Once Upon a Spring by H. L. Macfarlane

Author:H. L. Macfarlane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macfarlane Lantern Publishing

Jake Curran-Pipe is a horror and fantasy writer from Manchester. He enjoys writing scary, exciting, and intriguing fiction about underrepresented people and communities. Jake currently lives in Glasgow where he is the assistant producer of a theatre that used to be a Neo-Gothic church!

Lady of the Flame

A. J. Van Belle

Brig

The lace of branches parted for me, making a path through the woods where there was none before. My breath frosted on the air, and something about that felt wrong, unseasonable, but I could not recall why.

My feet crunched a layer of frost, though I took care not to tread on the prettier patterns of frost illuminated by a cold, round moon. When I touched a bare branch in passing, a pale green leaf sprang forth.

How odd. I had the feeling this was not the first time such a thing had happened, not the first event of leafing at my touch. But I did not know when or where or how I remembered this from.

All I knew of being me was that I had walked a long, long time, my walking stick by my side. That the tendrils of hair sometimes blown by the wind across my vision were a blonde so pale they were almost white. I knew I was seeking higher ground, because the kind and giving people in the village in the valley swore the others who lived high on the hill were grasping and cruel. I had never witnessed such a thing, and so I came uphill to see for myself.

The forest’s understory glowed, telling me its secrets in light. Under ferns in luminous green lived whole villages of plant spirits. Rocks glowed in brilliant blue light, a sign of the ancient rock spirits that inhabited them. I thought of the lights that glowed through all things as the underlayer of the world. In the low-lying village, I’d learned no one else besides me could see these lights or feel these dwellers of the forest floor, so sometimes, on winter nights, I’d entertained the children with tales of the spirits that made the woods alive.

I continued striding forward, moving ever uphill. Thick branches crossed my way ahead, like arms barring the way – and yet when I touched them they leapt aside, buds bursting forth on their twig-ends. In the space revealed was a cottage, a home made of wood and wattle, smoke drifting from its chimney and freezing against the moon.

I smiled to myself, not knowing why I felt pleasure at the prospect of entering this home. Only that these would be my first hill-dwellers, and I would be glad to meet them.

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