Once Upon a Summer Day Read Online Free PDF Page B

Faery, no matter the realm, the view fades into twilight along any bearing one cares to look, clear day or no.
    The sun sank toward the horizon, and as dusk came upon the land, Borel called a halt, and once again set about making camp, while the pack set about gathering small game for the evening meal.
    That night Borel tossed restlessly, not succumbing at all to deep slumber, but struggling instead on the edge of wakefulness for the fullness of the darktide.
    He had no dreams whatsoever.
     
    Late on the second day within the Autumnwood, they came to another looming wall of twilight, and leaving the bright-hued trees behind, they stepped into the gloam, the daylight fading as they went, and then brightening again as they pressed on through, until a gray sky loomed o’erhead, with chill, diffuse light gleaming through ice-laden limbs and glancing across snow, for when they had passed beyond the marge they had come into the cold of winter.
    Even so, they continued on, and when darkness finally fell, they made camp in the icy surround, for this was the Winterwood.

7
    Winterwood

    T hough kept warm by his quilted eiderdown bedroll, once again Borel did not fall into deep slumber, but instead was wakeful throughout the darktide. Needless to say, he did not dream, for dreams come to those who pass into deep sleep, a state that completely escaped Borel.
    The restlessness of the prince affected the Wolves as well, and they spent much of the night rising and turning about and then settling into the snow again, only to lift their heads at every stir of their master and at every small sound, be it the fall of an icicle or a plunge of snow from a pine or the cracking of rock in the winter cold.
    Borel finally fell adoze just ere dawn, yet Loll came and licked his face to announce the coming of the sun and a winterbright day.
    Stiffly, Borel arose and added wood to the remaining few glimmering coals of his fire, and he made strong tea to revive his alertness. Shortly thereafter, he broke camp, then he and the pack began trotting through the Winterwood, with its snow-clad pines and ice-clad deciduous trees barren in their winter dress, trees that in the ordinary world would awake with the coming of spring, yet these trees rested perpetually in the forever winter of this realm. Shrubs and grasses and other plants slept as well, for among the Forests of the Seasons, each woodland was eternal in its aspect: the Springwood was ever burgeoning; the Winterwood ever resting; the Autumnwood ever bearing; the Summerwood ever flourishing. Somehow, these mystical realms seem to maintain one another in concert, each by some numinous means giving unto the whole the essence of that which was needed to remain in a constant state of existence. The Winterwood provided slumber and rest that all such life needs; the Springwood infused all with the vitality of awakening life; the Summerwood gave to the whole the sustenance of coming to fullness; and the Autumnwood spread the fruitful rewards of maturation throughout. Jointly, they ran the full gamut, though each separately remained unchanged as well as unchanging.
    And so the realm of the Winterwood slept under blankets of snow and claddings of ice.
    And as in any winter realm, within this woodland there were storms and blizzards and gentle snowfalls, days bright and clear and cold or gray and gloomy or dark, days of biting winds howling and blowing straightly or blasting this way and that, of freezings and hoarfrost so cold as to crack stone, of warm sunshine and partial thaws and a bit of melt, and of snowfalls heavy and wet, or falls powdery and dry.
    It was a world of silence and echoes, of quietness and muffled sounds, and of yawling blasts and thundering blows.
    It was Borel’s realm—wild and untamed and white and grey and black, with glittering ice and sparkling snow, with evergreens giving a lie to the monochromatic ’scape—and he loved it most dearly, for never were any two days the same, and