A Wintersfest Carol

     Bostitch was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. 
      Solarrin knew he was dead? Of course he did! But this must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story. 
      Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Solarrin! A cruel, sadistic, pompous, avaricious, villainous old sinner. No warmth could warm him. Nobody ever stopped him in the street with gladsome looks. 
      But what did Solarrin care? It was the very thing he liked. 
      Once upon a time, on Wintersfest Eve, Solarrin sat busy in his mage’s house. The door between his study and the smaller chamber was open, that he might make stingily sure that his clerk didn’t use more than the single powerstone allotted him. 
      The outer door flung open, admitting a swirl of snow and the shaggy shape of a wardog, his saddle adorned with jingling silver bells and his collar tied with a wide red ribbon for the occasion. 
      The wardog’s rider cried in a cheerful voice, “A happy Wintersfest, uncle! The gods be with you!” 
      “Bah,” said Solarrin. “Humbug. Happy Wintersfest, indeed; what right have you to be happy? You have no magic at all.” 
      “What right have you to be dismal?” his nephew replied cheekily. “You have more magic than you know what to do with. Come, dine with Elsanni and me tomorrow!” 
      “When Haarkon goes dancing at the Lord’s Retreat,” Solarrin said sourly. “Be off with you. Some of us have work to do. It’s the price we pay for having superior minds. The ignorant can afford to be idle. In my mind, every mindless slacker who goes about with Happy Wintersfest on his lips should be boiled in his own cider and buried with a stake of evergreen through his heart.” 
      “Ah, well, I tried. Be as you will, uncle; I’ll keep my Wintersfest humor to the last. And a very happy holiday to you as well, Master Donnell.” He doffed his jaunty cap as Solarrin’s clerk rose to get the door for him. 
      “Happy Wintersfest, Greyquin,” Donnell murmured. 
      “Hmph, there’s another,” Solarrin grumbled to himself. “My fool of an assistant. Fifteen marks a week, a wife and family, talking about a happy Wintersfest. They’d drive me to madness if they could.” 
      Donnell, letting Greyquin and Bear out, let two gentlemen in. Lord Taron and Lord Marl. Solarrin knew them both, and was pleased to see neither, and pleased even less when they told him of their mission of charity, charged by the Highlord himself to collect for the poor. 
      Solarrin set down his powerstone. “Are there no prisons? No poorhouses? What of the slave markets of Tradersport? Are these places no longer in operation? If the poor are in such misery, let them go to the places I’ve mentioned.” 
      “Many would rather die,” Taron said. 
      “If they would rather die, then they had better do it. You humans breed too rapidly anyhow. Good afternoon to you!” 
      Solarrin watched with satisfaction as the two lords departed into the gathering fog and snow. His mood was bittered by the knowledge that across all of Thanis, and throughout the Northlands, the irksome humans were celebrating. 
      Something scratched at the door, and when Solarrin opened it, he found a black drake perched on his stoop. The creature turned jewel-tone eyes up to him and began to croon a holiday melody. 
      *Gods rest ye, merry magelord sir —* 
      Solarrin snatched up his staff but the drake fled before he could deliver it a well-deserved smiting. 
      At last, the hour of closing arrived. Donnell eagerly shuttered his magically-lit lamp and took his cloak from the back of the door. 
      “And you ... you worthless wretch of an elf,” Solarrin growled. “You expect the day off tomorrow.” 
      “It is customary ...” Donnell began. “And only once a year ...” 
      “A poor excuse for cutting a body’s purse every winter.” He drew his fur-trimmed outer robe around himself, then pulled the hood down to the top of his bristly eyebrows. “Be here all the earlier the next day!” 
      Donnell so promised, and dashed off. Solarrin grunted in displeasure. He locked the door behind him, pulled his hood down even further and his scarf up until only his bulbous nose and the tuft of white and black beard at his chin were revealed. 
      Limping, his gnarled leg and club foot dragging in the snow, leaning heavily on his staff, Solarrin made his way through the streets of Thanis to his house. The building was as dark and gloomy as he himself. He lurched up the front steps and extended a frost-numbed hand. 
      Now, it is a fact that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. But tonight, just as the lock opened, Solarrin happened to glance at it, and saw Bostitch’s face. 
      Sharp, curving horns sprouted from a sloped, dull-witted brow. There was the befuddled expression so familiar to Solarrin. Breath like steam plumed from the wide nostrils. 
      And then it was a knocker again. 
 Solarrin shook his head, remonstrated himself for even letting himself think he saw what he thought he’d seen, and let himself in. 
      His rooms were sparse, plainly furnished. He hobbled about in his dressing gown, not needing to worry himself over dinner for a foul-smelling elixir in a silver flask was all that he needed to sustain him. Later, he sat by the fire with a book of sinister spells, and was utterly engrossed when his ear was disturbed by the sound of clanking. 
      A figure passed like smoke through the door. Bostitch in his loincloth and thick belt of studded leather, his horns tipped with bronze, bearing a chain made of swords and axes, helms and shields, bits of battered armor. 
      A necromancer himself, Solarrin wasn’t perturbed at all by the notion of spirits. He wasted no time debating with himself, trying to blame this odd vision on any gastrointestinal cause. But this spirit in particular chilled him, and moreso when it began to speak. 
      “Little man!” Bostitch wailed. “Little man is bad! Make big chain for self of bad things little man do! Not nice to people. Now is in big trouble. Three ghosts come. One when clock goes bong once tomorrow, others after.” 
      “Humbug. Ridiculous,” Solarrin said. “I’m not planning to summon any spirits tomorrow.” 
      “Little man better watch out,” Bostitch warned dolorously as he floated backwards toward the wall. “Still time to be little nice man instead of little mean man.” 
      Solarrin sniffed scornfully. As the spirit disappeared through the wall, he closed his book and laughed bitterly. 
      “Ghosts, indeed! They’ll find that my powers are more than a match for any pitiful earthbound spirits!” 
      On that note, he went to bed. 
      He awakened much later to the chiming of a single hour, and a spill of light through the shutters of his bedroom window. Solarrin irritably swept aside the curtains, readying a spell, and found himself face to face with his unearthly visitor. 
      His hair, which floated around his head and prominently pointed ears, was the color of truesilver. The eyes were a shade or two darker. He wore a tunic of the purest white bound with a lustrous belt. He held evergreen boughs, winter flowers crowned his elegant brow, and a shifting radiance emanated from him like the glow of the moon. 
      “So you’re the first of Bostitch’s ghosts,” Solarrin said, unimpressed. 
      “I am the Spirit of Wintersfest Past,” the elf-visaged specter said in a velvety, nobly-accented voice. “I am come for your welfare and reclamation.” 
      “Imagine how enthralled I am.” Solarrin jerked his bedcurtains shut. 
      A pale hand whipped them aside and closed insubstantially but firmly on Solarrin’s arm. “I’m afraid I must insist.” 
      Solarrin laughed. “You think to order me? Me? I am Solarrin, Archmage of the Universe, master of dark magics!” 
      “This night, you are but Solarrin,” the elf-spirit said. A faint smile touched his lips. “You have no power over me.” 
      Before he could do more than begin to sputter in outrage and protest, Solarrin found himself lifted by an unseen force and borne out the window. He sailed along in the grip of his ghostly guide, his dressing gown billowing around his misshapen legs. 
      Mere moments later, they touched down in a field near a rearing plateau of stone pockmarked with caves and tunnels. Solarrin’s eyes grew very large. 
      “Gnome Keep,” he whispered. “I was a boy here!” 
      A group of thick-furred dogs swept past, not wardogs these but standard beasts of conveyance, and to his deep shock, Solarrin was able to name every young gnome astride them. They were riding away from a long, low, sod-roofed dugout of a building, shouting Wintersfest well-wishes to one another. 
      “The school is not quite deserted,” the elf-spirit said, pulling Solarrin inexorably onward. “A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.” 
      “Spare me the sentimentality,” Solarrin said. “They were never friends to neglect me. They loathed me for my brilliance. Even before I discovered my magic, they knew I was above them.” 
      The spirit shook his head sadly, and the world whirled around Solarrin. Now he found himself staring at a house, and the spirit asked him if he knew this place. 
      “Know it? I was apprenticed here!” 
      They went in. There at the desk was a human man whose youthful appearance could not conceal an aura of age and wisdom. 
      “Why, it’s Talus Yor!” Solarrin said. 
      The man called out, and two apprentices hurried in. The one at the rear was Solarrin, barely out of adolescence but still unhandsome, ungainly. 
      “No more work tonight!” Talus Yor announced merrily, clapping his hands. “Wintersfest Eve! Clear away, my lads, and make ready! Tonight we feast and dance until Helia shows her rosy blushing cheek!” 
      The other apprentice fell to with a right good effort, while Solarrin stomped about and did as little as possible. Soon the room was filling with people, lights, music, food, and jolliment. There were dances, forfeits, stolen kisses, sweets, wine, and riddling. Talus Yor was much at the center of the festivities, flirting with every lady and joking with every man. 
      “Why are you showing me this?” the elder Solarrin asked. “He would put us through this nonsense every year, squandering his money and his magic just to make these dolts happy.” 
      The spirit sighed. “My time grows short. Quickly, now.” He laid hold of Solarrin again, and now they saw yet another version of his younger self, this one black of beard and sinister of aspect, sitting beside yet worlds apart from a comely gnomish lass. 
      “Ranni.” The observing Solarrin spat the name as if it tasted bad in his mouth. 
      “You loved her once,” the spirit said softly. 
      “I wanted her,” Solarrin corrected. “She tormented me, mocked me, played her maiden’s games of sweet smiles and cruel words. It was a relief to be quit of her. I had my magic. I still fail to see why you must dredge up these wretched Wintersfests. Leave me! Take me back! Haunt me no more!” 
      “For all your cunning,” the elf-spirit said sorrowfully, “you have learned nothing.” 
      Solarrin’s retort went unheard as the air rushed around him. When his senses cleared, he was back in his bedroom, exhausted and irritated. He crawled into bed, muttered a few vile oaths, and went back to sleep. 
      The clock woke him again, once more chiming one o’clock. 
      “Cursed thing,” he groaned. And to think, Montennor craftsmanship was supposed to be the best. He hadn’t paid good coin for a clock that chimed the wrong hours. Either that, or he’d slept the whole turn of the day and night through, which he strenuously doubted. His various infirmities of body made that an impossibility. 
      Speaking of which ... he rose from the bed, tended to various matters, and was on his way back to the comfort of his blankets when he became aware of a golden-orange glow spreading along the floor. It seemed to be coming from under the door to his small living room. 
      He opened it, and stood agape. It was his room, but it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceilings were hung with swaths of vivid silk and flowered vines. Many little mirrors had been scattered about, reflecting back the light of the mighty blaze that roared in the fireplace. A bounty of decadent treats were heaped about, forming a couch upon which a vision reclined. 
      “Come in!” she purred invitingly, “Come in, and know me better, man!” 
      Solarrin was unable to take a single step, and his jaw was so far fallen that his white beard brushed the tips of his slippers. 
      “I am the Spirit of Wintersfest Present,” this sumptuously beautiful human-looking female said. “Look upon me!” 
      She was clothed in one simple deep green robe bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on her figure that her shape was nearly bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. On her head, she wore no other covering than a holly wreath set here and there with shining icicles. Her blonde curls were long and free, free as her luscious face, sparkling eyes, open hand, silken voice, unconstrained demeanor, and joyful air. 
      “You have never seen the like of me before,” this spirit laughed throatily. 
      “And there is nothing I wish to learn from you!” Solarrin said, averting his eyes with a shudder as she trailed lazy fingers along her lush, abundant limbs. 
      “Poor thing. You have no choice.” She rose from her couch, hips swaying, and reached for him. 
      Solarrin bleated, a shameful sound akin to terror, and recoiled from her touch. To no avail. She clutched his arm just as her predecessor had done, and whisked him through the ceiling of his house. 
      There below him, Thanis lay in a wonderland of sun-bedazzled fresh snow. Wintersfest morning, all the bells in every temple ringing joyfully, the streets abuzz with delighted people rushing hither and yon with armsful of packages, to greet and smile and generally carry on in a manner that Solarrin found exceedingly sickening. 
      The woman-spirit led him straight to a humble home, stopping on the threshold to bless it with a kiss from her ruby-red lips. 
      “Whose house is this?” Solarrin demanded churlishly. 
      “Why, that of your overworked, underpleasured clerk, Donnell,” she replied. 
      And lo, it was true! There was Donnell’s wife, adorned in colorful but inexpensive ribbons. There his children, boys and girls tumbling over themselves like puppies in their excitement, yammering about how splendid the goose smelled, how grand a feast they were to have. A huge brood for an elven family, all of them thin but squealingly happy. 
      “They call that a feast?” Solarrin snorted at the sight of a goose that must have been the scrawniest and most beleaguered creature in the barnyard. 
      “Their pleasure in the day makes it so,” the spirit said. 
      Donnell came in then, his face red and chapped from the cold but his eyes bright. Upon his shoulder, he carried a tiny elf-boy, whose legs were shriveled and encased in braces. 
      Solarrin rubbed his own leg absently, his gaze fixed on the child. Donnell raved to his wife about what a perfect child their crippled youngster was, and soon all of them were sitting down to devour their scant meal. 
      “A happy Wintersfest to us all, my dears,” Donnell said. “May the gods bless us!” 
      “Gods bless us, every one,” the tiny boy chirped. 
      “Tell me, spirit,” Solarrin asked, “if the child will live.” 
      “I see a vacant seat in the poor chimney corner,” she said, distressed at having to relate such unpleasant tidings. “And a crutch without an owner. If these shadows remain unaltered, yes, the child will die.” 
      “Hmph,” Solarrin said, scratching his beard. 
      “But what then?” Now there was a biting edge to the spirit’s voice. “If he is to die, he had better do it —” 
      “Do not throw my own words back in my face,” Solarrin snarled. “Others have overcome frail bodies and crippled legs to achieve greatness. If the boy can, fine; if he cannot, he has no reason to live. It’s not as if he had any strong magics to speak of.” 
      Within, unaware, Donnell raised his glass in a toast to his employer, Solarrin, Founder of the Feast. His wife had many choice things to say on the subject, and Solarrin noted that much of the merriment went out of their meal after his name was mentioned. 
      The spirit escorted Solarrin on, past numerous other houses where Wintersfest was being enjoyed. Even by the poorest of the poor, the lowest of the low. Every hearth had at least a sprig of evergreen, every hovel had some good cheer. 
      She brought them to a halt in a cozy, gleaming room, where Solarrin’s nephew Greyquin and his bride Elsanni were jesting and gaming with a group of friends. So many gnomes, all smiling so broadly their faces seemed wont to split, all laughing so gaily the tears shone in their eyes. They laughed hardest of all when, in a riddling game, Greyquin got them to guess the identity of a certain loathsome, unwanted creature. Not a rat, not a roach, not even a goblin ... no, none other than his own uncle Solarrin! 
      “I have had my fill of this and more!” Solarrin said. “Take me home, spirit!” 
      She nodded in agreement, and it was then that he noticed something odd about the folds of her robe. How they partly concealed what seemed to be two small, abject, frightened and starving children. He regarded them for a moment, then looked up into the spirit’s hazel eyes as a lonely bell began to toll from the clocktower atop the Temple of Blackmoon. 
      “They are the world’s children,” she said by way of explanation. “Ignorance and Want. Doom is written upon their brows.” 
      “You should rid yourself of them,” he said in distaste. 
      “To where? The prisons, the poorhouses, the slave markets of Tradersport?” 
      His sharp retort froze on his lips, for the bell struck twelve. Midnight. The glorious spirit vanished and the miserable children with her, and Solarrin stood alone in a deserted, fogswept street. 
      No, not alone. A figure waited in the mouth of an alley where shadows were deepest. Tall and broadly built, shrouded in cloth of dusty and ancient black. A weapon, a five-headed flail, swung from its belt. 
      The hand that emerged from the draped sleeve was the size of a grown man’s head, scarred and callused. It beckoned. 
      “What’s this, no stopping back home first?” Solarrin muttered. He lurched toward the figure. During his travels with the previous two spirits, he had not noticed any chill or dampness; now, those things seemed to burrow into him and nest there. 
      “Oh, very well, let’s be done with it, shall we? I take it you’re the Spirit of Wintersfest Yet To Come. One needn’t be a Magelord to determine that. What fun-filled frolic have you to show me?” 
      The dread phantom moved, and Solarrin had no choice but to follow although his bad leg was howling with pain and he had no staff to support himself. 
      Soon they came to a group of men. Solarrin knew them, petty nobles all. They were chortling in mean spirits over the death of an unliked acquaintance, debating whether or not a provided meal would make attending his funeral worthwhile. They found each others’ remarks to be of the highest humor, then went their separate ways with vindictive joy. 
      Solarrin glanced up at the spirit, catching a glimpse of the hardened orckin warrior face beneath the cowl. No sooner had he done so that the spirit turned and led him onward. Onward and downward, through the Rings of Thanis to a disreputable tavern called the Empty Mug. 
      They entered not the tavern but the small, dingy shop next door. A low-browed, beetling place presided over by a grey-haired rascal with a black patch concealing one eye. 
      A woman slipped quietly into the shop. More girl than woman, on closer inspection, a creature of striking exotic beauty and quick, clever hands. A crossling by the look of her, elfkin. She was laden with a large bundle, which she set before the one-eyed man. 
      “Open it,” she offered, “and let me know the value of it!” 
      He did so, sifting through various small items such as an ink pot, a brooch of no great expense, some silver teaspoons, gloves and other articles of apparel. At the bottom of the bundle was a large drift of linens; the one-eyed man lifted them to see what they were and then grinned fiendishly. 
      “You don’t mean to tell me, kitten, that you took down his very bed curtains! With him lying there cold as a cod?” 
      “And his blankets too,” the young thief replied with an answering grin that brought sparkling light to her sapphire eyes. “It’s not as if he could catch much more of a chill!” 
      “Well, now,” chortled the one-eyed man. “He’s gone and given someone a profit, at any rate! Never did in life, that I’ll warrant, but at least you and I will have some good of him!” 
      “Villains!” Solarrin’s lip curled. 
      The orckin spirit motioned him away from that festering and unclean place. Solarrin looked around hopefully for his own chamber, wishing that this ghastly night would come to an end, but it seemed the spirits were not yet done with him. 
      The morgue was still and silent as befitted the antechamber to the tomb. A sheet-draped form lay upon a table, waiting the undertaker. Solarrin had no desire to look closely at it, so the spirit continued their journey until they were once more in front of Donnell’s house. 
      Solarrin knew what he was going to see, and was not wrong in his guess. The wife, trying to hide her weeping. The children, hushed for once, their faces stunned and hurting. And Donnell himself, coming home with slow, lifeless steps, his arms empty. Tears flowed like rain as the family recalled their youngest, now lost and never to grow any older. 
      Just when Solarrin could bear no more, the spirit took him to another place. A graveyard. Here, he knew, he would learn the name of the unmourned man whose life could have been a mirror of his own. 
      “Before I near that stone to which you point,” Solarrin said, “Answer me this. Are these the things that will be, or that may be only?” 
      The spirit extended its brawny arm at the grave. Its bare earth was only lightly frosted with snow; the earth was yet raw from the spade. The letters carved into the headstone were so fresh they might have just come from the chisel an hour ago. 
      And of course, the name was his own. 
      “I see,” he said. “Your lessons have shown me what you wished me to learn. Now take me home, spirit.” 
      He no sooner uttered the words than found himself on his own bed, surrounded by the curtains that had not yet been torn down. He pulled them apart and saw clean white light streaming through the shutters. The temple bells were all ringing, a chorus of peals and chimes such as might wake the dead. 
      He limped to the window and opened it. Bright morning greeted him, brisk wind stirred his beard and caressed his bald pate. 
      A drake was perched on the windowbox below, and cringed away in alarm as it caught sight of Solarrin leaning out the window. 
      “You there, drake,” he called. “What’s today?” 
      *Today?* the drake warbled in surprise. *Why, ’tis Wintersfest Day!* 
      “Wintersfest Day,” Solarrin said to himself. “I haven’t missed it. The spirits did it all in one night.” In a louder voice, he said, “Hello, drake?” 
      *Hello?* the drake said in all curiosity. 
      “Do you know the poulterer’s in the next block? The one with the prize turkey in the window?” 
      *What, the one twice as big as me?* 
      “What a delightful creature,” Solarrin said. “Yes, that’s the one!” 
      *I know it,* the drake said, rising eagerly in anticipation. 
      “Then go and perch there, you unkempt reptile, and quit dirtying my window!” He swatted the drake hard as he could with the whisk-broom he kept by the fireplace. 
      The drake squawked and tumbled, landing with a puff of granules in a snowbank. 
      “What a revolting night I’ve spent,” Solarrin said to himself as he closed and latched the window. “What would they have had of me? Change my ways? Repent my evil deeds? Wax generous to that idiot Donnell and his unwashed, runny-nosed brood? I suppose they would have me become as a second father to that pathetic sickly boychild. Give of my magic to help others. Did the spirits think to drive me mad? Hah!” 
      And so Solarrin dressed, and went about his business ... 
      ... but before he left the house, he took down the door knocker and threw it in a rubbish bin.