Once Upon A Time (8) Winter’s Child

by Cameron Dokey

  A great wave of emotion rolled through me.

  “I think I have to sit down.”

  Kai laughed then, and the whole room suddenly was flooded with bright sunlight. From the window-sill, the falcon gave a sweet, sharp cry.

  “But I thought you loved Grace,” I said.

  “And so I do,” Kai replied. “But not the way that I love you.” He knelt before me and took my hands. “The truth is, I’ve loved you my whole life.” He stood and gently drew me to my feet. “Close your eyes, Grace,” he said over his shoulder.

  I was laughing as my true love placed his lips on mine. Kai’s lips were warm. By the time the kiss was over, I knew I would never be cold again. With Kai’s arm still around me, I turned to Grace. She was standing by the window with the sun on her face and the falcon by her side. Her eyes were wide open. In them I thought I caught the glint of tears.

  “Kai will tell you I almost never do what he says.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “For your heart has helped to mend mine twice. I would like it very much if there was something I could do for yours.”

  “But you’re no longer the Winter Child,” Grace protested.

  “True enough,” I answered. “Nevertheless, it lies within my power to grant a wish to the heart that has restored my own. What would your heart choose, Grace, if it could?”

  “The same as it has always chosen,” Grace replied. “My heart has never wanted to be in just one place. It has always longed for the journey, to see what lies over the horizon.

  “It isn’t that I don’t love familiar things. It’s that I love the unknown more.”

  At her words, the falcon suddenly spread its wings. It threw back its head and made the tower room echo with its cry. Without warning, the sunlight became blinding. I heard both Grace and Kai cry out, even as I lifted a hand to shield my eyes.

  When I lowered it, the falcon was gone. In its place stood a tall young man with fine, pale skin and wide gray eyes. Long dark hair brushed the tops of his shoulders.

  “Oh dear,” Grace said.

  The young man threw back his head and laughed, a bright, pure sound. Then he knelt at Grace’s feet. He extended a hand, palm up. After a moment’s hesitation, Grace placed one of hers within it.

  “Thank you,” the young man said simply. “Your words have rescued me from an enchantment I have carried for many years.”

  “Now I’m the one who wants to sit down,” Grace said.

  The young man chuckled. Still holding Grace’s hand in his, he rose to his feet, then turned to me with a bow.

  “Your Majesty,” he said. “I hope you will forgive my somewhat unusual arrival.”

  “Gladly,” I said, my tone warm with surprise. “On the condition that you explain yourself.”

  “Long ago,” the young man said, “I made a great mistake: I mistook false love for true. The young woman I rejected was a powerful sorceress. She placed a curse and a burden upon me, dooming me to wear the form of a falcon until I could find a heart that would choose me of its own free will, yet not be aware that it had done so.”

  “A heart that would choose the unknown,” Kai suddenly said.

  The young man nodded. “Precisely. I have flown throughout the world for many years, so many that I began to despair of ever breaking the curse.”

  He turned back to Grace.

  “Until one day, I saw a girl in the mountains. A girl who refused to give up, who kept her wits about her. My heart has been yours from that day to this one.”

  “I don’t suppose your name is Peregrine, is it?” Grace asked.

  “It’s Constantin, as a matter of fact,” the young man said.

  “Constantin,” Grace echoed. “And will you be as true as your name?”

  “With all my heart.”

  “In that case,” Grace said, her tone mischievous, “I will give you mine again, knowingly this time. I only wish I could have learned how to fly.”

  “I will grant that wish, if you’ll let me,” I said. “If you will, for three weeks out of every month, you will both be as you are now. But in the fourth week, Constantin may return to the form of a bird and, since Grace’s heart has chosen his, hers may also. Let your body soar as your heart has always longed to, and let this be the final gift of the Winter Child.”

  “I thank you with all my heart,” Grace said.

  “As I thank you for the gift of mine.”

  EPILOGUE

  A Few Thoughts Concerning Happy Endings

  And so it came to pass that the two couples were married in a single ceremony in the great palace of ice. People came to celebrate from miles around.

  Grace sent word to the city far away. Petra and Herre Johannes came to the wedding, traveling all the way in Herre Johannes’s flower wagon. He presented Deirdre with a bunch of snow drops, which she carried as a wedding bouquet. Petra gave Grace back her oma’s shawl.

  The wedding feast lasted for a full week, after which Petra and Herre Johannes began their journey home, while Grace and Constantin took to the skies. But Grace and Constantin promised to return to the land of ice and snow each year, for the bonds of love and friendship between the two couples were strong.

  Of course they all lived happily ever after, and not just because that is the way these things usually go, but because their hearts had been tested and had remained true. That is the happiest ending of all.

  “Well?” Kai asked, just at sunset on the day the wedding festivities concluded. He and his bride stood together at the palace gates, watching Grace and Constantin disappear from view.

  “Have you decided?”

  “I have.” His new wife nodded. She leaned back against him, and then tilted her face to look into his. “I wonder if you can guess what my new name will be.”

  “I can tell you what I always thought it should be,” Kai said. “Will that do just as well?”

  She turned in his arms then, so that they were face-to-face. “Tell me.”

  “Hope,” said Kai.

  At the sounding of this single syllable, she threw her arms around him.

  “I love you, Kai.”

  “I take it I got it right, then,” Kai said.

  She thumped a fist against his chest. “There’s no need to be insufferable.”

  And now, finally, Deirdre, the Winter Child, she who had once been named for sorrow, chose a new name, and the name that she chose was Hope. For, now that she was restored to her true self at last, she understood that this was the name her heart had carried within it all along.

  For even as the winter carries within it the seeds of spring, her heart had nourished, as all hearts must, the strong yet fragile seeds of hope.

  Author’s Note

  The structure of Winter’s Child is a little different from other stories I’ve created for the Once upon a Time series. This is a direct inspiration from my source material, Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen.” As a matter of fact, the official title is “The Snow Queen: A Tale in Seven Stories.” As is the case with Winter’s Child, in Andersen’s tale each individual “story” has its own heading giving a hint of what’s to come.

  In the original, the queen herself is pretty much the bad guy. As I am never that interested in stories where one character is always good and another always bad, I decided to mix things up. It also took me more than seven stories to get my characters where I wanted them to go! I tell myself this is okay as my tale is much longer. I hope you enjoy the Winter’s Child journey. May it inspire your heart on the journeys it will make.

  DON’T MISS THIS MAGICAL TITLE

  IN THE ONCE UPON A TIME SERIES!

  Belle

  CAMERON DOKEY

  Celeste. April. Belle.

  Everything about my sisters and me was arranged in this fashion, in fact. It was the way our beds were lined up in our bedroom; our places at the dining table, where we all sat in a row along one side. It was the order in which we got dressed each morning and had our hair brushed for one hundr
ed and one strokes each night. The order in which we entered a room or left it, and were introduced to guests. The only exception was when we were allowed to open our presents all together, in a great frenzy of paper and ribbons, on Christmas morning.

  This may seem very odd to you, and you may wonder why it didn’t to any of us. All that I can say is that order in general, but most especially the order in which one was born, was considered very important in the place where I grew up. The oldest son inherited his father’s house and lands. Younger daughters did not marry unless the oldest had first walked down the aisle. So if our household paid strict attention to which sister came first, second, and (at long last) third, the truth is that none of us thought anything about the arrangement at all.

  Until the day Monsieur LeGrand came to call.

  Monsieur LeGrand was my father’s oldest and closest friend, though Papa had seen him only once and that when he was five years old. In his own youth, Monsieur LeGrand had been the boyhood friend of Papa’s father, Grand-père Georges. It was Monsieur LeGrand who had brought to Grand-mère Annabelle the sad news that her young husband had been snatched off the deck of his ship by a wave that curled around him like a giant fist, then picked him up and carried him down to the bottom of the ocean.

  In some other story, Monsieur LeGrand might have stuck around, consoled the young widow in her grief, then married her after a suitable period of time. But that story is not this one. Instead, soon after reporting his sad news, Monsieur LeGrand returned to the sea, determined to put as much water as he could between himself and his boyhood home.

  Eventually, Monsieur LeGrand became a merchant specializing in silk, and settled in a land where silkworms flourished, a place so removed from where he’d started out that if you marked each city with a finger on a globe, you’d need both hands. Yet even from this great distance, Monsieur LeGrand did not forget his childhood friend’s young son.

  When Papa was old enough, Grand-mère Anna-belle took him by the hand and marched him down to the waterfront offices of the LeGrand Shipping Company. For, though he no longer lived in the place where he’d grown up, Monsieur LeGrand maintained a presence in our seaport town. My father then began the process that took him from being the boy who swept the floors and filled the coal scuttles to the man who knew as much about the safe passage of sailors and cargo as anyone.

  When that day arrived, Monsieur LeGrand made Papa his partner, and the sign above the waterfront office door was changed to read LEGRAND, DELAURIER AND COMPANY. But nothing Papa ever did, not marrying Maman nor helping to bring three lovely daughers into the world, could entice Monsieur LeGrand back to where he’d started.

  Over the years, he had become something of a legend in our house. The tales my sisters and I spun of his adventures were as good as any bedtime stories our nursemaids ever told. We pestered our father with endless questions to which he had no answers. All that he remembered was that Monsieur LeGrand had been straight and tall. This was not very satisfying, as I’m sure you can imagine, for any grown-up might have looked that way to a five-year-old.

  Then one day—on my tenth birthday, to be precise—a letter arrived. A letter that caused my father to return home from the office in the middle of the day, a thing he never does. I was the first to spot Papa, for I had been careful to position myself near the biggest of our living room windows, the better to watch for any presents that might arrive.

  At first, the sight of Papa alarmed me. His face was flushed, as if he’d run all the way from the waterfront. He burst through the door, calling for my mother, then dashed into the living room and caught me up in his arms. He twirled me in so great a circle that my legs flew out straight and nearly knocked Maman’s favorite vase to the floor.

  He’d had a letter, Papa explained when my feet were firmly on the ground. One that was better than any birthday present he could have planned. It came from far away, from the land where the silkworms flourished, and it informed us all that, at long last, Monsieur LeGrand was coming home.

  Not surprisingly, this threw our household into an uproar. For it went without saying that ours would be the first house Monsieur LeGrand would come to visit. It also went without saying that everything needed to be perfect for his arrival.

  The work began as soon as my birthday celebrations were complete. Maman hired a small army of extra servants, as those who usually cared for our house were not great enough in number. They swept the floors, then polished them until they gleamed like gems. They hauled the carpets out of doors and beat them. Every single picture in the house was taken down from its place on the walls and inspected for even the most minute particle of dust. While all this was going on, the walls themselves were given a new coat of whitewash.

  But the house wasn’t the only thing that got polished. The inhabitants got a new shine as well. Maman was all for us being reoutfitted from head to foot, but here, Papa put his foot down. We must not be extravagant, he said. It would give the wrong impression to Monsieur LeGrand. Instead, we must provide his mentor and our benefactor with a warm welcome that also showed good sense, by which my father meant a sense of proportion.

  So, in the end, it was only Papa and Maman who had new outfits from head to foot. My sisters and I each received one new garment. Celeste, being the oldest, had a new dress. April had a new silk shawl. As for me, I was the proud owner of a new pair of shoes.

  It was the shoes that started all the trouble, you could say. Or, to be more precise, the buckles.

  They were made of silver, polished as bright as mirrors. They were gorgeous and I loved them. Unfortunately, the buckles caused the shoes to pinch my feet, which in turn made taking anything more than a few steps absolute torture. Maman had tried to warn me in the shoe shop that this would be the case, but I had refused to listen and insisted the shoes be purchased anyhow.

  “She should never have let you have your own way in the first place,” Celeste pronounced on the morning we expected Monsieur LeGrand.

  My sisters and I were in our bedroom, watching and listening for the carriage that would herald Monsieur LeGrand’s arrival. Celeste was standing beside her dressing table, unwilling to sit lest she wrinkle her new dress. April was kneeling on a cushion near the window, the silk shawl draped around her shoulders, her own skirts carefully spread out around her. I was the only one actually sitting down. Given the choice between the possibility of wrinkles or the guarantee of sore feet, I had decided to take my chances with the wrinkles.

  But though I was seated, I was hardly sitting still. Instead, I turned my favorite birthday present and gift from Papa—a small knife for wood carving that was cunningly crafted so that the blade folded into the handle—over and over between my hands, as if the action might help to calm me.

  Maman disapproves of my wood carving. She says it isn’t ladylike and is dangerous. I have pointed out that I’m just as likely to stab myself with an embroidery needle as I am to cut myself with a wood knife. My mother remains unconvinced, but Papa is delighted that I inherited his talent for woodwork.

  “And put that knife away,” Celeste went on. “Do you mean to frighten Monsieur LeGrand?”

  “Celeste,” April said, without taking her eyes from the street scene below. “Not today. Stop it.”

  Thinking back on it now, I see that Celeste was feeling just as nervous and excited as I was. But Celeste almost never handles things the way I do, or April either, for that matter. She always goes at things head-on. I think it’s because she’s always first. It gives her a different view of the world, a different set of boundaries.

  “Stop what?” Celeste asked now, opening her eyes innocently wide. “I’m just saying Maman hates Belle’s knives, that’s all. If she shows up with one today, Maman will have an absolute fit.”

  “I know better than to take my wood-carving knife into the parlor to meet a guest,” I said as I set it down beside me on my dressing table.

  “Well, yes, you may know better, but you don’t always think, do you?”
Celeste came right back. She swayed a little, making her new skirts whisper to the petticoats beneath as they moved from side to side. Celeste’s new dress was a pale blue, almost an exact match for her eyes. She’d wanted it every bit as much as I’d wanted my new shoes.

  “For instance, if you’d thought about how your feet might feel instead of how they’d look, you’d have saved yourself a lot of pain, and us the trouble of listening to you whine.”

  I opened my mouth to deny it, then changed my mind. Instead, I gave Celeste my very best smile. One that showed as many of my even, white teeth as I could. I have very nice teeth. Even Maman says so.

  I gave the bed beside me a pat. “If you’re so unconcerned about the way you look,” I said sweetly, “why don’t you come over here and sit down?”

  Celeste’s cheeks flushed. “Maybe I don’t want to,” she answered.

  “And maybe you’re a phony,” I replied. “You care just as much about how you look as I do, Celeste. It just doesn’t suit you to admit it, that’s all.”

  “If you’re calling me a liar—,” Celeste began hotly.

  “Be quiet!” April interrupted. “I think the carriage is arriving!”

  Quick as lightning, Celeste darted to the window, her skirts billowing out behind her. I got to my feet, doing my best to ignore how much they hurt, and followed. Sure enough, in the street below, the grandest carriage I had ever seen was pulling up before our door.

  “Oh, I can’t see his face!” Celeste cried in frustration, as we saw a gentleman alight. A moment later, the peal of the front doorbell echoed throughout the house. April got to her feet, smoothing out her skirts as she did so. In the pit of my stomach, I felt a group of butterflies suddenly take flight.

  I really did care about the way I looked, if for no other reason than how I looked and behaved would reflect upon Papa and Maman. All of us wanted to make a good impression on Monsieur LeGrand.