Nerida lay on a bench under one of her mother’s apple trees, when night fell.
The air was warm and clear, even in winter, and she couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.
When she awoke, her whole body was trembling. Never had she experienced a cold like this. She sat up and looked around. It was as dark as in any other night, but the ground and the trees of her mother’s orchard were covered in white. White even fell from the sky like little fluffy stars.
“Nerida!“, she heard her mother cry. She wanted to answer, but her jaw was shivering so hard, she couldn’t open it. When she stood up, her sandaled feet sank into the cold and wet white and she almost set back on the bench. However sitting in the cold all night was not an option, so she followed her mother’s calls, until she found her under one of the orange trees, which looked black under all the white.
Her mother’s tall frame looked heavier than usual, then Nerida realised she was wearing a fur coat.
“There you are“, her mother exclaimed and held out another coat. “Quick, put this on and let’s get back to the house. Your father made a fire, where you can warm yourself up.“
Nerida took the coat and tucked it tightly around her shoulders, enjoying its warmth.
“What happened?“
“We don’t know. Probably one of the elemental mages messed up.“
Nerida held out a hand and caught one of the stars. It disappeared almost immediately. “What is this stuff?“
“Why? Snow, of course.“
When they reached her parents’ countryside villa, Nerida’s mother pushed her right into the kitchen, where a fire in the open stove warmed the whole room. She had never known warmth to be so delicious. She pushed a stool in front of the stove, pulled off the sandals and stretched her feet right into the fire’s light.
Her mother took off her coat and hung it around Nerida’s shoulders. “You get warm quickly, while I go and look for your father and your brother.” She pushed a strand of long, ruby red hair behind one ear, kissed Nerida on her head and headed out.
When the trembling stopped and the coats became too heavy to wear, she put them aside. A second later, her family returned. Her father took off his snow-heavy turban and shook out his dark curls. “Everybody’s safe inside.”
Khalid, her brother, shuddered and hunkered down in front of the fire. “Darn, it’s cold.”
“Don’t be such babies”, her mother laughed. “It’s just a little snow, not like the winters in the north.”
“You told us about those”, Nerida said. “Never thought they’d be like this.”
“I’m more worried about the plants and animals”, her mother said. “They can’t just put on warmer clothes.”
“What’s with Saari?”, Nerida asked. The old mage has been a well-received guest in the past few days.
“I checked”, her father answered in his dark, rumbling voice. “She’s sleeping.”
“She surely wouldn’t mind the cold”, Khalid said with still trembling teeth. “Being a northerner and all.”
“She might however know how to stop this sudden winter”, Nerida said, and stood up. “I’ll go and ask her.”
The old woman’s room lay dark and quiet. It was a bit cold in here, but as Khalid said, Saari didn’t seem to mind. She was snoring slightly on her bed; the long white hair lay on the pillows like snow on grass. Before going to her, Nerida’s eye fell on the table, where a few odds and ends lay strewn about. Curious she went over and her eyes widened, when she realised what those things were. Among raven feathers, sand from the desert Khôm, Gulmond, chamomile and other things she found a bowl of water, which should’ve been clear rain water, but as it hadn’t rained in weeks, the water looked murky. It would’ve weakened the potion, so Saari probably had tried to strengthen its power by adding a mandrake root, and powerful it had gotten.
Nerida went to the bed and tried to wake the sleeping mage, but to no avail. The hair fell from Saari’s forehead and revealed a rune right next to the mage’s sigil. Nerida immediately recognised the dream rune.
The mage slept; and dreamed of snow.
When she returned to the kitchen, Nerida told her family what she had found in the mage’s room. “She probably didn’t know what altering the ingredients of the sleeping potion would do.”
“Seems like studying Alchemy will finally pay off”, Khalid said.
“Well, poking her with a sword will do us no good”, Nerida replied, looking at the weapon that hung on her brother’s slim hips. He pulled a hand through his strawberry blonde hair that was just like hers, only not as curly, nor as long and wild, and smiled. “I guess not.”
“Can you wake her?”, Nerida’s father asked her mother, but she shook her head.
“I don’t know a spell that could do that.” She pulled at one of her pointy ears. “But I might be able to join her in her dream, ask her to wake up on her own.”
“If I can gather the ingredients”, Nerida added, “I could brew a waking potion.”
“How complicated is that?”, her father asked.
“A bit.” She shrugged. “It’s worth a shot, though.” She turned to her mother. “I will need some of your old winter clothes.”
“You need to go out?”, Khalid asked.
“I need some Yagan-oil.”
He stood and grabbed his coat. “I’ll go with you.”
“Why?”, she asked.
“We saw something out there”, her father answered. “I’m not sure, what it was, but it was big.”
“Fine. I’ll also need eighteen drops of bat’s blood.”
Her father raised an eyebrow. “I guess, you want me to go to the attic and kill a bat?”
“You don’t need to kill it, but, yeah, you would have to go to the attic.”
When her mother returned with the winter clothes for Nerida and Khalid, they put them on and stepped outside into the cold night. Nerida conjured up an orb of green light to help her find her way, otherwise she would be almost blind in the darkness.
The snow glittered cheerfully in the green light, as Nerida and Khalid made their way across their mother’s orchard. The trees looked different under the white blanket, dark and a little menacing. Every shadow made Nerida jump and the orb jumped with her.
“Calm down”, Khalid whispered. “You’re making me nervous.”
“I would much rather be home and eat some of mom’s cookies than walk across this cold.”
“Yeah, me, too.” He looked into the darkness between two trees. “Do you see that?”
Nerida followed his eyes, but she could only see black trees on white ground. “What?”
“I must’ve imagined it.”
The air smelled weird, clear like water and so fresh like it had never smelled before, not even in spring, when the first blossoms sprang from the grass and filled the air with sweet promises. This air cleared her head and she felt wide-awake.
“Where is that tree?”, Khalid asked, after they had walked a while in content silence.
“Not far from here, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Well, it looks different. Plus, I can’t see very well in any kind of darkness.” She made another step and expected her boot to sink into the snow, but it didn’t, it stayed upon the white as if it were solid. The ground shook and raised itself up, so that she almost lost her footing. Khalid jumped backwards and dragged her with him. His sword sprang into his hand and he stood in front of her, ready for a fight.
The snow formed into a huge ball, under which a second and a third one appeared, each wider than the other. It towered over them and almost disappeared into the darkness that was the sky, but thanks to the green orb, she could see, how two holes appeared in the uppermost ball, and a third right underneath them.
“Go Away!”, the snow-figure thundered through the mouth-hole.
“Don’t tell me, your tree is behind this?”
“Okay, I won’t tell you.” Nerida took a step back. “Who are you?”
“I am Winter.” The creature took a deep breath and exhaled. Cold heavy winds hit their faces, tugged at their clothes and pushed them backwards. They put their arms up to protect themselves. Once the storm was over, Khalid jumped ahead and pushed his sword into the snowball right in front of him. It went in easily, but the snow-figure seemed undeterred.
“It’s a Djinn”, Nerida said. “Swords won’t hurt it.”
“What will hurt it?”
“Magic? Fire?”
He stepped further back, shoved a hand inside his coat and took out a small bag. “Like this?” It was a bag of Pyrophorus; one of a few he kept with him at all times because he had a sister who could make them any day.
“I think so.”
“Good. You go around, I keep it busy.”
She was reluctant to leave her brother.
“This creature probably comes from Saari’s mind. She is an ice conjurer, after all. So if she wakes up, it disappears, right?”
The Djinn took another breath and was ready to exhale another icy storm upon them. Nerida nodded, turned around and went back the way they came, as if she were fleeing from the snow-figure. Behind her, she heard a tiny thud and then the creature screamed.
She probably gave them a wider berth than she needed to, but she wanted to make sure the snow-figure would not burry her under piles of snow. It was quiet all around her, no wind whistled through the trees as it normally would, and she couldn’t hear the fight that must be going on nearby. She just hoped, Khalid was okay, while she looked for the Yagan-tree.
Finally, it peeled out of the darkness into the green light of her orb. It was bent and crooked like an old woman, but when she cut it with her knife, fragrant juice flowed freely out of the dark trunk into the glass phial. She corked it and stuffed it under her coat; then she decided to go back to her brother and the Djinn and see if she could help.
She had walked through her mother’s orchard so often that she did indeed find her way around it, after she had gotten used to its different look in the midst of this strange winter. She pushed herself through the snow, which was now coming up to her shins and falling into her boots, making her feet cold and wet. She could hear the creature’s angry yells when she came past an orange tree. She sent the green orb a little ahead of her and saw the three tall balls of snow piled up ahead of her.
The snow-figure plunged to the earth and she heard a tiny grunt. As fast as she could she ploughed through the deep snow, which was soft even where the creature lay. She looked around, but could not see her brother, so she started digging with her hands, pushing snow aside, until she saw a hand come up through the white blanket. She grabbed it and pulled Khalid up, who was covered in snow and ice.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, but let’s not stick around.” He pushed himself up and together they made their way back to the house.
Their father awaited them at the door. “Are you alright?”
“Just had an encounter with a snow-Djinn”, Khalid said through shivering teeth. They went into the kitchen, the only warm place left in the world it seemed.
“Your mother is dreaming with Saari, maybe this winter will be over soon.”
“Did you get the blood?”, Nerida asked, and her father pointed to a little bowl on the kitchen table.
She went to her room and gathered the other ingredients. In the kitchen, where her brother was trying to warm up again, she put the ingredients into a pot and heated them up. Quickly the room was filled with the vile smell of iron and burning oil.
“Not exactly what I would cook in the middle of this weather”, Nerida commented. “But it should do.”
She brought the bowl into Saari’s room, which had gotten even colder. Her mother and the mage were breathing white clouds, and ice crystals had formed on the windowpane. She should hurry, she figured, so she sat on Saari’s bed and held the bowl to the mage’s lips. Thankfully, the old woman drank the foul smelling concoction, and within a few seconds, her eyes fluttered open.
She frowned and sat up. “Why is it so cold in here?”
Next to her Nerida’s mother stirred and rubbed her eyes.
“You shouldn’t play around with sleeping potions and dream runes”, Nerida chided. “Could turn the whole south into a winter wonderland.”
Together they went back into the kitchen.
“I’m not sure, what happened”, Saari said, after she sat down at the table.
“Well, you did say you missed the northern winter the other day”, Nerida’s mother said. “I guess, you get to enjoy it a bit.” Then she turned to the others. “This really does scream for a real winter meal.” With the help of Khalid and their father, it didn’t take her long to assemble the necessary ingredients for cinnamon cookies and cherry pie, warm apple cider and a roasting duck.
“This is the only good thing this cold has brought us”, Nerida said around a full mouth.
“Well, the snow is also very pretty”, her mother said.
“Food is prettier.”
“Good food, good company, I could not ask for more”, her father agreed.
Her mother held up her cup of apple cider. “To the return of the light and longer days.”
The End