How the Season Faded
IN THE warmth of summer, the forest remained cool and shadowed, removed from the brilliance of the clear skies and the heat of the day by the tangle of branches and the profusion of the leaves. The Hart had taken dominion over the forest’s vastness at the Summer Solstice, releasing the Bear from the task of stewardship. This year there was a chill in the air, a cold at the back of the wind that promised a hard winter ahead. More noticeable in the shade of the forest than in the warm glare of open lands: Beyond the trees the ploughed fields presaged a bountiful harvest, one that would provide sustenance for all through the lean months of winter.
But within the depths of the forest another harvest was taking place, this one as deadly as the orchards and fields were life-sustaining. Misgiving haunted the Hart as he made his stately way through the sun-spangled glades and tremendous thickets and huge groves of oak and yew and beech and willow and ash, for he could sense the forest was changing; something stirred within it that would forever change it. Already it seemed less familiar to the Hart than it had during his tenure the previous year, and that brought an apprehension that dismayed him. Never in all his reign had the Hart wanted the Boar to hurry his coming, but now, with the forest alive with sinister whispers, he would not have protested surrendering his sway before the Autumnal Equinox, a time that on this glorious summer afternoon seemed terribly, terribly distant.