Chapter 9: It Was a Dream

It was a dream, and Belgrieve knew it. He was staring down from the musty ceiling of what seemed to be the inside of a dungeon. The stone floor stretched further and further into the darkness, sandwiched between uneven walls. He could not move his body, yet his vision was terribly clear despite the dimness.

Eventually, several people walked down the path. They were young—eighteen at best. They wore relatively new equipment, each holding up their weapon as they walked with hope and confidence in their step. This was the unwavering stride of youth.

At the lead was a boy whose hair was the color of hay. He had an intellectual look to him, and he would frequently strike up a conversation with the members following behind. He tried to speak in hushed tones, but it seemed like he was still trying to find the appropriate volume for these halls.

One spot behind him, a red-haired boy occasionally chimed in with a wry smile. He was followed by a girl with silver hair, and then a brown-haired boy, who both tagged along with a smile.

Don’t do it, Belgrieve pleaded, but no words would escape his mouth. He could kick and scream all he wanted, and nothing would come of it. Don’t go past there! His desperate scream did not reach them.

It wasn’t long before something pounced from the darkness—it came down upon the boy at the lead. He tried to pull his sword, but he was a beat too late. And that was when the red-haired boy pushed the leader out of the way.

Belgrieve’s long-gone right leg began to burn in seething pain.

○

The snow came down in spades. It made for a magnificent frigid spectacle as it fell, the soft streams of white carrying off every sound it could. Consequently, it was terribly quiet, the silence broken only by the faint crackle of the fireplace and the hissing of the simmering kettle hung over it.

Despite all the snow, the sky was a milky hue—an irksome brightness that made the piled snow sting the eyes.

Belgrieve sat by the fireplace carding sheep wool. There wasn’t much work he could do outside at this time of year; the most important tasks were to keep the snow from piling on the roof and to shovel the paths. From time to time, he would also help the lumberjacks in the forest, though that rarely ever happened when the snow was this thick.

Winter was, instead, the season for housework: beans were separated, wool was carded, and textiles would be made from the resultant yarn. If he took a walk, he would hear the clacking of looms coming from every house.

Most households in Turnera raised sheep. Kerry had an extraordinarily large flock, and a large spinning workshop to go along with it. Everyone else would spin their wool in their own homes, weaving and knitting it into clothing.

Belgrieve did not have any sheep of his own, but Kerry and the other villagers would always share a bit with him. He passed the loose wool through a series of bristles to get out any tangles. Once he spun it on a spindle, he would be left with yarn.

It had been four months since he had begun working indoors, and spring should have been right around the corner, but it had been nothing but snow for the past few days.

“Phew...” He stood once his carding reached a good stopping point, then immediately found himself shivering. While the fireplace smoldered red, the thick piles of snow filled his house with a piercing cold. He took another log and tossed it in, a spark bursting out as it hit the pile.

It was almost noon. Belgrieve picked up a wooden bowl he had placed near the hearth. The cloth draped over it was pulled back to reveal bloated bread dough. Yeast didn’t rise properly in the cold, so it took a bit of time for the dough to proof.

Belgrieve lightly kneaded the dough, then tore off a few bits and rounded them into balls. He took out his skillet, oiled it, lined up the dough balls, and covered it all up with a wooden lid. Then, he placed the skillet over the live embers he had gathered at the edge of the fireplace. In a pot beside it boiled some bean and dried-meat soup.

“It’s quiet...” Belgrieve murmured, stroking his beard.

This was the fifth winter since Angeline had left. When she was still in the house, she would cling tight to him whenever it got cold. Her hands and feet chilled easily, and even after she started practicing sleeping alone, she would sneak into Belgrieve’s bed on the coldest nights. He would often find himself startled awake by her frigid hands. And when the nights were too cold for either of them to sleep, they would sit by the crackling fireplace. Belgrieve would set Angeline on his lap and read her the same picture book.

He finished his light meal of bread and soup. Once he had tidied up the dishes, he carefully equipped a snowshoe to the tip of his wooden leg. He slipped on his gloves, draped on his coat, wrapped a muffler around his neck, pulled a hat over his ears, and walked out. He had shoveled the snow just that morning, yet his yard was already a uniform layer of white. Icicles of all shapes and sizes dangled from the eaves.

Crunching the snow underfoot, Belgrieve retrieved more firewood from the pile out back. Then, he lifted the large plank that had been buried in the snow. A cavity had been dug there to preserve potatoes and radishes under a layer of hay.

“Oh... They’re a bit frozen...”

The ones on top had been damaged by the cold. He carefully plucked them out, then took a few of the pristine ones. Retrieving some hay from the shed, he layered it in a little thicker before placing the plank over them just as before. He was running out of provisions.

“It took so much time, and I’ve hardly done anything at all...”

Once he was back inside, he poured himself a glass of hot water from the kettle and added a bit of liquor. The alcohol rose off of it, piercing the depths of his nostrils. Belgrieve took his time drinking it and allowing it to warm him to the core.

“All right... I should get going now.”

He hung his sword from his belt and stepped out with a long walking stick. Even when the days were so cold, Belgrieve would make his daily rounds. Most wild animals were in hibernation, but perhaps the odd fiend would draw near under the cloak of the storm. He hadn’t encountered any so far, but there had been an icehund in the summer, and the number of fiends was on the rise. He could never be too careful.

The breath he exhaled through his scarf was white—and it didn’t disappear immediately, instead lingering a while in the air. If he hadn’t put on snowshoes, his solid peg leg would have sunk straight into the snow.

“It’s even colder than usual today. I’ll have to keep shoveling...”

Unable to contain themselves indoors, the kids would always run out and play, but today, there were none. Belgrieve used the barely visible fences as his guide, taking care not to step in the fields as he walked around the village. The distant forests and mountains were but a haze; he could barely make out their shadows in the dazzling white.

Belgrieve recalled how he used to take the young Angeline around with him. Her cheeks would be red, her nose runny, but she would tag along without a single complaint. However, she would doff her coat the second she went to play with the other kids, throwing him into a bit of a panic.

Each night, the layer of frost over the wheat fields outside the village would grow thicker, and now they looked like flat plains. Perhaps there was freshly sprouted wheat underneath, barely enduring the cold. Small footsteps—perhaps a fox’s—stretched out towards the forest.

He shook his shoulders to rid himself of the coating of soft snow that had built up before he realized it. He let out a long breath and watched it disappear into the sky.

And then, he saw figures in the distance. He narrowed his eyes.

They seemed to be children, and not just one or two of them. There were five or six, their hands linked in a ring as they danced in a circle. He heard a serene song in the wind, one that didn’t seem to be of this world. Belgrieve reached for his sword and quietly approached.

The dancing figures were indeed children, around seven or eight years old. They all wore puffy white clothes with matching white fur hats on their heads. While at first, it seemed like they were nimbly prancing about, on closer inspection, it became clear that their feet weren’t touching the ground and they left no footsteps behind.

“Snow children...” He released his hilt.

Snow spirits came in all shapes and sizes. There were those that were hostile to humans, as well as ones that meant no harm and were essentially natural phenomena. The snow children were the latter. The boys and girls were as if nature had taken on physical form. They were indifferent to humans, feeling no particular goodwill or malice, and were best left alone.

He watched them dance for a while. While they seemed to be bundles of energy, their song too manifested the stillness of the snow, resounding as if to emphasize the silence. Once he knew they were harmless, there was not a more magical scene around.

It was then that a strong wind suddenly picked up, wrapping the snow into a vortex. Belgrieve found himself closing his eyes and covering his face.

“Gah...”

The wind ran rampant for a short while. And then, it was like there was no wind at all. The snow fell straight downwards, and it was as if the sounds had all vanished.

A figure stood beyond the snow children—a woman standing straight and tall, wearing a pure-white coat and fur hat. While she was beautiful, her face was like a statue; there was a cold, inorganic quality to her. She brought with her even more snow children, ten or twenty following her around.

“Lady Winter...” Belgrieve muttered.

The mother of the snow children, and the personification of winter itself. It was rare to come across her, and impossible to kill her—to do so would mean to purge winter from the entire world. However, Belgrieve did not fear her. Lady Winter was a manifestation of nature like the snow children. She had no love for humans, but she did not hate them either.

He had come across this great spirit of winter by chance, once before.

○

The sky was a pearly gray as snow fell from on high. Tall smokestacks rose here and there through the mounds. Winter mornings were slow, and many houses were only now having breakfast.

Angeline—who was seven at the time—walked a few steps ahead of him. Her small footsteps dotted the thin, fresh coating of snow, and at times, she would nearly slip, faltering this way and that. She would stick her hands out to regain her balance.

“You don’t have to be in such a hurry, Ange,” Belgrieve called out to her, and she turned. She breathed a white breath, a wide grin on her face. The cold had turned her cheeks and nose red.

“It’s a race, dad!” she said and started running off. However, she kept slipping as she had before, and was barely going any faster. Belgrieve gave a wry smile, speeding up a bit to give her a hug.

“All right, caught you.”

“Noooo!”

When he nuzzled her cheek, she began squealing in delight. He had just decided to grow out his beard, and she must have found it ticklish.

A cold wave had set in the night before. It had snowed throughout the night and the ground was frozen solid by morning. Now a new layer sprinkled over it like confectioners’ sugar. Even as morning came, the village was silent as if it had been sealed in invisible ice. Even the crunching of the snow under their feet sounded as if it would echo for miles.

They slowly walked around the town, then headed for the plains beyond it. The white landscape seemed to extend to infinity. At times, Angeline would remember their race and run off, and each time, Belgrieve would catch her, eliciting her happy complaints.

The peppering of snow gradually changed to a large and soft sheet. Angeline brushed the snow off her cap, let out another breath, and watched, bemused by the shapes the white mass would take as it drifted off.

“Look, a dog! Oh, it’s gone...”

“I must have missed it. How about the next one?”

“Ah, the one you just breathed was Kerry’s face.”

“Hm? Really?”

“Honest,” Angeline said, before suddenly narrowing her eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“I hear something...”

Belgrieve honed his ears. It was a song, quiet yet clear. He lowered Angeline, put a hand on his hilt, and slowly made for the direction it was coming from. There was a silhouette in the snow. He focused his eyes. A woman, surrounded by children.

He felt a chill run down his spine—that was no human.

Alarmed, he drew his sword after a moment’s hesitation.

The woman looked at him, and he swallowed his breath. She was so arrestingly beautiful it was as if his body had frozen over. Her eyes were like ice; he couldn’t conceive any interest in him in their gaze. She looked at him as she would look at a bug on the ground, like a giant glancing down at some lesser life-form.

Angeline cowered behind him. Belgrieve was terrified—this was the fear and awe he felt towards nature itself, but at the moment, it was as though he was being intimidated by a fiend. He thought he might be sweating, despite being cold as ice.

Belgrieve gently patted Angeline on the head. “Ange...can you get home alone?”

“Huh... Dad?”

He focused the strength in his body. His heart pounded loudly, and he could feel the blood racing through his veins.

“You’re not laying a hand on her!” Raising his sword, Belgrieve raced towards the woman.

○

The being looked at Belgrieve’s face, mildly surprised.

“OH, TRANSIENT ONE. YOU’VE GROWN SO OLD IN NO TIME AT ALL,” she said, her dignified voice like glistening ice. It was hard to say whether she had actually spoken aloud or if the air itself was simply vibrating to her whim.

To eternal beings like her, a human was the sort of existence that was gone in the blink of an eye. “You shouldn’t measure us on your time, Eternal Mistress. It’s been ten years already.”

The lady stared at him blankly. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY TEN YEARS?”

“It means the seasons have cycled ten times, though I don’t know if that means anything when you only know winter.”

“PERHAPS. BUT TRANSIENT ONE, WHY HAVE YOU COME OUT IN THE COLD AGAIN?”

“I’m on patrol. The humans are afraid of fiends, you see... Although I don’t have to worry if you’re here.”

Lady Winter was neither hostile nor welcoming to fiends either. She was just as disinterested as she was with everything else. However, the fiends feared her, as she could easily rival even an S-Rank one. It could be said that there was no need to fear encountering fiends wherever Lady Winter went—although she came hand in hand with snowstorms and cold waves, which were dangerous in their own way.

Belgrieve relaxed and leaned on his stick. Looks like I went out for nothing, he thought. But he got to meet the lady again and reminisce in ten-year-old memories. They were bitter memories, but he could look back on them and laugh.

The snow children were now dancing in an even larger circle with the ones the lady brought with her. She watched them and asked, “WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SMALL TRANSIENT ONE?”

“It’s been ten years, right? She went off to the capital on her own, and now, she’s making it as a fine adventurer.”

“YOU MORTALS DO LOVE TO BUSY YOURSELVES.”

“Maybe you’re just taking it too easy.”

“I’M SURE I JUST MET YOU THE OTHER DAY... WHY DID YOU TURN YOUR BLADE ON ME?”

Ten years ago, when he encountered Lady Winter, he had drawn his blade and stood before her to protect Angeline. The lady had disinterestedly sent him flying with just her fingertip—he was no match whatsoever.

I was young, I guess. He gave a somber smile. “I was trying to protect the little one. I mistook you for a fiend.”

“OH, IS THAT IT?”

There was an S-Rank fiend called an ice queen. It took on the form of a beautiful woman, but it was a dangerous and hostile being. It was just as rare to come across as Lady Winter, and the lady was just as merciless to those who attacked her, so a majority of adventurers could not tell the difference. Belgrieve had been none the wiser at the time.

Afterward, the village elder—Hoffman’s late father, who was past eighty at the time—told him about Lady Winter. He was ashamed of his own imprudence and shallow thinking.

Belgrieve pulled off his gloves and breathed on his fingers to warm them up.

“I’m grateful you didn’t kill me back then,” he said, pensively, “though I’m sure that was just a whim.”

Watching Belgrieve deprecate himself, it was as if the lady had smiled ever so slightly. “WHAT REASON WOULD I HAVE TO KILL A PARENT PROTECTING THEIR CHILD?”

“I see... You’re a parent too.” Belgrieve chuckled, watching the snow children frolic in their circle. So essentially, Ange saved my life.

The snow continued to fall unrelentingly. He shivered.

If her children were out playing, Lady Winter wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. Belgrieve rolled his shoulders and gripped his walking stick again.

“I don’t have to patrol if you’re here. I’ll be taking my leave.”

“I AM NOT YOUR VILLAGE’S PROTECTOR, TRANSIENT ONE.”

“Oh, I’m just making convenient use of you. Don’t worry about it.”

“A WARNING,” she said after a moment, her voice suddenly sharper. Belgrieve, who had been about to turn back, narrowed his eyes and looked back at Lady Winter, ready for anything. She stared straight at him. “THE BEINGS WHO TRIED TO CONTROL EVEN WINTER ARE SOON TO WAKE.”

“Does that have anything to do with the increase in fiends?” he asked gingerly.

“WHO KNOWS? THAT IS NONE OF MY CONCERN.”

Belgrieve gazed into her icelike eyes. “Noble Lady...what are you going to do? What do you seek from us?”

Lady Winter calmly shook her head. “I SEEK NOTHING. I WILL LET IT RUN ITS COURSE.”

“Thanks for the warning... I’ll take it to heart.”

The spirit wouldn’t have said such a thing without purpose. However, perhaps because of the cold, his head wasn’t working properly. He would have to think about it after returning home and warming up. Belgrieve turned on his heels and retreated with slow, thoughtful steps.

The songs of snow children reverberated through the winter landscape.