Once Upon a Winter's Night

by Dennis L McKiernan

  Camille sighed, for Skuld had vanished with the coming of the sun. She turned toward Scruff. “All right, my wee companion, you’ll have your millet.” She trudged upslope to the camp and rummaged in her knapsack, then scattered a bit of seed on the ground before the sparrow, Scruff having awkwardly fluttered down from the low branch on which he had spent the night. As he pecked at the grain, Camille set about breaking camp. She paused a moment to examine the stave and groaned in dismay, for not only had the crack lengthened, but another split had started as well.

  I have not overly used the staff. What is happening here?

  Swiftly she counted the blossoms.

  Ninety-nine remain.

  As she slipped the stave through the loops of the rucksack, she glanced once more at the blossoms and again at the cracks.

  I wonder. . . . The first crack started when there were one hundred blossoms left. The second at ninety-nine. Will another crack appear at ninety-eight? Is Lady Sorcière telling me that time grows short?

  Camille raised her face to the sky and cried out, “I know, Lady Sorcière! I know!”

  Scruff looked up from the millet seeds and cocked his head. Then he began pecking away again.

  While waiting for the sparrow to finish, Camille stepped to where she could clearly see the cascade.

  Like a spring bubbling up from the ground, where the true source cannot be seen, so too does the fall of time issue from an unknown source, perhaps out of nowhere, right at the brim.

  Scruff gave a chirp, as if to say, All done, and Camille stepped to her waterskin and poured the wee bird a drink in a cup she had acquired just for him. “It won’t do, I think, to drink from time’s flow, Scruff. Raseri seemed to believe it would be a terrible thing to fall into the stream, and so I think we’ll completely forgo those silvery waters, except to use them as a guide to Skuld’s middle sister.”

  When Scruff had had his fill, and had taken his morning bath, Camille put his cup away and slung her goods and lifted Scruff to her shoulder. Then she looked at the river.

  “Which side, Scruff? Which side should we follow? It would not do to walk down the incorrect bank and find ourselves on the wrong side of time. I mean, Raseri also seemed to think no one should swim in the River of Time, hence, if we found ourselves on the opposite shore from Skuld’s sisters, well, then, since we must not swim across, we’d have to come back here and walk ’round the end. Still, the question remains: which side should we take?”

  Camille frowned in concentration, remembering. “Ah, Lady Skuld pointed with her right hand, and so we’ll walk along the right-hand side rather than down the sinister.”

  Camille crossed the stone streambed above the falls, then made her way down from the linn until she reached the bank below, and then she began to stride forward, following the silvery flow.

  Yet as she paced, the sun seemed to rise rather swiftly into the sky, and in less than a quarter candlemark by Camille’s reckoning it had come to the zenith. Camille stopped and, shielding her eyes, frowned up toward the golden orb.

  All seemed normal, but she waited.

  The sun slowly crept across the sky.

  “Hmm . . .” said Camille. “Let us see, Scruff.”

  She started downstream again.

  The sun sped forward.

  Again Camille stopped, and once more did the sun eke ahead.

  “Oh, Scruff, methinks days will be quite odd, here along time’s flow, but there’s nought to do but press on.”

  Downstream she paced, and within what she judged to be another quarter candlemark, the sun set and dusk drew across the land.

  Scruff chirped in confusion, but nevertheless went to sleep.

  Within another quarter candlemark, a waning gibbous moon arose. And another quarter after that, dawn came into the sky.

  Scruff awoke, yet he was not hungry, and neither was Camille.

  On Camille walked through a second swift day and night, perhaps a candlemark in all, and as day came once again, she paused, and the sun returned to a normal pace. Camille unslung her waterskin for a drink, but as she recorked it and looped it over her shoulder, she took in a sharp breath and pulled the stave from her rucksack. Two more cracks had appeared, and the blossoms numbered but ninety-seven.

  Tears welled in Camille’s eyes. “Oh, Scruff, each candlemark we follow time’s stream a blossom will wither and vanish. I must go away from here and—But wait. Lady Skuld said, ‘Leave not the banks of time’s flow, else surely you will lose the stream.’ It must be just the same as when we flew high above, and I looked away, and the river vanished. Oh, Scruff, if we leave these banks, we will lose the very flow. Yet along these shores is where the middle sister lives, and if we do not find her, then I think we’ll not find Alain.”

  Dejectedly Camille slumped to the ground. “Ah, me, but what a dilemma. Even if we stay still, a blossom will wither each day. But if we continue, blossoms will vanish each candlemar—” Of a sudden her eyes lighted. “What if after we find the middle sister we go back the way we came? Will the blossoms retur—?” Camille looked hindward. Only forest met her eye. Of time’s flow there was no sign.

  Her heart leapt into her throat, and swiftly she looked forward again and sighed in relief, for the river yet streamed from this point onward.

  “Only in Faery,” she muttered, and she got to her feet. “We have no choice, Scruff, but to go forward, for the middle sister I must find. Let us hope she is but a few strides ahead.”

  Onward she stepped, the sun racing across the sky and setting, only to rise and set again and again, the waning moon rising later and turning crescent and then new and then waxing, blossoms withering and vanishing, splits riving the stave, as Camille and Scruff went on.

  Altogether, nearly thirty candlemarks of trekking along the banks of Time’s River had elapsed, days and nights flying by—and some eight more candlemarks had been spent resting, where the passage of time returned to its normal ways; at this very moment, sixty-nine blossoms remained on the stave. But now that Camille continued along the River of Time, the morning sun was on swift rise.

  Rounding a bend in the river, Camille saw a mill, its great waterwheel—if it could be called such—turning in time’s flow. She went on, the sun rising with each step, and by midmorn, she reached the building. Old it appeared, quite ancient, yet it seemed sturdy enough, and Camille could hear millstones grinding inside. She stepped past a bench sitting outside the open door and peered in. It seemed no one was there, yet the great bhurstones turned.

  And then she remembered Skuld’s words:“As grain is to stones that roll and grind,

  Moments are crunched in the weft of time,

  Seek the like and my sister you’ll find.”

  “Oh, Scruff. Perhaps this is where we will find Skuld’s sister.”

  Camille stepped inside. Great gears on axles groaned o’erhead, driven by the wheel, and they in turn drove the great bhurstones, though there was no grain to grind. All through the mill went Camille, past a wide opening looking out on the world, past another breach in the wall which opened out onto Time’s River where the lower part of the great waterwheel turned. On she went, looking this way and that; strangely, midmost, a skylight was affixed in the ceiling above, and a slanting beam of sunlight shone down, slowly creeping across the floor.

  But Camille found no one in the mill, and no sign of loom or spinning wheel.

  “Well, Scruff, we’ll wait here, for I am certain that’s what Lady Skuld’s words did mean.”

  Camille stepped to the door and out to the bench, where she sat in the sunlight and waited.

  Slowly the day grew onward, the golden orb gradually arcing toward the zenith.

  Still Camille waited, and Scruff settled down on her shoulder, the wee sparrow content to simply bide.

  And time edged past.

  And just as the leading limb of the sun entered the zenith, Camille heard weeping from within.

  “Allo!” called Camille, stepping inside. “Who
is—?”

  “Oh, please help me, please help me, I have lost the end of my thread, and if I do not quickly find it, woe betide the world, for that which is now will then not be.”

  Past turning gears went Camille, to come upon a motherly woman, middle-aged she seemed, with pale yellow hair, and she was crawling on the floor before a loom, feeling about for her lost thread.

  Once again a shaggy little man seemed to be ripping fabric away from the cloth beam and bearing it to the opening at the waterwheel and casting it into the flow.

  As she had done with Skuld, Camille rushed forward to aid, even though here, too, the thread was invisible to her eyes. Camille dropped to her hands and knees beside the woman, Scruff scrambling to retain a perch. And as the wee sparrow chattered angrily at the hairy little man, Camille asked the woman, “Is it not lost in the tapestry?”

  “Nay, the thread upon the weaving is well marked, but the feeding thread broke and fell.”

  Feeling the way before her, Camille crawled toward the loom, and above Scruff’s irate chatter and the grinding of the axles and gears and stones, Camille thought she could hear the sound of one or two other looms, but they were nowhere to be seen.

  Of a sudden—“I know!” cried Camille, and she sprang to her feet and stepped to the loom, and by feel she found where the thread left the golden shuttle, and she followed it to its end. “Here it is,” said Camille, and she handed it to the woman, who looked with golden eyes at Camille and smiled slyly and said, “Clever girl.”

  In but an instant the woman had tied the thread on, and sat down at the loom, and it began frantically weaving, the spinning wheel at her side turning in synchronization, apparently spinning invisible thread out from the sunlight streaming in through a skylight above.

  In that moment, the hairy little man growled and vanished.

  “It is good to see Uncertainty gone,” said Camille.

  “ ’Twas not Uncertainty, but his brother Turmoil, enemy of the present, and, just as is his brother, Turmoil, too, is an agent of Chaos.”

  Camille looked at the loom, and to her surprise she could see a single, visible thread running across, various shimmering colors along its length, colors which changed with each clack of shuttle and slap of batten.

  Camille also noted that carven in runes on the breastbeam was the name Verdandi.

  “You, I take it, are Lady Verdandi?”

  “Aye, and you are Lady Camille,” replied the woman, staring out the broad opening, as if viewing events beyond. “Now, hush, child, and let me weave. When I catch up, we can talk. In the meanwhile, break your noonfast.”

  On the floor appeared utensils and a wooden trencher laden with steaming food: well-done beef slices and a stewed turnip along with a cup of rugged red wine and a great slab of coarse bread. Thereon as well was a small amount of oat grains. Smiling, Camille sat down and placed Scruff beside her and scattered the grain before him. And then she dug into the hot food, savoring every bite, for it had been many days since her last warm meal—rabbit over a campfire, eaten with Rondalo some thirty-four days ago, or mayhap but five days past, depending on how one counted the candlemarks along the River of Time. Unlike the meal provided by Skuld, this was food Camille was used to, for it was food of her time.

  Even as Camille finished the last of the provender—the utensils and trencher to vanish—the frantic pace of weaving slowed.

  “What do you weave, Lady Verdandi?”

  “I fix on the tapestry that which is now: folks working in fields, folks shearing sheep, and other such. Would you like to see?”

  Camille shook her head, and watched as Scruff pecked at something in the cracks of the floor, a beetle most likely. And she said, “I think that such sights are perhaps not meant for mortals, the viewing of events all the world over at the very moment they occur.”

  Verdandi laughed, but she did not take her eyes from the opening. “My sister Skuld says that one day to come, folks will be able to see distant events even as they happen. How that can be, I know not, yet Skuld is seldom in error. I know, for I amend the tapestry of time for those things she did foresee but were changed by extraordinary effort.”

  “Oh,” said Camille, “but I do hope I do not have to do so to find my Alain.”

  “Child, you are already making such an effort, and I do hope you succeed, else the world will be the worse off.”

  At this pronouncement Camille’s heart hammered wildly, for if the fate of the world were added to her quest for Alain, it would seem too much for a simple farm girl to bear.

  To still her racing heart, Camille concentrated on the clack and slap and thud of the loom, its rhythm somehow soothing, the loom where, but for a single weft thread, an invisible tapestry grew. Finally, Camille said, “Would that I could see my love at this moment, even if he is the Bear. Do you weave such?”

  “Mayhap, child. Mayhap.”

  “Then let me ask what I came to ask: where lies a place east of the sun and west of the moon? Lady Skuld said you would know.”

  “I believe, Camille, she sent you to me to ask, but she did not say I would know.”

  “Well, Lady Verdandi, do you know where such a place is?”

  Her golden gaze yet focused on the opening, Verdandi said, “You will have to ask my sister.”

  Camille groaned. “The third sister?”

  “Aye.”

  “Downstream, I assume.”

  “Indeed.”

  Again, Camille groaned. “And here I was hoping to leave this flow. Just where downstream?”

  “Let me ask you this,” said Verdandi, “what is the color of time?”

  Camille sighed in exasperation, yet, just as she had humored Lady Skuld, so would she humor Verdandi. She took two breaths and exhaled slowly, then said, “Well, the Mists of Time whence the future comes were silvery, though the future itself seems to be an invisible color, at least to most of mankind, for most of us see it not. I suspect, though, that to you three who weave the tapestry of time, the color of the future must be quite plain to all your eyes.”

  Verdandi smiled. “And what of the past? Has it a color?”

  Camille turned up a hand. “If it does have a color, then to mankind it is perhaps the hue of shadows and moonlight, or mayhap the color of death, for it is buried beyond recall.”

  Verdandi laughed and kept weaving and asked, “What of the present, then?”

  Camille looked at the golden sunlight twisting down onto the spindle and being spun into invisible thread by the golden spinning wheel. Then she glanced at the thread on the tapestry aweave. Finally she said, “In spite of the golden sunlight and the many hues I can see on that single bit of weft, I would think that the color of the present must be the same as the color of a flash, since both exist for but this moment.”

  Again Verdandi laughed and then said, “Urd will enjoy your company.”

  “Urd?”

  “My sister, and as you have rightly surmised, she lives downstream. To you she will seem much older than I, though to me she seems much younger.”

  Camille nodded and said, “And where might I find this sister?—Other than just downstream?”

  “Answer me this riddle,” said Verdandi. “Caught on the cusp of ago and to be and trapped forever in the eternal now, what am I?”

  Camille glanced out at the waterwheel turning in the River of Time. “You are the Present.”

  “And a present you shall have,” said Verdandi, tilting her head toward the loom. “My finest golden shuttle; take good care of it, and do not yield it to anyone except perhaps near the end, for then it may do you some good.”

  “But, my lady, what if you need it?”

  “I have others, my child, though not fashioned of gold; hence, you must take this one, else Faery itself might fall.”

  Sighing, Camille stepped to the loom and when the thread came to an end, the shuttle flew into her hand, while another did take its place.

  Camille turned back to Verdandi. “Again I ask,
my lady, your sister Urd, where can I find her?”

  With a flick of her eyes, Verdandi glanced at the skylight, where the sun passed above. And with her right hand she gestured downstream and intoned:“Ebon is the Oblivion Sea,

  A gape of darkness where all things

  flee,

  There binding time my sister will be.”

  Again Verdandi glanced at the skylight above, and she said, “And this I will tell you as well: when you leave the banks of time’s flow, then you will lose the stream.”

  And in that very moment the trailing limb of the sun exited from the zenith, and so vanished Verdandi and loom and spinning wheel all, leaving Camille and Scruff alone in the ancient mill.

  And the river flowed and the wheel turned and the great bhurstones ground on.

  30

  Past

  Some three and a quarter swift candlemark days after leaving the mill and continuing on downstream, at a candlemark dusk, Camille stopped and made camp, the second such stop she had made along the River of Time, and again she and Scruff rested through an ordinary night. When dawn came, she and Scruff broke fast, and then onward they pressed, swift days passing with every candlemark, blossoms fading, vanishing, splits fissuring the stave. Camille paused now and again to eat or drink and to feed her hungry and quite confused sparrow, for to the wee bird it seemed no sooner had day come than night and sleep quickly followed. Another fifteen and a half candlemarks passed, and Camille and Scruff spent another night acamp, stars slowly wheeling through the vault above, following a bright waxing moon some two days past half-full.

  When morning came, once again Camille and Scruff took up the trek, and some ten candlemark days later, at a turn ahead, high stone bluffs loomed on either side of the river, a gorge through which the flow ran. Toward this ravine Camille went, the swift day growing with every step. As she drew nigh, the sun passed through the zenith, and Camille could see a dark opening in the near-most wall.

  “Scruff, I believe yon is the place whither we are bound, for no doubt ’tis ‘a gape of darkness,’ and Verdandi did say: “ ‘Ebon is the Oblivion Sea,