Once Upon a Winter's Night Read Online Free PDF

were more vivid than any she could ever dream. Old were these trees, some of them, their roots reaching deep, their great girths moss-covered, their branches spread wide and interlacing with others overhead. Yet here and there was new growth—thickets of saplings and lone seedlings and solitary treelets, all reaching upward into the strange, crepuscular half-light. Yet, her eye was drawn to the old growth: oak, she could see, proud and majestic, and groves of birch, silver and white; maple and elm stood tall, with dogwood and wild cherry blossoms filling the air with their delicate scents. And down among the roots running across the soil, crocuses bloomed, as did small mossy flowers, yellow and lavender and white. Birds flitted here and there, their songs claiming territory and calling for mates. The hum of bees sounded as they moved from blossom to blossom, and elsewhere beetles clambered along greening vines and stems. Overhead, scampering limb-runners chattered, and down among the grass and thatch, voles and other small living things rustled. Somewhere nearby and hidden in bracken, a small stream burbled and splashed, as if singing and dancing on its way to the shores of a distant sea. Bright and dark and twilight were these woods, and full of wakened life, and Camille was filled with the marvel of it all.
    While looking this way and that in the impossible task of trying to see the whole of it, Camille unclasped the brooch at her neck and removed the cloak from ’round her shoulders, for the air was mild and she would be shed of the warm garment. As she reached for a strap of the harness at hand to affix the cloak under, Camille looked down and said, “Oh, Bear—” but her words chopped to silence, for the Bear was no longer a pristine white, but an ebon black instead.
    “Bear!” she exclaimed in wonder. “You’ve changed colors.”
    The Bear merely grunted, and padded onward across the sward and among the close-set boles of trees.
    As they travelled on, the twilight brightened, as if day were coming unto this mystical land. Onward they went and onward, the day getting brighter and brighter, yet whenever they topped a clear rise and Camille looked back the way they had come; in the distance hindward twilight yet cloaked the land. Frowning, she looked ahead, and twilight seemed to reign there, too, as well as to left and right.
    Full daylight came where the Bear now trod, the day nigh the noontide, and still there was twilight afar, seeming diminished no less than before.
    Glancing up at the sun above, the Bear plodded a bit farther, to come under the widespread limbs of a great oak, and there it was he stopped. He looked over his shoulder at Camille.
    “What is it, O Bear, that you desire? Should I dismount?”
    “ Whuff. ”
    Turning full sideways, Camille sprang to the ground. She stretched her legs and walked about, for she was not used to riding. She came to the edge of a brook, and the bourne sang its rippling song as it tumbled o’er pebbles and rocks. Kneeling at stream edge, she drank long and deeply of the chill water, and rose up to her knees to find the Bear standing nigh. She wiped her lips on the back of her hand, then said, “Oh, Bear, that was perhaps the most delicious draught ever. Is all of Faery like such?”
    The Bear grunted noncommittally, and then, moving downstream of Camille, he stepped to the brook and lowered his great muzzle and took a deep drink himself.
    Camille stood and brushed off her knees, then straightened and filled her lungs fully with the cool, crystalline air. “Bear, what name has this place? Oh, I don’t mean Faery itself, but this glorious woodland around.”
    The Bear raised his head from the bourne, water streaming down from his muzzle. He glanced about and grunted, and then lowered his head again.
    “Well, then, let me see. Since your master is Lord of the Summerwood, then this cannot be his demesne, for here ’tis spring, not summer. This must be the Springwood