A Winter King Story

Gods love stories about themselves. Flannery’s mother always reminded her of it. She would chase Flannery’s father’s stories with it, as though to undo all the magic of the stories. Flannery remembered them, but she also remembered the gods. 

 

It was eleven at night. It felt claustrophobic in the house. Snow pressed in at the windows where there should have been the glow of Christmas lights. Three feet of snow had fallen the night before. Another three had fallen today. If more than three fell overnight, they would have to excavate a path to the car the next day, or admit defeat and stay inside. Which was why Flannery could hardly believe anyone would be ringing the doorbell.

 

She opened the door. It took a couple tries. The lock had nearly frozen. She was irritable and uncharitable and full of vitriol, as she always was at this time of year, and she hoped it was a neighbour or an official of some sort coming to inform her there had been a freak avalanche in the town or something else dangerous and interesting had happened. 

 

She stared at the group assembled beyond the stoop. The group stared back. She had enough time to notice that the pathway she’d shovelled an hour and a half ago had disappeared beneath the snow before the group began to speak. No, not the group, just one of them. But it took her a moment to realize it was a single voice instead of several, and then she wondered how she could make that mistake when the difference was so obvious. Flannery disliked the Christmas experience entirely, and she was over the mix of celebration and well wishes and condolences every year. She should have been furious to see carollers. But they weren’t singing. It was a story they were telling- no, one of them was telling. But every time she spotted the moving mouth, another mouth took over the words and led the story to its destination. The story began familiarly: longed for a child, until they came upon a bud in the spring. Then: white as snow, lips red as fever, eyes black as char. Then, much less familiar, enough to coax Flannery into paying attention to the story: meant for the season of long, hungry nights. 

 

“Jesus Mary Joseph, you puke.” Madeleine, Flannery’s older sister, and currently the head of the household because their mother was knee deep in whatever depressing shit psychiatrists had to put up with at Christmas and had locked herself in the computer room, appeared in the hallway, swaddling herself in a cardigan. “Why’s the door open? You want to pay the heating when- er.”

 

“They’re carollers,” Flannery said. She hesitated. “They’re bards.”

 

“Bards,” Madeleine repeated, as though there couldn’t be a more unnecessary thing in the world. When she wasn’t paying attention, she thought by speaking. Then she collected herself, braced against the cold and the idea of strangers, and gagged and bound her honest opinions. She had a lovely smile, and she aimed it at the storytellers as she edged into the doorway. There was just enough doorway for both sisters to occupy it. Madeleine swept the smile over the whole group. She had long golden red hair, and a mouth full of straight teeth, and she earned a pleasant look from one of the men in the group. Flannery couldn’t know exactly what his age was, because when he smiled, it changed. But Madeleine was pleased with it anyway. She tilted her head and spoke quietly through her smile. The words were skewed; Flannery, fluent in Madeleine’s pseudo-ventriloquism, turned her ear Madeleine’s way. “They’ll want something to eat. Or a drink. For payment.”

 

In dad’s stories, it was never food or drink the strangers at the door wanted. Unless they were a fairy or god in disguise. Flannery didn’t think the storytellers were here to test them. 

 

Madeleine and Flannery shared the stoop. Madeleine pulled the door nearly shut behind them. The radio warbled statically in the kitchen. Flannery faded to listening, briefly, aware she had missed much of the story, wishing she hadn’t, and also filling in the blanks. It was very close to the stories their dad used to tell them. There was a god in it, and whomever took over the story always had something to say about the god. He wore a pelt over one shoulder, whiter than any cape, softer than any grassy meadow. He had a knife made of bone, carved with the teeth of the same animal from which it had been taken. His voice made the river tremble, and the stones sing. The winter king needed no crown, nor shield, because everything yielded eventually. Flannery wondered if Madeleine was listening at all. 

 

She noticed frost on the shoulders of the storytellers. She had the vague notion that human beings weren’t meant to survive in these sorts of conditions, let along trundle around the neighbourhood singing in the dead of night. She gave the group a searching look. But every face was lit, and not one among them was familiar. 

 

The story ended. Flannery didn’t know how, but she didn’t think she needed to hear it. Their father had told such stories and the endings were the same. Madeleine held her hands beneath her chin like prayer and sighed. “That was wonderful. A winter king story. So traditional.”

 

One of the storytellers smiled. Or at least, his mouth curved at the corners. His cheeks were very pink, as though the wind had burned them. He tilted his head at Flannery, like a hungry bird. He asked, “Did you like it?”

 

Flannery said, “Does it matter if I did? To fix it to my liking, you would have to know me better anyway, and you don’t.”

 

Madeleine smacked her arm. “Flanny! Runt!”

 

The storyteller grinned, as if Flannery hadn’t been rude at all. “That’s fair. Spoken like a story teller.” He sent a knowing look to the woman next to him, who was so much older that when she changed her expression, it was just a wobble of moving lines. Her eyes were glossy from the cold. A tear wound through the wrinkles, shiny as pewter. She didn’t seem to see the look. 

 

Madeleine was clearly irritated to have been done so wrongly by her sister. She put her hands on her hips to let them know she was in charge, and she smiled to let them know she was not responsible for her terrible sister and the terrible things that came out of her mouth. “Sorry,” she said, spackling casual over her distress. “She’s especially vile at this time of year. You must be freezing. Would you like coffee? Or- tea? Or- I can check for the apple cider and heat you some. With some cinnamon it’s perfect for a night like this one.”

 

“Would you like to come tell stories with us?” the elderly woman with a face like many gorges asked. She was the only one in the group who touched anyone else, and only briefly, like they were all taking turns, or she was elderly enough to have to lean on someone at all times. She put out no hands, but other hands came to meet hers. She looked up into Madeleine and Flannerys’ faces. All of the storytellers had very direct gazes. Flannery and Madeleine’s father had done the same thing when he told stories. There was no better way to make them pay attention, he’d said. 

 

They said nothing about this time of year. Flannery wished Madeleine hadn’t brought it up. Then she wished, self-destructively/hatefully, that one of the storytellers would ask about this time of year, and she could snap the answer back at them.  

 

Madeleine laughed. She had a pretty laugh that tended to make others feel they were the cause or target of it. She asked, “I don’t have boots warm enough or a heart strong enough to walk through this kind of snow.”

 

A woman with dark hair and black pebble eyes said, “We aren’t walking.” Like many puppets on a single hinge, the group turned. At the end of the pathway, in front of the yard, stark despite the grainy, snow-grey air, a carriage with a sled beneath it rested on the snow. Before it, a huge horse pulled. It was the largest horse Flannery had seen, and the blackest. Someone sat on the horse, hands clenched in its hair, face hidden by his own long, black hair. 

 

Flannery stared hard at the faceless figure. She could see it wasn’t gazing at anything, only listening. Her chest and stomach were suddenly as ill as if she had been out in the snow already. 

 

“Holy- that’s so cool,” Madeleine said. “Is it warm enough? It’s like, negative twenty two degrees.”

 

“It’s a special night for us,” the dark-haired woman said. She slanted a look at Flannery when she did. 

 

“Longest of the year,” Flannery said, clearly, as if she were answering a riddle, or speaking to the figure on the black horse. She didn’t want him to mishear, or not hear her at all. “I’d have to ask our mother about coming with you.”

 

“It’s just us three,” Madeleine said, which was unnecessary, Flannery thought. The storytellers must have already known their father wasn’t around. At least, he wasn’t in this house. And Madeleine should have known they weren’t asking her to come tell stories. “Speaking of, mum would love to see that- sled, and horse. Or carriage. Could you just wait a moment? She’s in the other room. She- I know, Flan, but she wouldn’t want to miss this even for moping about da- I’ll go get her. Just wait here.”

 

She backed into the house, tapping her shoes against the frame before shucking them off, and shoved the door lightly as she left. She whistled as she went, which was the only habit she’d picked up from their father. The door didn’t quite close, but there was a quiet moment where everyone seemed to be waiting to see if it would. 

 

“You know we don’t take anyone? You have to have a good story to tell,” said the storyteller that had smiled at Madeleine earlier. 

 

Without thinking, Flannery said, “According to whom? According to him?”

 

Again, like a bush of plants bobbing in the same wind, they turned and regarded the silent man on the horse. The longer Flannery looked at the man, the more she could make out. His white coat, the trinkets hanging from his belt, the gloves that had never seen dirt, the too-unlikely gleam of metal around the crown of his head. The horse as well was not as she had first seen it. It was larger than any draft horse she had ever seen, but its hooves did not sink into the snow. 

 

“He almost never likes any of the stories,” the black-haired lady sighed. She sounded disappointed and resigned. “Which is why our numbers dwindle every year.”

 

“Why stop at our door, then?” Flannery wondered. “Why ask me?”

 

“We stop at every door,” one of them said. “Or we try. Some doors never open for us. But we try, to tell the stories-”

 

The elderly woman sighed very loudly. His voice vanished into the snow. Her breath was invisible, though Flannery could see every one of her own breaths as clear as a smoke signal. “We try to remind everyone of the old stories. For the sake of the winter.” Flannery could hear, as clearly as if she’d said it, that she had cut herself off. 

 

Flannery did not look at the figure on the horse. “You did come here before. My dad talked to you.” They were silent. She measured her thoughts. “Before he was gone. There were fewer of you.” She was abruptly delighted that there were more of them now, and wary of it.

 

Through the front door and the door of the computer room, Flannery could hear the argument that had sprung up between her sister and mother. Their mother was prickly at this time of year as well, and Madeleine responded to barbs by turning them outward again. The black horse pawed at the snow in front of the sled. The elderly lady watched her. “It is time for us to go. Have you decided?”

 

“Would I come back in the morning?” Flannery asked. 

 

“Perhaps the morning,” the dark-haired woman said. She regarded some of the other storytellers. “Perhaps in a year. It depends how good your story is. You have to tell us that first.”

 

Madeleine and their mother had apparently hit on both of their sore spots. Voices escalated, as though by increasing volume they could be heard over either side of the emotional wall between them. 

 

Flannery asked, “You want me to tell you a story right now?”

 

The elderly woman shrugged. “Tell us what it is about. Some stories are worth more than others.”

 

The hall banged with angry footsteps. Flannery folded and unfolded her arms. She glanced at the man on the horse. “You’ll come back in a year, won’t you? You’ll ask again?”

 

She had lived with uncertainty long enough to spot it when it was microscopic. The man on the horse tightened his hold on the mane. The horse began to move, either restless or responding to its rider. The group of storytellers fidgeted. Flannery wanted to clarify that she hadn’t made a decision. That she hadn’t said she would prefer to stay in this house and remember her father’s stories while her father was nowhere to be found. 

 

“Perhaps,” the dark-haired woman said, gently, in the way neither children nor teenagers ever fell for. “Perhaps you don’t even know a story he would like.”

 

The grey quality of the night had vanished, though the snow remained in the air. Darkness pressed in all around, as claustrophobic as the snow had been. The group began to file along the path, back toward the carriage. They made no noise in the snow beneath their feet. 

 

“What about a story about the winter king?” Flannery said. 

 

The elderly woman smiled. The figure on the horse held tightly as the horse spooked at something invisible. The storytellers began to crowd the carriage. One smiled at her. Another cried from the cold. The figure on the horse whistled a small, strange tune to it and it stilled. It turned enough for Flannery to see the shape of a smile. 

 

Her mother and sister were almost at the door. She hopped into the snow. The black-haired woman put out a hand to help her into the carriage. 

 

Gods love stories about themselves. 

Art by Kim Myatt