YAAAY for character inspiration! biggrin D
I...just finished this. //conks out
A MAN CAME ONE DAY…
Username: thyPOPE
Story:
It's most memorable when Nanna starts with his story. Imagine you are a guardsman, she'll say. You are a proud man with a little family (wife, little boy, a hound) on a baron's estate by the Wardwood, and you patrol the property on your kind, good master's behalf. When you begin, you are content. Everything is as it should be.
Of course, where would the fun be then?
(Here, Nanna ruffles little Peter's hair, her smile kind and wise.)
Your master is a superstitious man. Or, perhaps - a wise man. Every year when the fields have been cleared and the harvest taken, he sets out gifts for the spirits. A little glass spoon is your son's favorite, this year, tied with a blue silken ribbon on its handle. It's a lovely prize, but you'd have forgotten about it easily had your hound not just run past you into the dark Woods. For he has just dropped a torn ribbon, the color of the sky.
You give chase, because he is your hound, and because the trinket is your master's to give. Yet in ten minutes you have lost him.
You return to your master and explain the situation. Your dog is of no import to him, but the gift is vital, for he is a wise man.
You set off, alone, into the wood that night. You have packed for a week, because the spirits are known for trickery. Little do you know that you will not see a human again - or, indeed, your hound - until the first snows have set.
That is when you stumble upon the little village. You are hopelessly lost, because you are no guardian's chosen, and you were not half so wise as your master.
You have never heard any word of a village hidden in the Wardwood, but you are hungry and your clothes grow too thin for even the sparse blanket of snow that has slipped past the trees. You have not heard or seen your wife, your son, your hound, in three weeks. For the past week you have eaten but scavenged berries and fungi, and occasionally a fish, because you did not bring anything to hunt with but a knife. The villagers, all of similar height, look up at you from beneath heavy hoods, and whisper in a language that does not resemble Common. In the town's center is a strange barren pyre.
You are from Trottsbury, you tell them, but they turn their heads away. You are looking for a hound. He is fawn-colored, with patches that are white when he is clean. He is this high. He has probably dropped the spoon, of course, for he is but an unintelligent creature, but you describe it, too.
Again they turn their heads away, but for one figure, in a cloak the color of the very ribbon your dog dropped, tied now around your wrist. "Come to mine," she says, for she is a woman with a voice like golden honey. "I have not seen a hound, but you look hungry, and beggars never venture this deep into the woods."
You follow her. The fields are bare of people.
"The spirits must have led you here for a reason," she says, when you are basking in the warmth of her fire and the stew steaming on it. Her eyes are jewel-bright, and blue, and when she peels her hood back to hang, her hair falls the color of rich mahogany on her shoulders. You stare, perhaps a bit too long. You have never seen loose hair that wasn't your wife's, or a girl's.
"They must be angry," you confess. You have fed from their wood and left not a gift but your hound, which you hardly think they'd take for their own.
"Then tonight, you will be born again, and repent," she smiles. Her teeth are whiter than the fresh-fallen snow outside, and her smile is warm like the sun in August.
"I have nothing to offer," you counter. "I would like naught but directions home."
She is quiet and solemn. "Tonight my daughter dances," she says. "I don't know of Trottsbury, but I will help you, if you stay."
Daughter, you hear, and you remember that the village's hooded figures were all too tall to be children. "Where are the children?"
"You are a man," she replies, evasive. "Can you whittle?"
Soon you are not a lost guardsman but a man draped in a furred cloak, and you are holding a strong white branch of aspen wood, and the knife that you have carried this far. You are sitting on a little wooden stool. The village is eery with the silence of the absence of children.
"Tonight," says a wrinkled woman in lavender hood, peering inside your host's cottage.
"Tonight," repeats your host, and both turn to you.
"Tonight," you answer, tasting some apprehension on your tongue. Who is your host's daughter? Where is your host's daughter?
The wood shrinks in your hands, and little white curls blanket the cottage's floor like snow.
The woman leaves. More villagers come and go, in much the same manner.
Something will happen, tonight. You shape a creature's head, indistinct and hazy, with your knife. Perhaps it is your host's, but it will need a week to gain features as fine as hers.
The sky darkens, of course. There is no doubt that it is winter now. Your host dons a sweet pink veil and sets a torch alight - even in the woodsy interior of her cottage. You stare, taken aback. "Come," she tells you, voice thick and golden, though you are not done. "My daughter will dance tonight."
When you exit you see it: a trail of little floating fairy lights. No, they are children, holding candles, and in front is the woman with the lavender hood, bearing a large basket. As they near, your host walks up to join the procession, illuminating the carnations and chrysanthemums threatening to spill from the basket.
Something strange has transpired, but the flowers and the lights are bright like sunshine. Villagers bearing torches join the procession, and you find that it ends at the pyre. Around you rises a wall of sound, words indistinguishable but lovely. In them you hear your wife's delighted laughter, and you join the circle they form round the pyre. The old woman's cackle rings out across the circle, and the song grows louder, louder.
Two women in day-dresses with masks like foxes approach the pyre first, and toss their torches in. You do not expect the gush of warm air, but it comes. The fire rises. Soon everyone has followed suit, moving in a loose, loud circle.
That is all, you think, but a yellow-haired child, face bare and eyes bright, approaches the woman, candle gone. She holds a little disk - a plate, you realize, of sweet cream. Then she runs - through the fire, and emerges without it. Her eyes are dark and her hair is singed. The cream is gone.
There are three more, and then your host finds you and pushes you. In your hands is your carving - it has become a little dog, running. You topple into the fire -
(The children hold their breath.)
- and emerge unscathed, without your snow-white companion.
That night you sleep in a warm bed, in a room with a red-haired woman and a yellow-haired child and no hound, wooden or living, to speak of. Your belly is full with rich stew. Trottsbury is so far, far away.
When you close your eyes, you are content.
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