The Ways of Winter

by Karen Myers

  At the response inside he opened the door and took a couple of steps in before stopping. An astonishing transformation had taken place. On Friday it had been a wreck, not yet repaired, with holes in the walls and a filthy floor. Less than two days later, it had been cleaned and repaired, the floor and walls scrubbed. It needed paint and polish, but otherwise it was almost respectable.

  The fire yielded a cozy, welcoming warmth, and the table was decorated with evergreen boughs and candles that helped brighten the wan snowy light coming through the clean windows, their broken panes boarded up for now.

  “What a change,” he said to Maëlys, and she beamed with pride.

  “I decided the laundry could wait one more day. I wanted to set this room in order for private feasts and ceremonies. It’s not done yet, of course, but it’ll do for now.”

  She turned and took her husband’s hand to draw him forward. Benitoe recognized the walk of a fellow horseman. “This is Luhedoc, of course.”

  Benitoe bowed deeply. “I’m very pleased to meet you and to find you well.”

  “Welcome, nephew,” Luhedoc said with a half-grin. “I believe this is yours?”

  He handed Benitoe one of the posters Benitoe had caused to be placed everywhere that Lleision’s guards had gone.

  Benitoe noted that it had been folded carefully to fit in a pocket. “I couldn’t be happier that you found it. Auntie has been so worried about you.” He gave it back to him.

  Luhedoc said, “When Maëlys told me of the adoption, I told her we should do it properly, that you missed the clan feast. We’re going to make up for that now.”

  Maëlys opened the door, and some of her new staff came in, bearing platters of steaming food. “Nothing fancy,” she said, “but plenty of it.”

  After a few minutes of filling their plates and catching up on events, Benitoe paused to tell them, “You know, I’ll have to go back with the huntsman when he leaves, but I can come back regularly to see you both.”

  Luhedoc said, “I may see you first. Maëlys has told me how my original herd was folded into Iona’s. I’m minded to go back and bargain with her for some foundation stock to bring to Edgewood, both horses and ponies.” He looked Benitoe over. “Think you could help me bring them back here, through the ways?”

  Benitoe approved the scheme, and they passed the afternoon trading stories and praising Maëlys’s recipes, until the light started to fade. The snow continued to fall lightly.

  George stretched in bed. The raw new leg felt better and even the bruises from the beatings were reduced to background noise. His eyes popped open. “What time is it?”

  “Late afternoon, sleepyhead,” Angharad’s voice came from behind him.

  He turned over to look at her, and kept right on going, sitting up and swinging his legs over the edge. “I don’t understand. And why is it still snowing?” he said, looking past her out the window.

  “You’ve slept all day,” she said.

  “Really?” He stretched his arms out behind him. “I feel like I may never sleep again.”

  He reached for the robe over the foot of the bed and stood up to put it on. He stood there barefoot with his feet spread, tying the belt. Then without shifting position he lifted his arms to chest height and began twisting left to right, stretching the sides of his back. It felt wonderful.

  He bent forward at the waist, trying to curl between his spread legs to stretch the length of his back. It was tight, but pain-free.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Angharad asked.

  “I feel well. I need the exercise.”

  She grabbed his spare pair of knee-breeches from the bench. “Put these on instead and let me get something for that back.”

  George pulled on the pants leaving them unfastened below the knee and shed the robe. All this time, Maelgwn had been staring at him silently. He winked at him, and the boy grinned. “Want to join me?”

  Angharad protested, while she rubbed some ointment on his back.

  He said to her, “He may be hurt someday. It’s good for him to know how to handle it.”

  “So, listen,” he told the boy. “I got my leg back, but it’s brand new. The bones need to be worked and the muscles are weak as a kitten’s. That’s no good. Not only does it make me limp, but the effort of the rest of my body to compensate will twist it and make everything else hurt. You understand?”

  Maelgwn nodded.

  “So I have to strengthen it as fast as I can, and I have to use it as if it were normal as much as I can, to keep my posture straight.”

  “Have you got a mirror?” he asked Angharad.

  She found two and held one for him. He looked at the reflection on his back, and then reached back and touched the part of the scars he could reach.

  “My back, now. Scars can cripple you if you don’t keep them supple and stretched, especially when they’re new. Deep ones can make adhesions of flesh on the inside sometimes, like tying your skin together. The marks don’t matter, but the lack of flexibility and reach, that matters.”

  Maelgwn nodded solemnly.

  “So I must twist and stretch my back until it feels as good as before, or live with that weakness forever. And I have to start now.”

  Angharad said, tartly, “What he’s not telling you is that recovering from a fever means you don’t have any stamina. If he does too much of this, he’s going to fall right over. But until then, being a man, he’s going to try anyway.”

  Maelgwn grinned.

  “So, sit here beside me on the edge of the bed,” George said, ignoring her.

  George went through a series of lower leg lifts, slowing both the up and down phases as much as possible. He broke a sweat after half a dozen of them, but it was a start. He waited a few seconds, then started again. He knew deep knee bends were out of the question for now, but he did a series of shallow squats to start building those muscles. He was immensely grateful to have a working knee at all, however weak, to climb stairs, to ride a horse, to sit down like a normal man. Strength would come.

  Maelgwn beside him had all the suppleness of youth, and a fraction of his weight. Still, he would add strength training as he grew to maturity and learned to handle weapons. Didn’t hurt to start him now.

  George stood and began a series of focused back stretching exercises. Angharad stopped him partway through to lay him flat on the bed and massage his back, rubbing in more of her ointment. “No pain?” she asked, as she kneaded the deep muscles.

  “It feels wonderful,” he growled. “Don’t ever stop.”

  She swatted him and let him up again, and he ran through the stretching set two more times before calling it quits.

  His muscles trembled from the unaccustomed exertion, but his body felt more his own, like it belonged to him.

  He needed to bathe. He rubbed his hand over his beard of several days. “Well?” he asked Angharad. “Beard or not?”

  “Shave,” she recommended.

  “On one condition,” he said. “Find us somewhere else to sleep tonight. I’m very, very tired of a sick room.”

  Dinner was well begun in Edgewood Manor’s hall when Rhys at the high table was struck by a tableau at one of the entrances. George stood there, fully dressed, wearing the coat Rhys recognized as the one he’d borrowed for emergency clothing while they huddled in one of Cloudie’s way passages. His clothes were clean, and he’d even managed to don his boots. He looked scrubbed and alive, if rather worn.

  Maelgwn stood behind him with Angharad, looking apprehensive. Rhys thought this might be the boy’s first time out in public, with so many people. George leaned over him, no doubt offering some encouragement.

  They entered the hall, George with a cane moving slowly and carefully to accommodate his weak healed leg. Angharad and Maelgwn walked behind, letting him set the pace.

  As he headed toward the high table, the people at the first long table he came to on the main floor looked up and began to whisper. Some of them were recently come from Greenway
Court and beyond, and others were newly awakened, here at the manor to resume their old positions or to find new ones. George’s destruction of the barrier way had freed them. As he passed and the word spread about who he was, the diners at that table rose and bowed to him. They stayed standing.

  Rhys felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. Gwyn, next to him, was motionless, hand frozen to his glass.

  As George walked by the end of the next long table, the people seated there rose and bowed, as well. Silence spread through the hall as people stopped talking and only the noise of George’s footsteps and the people standing up could be heard.

  About halfway through the hall, he started up the stairs of the dais, still moving slowly. When he reached the top, the people at the far tables, which he hadn’t reached, stood and joined the others. When they bowed, too, in silence, George flushed red with embarrassment and acknowledged them all with a jerky nod.

  Rhys rose, and was joined by everyone at the high table. They made their own bow, even Gwyn and Edern. Rhys could see George’s jaw muscles clenching as he held his face still and bowed back.

  George had Maelgwn sit next to Rhys, and then he joined them, with Angharad, sitting down very carefully and looking down at his plate, overwhelmed.

  Rhys leaned over and whispered to the astonished Maelgwn. “That’s your foster-father they’re honoring. Always remember this day.”

  CHAPTER 33

  By Monday late in the day, George was getting restless.

  Contrary to his expectations, he’d not only slept again the previous night, but had already taken two brief naps today. Seemed like he couldn’t get enough. But in all other ways he was feeling better by the hour. He wanted to go home, but there was still unfinished business in Edgewood.

  He’d spent much of the day, when he was awake, chatting with Mag in the conservatory. His ability to understand her clearly had lasted, and he provided clean translations of her responses to Eluned and Ceridwen’s questions.

  Now he had a question of his own for her. “It’s clear there are many things for us to value from your people—your knowledge, your ability to make ways. But what do we have to offer you, besides our friendship?”

  *You are looking for something to trade?*

  Yes, I suppose so, he thought. It’s one basis for a long and healthy relationship.

  *Remember the night you told me about how the earth is formed and how it changes?*

  Of course.

  *That is knowledge we would treasure.*

  George considered that. She meant true knowledge, not just the layman’s overview that he’d provided. Geology would be needed, but also chemistry, physics, even biology. Perhaps astronomy. And yet, why not? They had plenty of time. The knowledge was available, in his human world.

  Human evolution, if it came to it, would be a shock. We’ve only been around a blink of an eye, from her perspective. I bet the fae are no older, he thought. He’d have to ask Ceridwen.

  “Think you could learn how to read?” he asked. He fetched a book and a piece of paper and started to show her some of the basics.

  Seething Magma didn’t take long to understand the system of phonetic writing that George showed her, but translation was another matter. She heard thoughts directly, even when people spoke, so she needed to learn the spoken language without the thoughts in order to read, and that was going to take a little while.

  Once George understood the difficulty, they put it aside for another time.

  Are you well, George asked her.

  *I am very pleased that you have survived and that Granite Cloud is back safe.*

  She felt his pleasure at her response, and then a bit of curiosity that amused her.

  *You want to know more about Madog’s death?*

  He admitted it.

  *He didn’t understand at first that I was claimed, that he couldn’t take me himself. He was… disappointed.*

  George appreciated her humor.

  *He threatened to hurt Granite Cloud, to send her at me.*

  She reverted to pictures to describe what happened next, a series of moments. A picture of a way, small and focused like a laser, dissolving the clothing of his coat. The way expanding into a circle the width of his body. Madog’s expression of disbelief, dying before the pain could reach him. Madog’s lifeless shoulders and head collapsing onto his legs in a pool of blood. Granite Cloud’s release and joy as she danced around her mother, tracking carelessly through the remains.

  *Satisfaction.*

  George heaved a sigh beside her. Well done, he thought to her.

  George woke with a start in his chair in a darkened corner of the room and realized in horror that a council session was already underway. He’d dozed off again, clearly, and they’d let him sleep. Hope I didn’t snore.

  Mag, don’t let that happen, he thought.

  *You needed to sleep just then.*

  Perhaps, but it’s humiliating.

  Benitoe was asking about Madog’s domain, would Gwyn try to intervene?

  George sat up straighter to hear the response.

  “I will set an interim government of some kind into place there within the week,” Gwyn said. “Longer range plans will require more thought.”

  Rhodri spoke up, “About George’s new foster-son, he’ll need way-training. He’s definitely going to be skilled.”

  George caught movement in a chair behind him in the dark and realized Maelgwn was there. Keeping an eye on me?

  George spoke up, “It can wait until you’re free again, Rhodri. Then we can ask him what he wants to do.”

  What time was it, anyway, he wondered. He saw Angharad smile at him from a seat in the lighted half of the room. Must be after dinner, they’re all too relaxed to be hungry. I must have dropped off for a while.

  Eluned said, “I would like to offer a formal commendation to Cydifor. His translations for Seething Magma have been very perceptive, better than anyone but the huntsman. He has greatly helped Ceridwen and me with our scholarship.”

  “Well done,” Rhys said.

  George was pleased to hear Cydifor so well thought of. His venture here would be successful, after all.

  *It’s time for us to go. We only waited to say good-bye to you, friend.*

  George stood up. “Our guests are ready to leave,” he told them.

  They rose from the table and gathered in front of Seething Magma and Granite Cloud. Rhian helped Cadugan turn up the lights in the room.

  *Speak for us, friend.*

  “Mag asks me to speak for them,” George said.

  *We are sorry you think of us as dragons, as monsters.*

  “She believes we see her as a dragon,” he told them. “You’re wrong, Mag. You weren’t the dragon in the story at all.”

  He pulled out his pocket watch and showed her the engraving again. “Madog was the dragon, and Cloudie was the young maiden. You were St. George, come to the rescue.”

  Maelgwn followed along, fascinated.

  *The spear, maybe, or the horse.*

  George laughed out loud at the notion of riding a sentient creature her size.

  *We have a gift for you, something to remember us by.*

  Mag and Cloudie each extruded a pseudopod and pinched off the tip of it, dropping a piece of rock about the size of half a fist to the floor. George picked them up, and then Rhodri was brave enough to try touching one. There was no reaction, they were safe to handle.

  “These are gifts, part of themselves,” George said.

  *For you to recall how we taste.*

  She turned and George walked in front of her to open the outside doors. Gwyn followed them both out onto the terrace and bowed deeply.

  “We will be contacting you through George about our next visit and about meeting your mother, Gravel. Our most heartfelt thanks for your help these last two weeks.”

  *And our gratitude for our child.*

  “She thanks you for getting Cloudie back.”

  *Bye-bye, Maelgwn. Thank
s for being my friend.*

  George let that be private for the boy’s ears only.

  Maelgwn said, his voice thickening, “Travel safely, baby sister. Listen to your mother.” He walked off to the edge of the terrace, out of the light, and George let him be.

  With that, Seething Magma made a way, and the two of them entered it. After a few moments, George collapsed it behind them.

  They walked back into the conservatory, a subdued group. The quarter of the room that was filled with tables, maps, toys, and scraps of paper looked empty and forlorn without the rock-wight. Cydifor walked around it, picking up all the symbols and papers Mag had used. Ceridwen and Eluned joined him, and George overheard Cydifor ask Eluned to take him on as a student.

  George thought, alone in my head at last, with Mag gone. He felt Cernunnos stirring in the depths. Alright, be quiet and leave me my illusions, he amended.

  Rhys came up to him in Mag’s corner and gripped his arms with his own. George knew he was thinking of the long hours trapped in the way passage plotting destruction. Against all expectations, they had survived.

  Cydifor walked over to Rhodri and murmured something.

  “Really?” Rhodri said. “By all means, let’s have it.”

  He turned to the rest of them. “Cydifor has a praise-ballad he’d like to perform, for this moment.”

  Rhys said, “Let it be so.”

  They sat themselves down in a small semicircle in front of the fire, and Cydifor stood off to the side, without any instrument, and began to sing.

  George thought, it’s a catchy tune, I’ll give it that. Rhodri’s already got some harmonies going for it. But it’s preposterous. I’m not this ballad hero, it wasn’t really like that. He looked at Rhys. I expect my face is just as red as his at this moment.

  Maelgwn at his feet smiled proudly. I can’t live up to that, he thought. He looked to his wife next to him for balance, and she gave him just the right raised eyebrow of skepticism. It was the perfect antidote, and he grinned at her.