years.”

It seemed no madder than anything else they’d heard since they entered the cave.

“Why have you come here?” asked Josh. “And why now?”

“Because she is dying, and I cannot bear to be apart from her any longer, and it would not help her now if I stayed in the Frozen Lands. I weaken day by day as her power withers.
The only thing that could save her now is if what was stolen from her was returned, and what hope is there for that? Her Kingdom is almost sealed now, but this is the place where the Frozen Lands and the Kingdom of Summer come close enough to almost touch and I believe there will still be a way through for me. I will go to her when I sense that it is time and be with her when she dies, and then the Winterbringers will have their way: the Black Winter will come and the ice will stretch away forever.”

“What do you mean? Just in your … Frozen Lands? Or do you mean here?” asked Josh, suddenly worried that he understood.

“Everywhere. Everywhere. It has already begun.”

“Is that why it’s been getting colder?”

“Yes. Though here it is less bad than in other places.”

“I know. Everyone in the village notices, but no one knows why,” said Callie.

“They say it’s Global Warming that’s made it colder. Something about shifting the Gulf Stream. But it’s supposed to get hotter in other places. The ice at the poles is meant to melt,” said Josh.

The Winter King shook his head slowly. “You people tell stories about everything to try and make sense of what happens. That story is wrong. The ice will spread until it covers everything, as it has done in the past as the power of each Winter King waxed and waned.”

“There’s more than one of you?” Callie frowned, confused.

He shook his head. “No. The Queen is ageless, but not her people. Her Consorts age and their powers weaken until the Winterbringers overwhelm them. That is when the ice spreads into your world until she chooses a new Winter King. He must prove himself by forcing the Winterbringers back to the Frozen Lands. So the powers of Winter and
Summer waxed and waned, but there was always balance.”

“The ice spreading … you’re talking about the Ice Ages, aren’t you?” Callie asked.

He nodded. “But without the Queen there will be no end to this one. Nothing but rivers of white ice and seas of blue ice …”

Josh asked the question that had been nagging at him. “If there is nothing that can help, why did you call me?”

“Because it is you who saw me in the ice. You anchor me to this place now. Without you I cannot stay here. As I grow weaker I will be drawn back to the Frozen Lands and overwhelmed. If you are close, my strength will last longer. I called you so you would know.

“There is another reason too: to be a witness. So that there is someone who knows the truth and will tell it and set it against all the false stories. It will take time for the ice to win. Your people will fight it and try to explain it with stories, but this is the truth of it.”

“Prove it.” Callie’s voice cut in, cool and assured. “Prove you’re what you claim and not some madman in fancy dress.”

The Winter King held her gaze and Josh found himself holding back words.
How can you look at him and doubt him? Look at his face. Look into his eyes. However unbelievable his story seems, look and you must see it’s true.
Perhaps that’s another reason why he called me, he thought.

“As you wish,” said the King. “I will let in a little of what I hold at bay.” He closed his eyes, and snow began to fall in the cave, a few flakes at first, like swansdown, then coming faster and faster, though Josh could see that there was no snow beyond the cave mouth.

As she turned towards the rear of the cave watching the flakes fall, Callie saw something shiver and form in the air at the dark entrance to the ice passage. It was like looking down
the wrong end of a telescope: she was looking at a miniature but extraordinarily clear view of a landscape such as she had never imagined.

Blue and green and white and glittering, ice stretched past the limits of her sight, smooth or jagged or carved into wild shapes by a ceaseless, screaming wind. There was not a tree, nor blade of grass, nor inch of earth; nothing and no one but white gulls crying in the fierce air.

It hurt her eyes to look at it, but she found she couldn’t turn away.

“Josh?” she whispered.

“I see it,” he said quietly.

The snow whirled around them now, a miniature blizzard, each flake a tiny, stinging slap of cold. It clogged Josh’s lashes and ran down his neck. It was bitterly cold.

“Enough! Stop!” yelled Callie’s voice from somewhere inside the storm of white. The flakes still in the air settled and were still and Callie and the King faced each other.

“All right,” she said shivering, “I believe you.”

Snow was sifted into every crevice of the cave, and lay thick on the ground. It stopped at the entrance as though cut by a knife. Outside, a watery sun still shone.

“There must be something we can do – some way we can help
you
at least.”

He hesitated. “It would help me if you came back again. You are my anchor to this place. Your presence will strengthen my hold here.”

“You could come back to the village with us. You could stay in my family’s house; there’s no one there just …”

“No. Thank you. I must stay here as long as possible. From here I have most power over the Winterbringers. You must come back here.”

Come back. Come back.

“Of course. At least, I will,” Josh said, shivering.

“We both will,” Callie said firmly.

“But now you must go. Close your doors and windows after dark, for the ice ranges further each night.”

They didn’t understand exactly what he meant, but chilled and confused as they were, they were easily persuaded to go.

Josh paused at the boundary between the snow and the outside world. “We’ll be back.”

“I know.”

In the West Port Café, Rose and her friends sat at their usual table, their coffee and scones untouched in front of them. No one had spoken for nearly five minutes; a thing unheard of. In the middle of the table sat a honey jar, half full of sand and weed and fragments of shell. They all stared at it glumly.

“What does George say about all this?” asked Isobel.

Rose sighed. “You know George: he doesn’t really say anything. He guesses some of it of course, but not how bad things are, or how much worse they could get.”

“Did you see the …” Bessie gestured, looking for a word that would do.

“No,” said Rose as Barbara lifted the jar and unscrewed the lid to sniff the contents. “The dog woke. He knew there was something outside, though not what, or I doubt he’d have been so keen to get out beside it.”

“We must try again to conjure a proper summer,” said Barbara, putting the lid back on.

“Sshh!” hissed Isobel. “People will think we’re mad old women if they hear you saying things like that.”

“They’ll have more to worry about than other people’s conversations soon if we don’t manage to do something,”
retorted Barbara darkly.

“We must do it tonight,” cut in Rose. “We can’t wait any longer.”

“The tower?” asked Bessie.

Rose nodded. “At moonrise. You all know what to bring?”

They nodded and fell silent again.

“Does anyone want my scone?” asked Isobel. “I’m not really hungry any more.”

When my mother shook me awake the next morning I thought for a few seconds that I’d dreamed the whole thing; then I saw the Kingfisher feather I’d tucked in among the daisies in the little jug on the windowsill, and every detail came back at me clear and sharp.

I ate my porridge without even sitting down, my mother’s acid comments about my laziness buzzing about my ears like stray bees, then went to my chores absent minded, waiting for the evening, when we’d meet again and find what we had really brought back with us.

It was a strange day. The air seemed heavy and still and quiet to me, as though some sort of blanket lay muffling the whole of the village. It was as though a thunderstorm were brewing, but there wasn’t even a wisp of cloud to be seen for most of the day.