The Winter Riddle Read online

  “Osgrey?”

  “No, I’m Osgrey.”

  She’d only seen his silhouette at first—that was how things looked beyond the veil, very shadowy and murky—but she’d known it was him. She would have recognized him anywhere, murky shadows or not.

  “It is you!” She ran to embrace him, but he dispersed in a puff of smoke.

  “Careful!” said Osgrey, his cloud of smoke coalescing again a few feet away. “It’s not easy being visible. I can barely remember what I looked like as it is!”

  “Sorry,” Volgha couldn’t help the grin that spread across her face, “I’m just so happy to see you!”

  “I’m happy to see you, too,” replied Osgrey, with a smile that didn’t quite look right. He’d had a very warm and bright smile as a person. Volgha imagined that trees probably didn’t do smiles, so he’d probably forgotten how.

  “It’s a good fire,” said Osgrey, “very princely. You did know that there is royalty among fires, didn’t you?”

  Volgha nodded. “I did. You taught me a long time ago.”

  “Did I?” Osgrey looked off into the distance for a moment, as if trying to remember. Then he shrugged. “Well, it’s good that you know. What’s new in the world?”

  “Nothing much,” said Volgha. “Alexia is still the queen, and that vile Ghasterly is her court wizard.”

  “Court wizard,” Osgrey exclaimed. “I thought I was the court wizard. Is that not right?”

  “You were, until my parents passed away. Now you’re a tree.”

  “A tree … oh yes! I’d forgotten.”

  The two of them stood in silence for a moment, gazing into the fire, watching the regal flames dance. Volgha hadn’t talked to Osgrey in so long, she didn’t know where to begin. He’d been her teacher, more father to her than her father had been. She wanted to ease into it, but, “Why did you turn into a tree?” fell out of her mouth with all the grace of a wet laundry pile.

  “It’s what druids do when it’s time to retire.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Volgha. “I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s all right,” Osgrey replied. “You’re a little girl, and little girls have more curiosity than couth. You’re famous for it, in fact.”

  “I was a little girl a long time ago.”

  Osgrey looked at her, squinting. “Oh yes,” he said. “You’re a woman now. When did that happen?”

  “Gradually …” She smiled at him. “I’ve taken up in your cottage. I say hello to you every evening.”

  “Of course you do,” said Osgrey. “You’ll have learned manners, being an adult and all. How do you spend so much time in the grove? Aren’t you busy running the kingdom?”

  She suppressed a grin. Trees have horrible memories, it would seem.

  “No, that’s Alexia. She’s the queen. I’m just a witch now, I don’t run the kingdom.”

  Osgrey’s expression turned even paler. A ghost who’d seen a ghost.

  “That can’t be right,” hepuzzled. “No, that can’t be right.”

  “Yes, she’s the queen.”

  “Oh fine,” Osgrey gave a dismissive wave, “she can wear the crown, but royals don’t run the show. I mean, not really.” He winked and tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially, causing a tiny wisp of smoke to curl from his face.

  “Of course she does,” replied Volgha. “I know she’s not the wisest person ever to sit a throne, but she’s no more ridiculous than my parents were.”

  “Right, but I was running things back then, and you’re running them now. Properly running them, I mean.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Royals may make the laws, but they don’t run the bigger picture.” Osgrey leaned in very close, his eyes wide and urgent. “There’s a balance that must be maintained!”

  Volgha knew about maintaining balances. Witches and druids all knew about living in harmony with nature and such, but she didn’t think that was what Osgrey was talking about.

  “What are you saying?”

  “You must return to the castle,” said Osgrey. “The kingdom needs a Warden.”

  “A Warden? What’s that?”

  “The king is the land, and the land is the king. But when he is not … do you understand?”

  “No.” Volgha began panicking as she realized that the clouds were starting to close up. “Quickly, what’s all this about?”

  Osgrey’s eyes shot up to the darkening sky. “Darkness falls.”

  The spell was ending. Volgha felt the veil closing before her.

  “I’ll find you again!” she said.

  “Set things right!” Osgrey’s words echoed as he turned dark, and then he was gone.

  If she’d been given a choice of things to have piled upon her, warm blankets would have been high on the list. New oaths of revenge and cryptic mandates from druids-cum-trees were still better than beehives, but it still counted as proof that what one wants is rarely what one gets.

  Best to focus on the bright side. That’s what an optimist would say, though that sort of haphazard cheer might land them in dangerous territory, with pessimistic witches. They’ve been known to hex people for less.

  One piece of good news lurched into her mind from the gloom, despite her deepest desire to remain as angry as possible. Osgrey was alive! Well, sort of. He was there anyway, in the grove. If she could talk to him once, she could do it again. He’d seemed confused, like he’d forgotten how to talk to the living. Would that happen to her as well someday? Witches didn’t turn into trees, but she’d heard stories of old ones who’d gone all warty and cackling, spending the rest of their lives stirring cauldrons full of glowing ichor atop windy crags. Not the worst way to go, she supposed, but neither was it her idea of a good time.

  She needed to find out more about this Warden business. What was a Warden, and why couldn’t her sister do it? She was the queen after all. Then again, if Osgrey had been this “Warden” while her parents were on the throne, perhaps Wardens had to be serious people, or know something about magic. Alexia would be disqualified on both counts. Volgha would have to dig into the Grimoire to learn more.

  One last thing to do before bed. She still had a charge of magical energy within her and she knew just what to do with it. Smoothing her wild black hair back from her face, she looked skyward and loosed a howl that would send a shepherd into fits. It was a throaty, wolfen aroo, impossibly loud, and it carried up and over the ridge that framed the snowy valley.

  She stumbled back to her cottage, thoroughly exhausted, rather annoyed, and ready for a long, rejuvenating sleep.

  Moments later, miles away, the ears of the wolves slumbering around the forge in Santa’s smithy perked up, and they were running in an instant.

  6

  Volgha flew on her broomstick, mumbling swear words as she watched the wolves drag the metal wreckage toward Santa’s Village. They were repaying a favor, Volgha having misdirected some hunters from them a couple of summers earlier.

  Volgha didn’t like calling in favors. Those in her debt knew where they stood with her. Their heads didn’t fill with funny ideas about being peers or friends. However, in this case, she didn’t have any other means to move the wretched inconvenience across miles of rough terrain.

  There was no road connecting her grove to Santa’s Village, or to anywhere else for that matter. The absence of roads leading to the grove was Volgha’s way of relaying to any would-be visitors exactly how welcome they’d be made.

  She wished she could just ignore the entire thing. Economically, she was taking a loss. She was down one winter garden, her time and effort, and one favor from the wolves, for which she’d gain a single favor from Santa. She thought of asking for two favors, but that’s just bad witchery. Witches aren’t supposed to be greedy.

  She’d also be upholding the Witching Way by showing this Santa character that vexing a witch—intentional or not—would not go unanswered. That was worth a great deal to witches everywhere.

  The high timb
er walls around Santa’s Village were covered in permafrost, which served to reinforce them as well as help them blend in with the surrounding countryside. However, it was doubtful that the camouflage was considered very important, given the constant noise of the place and occasional explosions or gouts of flame shooting up into the autumn gloom, like a war zone that had decided to retire somewhere snowy.

  What had appeared from a distance to be a pair of great coal lamps standing on opposite sides of the main gate turned out to be something altogether less ordinary. Atop the wooden pedestals, which were banded with iron and twice Volgha’s height, stood what appeared to be diminutive winged persons made entirely of brilliant golden light. The lamps were capped with great glass domes and no frost had gathered on them. Perhaps they were newly installed and hadn’t had the opportunity to frost over yet.

  The wolves dragged the twisted wreckage in front of the gate and started howling. That was unexpected. Volgha stood there, in the light of the golden lamps, realizing that she’d not decided exactly how she was going to reprimand this inconsiderate lout. She wanted to do her witchy duty, of course, but her natural distaste for people was rearing its introverted head.

  The next unexpected thing to happen was the gate opening, just wide enough for the wolves to start moving through single file, which they did. Someone had just opened the gate to let a bunch of howling wolves come into the village. Non-standard behavior for villagers, to say the least.

  The gate closed behind them, and Volgha was alone. Gritting her teeth, she suppressed the urge to simply rise up into the sky and have done with the whole thing. How would that look? She had to avoid giving him the idea that she was the sort of neighbor who always had cups of sugar to lend.

  “Hello?”

  The voice had come from within the walls. A wide-and-short portal opened in the gate, and there was a pair of eyes on the other side of it, looking at her.

  “Hello,” said Volgha, her mind suddenly going entirely blank.

  “I want to speak to Santa,” she said. “He lives here.” She stood there silently, though she was mentally shouting the same swear word over and over, chastising herself for not having said something cooler.

  “Who shall I tell him is calling?”

  “Volgha, the Winter Witch,” she replied. “And be quick, I do not appreciate being made to wait!”

  That was more like it. It was the sort of “listen here, you” talk that made people act without thinking too much about it.

  The tiny portal slammed shut. There was some excited chatter on the other side of the gate, which had the general air of several people scrambling to avoid being turned into undesirable things. That was a pleasant sound to Volgha, one she didn’t feel she heard often enough.

  After a few more seconds the gate swung slowly inward, and there stood a very short man in a woolen cloak and a pointy green hat. Not a man, she corrected herself, an elf. That was further cause to assume that Santa was the only non-elf living in the village; otherwise, guarding an enormous gate would be an odd duty for someone so small.

  “Welcome to Santa’s Village,” he said with a smile and a flourish. “Won’t you come in?”

  Volgha walked in as quickly as she could without seeming rushed. Using one’s gait to convey a sense of foreboding could have a particularly intimidating effect, though that wasn’t something she’d learned from the Witching Way. It was something her parents had done.

  “Right,” she said. “Where can I find Santa?”

  “Just stay on this road,” answered the elf. “It ends at Santa’s house. You can’t miss it.”

  “Deal with that, won’t you?” Volgha waved a hand over her shoulder, vaguely indicating the pile of wreckage. She didn’t wait for an answer, but started walking toward Santa’s house.

  Volgha had flown over several villages on her broom before, but the only one she’d ever walked through was Innisdown, which stood about a mile from the gates of Castle Borealis. Innisdown had an inn, a smithy, cobbled roads, and all of the other things that proper villages were supposed to have—according to Volgha, who’d only ever been to Innisdown.

  Santa’s Village had some of the things she’d expected. It had a smithy and cobbled roads, as well as a bunch of buildings that she probably wasn’t going to be able to identify without knocking on doors and acting like a policeman, asking questions like, “What’s all this then?” Innisdown had those, too; both nondescript buildings and policemen.

  But the smithy was much larger than the one in Innisdown—larger than the one in Castle Borealis, for that matter—and full of elves, hard at work making very hot pieces of metal bend into different shapes. It was also full of wolves, namely the ones who’d helped her deliver the wreckage. Why were they lying around in the smithy? The obvious answer was to warm up, as smithies tend to have heat to spare. However, the crux of this particular question was less why and more how. How did they come to have leisure privileges at Santa’s smithy?

  She’d expected a pub, but she didn’t see one. What kind of village didn’t have a pub? Beyond serving as a convenient social venue, pubs filled an essential role in village life, being the place from which people dragged their spouses home, nagging them all the while for having drunk too much. There was no way that the village was simply making do without one. She must have overlooked it.

  The cobbled streets were exceptionally clean. The cobbles themselves were ground flat, which must have been expensive, and the streets were brightly lit by more of the strange lamps, like the ones she’d seen outside the gates.

  There was something troubling about the fact that Santa’s Village had a gate. Gates do not exist independently of walls, and walls around villages were meant to keep people out. None of the other villages—or rather, the other village—she’d seen had walls, which begged the question: is Santa expecting—or worse, likely—to be invaded?

  If invasion is likely, then the wall is a good idea, but Volgha should be suspicious. If invasion is unlikely, then the wall is pointless, Santa is paranoid, and Volgha should be suspicious. Paranoid people make the worst sort of neighbors, always peering through the blinds at you.

  Suspicion, then. Certainly the best weapon against paranoia, and far simpler than trying to work out who might be trying to invade.

  Just as she was pondering that, Santa’s house shrugged. It was more of a lurch, really. A massive, violent lurch, sending snow flying over everything nearby. When the powder settled, the house appeared to be covered in holly.

  Houses don’t shrug, Volgha thought, or lurch for that matter. The policy of suspicion decidedly applied to the house, then. She continued warily toward the door.

  It was closed. That made sense, since it was cold out. But be that as it may, it always took Volgha a moment to remember what she was supposed to do with closed doors. She grew up in a royal family, and doors were never barred to her. After leaving the castle, the only door she had to cope with was the one to her cottage, and she went through it as she pleased.

  She knew that knocking was the custom, no problem there. Just a quick rap to let someone inside know that someone outside had business within. The thing that she’d never sorted out was the inflection. By knocking faster, or harder, or in certain patterns, was one’s knock interpreted as more or less confident? More or less important, urgent, or sincere? How long should one wait before knocking again, if there was no response?

  She didn’t mind coming off as brusque, she just wanted to avoid timidity. She settled on five firm knocks, half a second apart. It sounded almost ominous in her head.

  One … two … three …

  The door opened, and Volgha’s fourth knock charged inward, becoming a punch that sailed over the head of the elf who’d opened the door. He flinched. Volgha glared down her nose at him, adopting her best I-meant-to-do-that demeanor.

  “Er, hello,” said the elf. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here to speak with Santa,” Volgha replied. “This is Santa’s house.”
She cringed. “Is it not?” she added in haste, so as not to seem like the sort of person who offered up obvious facts when she was nervous.

  “It is.” The elf gave her a sidelong look. “Please come in. My name is Sergio, and you are?”

  “Volgha, the Winter Witch.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance. May I take your, er, broom?”

  “Certainly not.” Nice try, she thought. He’d have to be a lot cleverer if he wanted to disarm her.

  “As you wish,” he said. “Right this way.”

  Sergio led her into a sitting room, to an overstuffed armchair in front of a blazing hearth. After pouring her a glass of wine that smelled like honey, he extended the glass to her, saying, “Please make yourself comfortable. Santa will be with you shortly.”

  She made no move to take the glass from him, and did her best not to let on that it was possibly the most exquisite chair in which she’d ever had the pleasure to sit. It was the sort of chair that you’d just about have to cover in nails to make it anything short of luxurious. Sergio gave a nervous shrug, set the glass on the end table beside her, and left the room at a quick step.

  Stupid, wretched chair. The wine looked irritatingly delicious as well. The condensation on the glass told her that it had been served cold. On purpose! They’d managed to keep this room so warm that an ice-cold glass of wine actually sounded refreshing! As indignant as she was, she had to hand it to Santa: he was a shrewd negotiator.

  The chill had completely faded from her bones after a moment. The entire situation was beyond decadent. It was tempting, and that was the worst part. Witches weren’t the sort of people to be caught indulging in comfort. Dabble in indulgence, and very soon her little cottage—which had been more than sufficient up to that point—would start to seem too small. Not cozy, small. Not the sort of place she was used to, where chilled honey wine danced provocatively in her glass as she succumbed to the wiles of overstuffed chairs.

  She wasn’t having it! Was that his game then? Trying to butter her up, or showing off his extravagance to make her feel small? Envious? He had another thing coming if he thought—