Once Upon a Winter's Night fs-1

by Dennis L McKiernan

  Down the vale arrowed Raseri, toward Rondalo’s campsite, and, as they flew over, the horses shied and would have bolted, but for the tethers holding fast. Raseri circled and Camille waved, and Rondalo waved in return, a look of astonishment on his face. And then Raseri wheeled and thundered away, the rising sun at his back.

  And down below, Rondalo sighed, and watched them wing into the distance-his implacable foe bearing off the woman he had come to cherish. When at last they were gone from sight, Rondalo stepped to the horses and stroked muzzles and soothed the animals with soft and gentle words. Finally he broke camp and saddled the mounts and laded the packhorse and then slowly rode away, his path taking him in the opposite direction from that in which the Drake had flown.

  High across the world of Faery did the Dragon Raseri soar, mountains and rivers and steads and cities, villages and forests and lakes, and barren wastes of ice or sand or rock all passing ’neath his wings. And Camille was enthralled, for never had she imagined what flying would be like, and here she was, high in the sky, chill wind streaming through her hair, clouds like foreign castles and great chateaus rising all ’round. Scruff in her pocket chirped his approval, and Camille then knew what a loss the tiny sparrow had suffered, unable to fly as he was. Momentarily, Camille’s wind-driven tears became tears of sympathy, but then she was distracted by a great herd of shaggy animals thundering across the grassy plain below.

  The sun slid up the sky and across and down, yet Raseri’s wings never seemed to slow, never seemed to tire. Through looming walls of twilight they flew, Faery borders, eight or nine altogether… Camille uncertain as to which.

  But finally, as the sinking sun touched the distant horizon, the Drake began to circle down. “Yon is the river,” he called out to her, but, though she looked, Camille could see nought of a stream.

  “Where?” she cried. “I can make out no river.”

  “See the high, grassy ridge jutting above the forest below? Just down the long slope you will find the origin, else you will see nought whatsoever.”

  Camille’s gaze first found the hillock far under, and then downslope she saw a glimmering, and of a sudden Camille could see a silvery ribbon originating at the glimmer and threading through the forest. How she had missed it, she could not say, yet there it was. She looked away and then back, and lo! the river had vanished entirely. Yet when she looked at the slope again, and then down to the glimmer, of a sudden the stream reappeared. Once more she looked away and again the river vanished, completely absent to her searching sight until she returned to the origin.

  As if sensing Camille’s trial, Raseri called out, “It seems one cannot see the full flow of time lest one starts at the beginning.”

  Camille let her gaze follow the course of the silvery stream, and in the far distance she could see a great glint of water-perhaps a vast lake, or even an ocean or sea-into which Time’s River did flow.

  Down spiralled Raseri and down, to finally come alight upon the knoll.

  “This is as close as I will go,” said the Drake, and he bent his neck low.

  Again Camille used Raseri’s foreleg as a stepping block as she dismounted. She stretched and twisted to get the kinks out.

  As she did so, “It begins there, the River of Time,” said the Dragon, pointing with his head downslope.

  Camille could see in the distance, a cascade plunging over a linn, yet it seemed the water itself had no origin, either that or it sprang directly from a misty cloud hovering above, the vapor itself glimmering as if of a gleaming within.

  Camille looked at the sky and judged the lees of the day, the sun some halfway set. “I should reach the linn ere darkness falls. If not, I have my lantern to guide me. Would you walk down with me?”

  “Would that I were braver, yet I’ll not gamble ’gainst time. Even so, Camille, you have little to fear in these environs, for all Fey shun this place. Still, stay on your guard, for who knows what troubles time can bring? I would say this as well: you have given me much to ponder, and I thank you for that. Mayhap someday I will be able to repay you for that which you did bring.”

  What did I bring? Camille wondered. Yet she said, “Oh, Raseri, by bearing me here you have more than paid whatever debt you might imagine you owe, though for the life of me I cannot think why you would believe such.”

  “Perhaps one day we will both know,” said Raseri. “But now I must fly, for yon is a peril I cannot face-the ravages of time.”

  “Then go, O Lord Dragon, and be well,” said Camille, and she curtseyed there on the ridge.

  Raseri dipped his head and then said, “Ward your eyes.” As Camille put a hand to her brow, with a great leap and thunderous flapping, Raseri took to wing, pebbles and dust and weeds and grass swirling about in a great cloud, Camille battered by the wind of his launch.

  Up he circled and up, and then with a great skriegh, he arrowed away, his dark ruddy scales glittering crimson in the light of the setting sun. And it was then that Camille remembered a time in the Winterwood as she rode upon the back of the Bear, a great fell beast flying high above and sounding the very same skriegh. Was that Raseri even then? She watched the Drake fly away, the splendid creature he was, and when she could see him no longer, down the slope and toward the linn she did go.

  She reached the waterfall as twilight ebbed toward night, and she set camp on the slope just above the cascade, and placed sleeping Scruff on a low branch of a sapling at hand. As she settled in for the night, she looked with curious eyes at the cataract; even this close, in the light of the stars, it seemed as if the water came out from nowhere at the very edge of the linn, though the silvery mist above may have obscured its source.

  As Camille prepared to go to sleep, of a sudden she remembered the stave; she lit her small lantern and examined the hairline crack. I don’t remember it reaching this far, and I surely did nought to cause it to lengthen, for it has been affixed to my rucksack all day, but for the gentle trip down from the ridge above.

  Sighing, Camille started to lay the staff aside, but then, though she knew what she would find, she counted the blossoms remaining, starting with the one awither and progressing to the one atop. One hundred yet linger, though the bottom flower is nigh perished. Two hundred sixty-six days agone, a scant one hundred left. A year and a day and the whole of a moon beyond, that’s all she said I would have. And I have squandered-No, Camille, not squandered. Used. I have used two hundred sixty-six days in all to reach this place. Even so, am I any closer whatsoever to finding my beloved Alain?

  Camille blew out the lantern and capped the wick to keep the oil within the reservoir no matter the lamp’s orientation, then placed it near at hand.

  Silently, the stars wheeled in the sky as Camille was lulled asleep by the shssh ing fall, for here at the linn and perhaps nowhere else could the passage of time be heard.

  28

  Future

  In the nascent light of the very next dawn, Camille was awakened by the sound of weeping, and she sat up to see a silver-haired maiden sitting at an apparently empty loom in the hovering mist at the precipice of the falls. “Woe betide the world,” the demoiselle wailed. “Oh, woe betide the world.”

  And Camille saw squatting under the loom a shaggy little man, or creature, covered in long, unruly hair- Much like the being I saw in Les Iles, but this one is much uglier and certainly hairier. And he gibbered and ran his hands along the cloth beam, then scuttled to the linn and made motions of throwing, as if somehow dragging unseen fabric from the bar to hurl it over the edge of the falls.

  At the maiden’s side a golden spinning wheel stood silent on the flat stone of the dry streambed along which water should have coursed to supply the cascade, yet nought flowed at all, though the cataract itself sprang from nowhere to thunder down into the river below.

  Casting aside her blanket, Camille sprang to her feet and cried out, “Ma’amselle, Ma’amselle, what is amiss?”

  The maiden turned, anguish in her gaze, and- Oh, my! — her
eyes were like unto silver. “I have lost the end of my thread, and if I do not find it quickly, what is to be will not transpire, and time itself will be broken.”

  What? How can that be?

  With tears brimming, the maiden mutely appealed for help, and even though Camille could see nought whatsoever on either the loom or the spinning wheel, she rushed down to aid. As she reached the demoiselle’s side, Camille said, “Where did you last have it? — The thread, I mean.”

  “On the tapestry,” cried the maiden, gesturing at the loom.

  Camille frowned-“What tapestry?”-but reached out and gasped in startlement, for her touch told her that indeed there was fabric on the loom, yet it could not be seen.

  In the dim light of the new morn, carefully, slowly, Camille ran her fingers lightly over the nonvisible cloth, searching by feel for the end of a misplaced thread, her un-aiding gaze lost in the moment, alighting on runes carved in the breastbeam, runes which spelled out the name Skuld.

  “I cannot find it here,” said Camille.

  “Oh, but it must be there,” wailed the maiden. “I had it not a moment ago.”

  “There is another place to search,” said Camille, and she scrambled ’neath the rig and ran her fingers along the underside of the fabric, and the ugly little man gibbered at her, his breath foul, his eyes glaring as he motioned for her to move aside so that he could continue with his arcane rite.

  Yet Camille did not yield as she felt all along the bottom, and, in spite of the hairy man’s angry jabber, she thought she could hear the sound of one or mayhap two other looms weaving nearby-the clack of shuttle and the slap and thud of treadle and batten-and though Camille glanced this way and that, she saw them not.

  Of a sudden-“I have it!” cried Camille, grasping the dangling, unseen thread ’tween forefinger and thumb.

  “Clever girl,” said the maiden, smiling, a bit sly it seemed. “Do not let go of it, please.” She took up a very-fine-toothed, golden carding comb hanging from the distaff of the golden wheel. “I need to start spinning a new thread from the Mists of Time.”

  Camille’s eyes widened in amaze as the demoiselle reached up with the comb and teased a wisp out from the shimmering vapor. Somehow she managed to grasp the tenuous strand itself, and she fed the hazy filament through the eye in the golden spindle tip and over a hook on the flyer arm, and then down and ’round the spool. Then she gave the wheel a sharp whirl, and lo! it continued to spin, though no one pressed the treadle. And gleaming vapor was pulled down from the mist and twisted into a glassy thread that vanished even as it was spun. Long moments it turned, yet of a sudden the spinning wheel stopped, and the maiden plucked the bobbin loose and mounted it to the shuttle. Even as she did so, another bobbin abruptly appeared on the spinning wheel, no hand setting it there, and again the wheel began to whirl, as if that new spool were right then being wound with invisible thread. The maiden paid it no heed, as she fetched the end of the new-spun, unseen thread from the bobbin on the shuttle in hand, and she took from Camille’s fingers the end of the invisible thread of the cloth on the loom.

  As Camille scrambled out from under the rig to sit on the dry stone just back from the linn and watch, the maiden tied the new thread to the old-or so did it seem she was doing from the movement of her fingers-and she placed the shuttle in the loom shuttle race and then sat down; and the moment she did, the loom of itself began furiously weaving.

  The hairy creature under the loom gnashed his teeth, and cursed in a tongue Camille did not know, and vanished.

  “Who was that, and what was he doing?” asked Camille.

  “That was Uncertainty, enemy of the future, an agent of Chaos who would have all things return to the formless, disorderly state whence both Faery and the mortal world came.”

  “Why was he-?”

  “Hush, child,” said the demoiselle, her argent eyes staring into the silvery vapor, her gaze intent. “Let me weave that which I see in the Mists of Time; when I catch up, we will talk. Break your fast while you wait.”

  Suddenly, before Camille appeared utensils and a fine porcelain plate laden with food, but food not quite like any she had ever seen, familiar and yet not, as if it had come from a different time. Yet though the meal was cold, the aroma was appealing, and so she ate: the bread the whitest and lightest she could imagine, the meat well spiced and tender, the strange red and orange fruit tangy and tart, the greens crisp, and the deep, deep brown confection so sweet, so marvelous, it brought tears to her eyes.

  Even as Camille ate, she watched the wheel and loom in amazement, as many new-wound bobbins flew from the spinning wheel to the warp beam, to somehow keep the warp threads replenished, while other bobbins mounted themselves on shuttles to wait their turn at the weft.

  Just as Camille finished her breakfast-the utensils and plate to vanish-the silver-haired maiden smiled, for the loom had slowed to a moderate pace, the spinning wheel turning in synchronization, twisting time’s thread out from the hovering mist, full-wound bobbins and shuttles replacing empty ones.

  “Ma’amselle, I am Camille.”

  “And I am Skuld,” replied the maiden, not taking her gaze from the mist.

  “A strange name, that,” said Camille.

  “Perhaps no stranger than Camille,” replied Skuld, smiling. “Mine is a very ancient name.”

  “Is your loom ancient as well? I ask, because I saw the word Skuld carved thereon.”

  The maiden smiled again. “The loom and I are both quite antiquated, primeval in fact.”

  Camille looked at the demoiselle. “You do not appear antiquated. In fact, were I to guess, I would say you are no older than I am, mayhap even younger.”

  “Oh, la, child, believe me, I am eld beyond counting.”

  “If true,” said Camille, “then perhaps you are one of three I have come to see: one of three sisters that Raseri said might be found along the shores of Time’s River.”

  “Raseri the Drake?”

  “Aye, he brought me here.”

  “Ah, then it did come to pass, just as I wove.”

  “Just as you wove?”

  Skuld gestured at the loom and said, “In the tapestry of time.”

  “Ma’amselle,” said Camille, “a tapestry it may be, yet I cannot see that which you weave.”

  “I know, child, for the future is hidden from most mortal eyes.. from most immortals, too.”

  Camille nodded. “Indeed, Lady Skuld. Still, that’s not why I am here. I need your-”

  “I know why you have come, Camille. Did I not say that I wove it into the tapestry?”

  “Yes, but-”

  “Humor me, Camille, for it is not oft I have visitors. I will in good measure deal with your question. But ere then, I ask, what do you know of time?”

  Camille took a deep breath, then exhaled and said, “All I know of time is that it flows from the past through the present to the future.”

  Skuld laughed. “Ah, but that is just backwards.”

  “Backwards?”

  Skuld pointed at the silvery vapor. “These are the Mists of Time; here is where all things begin, a future flowing toward the present, to wash over all mortal things and stream into the past. Here, child, here at the start of the River of Time is the future; it is the beginning of all things, whereas the past is the end of all, for there, at the end of time’s flow, all things come to rest, buried in antiquity.”

  Camille frowned and said, “Perhaps it is all relative, depending on whether one looks at time as a flow streaming o’er the mortal world, or if one looks at it as a mortal moving forward through a flow of time.”

  Skuld laughed again and said, “You are quite clever, my child,” the maiden at the loom calling Camille “child” even though Skuld herself appeared to be no older. “My sisters will delight in you.”

  “Ah, then,” said Camille, her heart a bit lighter. “Raseri was right, assuming your sisters live on this river too.”

  “They do,” said Skuld. “Have you
any sisters?”

  Camille nodded. “Five… and a brother as well.”

  “And what do folk say of them?”

  “Until of recent, very little. But now that they have wealth and a mansion, they are courted.-My sisters, that is. My brother Giles is yet too young to be sought out by prospective brides. Regardless, I believe that folk say my sisters are quite fetching… certainly Lord Jaufre does, the old roue.-But tell me, Lady Skuld, what do folk say of you and your sisters?”

  Skuld smiled. “Many things: some curse us; some bless us; some say nought, while others make up fanciful tales. Some men have it all wrong about the three of us. They say that one of us spins the thread of a man’s life, and that one of us measures the thread, while the third one cuts the thread. But that is obviously wrong, for my sisters and I seldom interfere in the affairs of others-oh, at times we do intervene when someone fails to live up to the terms of a wager, but in the main we stay aloof. Too, occasionally when times are dire do we take a hand, but even then we follow a set of rules. Ah, but the men who say we spin and measure and cut the thread of a man’s life do have it wrong, for time and fate are continuous, flowing from the future through the present and into the past, washing over all on the way to the Sea of Oblivion.”

  Camille frowned and slowly shook her head. “I yet find it difficult to comprehend the flow of time as you tell it to be.”