Snow (Reprise)

He hauls the beast from the woodlands to the town. He felt poor calling a deer a beast, for deer are good spirits of the forest, but during hard times it is easier to call many things beast. His family waits for him. They are not starving but they are hungry, they haven’t had meat in a week or so. There was a snow the sky had during the hunt, made it harder to track the beast. But track he must and track he did— tracked it down to the furthest place you can go down— tracked it down to death. 

Calling it a beast made it seem heavier around his shoulders. It began to snow again after a brief reprieve. These woods are said to be enchanted by those in the town who speak of them. The hunter heard their stories, and told some to his children himself. Told them a story about a dragon who entered a contract with a king to keep the village warm throughout every winter they would share together and the king would give the dragon the thing this dragon loved most, clay pots of every shape and size. When the dragon died as they do after a while, and after the harshest winter they had ever known, the village made clay pots that resembled the dragon, and on every Yule they honored him with big fires in their hearths. 

How he loved that story. But a moment. He turned around and found that his feet had made no footprints after him. Strange that was. The snow hadn’t been so heavy that his foot holes would be filled the moment he lifted his heels, and he was not so light nor his feet so wide that he could carry on above the snow without making a mark as a lynx could especially with this beast about his neck. 

The snow was falling of that he was certain. He could see the sun was further across the sky now so time must be moving, mustn’t it? He couldn’t bear to bring an enchantment into the town, not during winter, not when it was a struggle enough to warm and eat by the fire. He must have done something to offend to experience this uncanny trek. It was as if he wasn’t there. He wondered if he could be seen by human or animal eye. He looked about the alpine wood dripping with pine and snow, he was alone. Dead deer and man alone in the wood facing an enchantment together. 

All enchantments can be broken. 

But how to get out of this one? He put his hand through a tree. It was as if he were a phantom, he had a form but no substance, everything in this forest was going through him but he was glad he hadn’t fallen through the ground to what? Oblivion surly. The weight about his neck seemed to be all the more heavier. Perhaps if he let it down, if he left the deer the enchantment would lift. He set the deer down. 

Nothing changed not even the weight upon him once he stood. He though about the town, he thought about leaving— had anything seemed different. 

Enchantments often happen when one thing is out of place, when a balance is restored or altered. A few townsmen came out of their homes to wave to him— not too odd but maybe something. No one with any magical inclinations, just the gatekeeper and two other family men. Had he played any games with those men— enchantments can come from tavern games, losing and winning have their own spells. 

No games he could recall. It began to snow again but he hadn’t noticed when it had stopped. Snowing all around him but in one direction almost like a pathway. No— clearly a path. A path carved of wind and snow, carved for him. He abandoned the deer there in the snow. A dead beast in the forest is a common sight. He walked the path set before him, the path that no one would be able to track down. A path that existed one moment at a time. 

The weight on his shoulders became heavier, so heavy that he fell forward, but smooth was the surface he placed his hands on, clearly it was snow but it could have been the thinnest and strongest layer of ice upon it. Maybe not an enchantment at all but the enchantments that nature brings daily. 

The path continued to lead him across forest and stopped in the middle of a long and wide clearing. He looked for the path, but all about him was snowfall. 

“O! Where do I keep to? What must I do to get home? Not to feed my family but to hold my son and daughter in my arms again. I could lift them high after the relief of this weight about me!” 

All he could think about was them his children, sitting by the fire telling them stories of warm winters of the past. Telling them about how he was enchanted by the forest today, enchanted by the spirit of a beast he’d killed but released, yes, at the end of the day released. 

The ground gave way from beneath him. Cracked like ice, but beneath was a cavern not water. It was quite dark but where he’d fallen in. A spotlight it seemed. 

He’d landed on his back and heard the crunch of clay. He’d tried to sit up but the weight— oh the weight! What spirit was up to such mischief and dare he say cruelty to make him carry such a beast.

He summed all he had and rose to his feet. He wanted to see where he’d fallen but the dark about him was thick as curtains and he’d feared he would be wrapped up if he took a step out of that light. He had his knife, he took it out, used the blade to shine some light inch by inch about him. Maybe a sconce upon the wall or a lantern or a torch was hidden in the dark. The path cut through by his knife revealed a lamp hanging from a golden hook. He would have to remember the path once he stepped out from the puddle of light. Arms out eyes adjusting to the dark. His feet shuffling across the floor brushing past many clinking pieces of debris. The floor was stone. 

His hands met the lamp, clumsy in the dark. He checked for lamp oil and yes it was there. He flinted to fire the oil with the stones in his pocket and it took. In the presence of the fire he realized it was cold, something his body kept from him between the weight and the fall. Now he trembled. He found more lamps and lit them along the walls of the cavern. He stepped over broken clay and stone, some pots still in tact. 

Then he saw the bones of a dragon, a whole skeleton. He though of his journey to the northern coast with his family as a boy. On the shores of the grey beach, the bones of a whale. The ribs a dried out cave with sky and teeth as the cover. He looked at the dragon’s head. The hollows for eyes the teeth and nostrils the holes running through the beast, the beast mostly holes. Some of the parts he walked over were bones of the tail. 

The winter dragon buried forever with its horde of clay pots. The walls were clay pots. The floor was littered with them.

It did not relieve him to see his favorite myth granted death and truth, but that the weight about his shoulders had begun to lift. As he approached the bones the weightlifting became the path. His body felt lighter than air as he sat inside the dragons belly. He felt warm and light. Now that the weight was gone he could not bear it again, so he could not stand— he was enchanted by the relief. The snow that fell into the cavern began to slow. 

A sacrifice must be made for an enchantment to last. This one, the one of a gentle winter requires the reprise of an enchantment long past, and the life of a hunter who has hunted, who has provided, who has no fear of the wood or of death. Who would track something down to the death, to the depths, to the soul. 

It was hard to give up such a man, but they would make sure his family was taken care of. They would make sure they were well fed. The possibilities are endless in enchantments if one is willing to make the myth real. 

He rests and breathes fire into the town. Fire below the earth that melts snow, that warms the homes of his children, until he dies alone with the beast, until the snow sings a reprise.