Once Upon a Winter's Night fs-1

by Dennis L McKiernan

  “Why so?”

  “Well, is it not true that what a man has done affects what he will do? Do not the events of the past shape those of the future? And does that not mean that the events of the past occur before those of the future? Is not the past merely prologue for that which is to come?”

  Continuing to watch the mist, Skuld said, “As you yourself pointed out, Camille, it all depends on whether one perceives the past and present and future from the standpoint of one who is moving through the wash of time, whereas my sisters and I perceive it from the point of view of the flow itself as it washes over those standing still. Hence, I weave, as do my sisters, shaping the great tapestry of time. Together we depict that which might come to be, that which is happening in the moment, and that which has gone. As for my part, the patterns I set thereon are not quite fixed, for they are mutable by those depicted. Hence, the tapestry is a living thing, and I alter what I portray even as I weave. My middle sister alters it again by what occurs, and my third sister binds it forever. Hence, in a sense, you are right: for those who stand in the flow of time, the past is prologue, even though it is gone beyond recall, though from my view the past is yet to be.”

  As Camille pondered that enigma, the shuttle slammed side to side, bearing the weft of time back and forth through the warp, the treadle setting the pace, the batten pounding the threads home, the unseen cloth growing. Finally Camille said, “I am quite amazed that you-or perhaps your splendid loom-can weave an invisible tapestry.”

  Without looking away from the mist, Skuld said, “Invisible to you, perhaps, but not to me.” Then Skuld pursed her lips. “If you wish, I can make visible to your eyes the events and other such it contains-great wars to come, men flying in machines through the air, and the like-but heed: should I give you such knowledge of the future, you may bring even greater disaster to all. Even so, I will show you if you so desire.”

  Hearking back to her discussion with Alain concerning predestination versus free will, and about knowing the future, Camille said, “No, Ma’amselle, I’d rather not see. Still, I would like to know if I will succeed.”

  Skuld raised an eyebrow. “If I say yes, will you try less hard? If I say no, will you abandon your search?”

  Camille shook her head. “No, for you yourself said that what you weave is mutable, hence, even though I might welcome the knowledge, still I or others might make it change. And so, whether the answer is yea or nay, I would go on, either to preserve the yes, or to alter the no.”

  “You are wiser than your years, Camille,” said Skuld.

  “Oh, I think not, Lady Skuld, for if I were, I would not now be searching for a place east of the sun and west of the moon. And that is why I came, to ask where such a place does lie, for at that place is my Alain, or so I have been told.”

  Skuld said, “You need ask my middle sister, for, from your point of view, she is much older than I, while I think of her as being much younger, given how differently you and I perceive the flow of time to be.”

  “But haven’t you already woven into your tapestry the place I seek?”

  “Mayhap, Camille. Even so, you still must ask my sister.”

  “Where can I find this sister?”

  Yet weaving, Skuld said, “My sisters and I are bound by a rule: no answers of significance or gifts of worth can we give to anyone without first a service of value being rendered to us-which, in my case, you have certainly done- but even then we must ask a riddle and have it correctly answered. Hence, resolve me this: from that which is yet to come, unto the singular now, what am I?”

  Camille glanced down through the growing dawnlight at the River of Time and said, “You are the Future.”

  “Indeed,” said Skuld, “and a gift from and for the future you shall have.” She tilted her head toward the turning spinning wheel. “Take my finest golden carding comb and keep good care of it; hold on to it to the very end, for then it might do you some good.”

  “But, Lady Skuld,” protested Camille, “Should the thread snap again, time itself will be broken have you not the comb to tease out a new thread from the mist above.”

  Skuld shook her head. “I have another, my child, though not fashioned of gold; hence, you must take this one, else Faery itself might fall, for there is one who will pollute the River of Time even more than the one I now place on my tapestry.”

  Camille looked at the loom where the invisible depiction grew. “You now weave someone evil?”

  “Aye, a monstrous man yet to be; one who will reach out his arms to take in the masses and clutch them unto his breast; one who will do a little three-step jig dance of victory; one who will start a dreadful holocaust. Regardless, Camille, you must take the carding comb, else one will come and destroy Faery itself by polluting beyond all recovery the very River of Time.”

  Camille sighed, yet did as she was bade and took up the golden carding comb. “Again I ask, Lady Skuld, your middle sister, where can I find her?”

  With a flick of her eyes, Skuld glanced at the horizon, bright with the oncoming sun. And with her right hand she gestured downstream and intoned:

  “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.”

  Again Skuld glanced at the bright horizon, and she said, “And this I will tell you as well: leave not the banks of time’s flow, else surely you will lose the stream.”

  And in that very moment the limb of the sun edged over the rim of the world, and so vanished Skuld and loom and spinning wheel all, and day came on the land.

  And Camille heard Scruff instantly chirping, for he would have millet seed.

  29

  Present

  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 Sorciere telling me that time grows short?

  Camille raised her face to the sky and cried out, “I know, Lady Sorciere! 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 w
e 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.

&nbs
p; 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.”