In The Grip Of Old Winter (15 page)

Peter glanced at the fire, at
the skin-walkers, at Almina with all her weird make-up. “I didn’t come here
first. I went to Leonor’s and Oswald’s time. I didn’t have the seal-amulet
then.”

Almina’s eyes widened. “Oh...
Who?”

Bear said, “This is what
makes me wonder, for there is upon Peter some strange aura that is not easy to
define.”

Peter squirmed. “I don’t have
any auras, not a birthmark or anything.”

“He doesn’t mean that, dear,”
Almina explained. “He senses something - odd, in a nice way - about you,
something that might - break the cycle every time we have a bad winter.”

Peter frowned. “Cycle?”

Almina nodded. “That’s right.
The seal-amulet, the carrier, the burnt branch, the big black dog and that
funny little ghost girl who creeps about the house, she gives me the willies,
they all appear whenever there’s a bad winter and then they all disappear when
the snow melts. Years go by when there isn’t any snow at all and then nothing
happens; it’s only when there’s a very cold winter that the story repeats
itself. Didn’t Master Prospero tell you?”

“Who?”

Almina waved her hand towards
Bear. “This clever man, that’s what I call him. Prospero lived on an island and
worked magic, Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I played Miranda in the nineteen
seventy-eight Old Vic production.” She flicked her hand as if that didn’t
matter. “What do you call him?”

“Bear.”

Almina’s eyebrows rose in
surprise. “Oh... Why?”

Peter picked up the
seal-amulet and ran the metal links through his fingers. “But how did you get
here this time, you didn’t have this?”

“I caught hold of the carrier
just before he touched the burnt branch. He seems to be able to travel about
without that trinket, much like you. I came here... I don’t know where he
went.”

Peter pushed his finger
against the seal-amulet’s hard edge until it hurt. “Is that after you pushed
dad off the ladder?”

“What?” Almina’s shocked
expression pulled her face up and down and from side to side. “I didn’t... oh
for goodness sakes, is that what granddad said? Of course I didn’t push him off
the ladder. The carrier did it, that’s why I chased him. I wanted to beat him,
but he hid and jumped out at me and we fought and he touched the branch. I’d
never do anything like that to your father, Peter. It was lucky there was so
much snow, he didn’t fall very far.”

“He cut his leg on a potato harvester
and Farmer Brunt’s taken him to hospital on his tractor.”

Almina’s hands fluttered.
“Oh! Really? A bad cut?”

Peter nodded. “It wouldn’t
stop bleeding.”

Almina covered her mouth.
“Did the carrier... Oh no...”

“What?” asked Peter.

Almina shook her head, unable
to speak.

“The carrier,” Bear said, “is
infected with pestilence.”

***

Peter said, “What’s that?”

Bear replied. “A scourge to
men. Swifter than smoke rising from a flame, its touch is death.”

Almina recovered and taking a
deep breath said, “You must have learnt about it at school, Peter. The Great
Plaque of London in sixteen sixty-five, sometimes called The Black Death. It
ravaged whole continents for hundreds of centuries before that, though of
course it was called other names. Even in the Bible...” She covered her eyes.
“I can’t bear to think ... your father... has the carrier...?”

Peter remembered they’d
learnt about The Black Death in history and that it killed thousands of people
in London. If the carrier caught it too, why wasn’t he dead? “He can’t have it,
because he’s still alive.”

“A few that fell to the
contagion,” Bear said, “did not succumb and the carrier proved to be one such.
It maimed his body, but left him his life.”

Almina rose. “We have to get
back - we must warn them about the danger. A bad cut and with the carrier so
close... come with me, Peter.” She hurried into the trees. “I need you with the
seal-amulet, I can’t work this branch without it. And together we can help your
dad. You can cast a spell to make him better.”

Peter rose to follow, but
Bear strode forwards. “I want Peter to stay, for I must learn and understand
his words.” He faced the skin-walkers. “Aid her return.”

The nearest skin-walker,
their robe shimmering a golden yellow as the soft folds caught the firelight,
swept after his aunt. Eagle, Peter guessed.

Almina called. “Peter must
come with me. It’s his dad we’re talking about and he can use the seal-amulet
to help. I shan’t be able to come back and find him.”

“He is safe with us,” said
Bear. “There are different paths that he might take.”

Almina reached the charred
branch. “What? I mean what shall I tell the others? I need the seal-amulet.”

Eagle joined her and placed
his hand on her shoulder.

Almina twisted to escape
Eagle’s grasp. “He’s only a boy and doesn’t understand what’s happening...”

Eagle touched the charred
branch and Almina vanished. The skin-walker returned to the fire.

Peter sat down. Tiredness,
like a sudden wave, swamped his thoughts and he leaned forwards with his head
in his hands.

I must go back to Leonor before
she arrives at the outlaws’ hideout and find out what Bear wants me to know,
but dad needs my help more. What am I supposed to do in my time or Leonor’s?

He heard the rustle of robes
as Bear approached.

What use might he be in
either time? He’d chased away the barghest, but that had been an accident, or
luck. If he hadn’t been there, then... he raised his head. “What happened when
the barghest attacked Oswald - I mean when it really happened a long time ago?”

Bear sat down. “Oswald died.
The barghest killed him and his mount and took their bodies.”

Peter shuddered, did that
mean eaten? “So how did Leonor know what to do? She needed to find the outlaws’
camp.”

Bear gazed towards the fire.
“The knowledge of her father’s fate and the plans he’d laid to keep them safe
remained unknown to her in that time.”

“She didn’t escape?”

Bear’s robes shimmered purple
as he shook his head. “Eorl Bosa and his men came upon the house and took her
captive. Betrothed to the Eorl, unable to flee, unknowing of her father’s fate,
despair racked her thoughts with torments. On the day of her union with Eorl
Bosa, in the early morning light, she went upon the tower that stands higher
than the manor and whether by fate or by design, tripped. They found her broken
body upon the ground.”

Peter’s heart thumped. She’d
died so long ago and yet still she glided through granddad’s house as if she
lived. Poor Leonor, to be so upset that death was all she wanted. Yet, because
of what he’d just done with the seal-amulet, Oswald lived. “Oswald isn’t dead,
not this time, because I chased the barghest away. So Leonor won’t be captured.
She’ll live.”

“That may be so,” Bear said.
“For the seal-amulet works to your will, though you did not craft or lay the
charms upon its surface. A mist clouds my understanding of your abilities. I
thought the spae-wife walked once more to will her thoughts upon the
seal-amulet from afar, but now I wonder, for it worked to your bidding and that
fills my thoughts with hope, but also fear.”

“What do you mean?”

Bear rose. “You are tired and
must rest.” He raised his arms to encompass all the skin-walkers. “We will talk
while you sleep.” He faced Peter. “Behind the fallen tree you will find a bed
of leaves. You will sleep well there.”

When Bear said tired, Peter
yawned. It sounded like the best idea he’d ever heard. He stumbled round the
fallen tree and found the mound of leaves. They covered the ground like an
enormous mattress and when he lay down, they rustled and he sank into their
softness and went straight to sleep.

He dreamed that he floated
through space, past cold planets and spirals of many-coloured gasses where
stars glittered. Comets hurtled across the immense blackness and left behind
shimmering tails of dust that drifted and separated and faded. Life as he knew
it, with people and animals and trees and the cycle of day and night, did not exist
away from Earth, for Time, more time then might ever be imagined, made different
patterns of existence, for the planets and the comets and the stars and the
gasses. For what purpose he didn’t know, enough that he understood that much
and to be left in awe.

Then he dreamed of the
skin-walkers and they stood in a silent circle around the fire. The flames
flared and as he watched, they changed colour. Sometimes blue, then yellow,
purple, bright green. Fire, that warmed and burned, that boiled water and
heated furnaces, that erupted from volcanoes, that burst into existence as the
Earth took shape and had never been extinguished. Such an ancient element
deserved respect and in his dream Peter understood the skin-walkers reverence
towards this long-lived element, though not how or why fire served their
purposes.

The dreams faded and he
thought to wake - when Leonor appeared. Her lips parted as if to speak and her
eyes gazed at him as if to see, though she drifted past without a word and when
he called her name she made no attempt to reply. Musical notes, soft and high,
from a song that he didn’t know, came to him and he felt refreshed to hear such
sounds in the vast black silence. Leonor floated away and out of sight and he
opened his eyes.

He lay on the leaves and
enjoyed the comfort. The fire crackled and spat with a consistent and regular
force, a bit like a gas flame, thought Peter, whose strength and weakness is
easy to control and which never goes out however low it burns. At home, you
needed to push the knob on the cooker and then turn it to ‘Off’ to extinguish
the flame altogether.

He giggled for thinking of
something so silly. The skin-walkers fire and the gas flame on the cooker at
home didn’t have anything in common and that made him giggle even more. He
imagined a huge round knob somewhere in the trees and all the skin-walkers
jumping up and down on top of it to push it down and then together, turning it anti-clockwise
until the bonfire went out. His body shook with laughter and the leaves
rustled.

He turned on his back to draw
breath and gazed up at the stars. Did Almina reach dad before Farmer Brunt
drove him to hospital? Had Leonor and Oswald arrived at the outlaws’ camp? With
a grunt, he rolled off the leaves and sat up. His stomach growled and a sudden
hunger demanded that he eat straight away.

He pulled his backpack closer
and pulled out the sandwiches wrapped in tin foil. No need to check the
fillings, just eat. The first bite and the sulphurous tang of egg mayonnaise
erupted onto his tongue. Devoured in four big bites, he picked up the next
sandwich. Ham and piccalilli and that took five bites to finish.

He unscrewed the cup on the
thermos and wisps of steam floated out. With the cup balanced on his thighs, he
filled it to half with hot chocolate and then screwed on the top.

He cradled the cup in both
hands and sipped the sweet confection. A glow of contentment spread through his
body.

Bear didn’t understand how
the seal-amulet worked. Almina called him a ‘natural.’ That meant... he didn’t
know what that meant. That the seal-amulet worked to his will made him feel good
and he wanted to do it again because, like the heroes in his computer games
when they found a magical talisman, its use granted the finder increased powers
and abilities. Able to dominate, they took control with ease.

***

“Are you rested?” Bear stood
over him.

Peter drained the remains of
the hot chocolate and screwed the cup back on the thermos. “Yes.” He scrambled to
his feet. “I have to go to Leonor and Oswald. If I’ve changed the story because
I saved Oswald, then they will need my help again.”

“That is a wise choice.” Bear
sat upon the fallen tree. “The seal-amulet is fickle. There will be many
choices that you need to make and they will be profound, for past events will
change and their impact will fall upon the present. Be wary of what needs to be
done, the seal-amulet is chained to one who uses it for her own purpose. That
those charms respond to you may be chance, or they may be design. I have told
you that once we were eight and that the spae-wife meant to destroy us all. She
wanted our knowledge of the Ages, past, present and to come, to use to her
will. Had she succeeded, the stars would cease to shine and all that was to be,
even your life, would be clouded in cold and darkness.”

Peter held up the
seal-amulet. “She could do all that - with this?”

“It is the seal-amulet that
offers such possibilities.”

Peter frowned. “I can’t understand
how she can do anything. I’ve got the seal-amulet and I’m not going to give it
to her.”

Bear’s hooded face gazed
towards the fire. “The spae-wife is cunning and sly. She walks once more, I am
certain, though in a changed form, much as you witnessed our forms change when
the carrier attacked. I say to you again, take care in whom you trust.”