A Poem on a Journey.

It's a long long way from home my friend

the moonlit night at summer's end
when simple silver light doth wend

through crooked branch and falling leaves.

Looking back past lonesome roads

we traveled bearing heavy loads

while our desire behind us goads

with promises of home's warm fire.

For certain she who loves us grieves

the same as when we took our leaves

and now she only misconceives

our paths forever parted.

Perhaps when spring again retire

after winter and its ire

and summer once more starts entire,

our half-walked journey then retrace

A place in mind that when we started

even now our course has charted

past unknown trials to fainthearted

hidden just behind that bend.

In few short days we find the place

since now we will increase our pace

to see it sooner, face to face.

Yet it's a long long way back to our abodes.

Not about vikings, but still snow.

Intricacies of a highest order is what they are in the purest form.  Not the highest order, as if there were one, or as if there were but one which pertained to us.  They exist as a tangled rope, a kind of metaphysical Gordian knot, or would if we found them alone and unspoiled.  As I said, their purest form would be such as that.  As they are, having penetrated our sphere of being, which exists in the most unspherical way poissible, you might liken them to a ghost.

Walking into those northern woods at night would lend your eye no notion that she was even there.  She exists as one of these mottled entities that call our world home, and those knowledgeable enough to recognize her existence are unable to really pin down her thoughts.  We know her as old lady winter, for she is aged and she is cold.  When I was younger, I did take that trip into the forest in search of her.  I had heard the tales of the legions that thought the woods would be a shortcut around the mountains and oceans that otherwise ring this country.  All that most scholars say on the matter is they never came out.  Some brave enough to theorize say they came down with sickness or disease when they traveled through, or perhaps were unprepared for local wildlife as of yet unknown.  The bards string along tales of lost cities of great magic such that the tall towers of our empire would be awed to shame.

I had heard but one tale of old lady winter in all the tales that were thrown around, and by a most curious sort.  The lowest of the beggars, clad in little more than scraps of burlap whilst sitting in the street.  Of all the accounts, he was the only one to have actually claimed to venture in and back out of those woods, though quite a few expeditions had made known their intent at the former.  He said he saw a ghost of a great lady, all frosted over and walking through the dark parts of the forest, surveying her kingdom.  With a bit of a tremor in his voice he finished his tale with a short rasp. "I fled."

So into the trees and snow I strode with a pack on my shoulders and a pipe in my mouth.  It was two days in when I noticed the trees rise taller around me as I dragged my feet through knee-deep snowdrifts.  In a land of continual winter, the trees were mostly scraggly things, growing up out of the hard ground and spurting up on the few days it would thaw to let water flow down into their roots.  Here though they began to climb higher into the sky and clump closer together, weaving their needled limbs together into a great canopy atop the sky.  I walked in wonder, asking myself why nobody had talked of such trees as this, for surely some had ventured deep as I had.  The thought did not quite reach my young and brash brain that few would make it back out again but those who traveled alone and quietly.

I would draw out the sights I had see that day by campfire-light upon the few sheets of parchment I had taken with me before settling in to warm furs through the night.  I had at first been worried about wolves or bears menacing me on my journey, but the farther I walked inwards the fewer signs of life I found there.  By the third day I hardly ever heard a bird, much less saw tracks of any kind besides my own.

It was the fifth night before the forest really awoke with what I would deep as its great power.  A long day of walking and staring at the thick forest and the ever increasing gloom that was nestled within it left me to find suitable wood to make my fire, a task harder than it would seem.  The underbrush was surely flourishing, but where other forests might have a good deal of old and fallen trees or a few broken branches there was nothing but grass and bushes and rocks and snow.  I was driven to chopping off low hanging branches from the trees themselves to fuel my fire.

The ground, of course, was not dry, so I had taken to the habit of building up a pyre and letting it burn down into the ground and steam up the snow beneath throughout the night.  It was a great surprise to see the fire expose a ground littered in bones when it did indeed burn down to the frozen ground.  I had felt the ground grow more rocky over the later half of the day, but I reflected later when I had returned that the field I found myself in, must stretch a few miles in diameter, if not more.  The bones were not naked, surrounded by rusted metal that had all but been erased by time, and scraps of cloth and leather that made up their uniforms.  Not all of them were the same, and I counted up to three different insignia on helmets and belt-buckles and shields before I had the sense to pack my things and head back away out of the place.

It was nearing midnight by then, and a few frail beams of moonlight had pierced the canopy to guide my way, though I also carried my torch aloft to find my tracks.  I walked through the night, though I had not made my way to dawn before the second disturbing thing happened to me that night.  I felt a prickle in my neck, and after walking a few more steps I gave in to the temptation and looked backwards to, as I thought in the moment, 'relieve my overactive mind of strange fantasies'.

She was standing there, all in white and at least ten feet tall.  Her eyes were white and her skin was white and her gown was whiter than white could seem to be.  Her steps wove her through the trees, and as she walked towards my petrified form I could feel the air harden in cold around me.  It was an instinct when I went to cross my arms and huddle against the cold, but the rattling stopped me before the chains did.  They were thin things at first, and clear, but the shackles swelled with the cold.  They held by hands together, and my feet, and more grew up to chain me to tree-branches that were close enough.

By the time she had arrived facing me, I was immobile and would have violently shivered had I the leeway.  Her face was expressionless, as if it were untouched with any emotion having chained me up.  There was not even the hint of boredom you might expect.  I lost sight of her as she paced around behind me, moving smoothly through the chains which rippled as she interposed herself in their space.  When she had made a circuit, I saw her holding one of my sheets of drawings in a spot of moonlight.  I swear that for but a moment she smiled the smallest smile that I ever saw.  Then she was walking away through the trees again, back deeper into her winter realm.  It was still before dawn when the chains melted off.

I did not make it very far with stiffened limbs and chattering teeth before the dawn greeted me.  The rest of my trip back was cold, but uneventful.  I never had the same level of circulation as I once did, still frozen on the inside by that encounter.  The years since I have guessed and second guessed why I survived that night unlike the thousands and more that never walk out of those woods.  What I know of their kind that exist in this world tells me it stands beyond my comprehension, that my eyes were playing tricks on me and she didn't smile at all, yet I can't shake the memory no matter how hard I try.

Anyway, stay out of those woods if you know what's good for you.  Every year some more people go in there and never come out, though by now the armies have stopped trying to cross it.  Perhaps in another few decades some general will be stupid enough to lead his troops within, but even without a tale of the old lady of winter the histories speak of the poor choice it would be.

Viking Tales Part 1

Never would you hear them come in sun or light weather, their ships bright and warm by golden rays.  No, these men came in with the weather, said to be as much a part of it as the rain and snow.  So too that day when they landed their boats outside town, cracking sails shedding ice and snow in the wind.  The sun would not peek through, even at noon, and stayed away in what I might say was fear of the men who road the sea in the bellies of what could only be described as their monster boats.

Each of the three was cut of wood as black as burning bone, each coated with shimmering ice and sticking frost.  Along the rails the shapes of hungry birds, wings outstretched to overlap, the masts wrapped round with serpents, and the figurehead on the front a terrible beast reaching out to rip the ocean itself asunder just as they had many unfortunate vessels that got in the way; one a bear, one a wolf, and one an unnamed beast with horns like an elk and fangs of a viper.  These too were carved in black and painted by the sky with dustings of white.

Of the inside and the deck itself, none but the sailors who sail it would see up upon it, so I know not of what fierce designs pull themselves from the woodwork there.  From these ships three came forth the fierce men who we shared mead with that night.  Each one upon his face a beard of white, either snow or age to color it, and each one also had upon his shoulders a cloak of deepest blue that frozen stiff would creak and crack as they moved along.

With shining coin and plundered sheep, they plied from our small tavern drink to fill the mugs of every man, grinning and laughing with smiles sharp enough to cut a man and laughter that would bury him.  I sat deep within the corner there as was my habit late in nights after long days fishing.  It was from there that I overheard their stories, and of these I shall relate to you with the detail I can with the ale flowing so switftly within me then.

The first tale that started was led by a small man with a rough eyepatch  under his helm of iron and a thick spear of the same that leaned up against his chair.  Strong was he to carry such with the ease he did, and when he spoke the sense of drama was even stronger that the jokes and laughs of the men 'round him hushed away and a small circle of silence took the table he sat at.

"Have I ever told you lads about the firs' sea serpent I wrestled?" he asked.  Heads turned his way.  Some smiles and a few nods, some shakes of the head and curious grins from the men around him.  "Well I'm gon ta tell it the proper way this time.  Less talk of the battle before, less of the honors after, for you all better know those at lest by now."

"Aye, we do, an we've heard the story of how you lost your eye mor'n this 'un." said one of the smilers across the table in the shadow.   He was large, well muscled, and knew how to carry his weight to impress.

"Tha' was the secon' sea serpent, aye.  At tha' time I was grown on by ten years an' more crafty, or so I thought then."  He raised his mug and drained it before going on.  "But the serpent a'in't the start o' my story. the great burning of the gold fleet is."

Round the table faces turn more solemn and slow nods draw their eyes deep into the oceans of their mead.  Even I knew the tale, being a man of the sea. "The golden fleet was set a'fire deep in winter, back at the last meetin' of the clans, back what goes a good sixty turns a the seasons.  I saw them ships, piled high with looted gold and treasures stole from every coast we know, saw 'em flare in the night, from ship to ship it spread until our captains cut the lines and set us three ships adrift."

With that he motioned with his empty mug over toward the youngest of the group at the table.  "And if I'm to start in on the heavy part I need more mead."  It took a moment before he got up, wordlessly, and longer before he was back with a full mug.  The rest of the group looked like they were brooding over it.  Men from the clans were said to have lost half their relatives that day.

"Now if it weren't enough tha' the fire spread, but there were the looters tha' came after.  Our little fleet ran into some and sank the bastards 'fore they got there, but we were sore and tired, afraid to see what dawn would show where burning wood would not.  I had watch tha' nigh', and with eyes either blinded by tears or the fires, I didn' notice the dark shape in the water.  This'd be the part where I tell you I got grabbed, drug under and stabbed it to death 'fore swimming back up on board.  I said it like tha' most times, and most times I ge' those looks of disbelief.  So I go' to thinkin', if I'm gonna talk and get disbelieved, migh' as well do i' with the real tale."  All the eyes of the table do have that look about them, but knowing what I know today, I'd say half of them really wanted to believe what he'd say next.

"First a all, I weren't grabbed, I was eaten."

A short interlude that doubtless occurred on some lake, somewhere, sometime.

Y'know son, I've always though I figured out the secret to fishin' right about round your age.

That is was boring and pointless and miserable and cold out on this leaky boat of yours?

See, I always figured when I was young that it was all about the fish.

And we barely packed anything to eat.  Four sandwiches to last us for however long you plan on keeping us out here.

You'd think that, yes, what with fish bein' in the title and all, but they're more of a happy afterthought, a side effect of the true entertainment hidden within the pasttime.

Yeah, entertaining, sure.

What it's really about is relaxing, letting yourself just be.  Becoming one with the nature around you and all its beauty.

What if nature freezes me dead first, eh pops?

It's a meditative state, a state in which you can truly learn patience and wisdom.

Riiiiight.  Wisdom.

Yes my boy, wisdom.  Take the fishing pole itself.  Maybe you think that I just picked a side of the boat at random to cast my line off.

Yes, actually.  Why wouldn't you?  It's the same water for about a mile in every direction.

No, in fact, this was through design, fueled by purpose.

And I suppose you want me to ask you what that purpose is?

You're learning wisdom in leaps and bounds, you are.  You see, while it may all seem the same if you just look at the surface of the water, but take a closer look.

The shadow of the boat?

No no, closer.  It's water, there's nothing different.

There is a very obvious difference here, my boy, you just have to look for it.

. . .

Come on, take another guess.

. . .that patch there is maaaaaagical water with the mysterious properties of maaaaaagical fish magic, despite the fact that we've been out here for four hours and there's been no bites at all.

Really?

. . .

Well, no.  I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about.  Is it one of those newfangled teen things?

No dad, it was sarcasm.

No need for that out here, surrounded by the beauty of nature.

Right, beauty.  It looks like a giant flat lake filled with water.

But look at the reflections, and the mountains in the background.  Hear the clapping of the waves and the woosh of the wind.

The wind trying to give me frostbite?

Wonder at the clouds in their puffy shapes.  That one looks like a pillow, I reckon.

It's cloud shaped.

Well, aren't all clouds?

. . .

Anyway, that brings me to my point.  You didn't guess it, but here it is.  I picked this side of the boat because it has a nice view of the mountain over there with the little glaciers on it and the steep rock face.

Are we almost done here?

Isn't it a nice pretty red on the face of the cliff there.  Really, I think it brings out the green of the pine trees that kinda hang on to the side.

. . .

C'mon son, enjoy yourself.  We've got all day out here.

Uuuuuuuugh.

As Winter melts to Spring

Like a flickering wick, the kingdom fell.  It was not with some great battle, or threat, but with the quiet change that had flooded the nation in the years leading up to the last full moon of winter.  It was quiet besides the muffled thump of leather on rug as the soldiers patrolled the halls of the castle, keeping their nightly watch, purportedly against intruders.

Really, they kept their vigil for the king, latest in a long line stretching back to the time when history became legend.  Where the tradition he held was once revered, passed down through the lineage from father to son, from son to daughter, from mother to son, and so on, the kingdom now thronged with suspicion and loathing.  He was king, and nothing would keep him from that.  Even the riled up populace with their opinions would not change that.

However, instead of finding solace in his guard's watch, he was slinking through the shadows in his nightgown, wincing as he heard leather boots slow as they passed the alcove he hid in.  No eye saw him, and this was one form of blessing from his lineage, a sympathy with the shadows so that they clung to him like black robes.  In the past, his grandfather had foiled an assassination attempt from a foreign country with this mystery.  Now he only hoped that the guards had forgotten that part of the royal mythos, or at least we not so keen of sense as to figure out the reason the hairs of their neck prickled as they walked past his hiding places.  Luck favored him on his way to the garden; not a soul found his trail, and not even the guards at the gates noticed his presence.

The wrought iron fence stretched high up, vines grasping and twirling up the black poles, blocking out any sight inside with their girth.  The main gate was guarded, padlocked, wrapped with chain, and lit with fierce torches that shone globes of illumination over the path.  This was not a problem for the king, though he scowled at the presence of such a watch.  No, he did not need that gate for any but the royal line knew nothing of the secret entrance further on along the side.  The first queen of the land was said to have forged the garden and its gates herself, taking the time to become a master craftsman to put a more physical barrier up around the sacred place.  The king pushed through the vines, letting them prick him and nettle him, drawing out a few drops of his blood as a toll for his entrance.

Inside, even the tramping of the guards subsided to silence, the flickering the the torches at the gate a low mumble.  All the leaves and branches of the gnarled old trees were painted silver with the moon's cold light.  He shivered, perhaps from a draft of air as his breath fogged out in front of him.  He had spent the past month resolving himself, and now he took his time, wandering through the place to touch the rough bark and smile at the pale flowers that pressed in waves against the stone pathway's border.  There was not a tree for each member of his family, not even for each monarch.  Some monarchs claimed the same tree as their ancestor while others found seeds waiting for them on their coronation, brought forth by some fey spirit to plant amidst the oaks and ashes and willows that marked the history of the kingdom to the gardener-kings and queens that had taken the time to hear the history of the place.

It was many minutes as the pathway circled before he came to the center of the garden where the tall tree grew.  It was the first and largest, planted by the first king and nurtured by three more kings and two queens before the current time.  The king who faced it as the sky twirled, it's great silver eye staring down at the garden, he was the seventh to call it his, the thirty-ninth to call the garden itself his sanctuary.  Heavy steps brought him off the path to approach, climbing the small hill to its roots before sinking to his knees.  In the shade once more, the dark tendrils reached out to embrace him once more, but he brushed them aside.  One hand reached out to the trunk, bracing himself, while the other felt the cool ground beneath him.  In the darkness, his tears didn't glisten at all.  Past his hanging hair, he mumbled three words, old words.  None else alive would have understood him, none but the trees and the fey.  They understood him, and answered in their own wild way.

Outside the garden, the guards raised a shout as it seemed that the very stars of the heaven descended to earth, pulled down to the garden.  Bright and hot the lights came down, cries of alarm spreading like ripples first through the castle and then out into the city that surrounded it.  For an hour they rained down, one or two at a time.  Even before this, the people never dreamed of entering the garden, now none dared enter the castle halls with the heat billowing out, melting the snow on roofs and streets in a mile around.  When the moon had set, and the sun once again rose upon what had been the kingdom of Vel, there was no garden.  It was not burned down, nor was it cratered out.  Bare of all decoration, a large square courtyard was set in the castle's grounds.  No king, and no garden for the king.  The flame ember dulled to ash and all that rose was the smoke from its remains.