Winter's Knight by Bridget Essex

Author:Bridget Essex [Essex, Bridget]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-12-23T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen: The Shelter

It was nightfall by the time Winter reached the little cabin.

She had followed Addalee’s meandering instructions as best she could, but though the stablemaster was a woman of few words, her directions included things like “turn at the boulder where that little black yearling spooked last week,” which was, unfortunately, not a story Winter was familiar with--nor was she familiar with...any of them.

So she turned herself around a few times, ended up almost back where she started, and to top all that off, she had to set a slow pace, for the mare could only walk so quickly as tired, cold and hungry as she was.

So the moon was rising in the east by the time Winter stumbled upon the little clearing.

She’d ridden past this place many times in her youth. But back then, the clearing had contained nothing more than a lean-to Winter’s mother had erected for woodland creatures on the coldest, snowiest nights of the year. The lean-to had long since disintegrated and been rebuilt a little deeper into the wood.

And the spot where it had once rested now bore a sweet little cottage.

It was only one story, as all of the most charming cottages tend to be, built of thick layers of river rock from the edges of Glacier River, the largest of the waterways that flowed through the Winterlands.

Someone had painstakingly gathered the stone from the river’s edge, had lugged it here, to the middle of the woods, and built a structure of it. But it wasn’t just four walls and a roof. Someone had cared about this place, and deeply.

So, as the walls went up, care had been put into every layer of mortar so that spirals of stone formed impressive artwork out of what was, ostensibly, a small shack and stable.

There was a window next to the curved front door, and out of that window shone a light so warm that Winter froze when she first saw it, mesmerized.

The winter woods at twilight, to Winter, at least, was the most magical place in the world. The sky overhead had outdone itself, and the most potent magentas and golds, burning oranges, and euphoric purples layered one after the other in the west, delineating the final resting place of the sun, where it had sunk below the horizon.

The moon hung, round and bright, in the east.

And above Winter and the mare, farther still than the moon and the sun, spun a glimmering web of stars that hung, shining and spinning.

Here were the dark thin branches of the wood, the hearty sentinels of the pines, crowding along the edge of the sky. Here, in the cold of the twilit wood, a softness had descended.

There were few sounds, as if a sacred lull had fallen over the wood itself. And Winter was quite sure it had. This close to the Winter Solstice, she knew the woods took on a sort of magic. Beneath the trees, the forest became a cathedral of snow and cold. And, at the very edge of the chill of it, there was a burgeoning hope, too.

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