The Winter Spirits

by E. C. Hibbs

  About the Author

  E. C. Hibbs is an award-winning author and artist, often found lost in the woods or in her own imagination. She adores nature, fantasy, and anything to do with winter. She also hosts a YouTube channel, discussing writing tips and the real-world origins of fairy tales. She lives with her family in Cheshire, England.

  Learn more and join the Batty Brigade at

  www.echibbs.weebly.com

  Also by E. C. Hibbs

  THE FOXFIRES TRILOGY

  The Winter Spirits

  The Mist Children

  The Night River

  THE TRAGIC SILENCE SERIES

  Tragic Silence

  The Libelle Papers

  Sepia and Silver

  Blindsighted Wanderer

  The Sailorman’s Daughters

  Night Journeys: Anthology

  The Hollow Hills Tarot Deck

  Blood and Scales (anthology co-author)

  Dare to Shine (anthology co-author)

  Fae Thee Well (anthology co-author)

  AS CHARLOTTE E. BURGESS

  Into the Woods and Far Away: A Collection of Faery Meditations

  Gentle Steps: Meditations for Anxiety and Depression

  The Winter Spirits

  The Foxfires Trilogy

  Book One

  E. C. Hibbs

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  The Winter Spirits Copyright © 2020 by E. C. Hibbs

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

  First published January 2020

  Cartography, cover design, cover artwork, book production and layout by E. C. Hibbs

  Cover stock image from AdobeStock

  Author photograph by Allison Page-Hibbs

  www.echibbs.weebly.com

  Dedicated to the memory of Thomas Hibbs,

  The little brother I never met.

  Enjoy your dance through the Lights.

  Prologue

  At first, Lilja wasn’t sure what woke her. There was a strange taste to the frigid air. And it was cold. Far too cold.

  She sat up, the soft fur of her sleeping sack falling away into her lap. As usual, she had slept in her coat to keep warm, but even that did little to ward off the chill. The night had sucked the moisture out of her skin; it was numb and tight over her cheekbones.

  She eased her eyes open, carefully, in case her lashes had frozen together. There was barely enough light to see by. She couldn’t even make out her brother Kari’s sack, and he was only lying a few feet away. The cone of interlocking poles which formed the shelter loomed like giant bones all around her, broken only by the smoke hole overhead. The tarp of reindeer skin stretched over the wood was so dark, it was difficult to see where its protective circle ended and the night sky began.

  Lilja turned her attention to the hearth, directly under the smoke hole. Only a single tongue of flame was licking at the charred logs.

  A frown fleeted across her forehead. Hadn’t Kari added another one before he’d gone to sleep? This was the second night in a row that he’d forgotten.

  She peered closer. No, the wood was stocked high, like it should be. The fire just hadn’t caught.

  Rolling her eyes, she wriggled out of her sack and crawled closer, blowing on the embers to try and coax them back to life. When that didn’t work, she grabbed another log from nearby and tore off the papery bark, tossing the shreds onto the hearth. Sure enough, the dying fire flared, letting out a waft of thin heat.

  Across the hearth, Kari didn’t even stir.

  Lilja tended the flames as they bloomed back into life, spreading light and warmth through the shelter. She could see the seams of the tent tarp now: sewn together with tendons and sinews, creating a rough patchwork permanently discoloured from years of smoke residue and journeys though the tundra.

  From a notch above her sack, her drum hung suspended on a leather thong. The stretched skin was painted with a plethora of symbols, all daubed in red alder bark juice. Her eyes passed over the one in the centre, of the Great Bear Spirit, and a small smile rose to her lips.

  She and Kari would need to call to the Bear later, and to the Spirits of the Sea, to ask for fortune in the coming hunt. They had pitched camp close to the coast to fish for char, up here where nobody would walk this deep into winter. As the snows fell thicker and the Sun Spirit retreated more and more every day, all the folk of the Northlands would huddle in their villages and wait for the Long Dark to pass.

  All folk, except Lilja and Kari. That was not their way. Theirs was one of wandering, as it had been for years, ever since they were teenagers. Ever since the Great Bear Spirit had brought Lilja back from the dead.

  She gazed back at her drum. She was as familiar with it as she was her own body. Since the day she had made it, it had never left her side. Apart from Kari, it was the one thing she still had from her old life. It had grown with her like another limb: mage and instrument attuned with each other, and as she forged memories, she painted them on the skin so they would not be lost. Even the ones which brought pain, for they were often the most powerful of all.

  Her attention strayed to the bottom-most picture. It showed her and Kari: he outside a shelter laying down protective chants, Lilja inside, pulling a baby from its mother. That had happened years ago, in the southernmost village. A poor woman had been in labour, so Lilja was forced to act as her midwife. The child was born healthy, with a glow in its cheeks like the Sun Spirit herself. All the mages present had looked at each other with knowledge they dared not speak aloud, and Lilja and Kari had stolen away as soon as heads were turned.

  But lately, Kari had been bringing it up more and more in conversation. There was a strange longing in his eyes when he spoke of it. Lilja had often wondered about the boy herself, and humoured Kari’s musings, but she felt it best to stay away. She had learned a long time ago that being around children was not one of her strengths.

  She glanced up, over the growing fire, to Kari’s sleeping sack. He still hadn’t moved.

  Lilja supposed she should wake him. There was no point in her going back to sleep now; the two of them may as well feed themselves and the reindeer. A long day of fishing lay ahead.

  She picked up another log from the pile – a long thin one – and leaned over the fire to poke him with it.

  “Get up, sleepyhead,” she said.

  The log fell against an empty sack. He wasn’t there.

  She frowned. Was he feeding the animals?

  She threw the last handful of bark on the fire, crawled to the door of the tent and pushed back the flap. The tiniest glow of dawn tinged the eastern sky, but it was upon a land still steeped in darkness. Stunted shrubs stuck up here and there; branches encased in their own crystalline limbs of ice. Snow lay undisturbed and perfect, its whiteness tinted pale blue and lilac by the faraway light.

  Next to the shelter, the two reindeer raised their heads to look at Lilja. They were both lying down, their thick fur dusted with snowflakes. There was no sign of her brother.

  “Kari?” she called, a note of annoyance in her voice. “The least you could have done was get the shelter warm.”

  He didn’t reply. She craned her head towards the sleighs, in case he was fetching lichen from the bags. The reindeer were able to dig through the snow to find food, but Lilja and Kari always carried a supply for them in case the ground froze.

  But he wasn’t there, either. The bell
ies of the sleighs were undisturbed: still covered by the skin tarps Lilja had lashed across them.

  “Kari!” she called again, louder this time.

  The frozen landscape answered only with silence. Not even an echo of her own voice rebounded back.

  Lilja ground her teeth together. Where was he? He’d forgotten the fire again and now hadn’t even fed the animals?

  Then she tasted that strangeness again, blowing against her face like a wind too faint to truly feel. It was heavy, almost metallic.

  Unease twisted her stomach like a knife. Kari had been distracted for the past few weeks, but he wasn’t stupid. Something was wrong.

  She spotted prints leading towards the forest – the light was so dim, she’d missed them. However, her relief at finding them quickly turned to confusion.

  They were footprints: clearly marked with the shape of boots. The snow was several inches thick. Why hadn’t he taken skis?

  She ducked back into the shelter and pulled on her mittens. Then she looked back at her brother’s sleeping sack, and realised he wasn’t all which was missing.

  His drum was gone, too.

  That was all the confirmation she needed. He’d left to call to the Spirits. There was nothing strange about that. Like her, he was a mage, after all; it was what they did.

  But Lilja couldn’t shake off her unease. No skis? Not feeding the fire or the reindeer?

  And there it was again: that horrible taste. The air was usually crisp and clear, but now it seemed as though it was cracking under itself. She breathed in through her mouth and immediately wished she hadn’t. It lingered on her tongue like blood sucked from a wound. It was wrong, so terribly wrong.

  Then, as distant as the Sun, she heard the drumbeats.

  Her breath became ragged. What was Kari doing?

  She snatched her own drum and held it over the fire to tighten the skin. Usually she would leave it there longer, but now there was no time. Every second felt like an age. When she felt the heat spreading to her hand, she secured the drum on her belt, jamming the antler hammer in beside it.

  She manoeuvred the logs in the hearth to ensure they wouldn’t fall, exited the tent, and tied the flap down so no snow could blow inside. She didn’t worry about the reindeer – no wolves would be this far north. Nevertheless, she checked the rope binding them to the bottom of the shelter, to make sure they wouldn’t wander off. Then she trudged around the back, where she and Kari had left their skis. Sure enough, his were still there, sticking up out of the snow. She tied hers onto her feet and set off, after the trail.

  She bit her chapped lips together in an attempt to quell the rising panic in her blood. Her heart raced. This was so unlike him. And that pressure in the air was different to anything she had known him drum up before. A mage’s power was something both delicate and mighty: a beautiful balancing act with no beginning nor end. But whatever he was doing was too harsh, too coarse.

  Nausea welled in her stomach; she couldn’t tell if it was from the magic or from her own nerves.

  She leaned on each ski as it glided forward, down a gentle slope to the edge of the forest. Even though the trees stretched for miles, here their girths stood thin, and she was able to go on. Overhead, they seemed to melt into the sky, their branches so feathered with ice that they appeared invisible against the white clouds.

  The beats of the drum grew stronger the further in she went. They coursed through the ground, reverberated up her legs.

  Her heartbeat changed to keep time with the fast, irregular pounding. It squeezed her stomach and she paused, dry-retching into the snow. Nothing came up except bile. Grimacing, she wiped her mouth on her cuff and pushed onwards.

  She wanted nothing more than to call out Kari’s name, but she knew better than to do that. She could hear his chanting now: he was deep in trance. To snap a mage out of that could be dangerous. If he was in any kind of trouble, the last thing she needed was for him to be so disorientated that he couldn’t walk.

  She was close now. The heaviness in the air became stronger, until it made her ears hurt. Every time she heard the drumbeat, her hands shook.

  Then she spotted him.

  He was almost invisible in the low light: standing between two trees, the snow around him churned and uneven. He had his back to her.

  Lilja tried to keep calm. She slipped out of her skis and closed the remaining distance on foot. She walked slowly, so as not to startle him, but it was she who was startled.

  Kari had built a figure from snow in front of him, carved into the effigy of a human. Two small stones were wedged in its head for eyes; sheets of bark torn from the birch trees lay atop the scalp to serve as hair. He was rocking back and forth, beating his drum crazily, the sound becoming more erratic and unhinged with every moment. Each strike of the hammer sent out a small shockwave, wafting his hair back as though it were caught in a soft wind. His chanting chilled Lilja’s blood: both guttural and shrieking, not like anything she had heard before.

  She had seen him do something similar when singing to a blizzard, echoing the fitful winds and swirling snow with his voice and instrument, in an attempt to appease the Storm Spirits and still the weather. But he wasn’t singing to the Storm Spirits now. He was singing to the effigy, and the mere presence of it almost made her retch again.

  She had heard tales of these things, and in the old lore told around fires, they were used for terrible deeds.

  But Kari wouldn’t be dabbling in anything like that. Not her big brother, who had always been at her side. Her rock, her confidante, her best friend. He was a good man, not evil. He could never be evil.

  She reached out a hand, feeling the air. The denseness was still there, but she sensed no resistance against her skin. Kari hadn’t even cast a protective circle around himself. That was a novice mistake; one of the first lessons drilled into young mages.

  She swallowed, feeling as though a heavy stone had dropped through her entire body. It wasn’t a mistake. Kari had deliberately not laid down a circle.

  The unease swelled into a crescendo. She had to stop this, now.

  She untied her drum and held it before her, ready to begin her own rhythm. The hammer cast a shadow over the picture of the Great Bear Spirit. She eyed it, trying to draw reassurance from the alder painting.

  She forced herself to breathe slowly, trying to ignore the disgusting air as it filled her lungs. She could do this. She was Kari’s sister, his equal, a mage just as powerful as him. She might not be able to snap him out of whatever horrid trance he had sung himself into, but she could rise alongside him and guide him back, before he had a chance to harm his souls. Once he was lucid, she could demand an explanation.

  Then Kari suddenly drew a knife from his belt and slashed his throat.

  Lilja screamed. She dropped her drum and ran towards him, not caring about pulling him out of the trance anymore.

  With a roar of pain, Kari doubled over, clutching at his chest. He fell to his knees.

  Lilja snatched his shoulders and jerked him around to face her. She screamed again.

  His eyes were as hollow as a dead tree; his skin drained and paler than the snow. The gash in his throat was deep enough to see the ridges of his windpipe. His beautiful coat of white reindeer fur – the symbol of the mage – was lost in a waterfall of scarlet.

  Lilja clamped a hand over the wound in a desperate attempt to stem the flow. Warm blood seeped through her mitten. She wrenched the knife from his grasp with her other hand, in case he tried to hurt himself again. Or her.

  No… Kari would never hurt her…

  Kari cried out again. Tears streamed down his cheeks, cutting channels through the blood where it had splashed on his face. But with every shriek, his voice became less garbled, as though his vocal cords were somehow unharmed. Then, any semblance of pain left him, and he shoved Lilja away.

  She stared at him in horror. For a moment, she wondered if it was even her brother in front of her.

  Something small
rose out of the gash. It was thinner than a bubble, but sparkled like a star.

  Lilja cried out. It was his life-soul. He had ripped it out of himself.

  She tried to catch it, but it evaded her hands and flew into the effigy. Kari grinned at her. It was so unlike his usual smile; it turned her stomach. She could sense the darkness he had been drumming up: so thick in the air, she might have been able to cut it with the knife she held. The smell was awful; it tasted like something unearthly and ancient, something beyond even the most experienced mage.

  “What have you done?” she shrieked, unable to think of anything else to say.

  Kari smiled again, then looked at the effigy. Lilja watched the blood wash through the snow as though it were alive. It surrounded the base of the figure, and Kari lifted a hand.

  A rasping snarl came from within the effigy. Then it blew apart, sending clumps of reddened snow in all directions.

  A creature unfolded itself from the carnage. Pale skin was shredded about its branch-like bones. An empty mouth opened onto a black throat; within its flat face, two eyes burned like fire. Its fingers were long and tapered into lethal points: so sharp, Lilja couldn’t even see their edges. It stank of desolation and death; the clear air around it practically darkened like muddied water.

  Terror lent Lilja new strength. She grabbed Kari’s wrist and brandished the knife at the creature.

  “Run!” she yelled.

  Kari pulled himself free.

  “There’s no need,” he insisted. “I’m fine… it worked! I can’t believe it!”

  Lilja’s blood turned to ice. Despite his horrendous appearance, the ragged gash in his throat, what she had seen him doing… those three words unnerved her most of all. There was no pain in his tone. His voice was unchanged – it was exactly the same one she had grown up with, travelled with, laughed with the night before.

  She backed away in fright. This was not her brother.