The Lord of Winter begins to build fortresses all along the banks of rivers, and seemingly overnight these ice caves appear. Some of them are deep and elaborate with many rooms and corridors. Daily the sun grows stronger, and as it does, the construction of the ice caves continues at a furious rate. Whereas winter lazily dropped its feathery snow here and there, now ice as hard as steel forms at an alarming rate as the sand goes pit-pat pit-pat in the hourglass. The ice caves rise up as if by magic and gleam like diamonds. Soldiers are posted outside to ensure the passage of creatures of the cold only.
When the largest stronghold is built, the Lord of Winter
will retire within. He will invite any
creature of the cold who wishes to oversummer in his palace. Those who do not come are lost in time. All of the snow on the fields and the ice on
the lakes are carefully brought into the ice caves at night, under cover of
darkness. In these secret caves, all of
the frozen winter things will stay safe and sleep until needed again.
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| Ice caves on the shore of the Cathance River. |
Then the Lord of Winter will put a spell on the portcullis
of his ice mansion, and a faerie glamour will be cast so that no eye looking
upon it shall see it. To all who walk
by, to those in boats and the children who swim in the lake in the summer, the
ice mansion will be invisible. A keyhole
will be carved into the portcullis, and no key forged by man will work on this
hidden lock. It is the Sun King himself
who holds the key, although he does not know it.
And someday when the heat of summer has parched the land and
the harvests have been collected and the explosion of life has grown tired and
weary, the Sun King will grow listless and will turn his chariot in a slightly
different direction, hopelessly searching for the Maiden of Spring. The tiny beam of light he casts at that very
moment will find the hidden keyhole on the frozen portcullis, and the ice mansion
and ice caves will rise again as if by magic.
Then the eye will see once again what was always there, and the Lord of
Winter will take his rightful place.
But I am getting ahead of myself. Stories.
All stories. We tell them in the
late winter when we are consumed by ice and death. They keep the Candle of Hope lit in our
hearts as the ice crashes relentlessly against the shores.
