Winter
"Skating around the truth, who I am. But I know, dad, the ice is getting thin..." - Tori Amos,
"Winter"
***
"They look like mariners from here," she insists, her skirts bunched in her fists as she tries to scramble up
the side of the battlement wall.
"Nay, Sheila," the giant says, squinting through his periscope. His lips whiten just a tad - he physically
turns the girl around. "'Tis the dragons. Ye see them? The tails have a most curious curve?"
Her eyes widen as she looks out over the vast hills surrounding the castle. "Oh, Aye, Papa," the girl
squeaks, seeming to see the lizards curled just beyond the horizon.
Her father gestures madly behind her back, at the guard who carries the body of the girl's mother over the
threshold, her body wrapped in the plaid of a rival clan and her throat slit from ear to ear.
"Take the heather, love," he instructs. "Hold it close to thy face..."
***
The motherless child runs through snow drifts at the pace of a hare, her dark red curls flying behind her
like a flag. The ground is mantled in a thick sheet of ice, and she skids across it in her small pink boots,
laughing at the wildness of the ride.
Before she tumbles off of her feet a strong hand grasps her, righting her in mid-step.
"Careful, little love," the giant says, guiding her away from the woods. "There be dragons here."
She obeys happily for, to the girl, there never has been anyone in the world but she and the giant.
***
"Father!" she cries. The tone of her voice forces Wolfric's features into a hardened mask.
"Sheila, tush," he takes the ten-year-old by her arm and pulls her away from the crowd of dignitaries
encircling his fire. "What is amiss?"
"Ranulf beheaded Emeryss!" she holds out her rag doll, tears shining in her eyes.
Wolfric glares at the little doll, the very symbol of Sheila's childish nature. As of lately she's frankly
disappointed him by clinging to these cherished symbols. Perhaps the death of her mother has delayed
her progress.
Impatience stirs him to harshness. "Ye are past the age where such play is acceptable. Ranulf is half your
age and already he bears the commanding nature of a warrior."
She whimpers - her little fingers kneading away at the soft material of the droll's shoulder as he pulls it
free of her grasping fingers. "Father..."
"Do not cry," he snaps, breaking the doll's body in half and tossing it into the fire. "Smythes never cry."
Her jaw sets, her eyes snapping rebelliously.
But the tears cease.
"Ye must understand, love," he says. "Ye're soon to be a woman. A woman must put away childish
things."
She doesn't seem to hear the rest of his speech, turning her eyes toward the fire as the straw body crackles
in the silence.
She doesn't know that life has been split in half - and that the years in she was her father's darling have
passed.
***
He arrives home from his pilgrimage to find his people in a tizzy. The men prattle on about the Scots and
skeletal armies and a chosen leader who saved them all. While they've been victimized by the undead on
occasion, the notion of a large wave of moldering soldiers sends him scrambling to have the ale surplus
replaced.
Otherwise the place seems miraculously unscathed - Arthur, he decides, won't be stretched on the rack
for his apparent disloyalty to the crown. That is, if the stories are true - and if they are, he cares not at all.
Wolfric leaves the peasants to wallow in their fantasies - he has a son to mourn.
He takes one look at Sheila and realizes that she's changed. The woman he forged in iron seems
distanced, vaguely lost. When he tells her she will marry a count of French extraction the following
morning, she coldly excuses herself from the room.
He sees her not for the rest of the afternoon.
Let the little wench sulk, he decides.
***
"Sheila?" he pounds against her door in rhythm with every syllable of her name. "She-il-ah."
No answer. Not even a breath.
He knocks the door down with a heavy boot and is greeted by an empty chamber.
Her maids know not where she's gone; the serving wenches cast their eyes low and refuse his bellowed
requests. He knows before he reaches the Wiseman's lair that the old fool's helped his daughter escape
her match. But to the future?
"You know not the power of the Necronomicon," says Wiseman John, his eyes quite grave. "Thy
daughter is the mate of the Chosen One, and it is her destiny to...."
On and on the man drones, until Wulfric finally understands.
His daughter has been soiled.
Heart hardening, Wolfric turns away from the fool. "Cease thy prating. I have no use for the chit now.
Let her be gone, and good riddance at that."
"Milord..." the Wiseman gapes.
"Protect the book," he snarles. "Let that be thy duty. But cease thy discourse on the daughter I no longer
have."
"As you wish, milord."
It is not what he wishes, but he shall soldier on.
***
Thirty winters have passed by when he falls to the grippe.
His men pray for Mary's intercession, but Wulfric hears nothing but the roar of the crowd in his ear. He
is young again, atop a horse, bowing to the women who've come to see him ride in the King's
tournament. They flock about him when he dismounts, but one in particular stands apart from the crowd.
He pursues her attention.
The feminine face staring back at him with cold indifference has not been seen in this world in years, yet
he remembers still her eyes, her graceful bearing.
He dies whispering his daughter's name.
***
How final a gravestone is, Sheila thinks, as she kneels beside the plot of earth that contains her
father's bones. Her fingers trace the worn-down letters on the marker, chips taken by time nearly
obliterating the crucifix hammered into the surface.
The people she once knew are nothing but dates on stone. The realization pummels at Sheila's nerves,
making her nibble at her lower lip.
She lays a bundle of heather on the high-mounded dirt.
"I..." she swallows hard. "I wish to tell thee that I apologize for my haste. I should have left a word to
explain my absence." She pulled at the hem of her sweater - so strange, modern clothing feels upon her
skin. "Where did we err, father?" She wonders aloud, hopelessness in her tone.
His hand caresses her back. "Y'okay?"
She glances over her shoulder at her husband, gives him a wry smile. "Old ghosts," she explains.
A faltering smile tilts his lips. "Know the feeling," he mumbles, his eyes darting about the decrepit
graveyard as if waiting for the bodies within to leap up and attack him.
She reaches up and squeezes the hand resting on her shoulder. He's still here with her, even though
cemeteries terrify him, and that says more about his character than he could ever conventionally express.
They've come to England for one small, tender reason. She gasps again as it makes itself known once
more.
"Kicking?" he asks.
She rests her free palm against her belly. "Swimming," she informs him. "Nay, the lad's dancing..." she
winces, "'pon my ribs."
She's known for months before the doctor confirmed it that the child she carries is masculine. Strange,
the instincts of a mother - she wonders if her father knew her to be a girl - if her poor mother knew
Ranulf was a boy.
Her husband pats her shoulder. "He's using you for a trampoline again?"
She leans back into his touch. "Aye. And grows heavier with each passing night," she sighs.
"Maybe we should catch up with the rest of the tour group. You need to get off of your feet." It's getting
to him, sitting here among the dead, and she knows it, and so she allows him to pull her to her feet.
Together, they gave the old place one last, long look. "I still don't know why you wanna have the kid in
London."
His words instantly conjure up Haughty Sheila. "The child is half-British," she points out. "I would that
he had dual citizenship." He cannot understand her need to be close to the land of her birth when she
brings life into the world - it is as simple as wanting to bring joy to a place of absolute darkness.
"You're the pregnant lady," he shrugs, his arm wrapping around her as he guides her back down the
cemetery pathway. "D'you think your old man'd've liked me?" She casts a quick, anxious look over her
shoulder, and he laughs.
It's no laughing matter to Sheila. "My father was a giant, Ash. He would not hesitate to hurt thee. To
slay me for lying with thee, simply for flouting convention...."
She must have seemed frightened, for his arm tightened against her. "He can't hurt you now."
"Hurt me? Nay, he never did..." she trails off. She cannot explain the inexplicable. "We drew apart
when I reached womanhood," she explains.
"Mmm," Ash remarks. She smiles, knowing he doesn't understand, knowing that it doesn't matter as
long as he'll love her. "I'd've killed him just for that. You know, doncha?"
The remark makes her laugh. What good would his death have done, when she herself embodies the bad
and good of the man within her own being? I have slain the giant, love, she thinks. But in me
he lives on.