The Huntsman of Winter

Cold

Child of Odin and light
All hail Vainomom
Sinter falls
Kramupus loves
Darkness rains down

Cold.

It was cold, but it was not the temperature that now troubled her: it was the sounds. Or, rather, the lack of sounds. The night was eerie. There were no birds chirping, not even the few that remain once the leaves have fallen, no rustling of long-dead leaves. She couldn’t even hear the sounds of humanity ,although she could see houses nearby, lights shining through decorated windows, silhouettes of revellers dancing upon the virgin white crystals that lay upon the ground.

The only sound was the crunching as she walked, half naked, dragging herself forward towards some unknown destination. Where she was heading, she did not know, only that her legs were dragging her away from where she had been before, away from those who loved her, and away from those who turned her away with mocking glances and laughter. Even now, her lip still stung where she was given proof of her lover’s admiration.

For the first several hundred leagues she had almost believed that he would be chasing after her, to bring her home, to call her stupid for running out, to tell her that the “kiss” was proof that he cared…No longer did the thought cross her mind. She could not even feel the bitter cold of the night, just the kiss and the burning brine upon her cheeks.

Marching forth through fear, hatred, and certain frostbite, she was a soldier reporting home to warn of a battle lost and another army’s advancement. Her legs should be cramping. Her chest should be a volcano of pain. Her nose hairs did not even feel like daggers as they should -- all she could feel was the pain in her heart and the gravitational pull, forcing her forward, towards something, somewhere.

In the distance, a wolf howled, at least in her mind, though it was probably just a dog, or two lovers in a moment of passionate sin. She dared not look, for fear that whatever primal force, muted as was, could be following her, waiting to devour her whole.

Soon, the echoes existed only in her mind as no sound sings upon the snow for long. 

Snow forms an endless landscape, a neverending plane of whiteness, a maze with no entrance nor exit, just endless white borders. When the snow continues to fall, even your past becomes covered up, you become an object in a void, a nightmare of beauty and desolation. 

Teeth chattering, snot no longer running, she began to fall. As she began her descent to meet the frozen earth below her, the lights of stars covered by dark clouds came from upon the heavens to meet her eyes, dancing like the fae folk of the old stories, orbs of death and beauty before her. With a sigh, she allowed her eyes to roll up into her head and met darkness there forevermore.

She dreamed about her life: the laughs, tears, passions of lust and hate; the joys of the moments lost in the fading memories of her dying mind. In the darkness of her mind he could hear tattooing beats of a rhythmic drum, the snares and bass offbeat coming closer and closer until the very vibrations overcame her memories, shaking her to her very core, each beat louder and louder, pushing her up and down. She became like a ship upon the waves in a storm.

“Child? 

“Child!

“CHILD, WAKE UP!” The voice was old and thin.nce it would have carried itself with a rich baritone, but now it was distant and cracking like a tree shattering in the wintered night. She felt as if she had known the voice her whole life, but no face could come to her. Each time the voice shouted, a searing pain flashed where she imagined her temples to be. Each flash was accompanied by a series of visions, too quick for her mind to make out fully, but it became more and more apparent that she knew the voice calling to her.

It was the gravity pulling her forward, made into the vibrating sound in her ears, light becoming solid as her eyes fluttered open. The face before her looked as it had been made from the very snow itself. It was covered in a long white beard,probably the longest beard she had ever seen. There were no traces of grey or whatever color the beard would have been in youth, it was the very color of the snow. If not for the face behind it she was not sure she would have seen the man.

His face, though hidden by shadows cast by his large hat and beard, had the look of someone who had weathered many winters and many other of life’s horrors. She could only see one eye through the blackness that seeped down from the brim. It shined like glass, but she could not tell what color the iris was, only that a light somewhere far away had somehow caught it.

Seeing that she was awake, the old man stood up. He was taller and thinner than any man should have been, but the way he moved made him seem smaller at times, more compact almost like an old boxer in a black and white film. “Good,” he said in a voice that expressed many conflicting emotions, “I thought you were lost”. 

“Lost,” she said, if only to hear the echo of the word.

“Yes, well you are awake now and should be on your way.” There was no hint of sincerity in his voice, no probing tones, nothing to state any interest in her. Then the eye caught a twinkle as he shifted. “That is, if you have anywhere to go, Carolyn”.

She sat up abruptly, “You know my name?”

“I know a great many things,'' he said, with a slight chuckle in his voice.

A frigid tone returned to the man’s voice as he let out a “Come”. It came across as the impatient command of a teacher trying to make a point. He reached down, and despite his frail frame, lifted her to her feet with ease. Once he was sure of her balance he led her to a small sack on the ground. Letting go of her hand as they neared, he simply pointed with a very long, gaunt finger. “You need to put on something warm,” he said, and turned away.

Confused, she reached into the bag and felt fur of some sort. She had never worn fur before, and was a modern woman who prided herself in not needing the trappings of the rich and elite, but she had begun to shiver and knew that he was right. She pulled her hand out of the sack and out came a very large coat, covered in a whitish-tan fur of an animal she could not recognize. She began to put it on, when his voice stopped her, telling her to take off her wet clothes first. She voiced a protest that she would still need clothes under the coat, when another bag landed near her, then another. 

She emptied each bag carefully and found a whole new outfit waiting for her: undergarments, socks and pants, even fur-lined boots. Slowly she undressed, making sure the old man was not watching her. His back was turned,but still she felt as if she could still see that one eye watching. As she had begun to dress he instructed her to put her old clothes in the sacks before putting on the new ones. Without complaining, she did what she was told. She started with socks, worrying that her wet feet and snow would dampen them, but once they were on she felt warmth and comfort. 

The clothes, like the coat, were all the same tanned white, but there was trim on each part of the costume in a beautiful pine green that even in the dark of night stood out clearly. Once fully dressed, she quickly pulled the hood of the coat over her damp hair and any hint of chill was replaced with a comfortable heat. 

“Decent?” he said, again in a voice that did not seem to be asking. She let out a grunt to acknowledge him -- a primal response, but it felt like the proper one for such an occasion. “Good” he said quietly and turned towards her. He bent down, picking up a large stick as he began to walk over to the sacks containing her old clothes.

She stared at him as he walked on the snow, thinking that he appeared to be walking too slowly,, leaning too much on the stick, like it was an act he was putting on. 

“The clothes fit,”he said, again stating and not asking.

“Yes,” she said shyly, then after an uncomfortable pause, she thanked him and asked him who he was. He only replied with a grunt as he bent over stuffing the smaller sacks into the larger ones until there was only one medium-sized sack which he slung over his shoulder. He turned and began to walk, using the stick in front of him as a cane. She followed him. 

“You may call me the huntsman,” he said.

“And what are you hunting?” she asked. The figure before her raised his shoulders in a shrug and sighed.

Together they walked in silence for a while, him in front, his large brimmed hat bobbing up and down, his grey cloak almost ghostlike as it flowed upon the snow. She stayed behind him, stepping where he stepped.The snow was getting deeper and deeper as they went forward; the snow which had already been falling heavily was coming down harder and harder, so heavily that nothing else could exist. Despite this, he found that she was not cold at all, and could no longer feel where Stephen had shown his love earlier that night. She continued on until his steps began to get too deep for her to mimic, and the prints his legs had made were almost up to her knees.

“Not much farther now,” his voice faintly called back to her. She could hardly move, nevermind walk. The sense of gravity she had felt before had returned, pulling her forward. No longer able to walk in his footsteps, she began to crawl on the snow banks. 

At last she came upon a wooden fence, not the type made of vertical boards meant to block vision, the horizontal kind meant only to mark boundaries, and she used the top post to pull herself up.. The huntsman was up ahead waving her forward. By the time she reached up to him they were standing on the broadside of a house. 

“Took your time,” he said in a manner that implied a fake grumpiness. 

“I kept losing your footprints in the snow and had to crawl.” 

“Smart,” he said, “for when you saw the footprints in the snow, you chose to carry yourself.” He let out a small chuckle. “We are here.”

“Is this your house?” she asked.

“No, “ he replied, “we have come to the first hunt of the evening. The way he emphasized “hunt” reminded her of Stephen when he was trying to explain a joke to her by stressing the words that he assumed she didn’t understand. She could feel her cheeks redden.

“Shhh, come,” he said in a whisper.

She followed him around the corner, almost bumping into him as he stopped suddenly at a window. He seemed transfixed as he stared inside. He cautiously raised his hand and motioned to her to come closer and look with him into the house. At first she saw nothing but her own reflection, then a fog as her breath steamed out onto the glass. He stood still, balancing himself on his walking stick, staring intently. After a seemingly infinite amount of time, she began to see past the condensation and into the house. A family was sitting by a fire. A mother sitting on an ottoman was facing the rest of the family who were sitting on the floor. She was reading to them by the light of a fire and the dimly-lit lights on a small plastic-looking tree.

Carolyn could almost begin to imagine the smells in the house: the fake pine, hot chocolates, peppermints and nutmegs. She stared for a long while until he heard the man sighand turn away.

When they got back to the fence, she asked him what they were doing. “I am the Huntsman,” he said as his only reply and he walked on into the night. They stopped by multiple houses, and each time he would stare into the windows alone, then beckon for her to do the same. They saw various people living their lives inside. Some were celebrating the night, others were solemnly arranging toy mangers while children put out plates of cookies and carrots. Each time they would only leave when he had decided he had enough. He never explained what he was hunting for, only that he was the Huntsman. 

They came upon another house and peered in. As before, it took a while for her to be able to see inside the house. When she could finally make out the shapes inside, she turned away, blushing. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the old man almost grin.

“Pervert!” she said. 

He whispered back, “of course.”

This time when they got away from the house, she cornered him, “Is that what you are hunting? Are you some kind of Peeping Tom?” 

He replied with a sickly sounding cough and laughed, “No...I am the original peeping Tom.” He then sat down on a stump and motioned for her to sit as well. She fought the urge for as long as she could, but again she felt something pull her forward and down. 

“Tell me child...” he paused as if trying to find his words. “What did you see?” 

“I saw people fuck-”

“No, not that,” he said after letting out a laugh that seemed like it would rip his body apart, “although that is always fun. Think back and tell me everything that you have seen.”

“I saw people, I suppose.” She thought for a second, “They were all celebrating. It is Christmas, isn’t it?”

“It is and it isn’t, “ he said, sounding sad. “But yes, you saw celebrating. But think deeper, tell me what you really saw.”

She sat there for a while, staring into the shining eye of his, half trying to think of something to say, half remembering all that she had seen. After a while she lay down in the snow and stared up at the sky. The snow had stopped falling, and the sky had opened up, showing stars above her. Billions upon billions of stars were out there, according to what she had been taught: giant, fiery balls of fire and plasma in a wide variety of colors. Right now, each one reminded her of the Huntsman’s glowing eye.

“I saw families, people, strangers; I saw thiem in the dark, secure, private worlds they have created. I saw their Christmas trees, Menorahs all covered in tinsel of silver and gold. I saw fires burning, as dead logs became ash, I saw an old man look broken and sad, like he was longing for something, and searching for something else, like he was missing his reason for being.”

The Huntsman leaned forward and stroked his beard as if thinking, then after several moments he asked, “What else?”

She did not hear him.he was deep in her own head now, remembering everything she had seen. There was more, a lot more. She saw glimpses of parties in the flashes of the flames and in the reflections on the electric bulbs. She saw feasts at tables longer than some driveways that had given way to orgies of food and merriment. She saw solemn people reading over texts they held holy and dear. She saw a man dressed in furs stand up and declare that from now on a new holiday would be celebrated on the very day, and how the people rejoiced, the priests prayed. She saw men on icy rivers, crossing to fight for new ideas and she saw old ideas adopted and perverted by new ones. Finally, in the reflections, she saw the Huntsman in many guises always staring into houses, never getting caught by those within. She saw how lonely he was. She saw him watching her throughout her life. His face took on many features, his clothing changed: sometimes he wore green, and looked like a Saint in a stained glass that belonged in a church; sometimes he was a barbarian in bloodied furs; many times he was a heavy set man in red...memories flooded back to her of the magic of her youth, of innocence and discovery. He had been there, always in winter.

“Who are you?” she had begun to ask, but she had known who he was her whole life. He was the Huntsman, the Grim One, the Seeker, the Giver of Gifts, The Watcher. He was Sinter, He was Väinämöinen, Father Winter, the parts of Santa Claus that had nothing to do with Nicholas; He was the gatherer, time, knowledge, He was Odin All Father, and Wotan; Chronus...he has had thousands of names and roles in humanity’s years upon the Earth. He was the constant. He was the leader of the Wild Hunt and now it was time for him to claim his prize, what he longed for. 

A place among the hearth. 

A loud noise startled her back to this plane of existence, monstrous and loud like a wild dragon seeking to destroy. It came closer and closer, the fires of hell spilling from its unnatural eyes, a giant scales scraping upon the ground: a snow plow passed by clearing the street. 

She turned to talk to the old man, but he was gone. Only his staff remained. She got up and took it in her hands and turned to walk home. Shereturned to the snow to make a set of footprints of her own. A faint pink light had begun to come over the sky by the time she got home. 

Stephen was asleep in her bed, looking content with himself and the discarded bottles and glasses around him. Most of the other guests, his friends who had stood by and done nothing as he had hit her, hadleft sometime in the night, save for a few stragglers, who slept on furniture that was not theirs. The air in the house did not have the sweet smells of the seasons, but instead those of stale alcohol, vomit, and shame.

Quietly, she slipped into her house. It was hers; she had paid for it long before Stephen had moved in -- back then he had been charming and wonderful, then as time passed he had become violent and she docile, but no more! In the bathroom mirror she saw how swollen her lip was, and how it had already begun to discolor. Without a sigh of grief or shame, she walked to the fireplace and tossed dying embers onto discarded wrapping paper, and rolled up a newspaper, allowing it to catch flame then lifted it towards a smoke alarm.

Between the alarm and the small fires in the living room, her guests all ran out of the house. Stephen was the last to get up and move. He saw Carolyn standing there, dressed like some wild woman. He was furious -- he knew how expensive furs were, and he would be damned if she spent money on herself and not him. Ignoring the fire, he began to walk towards her, fists clenching, ready to teach her another lesson. He had almost felt guilty hitting her last night in front of his friends, but now he could only see that he was right to have done it. She was a bitch, and needed to learn her place. He was met with a large branch hitting him in the head. A fierce, bestial voice came out of her, telling him to get out. And though he wanted to fight her, he found that he could not retaliate; the fire in her eyes was fiercer than anything he had ever seen in her. 

He had seen this before, he thought to himself, every now and then his cunt ex girlfriends would get a back bone, but they would all come crawling back. He snickered out on the snow-covered lawn even as she threw his clothes out in the snow. His friends were amazed at how calm he looked, and even joked with him about how crazy she was. Some even stayed as a cab arrived to take him to the hotel he had booked for himself. 

He grinned and smiled and shook hands with his friends, and they all told him that he was for the better, being free from her, she truly was a bitch, and this and that. They all cheered as he climbed into the cab that pulled up, and some even giggled at the festive little dark man driving it and his funny European accent. They waved as Stephen got in then drove off.

Stephen sat in the back seat, sprawled out and grinning. He would get her back, he thought. He would break her and leave her when he was bored. His cabbie Pete laughed with him when he laughed, although at times it sounded as him the funny little man was laughing at something else instead. The man kept grinning and occasionally giggling as the drive continued. Stephen thought nothing of it at first, then began to wonder if the cabbie was here legally or not. Stephen was no racist, as he would tell his friends, but truth be told he hated foreigners and their strange accents. Pete began to laugh more and more wildly now, and began to drive erratically. Stephen had had his share of bad cabbie drivers, but the car began to cross into the other lane of traffic,then swerved into snow banks or up on curbs. 

A tightness had begun to grow in his chest, and he demanded the cabbie to stop. The little man giggled more and more wildly. Stephen began to cry. I’m having a heart attack, he tried to scream, but he couldn’t form words.

Pete stopped the cab when he saw his fare slump over. He turned on his cell phone and punched in the three digit code. He pulled the dickhead American out of his back seat and began to do chest compressions. He had to be careful not to smile as he broke chest bones, even though he really did love listening to the crackling and popping -- there were onlookers, people with cellphones filming. He longed for the old days where he could show up at night and beat bad children with sticks, but now he had to play long games. Soon an ambulance arrived, and two EMTs jumped out of the back. A large black man, and an older man with only one eye. 

The last thing Stephen had seen was the black man placing a bag around him. He felt himself loaded into the ambulance, as he heard the weird little cabbie tell a policeman that the man had died. The cop reassured the cabbie that he had done what he could. Stephen wanted to scream out that he wasn’t dead, that the cabbie was to blame, but no sound ever came out of him.He was never seen again on this realm. 

Every year, Carolyn would leave her window slightly cracked on every night of the Yule and Saturnalia. She would leave treats of honeyed cakes and ale on the sills, and at least once every year she would wake up with a fire in the chimney and a single gold ring on the mantel. She would then don her fur coat and walk into the woods, walking stick in hand, to leave her own footprints upon the world. 

The Wanderer lives within us all.