Shadowsong (Wintersong #2)(59)

Harmless, the townspeople reassured each other as they passed by his shop in the market square. Eccentric.

The wheelwright was a young widower—more youth than man—and his wife had been one of the unfortunate victims of the Great Winter the year previous, when the snow had brought with it wolves, worry, and woe. A beautiful woman, the wheelwright’s wife’s cheeks had flamed with youth and vitality, until the fire he treasured about her burned her up from the inside. Fever, fast and furious, first devoured her lungs and then the rest of her, taking with it not only the wheelwright’s wife, but the unborn child within.

She had been one of the lucky ones. Sickness had carried her off, but the wolves had taken the others.

Grief buried the town as deep as the snowdrifts, lingering long after the spring thaw flooded the streets with emotion. The wolves had retreated along with the ice, but the beasts had left their mark. A wife here, a son there, a daughter, a grandfather, a grandchild—their absences as noticeable as a missing tooth in what had once been a long row of families whole and hale. Some soothed the pain with the usual balms—drink, whores, and God—but the wheelwright’s madness was particular.

It began with the shadows, the smudges in the corners.

Tsk, tsk, tutted the wives, seeing what they took for soot on the floor of his shop.

Be kind, responded their husbands. He’s lost his wife.

Be strong, their wives retorted. Life goes on.

The wheelwright ignored their whispers, ignored their words. By day he fixed their wheels, but at night he built an empire of trinkets and toys. He carved and cut, he whittled and whistled, and slowly, from scraps of wood, he founded a fantastic fairyland of goblins and bears and wolves and forests.

It was the children who noticed them first. As their parents conducted their business with the wheelwright, they picked up the goblins and bears and wolves from the scrap pile and played with them on the sawdust-and dirt-covered floor. Their parents saw only the smudges in the corner, grown now into piles of earth, loam, and the grasping, spidery roots of dead trees. But the children saw a kingdom of the possible in the wheelwright’s discarded scraps of imagination, and the wheelwright, the memory of childhood still clinging to his face, brought himself down to their level and played.

At first the townspeople were charmed and not a little sympathetic by the wheelwright’s childlike behavior. A good father, they agreed, he will make a good father someday. But the longer the wheelwright lingered in the realm of make-believe, the less enchanting his behavior seemed to be. The figurines he carved, at first so exquisite, now seemed grotesque, less the work of a man yearning for children than a man stunted.

The madness grew larger than the shadows in the corner. It was no longer possible to enter the wheelwright’s shop; dirt covered every inch of the floor, dead branches and twigs creeping in through the windows and doors. And still the wheelwright continued to carve, adding to his collection of figurines stories that matched their outlandish shapes. Half men, half bears, wolves with human eyes, goblins shaped like alder trees.

Soon even the children came to dismiss him. They liked the wheelwright’s stories, and they especially liked his toys, but the man himself made them uncomfortable. He played with them, but he was not one of them. He was too old, despite the lost look in his eyes, the look of a child abandoned. The look of an orphan. One by one, the children stopped coming to his shop and one by one, his figurines disappeared, down dirty shirtfronts and little trouser pockets. The wheelwright was left alone once more.

So when he brought tales of a ghost boy in the woods, no one was surprised. The wheelwright was lonely after all; the Great Winter had stolen his wife, his unborn child, and his parents in one fell swoop.

Just another sign of his madness, they said, eyeing the dirt now spilling from the wheelwright’s windows, doorways, and lintels. Another symptom of a mind gone awry.

The ghost child was marvelous, or so the wheelwright claimed. A boy, a fine specimen of a lad, with wolflike grace and eyes of two different hues. We must find him, the wheelwright said. We must save him. Spurred on by his passionate pleas, searchers combed the forest far and wide for any sign of a human child in the wild, but there was nothing—not a scrap of hide nor hair.

After weeks of fruitless forays into the forest, the townspeople had had enough.

It is time, they said, to lay the wheelwright to rest. Let him be given unto God, where he might find solace and healing.

The church prepared a bed and the good burghers of the town marched in on the wheelwright’s shop, where none had set foot for days. There was more than dirt and grime covering the windows and doorways; there were vines, roots, and dead trellis roses crawling over the walls like spidery bruise veins.

No one had heard the spectral hoofbeats pounding for days.

The townspeople called the wheelwright’s name, but no one answered. They knocked, they pounded, they pleaded, but there was nothing. Nothing but muffled, ominous silence.

When at last they were able to break down the door, the townspeople found not a shop but a tomb. The wheelwright’s shop was filled to the brim with dirt and loam and leaves and twigs—and the strange sight of scarlet poppies scattered like drops of blood amidst the decay and decrepitude. But the strangest sight of all, surrounded by the fractured figurines of bears who walked like men and wolves with men’s faces, was a little boy with hair the color of snow and eyes of two different hues.