Once Upon A Time (8) Winter’s Child

by Cameron Dokey

  “If the roots fail, the plant will die every time. Do you understand what I am trying to say?”

  “I think so.” I nodded. “You are trying to remind me not to get so consumed in what lies ahead that I forget about where I came from. You want me to remember to look both forward and back.”

  “There now,” Herre Johannes said, and he pressed a kiss to my forehead. “Your grandmother was right. She always said you were a smart one.”

  Not smart enough to keep Kai from leaving, I thought. Not smart enough to truly see him even though he’s spent his whole life standing at my side. Not so smart that I stopped myself from driving him away, straight into the arms of the Winter Child.

  But I did not say these things aloud. “I will never be as smart as you are,” I said as I put my arms around Herre Johannes and held on tight.

  Herre Johannes made a rumbling sound deep in his chest. “Yes, well,” he said. “It helps if you remember that I am very old.”

  “And your roots are strong,” I said as I let him go. I stepped back, the better to see his face in the fading light.

  “As are yours,” Herre Johannes replied. “Remember that, when your journey seems difficult. Remember that I will be thinking of you as I tend the garden.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  We left the rooftop just as the sun went down.

  TEN

  Story the Sixth

  In Which Kai Finally Finds His Voice

  I suppose you’re wondering why I haven’t said anything until now.

  If Grace were here she’d tell you I don’t talk all that much, not unless I really have something to say, anyhow. Which makes me sound like some strong and silent type. Totally untrue, of course. And Grace isn’t here. That’s part of the point. If the two of us hadn’t quarreled, if we’d stayed together, neither of us would have much of a story to tell. Or at the very least, they would be different from the one—ones—you’re now holding in your hands.

  You may also feel as if I owe an explanation. Why did I do it? Why did I follow the Winter Child? This would be difficult to put into words even if I were a big talker. The closest I can come is to say that the moment I beheld Deirdre, I felt ... affirmed. For as long as I can remember, my heart has harbored a belief in spite of my logical mind: the belief that the Winter Child truly exists, that she is much more than a character in a bedtime story.

  So I ask you, what would you have done? If your most cherished fantasy suddenly had appeared and looked you in the eyes, offered you the chance to become a true part of her tale, would you have refused? Would you have stayed home?

  No. I didn’t think so.

  “Is this some sort of test?” I asked, that first night, as we walked along.

  Somewhat to my surprise, once I’d declined Deirdre’s invitation to fly through the air, she’d let me set both the pace of our journey and its course. My feet chose the way of their own accord: through the graveyard on the hill outside of town, heading in the direction of the mountains where my father had died. It was almost as if I wanted to say goodbye.

  “Is what some sort of test?” she asked in return. This turned out to be a habit of hers. She often answered a question by posing one of her own. Perhaps it simply had become part of her nature. She’d been alone for so long that she’d fallen out of the habit of regular conversation.

  “Letting me choose which way to go,” I explained.

  Deirdre shook her head, and I watched the way the moonlight shimmered over her pale locks. I narrowed my eyes, trying to imagine what she would look like when she was restored to her natural coloring— midnight hair and dark eyes. I simply couldn’t do it. Imagination has never been my strong suit, but it seemed to me that everything about Deirdre fit, just as she was then.

  “Of course it’s not a test,” she answered now. “Why would I want to test you?”

  I shrugged, feeling slightly foolish. “I don’t know. Because that’s the way these things always seem to work, at least in stories. The hero gets tested, needs to prove himself.”

  She turned her head to look at me then, and I thought I caught a hint of a twinkle in her eye.

  “Wait,” I said before she could speak. “I don’t think I’m a hero. That isn’t what I meant at all.”

  Deirdre bit her lip, as if to hold back a smile. “You might be. You never can tell.”

  I gave a snort. “I’m a watchmaker, not a swash-buckler, so don’t even think about me wielding a sword. I’d probably drop it on my foot and slice off a toe.”

  “Fortunately for us both”—Deirdre spread her arms wide, the cloak fanning out around her and revealing the dress she wore beneath—“I seem to be fresh out of swords.”

  “I’m just saying,” I plowed on. “I mean, just so you know.”

  We trudged along in silence for several minutes, both of us looking ahead. What Deirdre was thinking, I couldn’t tell. As for me, I was giving serious consideration to the physics that allowed me to walk, even though I’d just managed to put both feet in my mouth.

  “Does the path we take make a difference?” I asked after a while.

  “Yes ...,” Deirdre said at once.

  She tilted her head to look at me, and I caught my breath. If I live to be a hundred, I thought, I’ll never get used to those eyes. They were a color that usually resides only in nature, at the heart of a glacier or in the fine, pale height of a wind-scoured sky. They were beautiful and strange, and they drew me in, right from the start.

  What must it be like to possess such eyes? I wondered. Eyes with the power to see into a human heart? What did Deirdre’s eyes see when they gazed into my heart? Did they see things about it that I could not?

  “... and no,” Deirdre went on.

  I sighed. “I suppose I should have seen that coming,” I remarked.

  Deirdre turned her gaze back to the path in front of us, but I thought I caught a glimpse of a smile.

  “You know what they say, don’t you?” she said. “I think I do,” I answered. “They say that all paths are open to the Winter Child.”

  “All paths that lead to the living,” she amended. “The hearts of the dead are beyond my help.”

  “But you fly,” I protested, then bit my tongue. It’s just like in the old days, I thought, when Grace’s oma used to tell us stories. I always had questions, always saw loopholes.

  “That was unexpected,” Deirdre acknowledged. “A benefit, if you will, of the brief time I spent in the North Wind’s arms. When my time as a Winter Child is finished, my flying days also will be done.”

  Deirdre cast another sidelong look at me. “To tell you the truth, I don’t do it all that often. Like you, I prefer to keep my feet on the ground. That’s where the hearts I must heal are to be found. But flying is glorious,” she added with a smile. “And I will get you to try it sometime, so be forewarned.”

  “And the path we walk now?” I inquired, bringing the discussion back to where we’d started. I was still curious as to why she’d let me choose our course.

  “I thought it might make the transition easier if you chose your own path away from home,” Deirdre said simply. “I am accustomed to being a stranger in the world. You are not, and besides ...”

  “Besides what?” I prompted.

  “You think you know me,” Deirdre answered slowly, as if trying to decide how best to explain. “For you have heard my story all of your life. But every time a story gets told, it changes a little. Things get left out. You don’t know me. We’ve only just met.”

  “Not a test,” I said suddenly, grasping her point at once. “More like an introduction.”

  Deirdre’s face lit up. “An introduction,” she echoed. “That’s it precisely.”

  On impulse, I stopped walking and held out my hand. She stared at it, her expression puzzled. Then, without warning, she laughed and placed her hand in mine. It was like holding ice. Never in all my life had I felt anything so cold. It took every ounce of willpower I had not to shiver.
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  “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” I said. “My name is Kai Holmgren. What’s yours?”

  “Do you know?” Deirdre said suddenly. “I don’t think I have a last name, or if I did, I’ve long since forgotten it.” Her mouth gave a funny twist, as if it were full of a taste she couldn’t decide if she liked.

  “I only have titles, really, don’t I?” she went on. “Take your pick. Which shall it be? Princess, Winter Child, or Sorrow?”

  “I would like to call you Deirdre, if you’ll let me,” I answered steadily. “At least it’s a proper name.”

  “Deirdre it shall be, then,” said the Winter Child. She took her fingers from mine, and not a moment too soon. My arm was numb up to the elbow. We resumed our walk, continuing in silence for several minutes.

  “If that conversation had been a test,” Deirdre said finally, “you’d have passed with flying colors. You gave both a true and sensible reply.”

  “Oh, I’m just filled with common sense,” I said, surprised at the bitterness of my own tone. “Though if Grace were here, she’d tell you I have too much of it. It made such good sense to ask her to marry me. I had it all worked out.”

  We hadn’t talked about Grace, not since we’d left town. But the truth was, even with Deirdre beside me, Grace was always on my mind. For here I was, embarking on precisely the type of journey Grace always had wanted, exploring what lay beyond the horizon. It didn’t seem quite fair, somehow.

  Still, the fact that I was thinking about Grace irritated me. I had offered her everything I had to give, offered her myself, and she had turned me down.

  “And are you sorry?” Deirdre inquired.

  “Now I know that’s a test,” I said with a short laugh. “Or at the very least a trick question. How can I know how to answer unless I know what I’m supposed to be sorry for?”

  “Sorry for coming with me, of course,” she answered. “Sorry for leaving Grace behind.”

  “No,” I said, and as I spoke the word, I felt the certainty of it, right through to the marrow of my bones. “I am not sorry I came with you, and if I’m not sorry for that, then I must not be sorry for the other.

  “But I am sorry that Grace and I quarreled,” I went on, and I felt the truth of this as well. “We almost never do, and we’ve been friends our whole lives. And I’m sorry that we parted in anger. Our friendship deserved better than that, I think.”

  “Perhaps there will be the chance to make amends,” Deirdre said.

  “Perhaps,” I said. “I hope so.”

  Though I noticed that neither of us specified who would be making amends. Was the responsibility Grace’s, or was it mine?

  We walked all night and on into the morning. Each time we came to a fork in the road, I chose which path to take. The course I set took us higher and higher into the mountains. Deirdre had declined testing me, but it seemed I had some desire to test myself.

  I had been happy in my previous existence, working for the watchmaker, figuring out how all the delicate pieces went together and how to mend them if they broke. I’m good with mending broken things, though I never expected to mend a broken heart.

  What if I couldn’t do it? What if I wasn’t strong enough?

  “Kai,” Deirdre said suddenly, her voice slicing through my troubled thoughts. I felt the cold touch of her hand upon my arm. “Stop.”

  I did as she instructed, just in time. Two more steps and I’d have walked right off the face of the mountain. In front of us, the path stopped abruptly. The mountains fell away and I could see the world spread out below us. I stood for several minutes, catching my breath.

  “The world is a very big place,” I observed.

  “That is so.” Deirdre nodded.

  I let my eyes roam over the patchwork landscape. “Have you traveled everywhere?” I asked, and then I winced, for I sounded like a child.

  “Not quite everywhere, but close,” Deirdre answered.

  We stood together, looking out at the great expanse. “I feel very small,” I said.

  “As do I,” Deirdre replied honestly. “But small and insignificant are not the same thing, Kai.”

  “I think my brain knows that,” I said, though my tone expressed my doubt. “But my heart ...”

  Deirdre laid a hand on my arm. With the other, she pointed across my body to a dark smudge on the horizon.

  “Do you see that?” she asked. “That speck of green?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think so.”

  “That is the forest that borders my father’s kingdom,” she said. “The land of ice and snow, the land where I was born.”

  I heard the longing in her voice, and suddenly, I saw the way to go. The path we could take to ease the longing in her heart and prove the strength in mine.

  Fear, I thought. Hadn’t that been Deirdre’s mother’s innermost flaw? The wound that her shattered mirror had scattered throughout the world. I would not give in to it now.

  I reached for Deirdre’s hand. Without a word, she reached back.

  “Deirdre,” I said, “will you teach me how to fly?”

  ELEVEN

  Story the Seventh

  In Which Grace Sets Out in Search of the Horizon and Discovers More Than She Bargained For

  Kai’s footprints traveled north. The direction was not surprising.

  The Winter Child is taking him home, I thought. Back to the place where her long journey began. Why?

  I pondered this, and a thousand other questions, late into the night. Common sense suggested I should be getting a good night’s sleep so I’d be fresh when I set out the following morning. My brain insisted this was the best course of action. My heart rebelled.

  My heart whispered that common sense already had been proved wrong, for common sense had not believed in the Winter Child. It reminded me that Kai and the Winter Child already had a day’s head start. Who was to say where they might be by now? Though Oma had told us Deirdre’s story for as long as I could remember, I had never heard anyone speak of what might happen to a person who chose to journey beside the Winter Child.

  Kai was in her world now. Even more, he had chosen this for himself. Would he cease to age so that he and Deirdre would stay perfectly matched until her task of mending hearts was done?

  The trouble with common sense was that my heart had too many questions my mind could not answer. So, in the end, I listened to my heart. Instead of curling up beneath my blankets, I spread out a selection of my belongings on top of them, trying to decide what to pack for my journey. It was not as easy as it sounds. I might have known where I hoped to end up, but I had no idea how to get there. I had no idea how long it would take.

  Let’s see if common sense can work on this, I thought.

  I was going north. That meant cold. But, in spite of the weather at the moment, I knew winter already had given way to spring. It might be cold where I was going to end up, but along the way it would be warm.

  I walked to the wardrobe that stood in the far corner of my room. From it, I selected my second-warmest cloak: the green one I often wore for rambling in the woods. I laid it on the bed. Beside it on the floor, I added my sturdiest pair of walking boots, followed by several pairs of socks. The boots might have been heavy, but they would last. And they were well-worn. No blisters, no matter how far I walked. I knew the socks were sturdy and in good repair. Oma and I had knitted them ourselves.

  I will need a second dress, I thought, wishing, not for the first time, that I could wear boys’ clothes. I chose my third best, one made of sturdy, serviceable calico. It would be a good choice when the weather grew warmer, and it would not take up too much room in my pack in the meantime.

  Food to last for several days. A water skin. These, too, were added to my growing pile. I considered for a moment, then added some examples of my needlework. These I might barter for food or sell. Perhaps I could even hire myself out as a seamstress, if necessary. Finally, I placed the shawl I had given Oma in honor of her last birthday on the bed. It
was made of pale green silk, embroidered with images of the flowers from our garden. It was too fine to wear, but I could not bear to leave it behind.

  I stood back, hands on hips, gazing at my selections.

  What else, Grace? What else?

  There is nothing else, I realized. Nothing that I could pack, anyhow. My memories of Oma lived inside me, just like my love for Kai. Those would go with me wherever I went.

  Go! my heart cried suddenly. Don’t wait for morning. Don’t wait another moment to go after who you love. Go now.

  And with that, I was desperate to be gone. Filled with a fierce determination, I bundled the items I had selected into my pack, put on my boots, tossed the cloak around my shoulders, and headed for the door. Here, finally, I paused to look for one last time at the rooms in which I had grown up. On the small table beside Oma’s favorite chair was her seed-saving box. I had left it for Herre Johannes.

  Oma saved garden seeds every year, each kind in its own slip of paper that was carefully folded so that no seeds could escape. On impulse, I crossed to the box and plucked out a paper containing the seeds of Oma’s favorite sunflowers. I carefully tucked it into the bottom of my pack, then slung the pack onto my shoulders. I felt the weight of it settle against my back, felt the way the straps gripped my shoulders. Then I left the apartment, closing the door quietly behind me.

  Outside, it was cold. A great round moon, just past full, drifted in the sky. By its light, Kai’s footprints were easy to see.

  Why? I thought again. Why?

  I had no answer. But I was not about to let that stop me.

  Wish me luck, Oma, I thought.

  My breath making fat white clouds in the cold air, I began to walk alongside Kai’s tracks.

  A girl doesn’t need luck, Grace. I suddenly heard Oma’s voice inside my mind. What a girl needs is a good head on her shoulders. She needs to learn to keep her wits about her and her eyes open.

  I will, Oma, I thought. I promise.