In His Winter - Sample

Chapter One – Autumn’s Awakening

It was strangely quiet as Nusti awoke, slowly opening his eyes to the world around him. His vision was blurry, as one might expect after being asleep for several months, and his eyelids felt extraordinarily heavy. As the chamber ceiling above him gradually came into focus, he welcomed the familiar sight of golden ivy hanging from the ancient stone above him, spreading like arteries across its surface.

The world had seemed quiet before, of course, in those years when Nusti had been amongst the first of his people to awaken from the Great Sleep. The awakening was never the same from one year to the next, and just once he’d been the very first gold faery to awaken, forced to wait several lonely minutes for the elders to rise and offer him guidance. This time, however, it was different; the quietness was heavy, oppressive, and altogether unsettling. It took several long moments for him to realise what the difference was.

It was utter, absolute silence.

There was no sound around him in the Chamber of the Gold Faeries. None of the usual noises were present, such as talking, the breathing of his waking siblings or the rustling of wings. Nusti turned his head to look at the wooden cot next to him—it was formed of a dense knot of vines and leaves that grew out of a tree stump in the rough shape of a bed. Asleep on it was one of the elder faeries, one whose name he couldn’t quite remember, so he turned to the other side and saw the same thing: another sleeping faery, though this one he knew to be Beinel, one of the faeries from his own generation. The girl looked peaceful, and no closer to waking up than the elder faery on the other side of Nusti’s cot.

As he sat upright and stretched, Nusti paused. There was no sign of movement from any of the other cots and, as he looked around whilst his wings spread for the first time in months, he realised that not one of the others had awakened. This is wrong, he thought. At least some of them should be stirring already. 

A gentle rustling sound suddenly made his pointed little ears twitch, and he turned to see a small gust of golden leaves appear over his shoulder and hang in the air next to him. As it floated there, it took the form of a loose sphere slowing rotating in the air. The leaves gently brushed against each other, making a soothing noise almost like a whisper.

‘Hello, friend,’ Nusti said with a smile as he looked at his Nascent. ‘Did you miss me?’ The question was rhetorical: the creature couldn’t answer him, though it spun faster for just a moment to show its own way of responding to Nusti’s voice. His Nascent was, for all intents and purposes, a prenatal faery; a spirit of the Forest that was bonded to him. All faeries were bonded to a Nascent at birth, and the beings stayed with them for around a quarter century, experiencing the world with them and learning what they could of it. Eventually they would coalesce into a newborn faery, retaining much of the knowledge they’d learned during their nascence and allowing them to undertake their duties in the Forest with minimal delay. Nascents of Autumn typically took the appearance of a gust of leaves like Nusti’s, though there were exceptions. Several of the other gold faeries had Nascents that appeared as balls of swirling dust, and another had one that took no physical form, but you knew it was close when you could hear the sound of distant chanting in your ear. Nusti had no idea what those of the other seasons looked like, however, though he enjoyed imagining what strange and wonderful forms they might take.

He swivelled on his cot and placed his feet on the ground, wiggling his toes as they sank into the soft amber moss that covered the floor of their sleeping chamber. It was always his favourite part of waking up each year, and he smiled as the familiarity brought him comfort. His Nascent bobbed back and forth in front of him, and Nusti brushed his hand along its side, lightly stroking one or two of its leaves. The little ball seemed to shiver in contentment as he did, then slowly moved away to investigate one of the other sleeping faeries.

Standing from his cot and stretching his wings again, Nusti turned his head from side to side as he carefully checked them over. He had always been proud of his wings, particularly the bold contrast between the black veins and edges, and the vibrant cells that gave them their distinctive gold and orange colour. They trembled and flicked as he stretched the muscles that controlled them, and he let out a contented little sigh; it felt good to move them again after a long sleep.

That was the other thing that bothered Nusti: he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that he’d slept for a lot longer than usual. Such a thing was impossible, of course, but he certainly felt groggier than he normally did when waking up. Perhaps the elders would have a view when they awoke; they were certainly the wisest amongst his people, and though he’d never heard of a faery having trouble emerging from the Great Sleep, if anyone would know it would be them. If they ever wake up, he thought, stepping away from his cot.

Nusti strolled through the chamber for a short while with his Nascent in tow, passing by various cots full of his sleeping brethren. The little ball of leaves occasionally moved curiously towards one or other of the faeries, but always returned before Nusti got too far. Not one of them showed signs of stirring and, as the minutes went by, he felt himself beginning to panic. No faery had ever been awake on their own for this long before, and he wasn’t yet old enough to know what he should do in a situation like this. There should have been elders and wardens awake to take charge, but there was nobody. He was all alone, and he needed help...

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