Cold

Cold—yes, absolute cold— enveloped me in a way that was not quite comfortable, but not altogether unwelcome either. Every year, it happens this way… Ferrier would arrive as the last leaves fell and, just behind him, the cold would come whistling through the trees in swirling little cyclones, flurries of snow and ice and deep darkness. The biting wind carried with it the failures and regrets of the past year, highlighting all that we’d left undone in sparkling white peaks and glassy frozen encasements. Ferrier stood outside at the first snowfall in head-to-toe black wool, his arms open wide as if summoning the winter himself, beckoning the brittle branches of trees to freeze and creak, allowing the air to chill us all to the very depths of our bones.

The children would say that it was he who brought the winter; it was Ferrier who called upon the ice and snow that draped our sleepy little town in white blankets of silence. However, it was the winter, rather, that brought Ferrier. And it was the winter that would, eventually, usher him to his death.

I was but a patron of the Inn the day Ferrier was swept into town that fateful year. I recall the doors swinging open with a burst of blistering cold, the icy wind dancing at my ankles and searching the layers of my petticoats. I also recall, as if it were yesterday, the woolen-hooded figure poised in the open doorway, his black cloak speckled with tiny snowflakes which melted rapidly as if they were afraid to be seen. The snow was already falling—Ferrier was late.

“Aye,” exclaimed the Innkeeper, an elderly gentleman with one glass eye. “Welcome, Mr. Ferrier.” The old man raised a half-empty glass of piss-yellow ale into the air and the other two-dozen patrons of the Inn lifted theirs in accordance. “Welcome the frosty cold of winter.”

I mumbled and lifted my own glass to my lips. I hated winter. Still do, maybe even more so now than ever. Ferrier shuffled across the swollen wood floor and placed himself in a seat at the counter right next to me.

“Evening,” I said.

“Mmph,” Ferrier replied.

The Innkeeper set a sloshing tankard in front of the traveler and Ferrier finished it quickly. All the while, I stared ahead at my own glass, its contents unchanging. My hands, I noticed, were trembling, though I did not fear Ferrier.

“Another?” asked the Innkeeper.

“Mmph,” said Ferrier. He reached over and took my drink in his hands and finished it.

Appalled, I turned to face him. I took the empty glass from his hand and set it heavily on the counter.

“I paid for that,” I said.

Ferrier seemed to chuckle. I could see his crooked smile in the shadow of his hood.

“I am not afraid of you,” I said.

“Ehh.”

I frowned at him. “My name is Iris.”

“Ferrier.” He coughed.

“I know who you are.”

His enormous hands pushed the hood back to reveal his face. I held my breath; I’d never seen Ferrier’s face before. What I saw left much to be desired. He appeared as an average man with a salty beard and outgrown hair. But there was something about his eyes; the white-blue of a frozen pond.

A chill shot up my spine when his silver eyes landed on me. I caught myself thinking that, perhaps, he was the harbinger of winter after all. Maybe, I thought, he was winter itself.

Ferrier finished another glass of ale and immediately stood to lumber out of the Inn, ushered by another gust of cold air and snow flurries. I watched him go, holding my breath, and sighed in relief when the door swung closed. But, from that moment forward, I could not stop thinking about him, nor could I erase the image of his eyes from my mind.

I walked home that night with no intention of ever seeing Ferrier again. And I didn’t see him for quite some time. His home for the season rested in the hills of the lush Viridian forest. I resided in a small house in the valley—luckily miles away from where Ferrier would lay his head throughout the winter.

As time went, I thought less and less about Ferrier, focusing solely on keeping wood in the fire and bread on the hearth. It was nearly two-and-a-half months into the blistering cold when I did see him again, on a fateful day that I would not soon forget. I remember every detail of that morning; the crackling of the hearth fire, the clean scent of cold and ice, the chill that pervaded my bones as I stepped out to see Ferrier standing like a scarecrow in the field behind my house. We simply gazed at each other across the snowy field, both unmoving. My heart pounded against my chest as if it were trying to escape, to run away and remove itself from the very presence of Ferrier. I finally rushed inside to load my rifle but when I returned out the back door, Ferrier was gone.

I stepped into my boots and wrapped a thick cloak around my shoulders before trudging out into the ice and snow. I trampled across the now barren fields into the woods beyond in search of the man, wondering just what it was he wanted from me and how it was he came to find my home. I searched for hours until the sun began to dip below the horizon and my feet were numb, my hands practically frozen around the barrel of the rifle. I decided to exit the woods near the lake and take the road home in hopes that it would save me from losing my toes to frostbite.

That’s when I saw him again… standing in the center of the frozen lake, statuesque as he was before while he’d loomed in my snowy fields.

“Ferrier!” I called out to him.

He did not answer, nor did he behave as if he’d heard me at all. I could not see his face beneath the hood of his cloak, but I knew that he was looking right at me. In my mind, I could see his silvery eyes—I could feel them on me.

“Ferrier,” I called again, “what are you doing out there?”

Slowly, he raised his hand and beckoned me forward. I shook my head, but my feet shuffled forward a few steps. The wind picked up all around me and blew my hood back away from my face, tousled my hair and chilled my cheeks.

“Come to shore,” I called to him, “before you fall in. The ice is too thin!”

Again, he beckoned me forward. I sighed, thinking of the perfect cup of tea I’d left at home and the loaf of bread that I’d left to cool on the table. I could be at home, I thought, reading by the warmth of the fire. But I was, instead, out here in the cold, hollering at this bewildering stranger.

“Join me,” I heard him say. The wind carried his voice softly across the frozen water. “We shall rest in eternal winter.”

“Are you mad?” I called back. I took one step onto the lake and heard something beneath my feet—the low, reverberating sound of thick ice cracking. “Ferrier, get off the ice!”

I watched then as his dark figure disappeared, plunging through the surface of the ice and into the freezing water below. My legs began to carry me before my mind had processed what was happening. I ran as fast as I could across the lake toward the spot where I’d seen him standing, calling his name loudly as I went, my voice cracking and echoing across the lake.

I fell to my knees when I felt the ice shake below me, trembling as it cracked apart somewhere nearby. I crawled over the ice, swiping at the snow covering it, searching for a sign of Ferrier. I could not see the hole through which he fell, nor were there any footprints in the snow. Still, I continued to search, screaming his name all the while, until I saw something beneath the surface. Through the darkness of the water, I saw a pair of white-blue eyes staring up at me.

I wielded my rifle and slammed the butt of it into the ice over and over, attempting to break a hole in it, but it was too thick. I moved a few feet to my right and tried again, but it was useless. The eyes drifted down into the depths until they had disappeared and, as he drifted farther into the deep, I could have sworn that he was smiling.

I sat catching my breath for a moment, wondering what I should do. The ravaging wind whipped the snow through the air; I could see nothing but white all around me. Aside from the whistling wind, there was nothing but silence. Something dark lay in the snow a few yards away from me and I carefully crawled toward it across the snowy lake. When I reached the shadowed heap, I found that it was Ferrier’s cloak, soaking wet and frozen nearly solid.

Slowly, I gathered the cloak and my rifle and made my way back across the lake to the road. I walked straight home and hung the cloak near the hearth fire. After dinner, when my bones had finally been warmed by hot coals and stew, I touched the cloak to find that it was dry. In the pocket of Ferrier’s cloak, I found a small piece of paper that had been folded and rolled and pinched too many times to be considered paper anymore; it was soft like fabric as I unrolled it.

In stark black ink was written a name; Iris Ferrier.

I tossed the paper into the fire and pulled the cloak around my shoulders, shrouding myself in an impossible cold. As I stood before the window of my tiny home, gazing out at the gray sky, I thought it must be time to go. Yes—it was time to leave this sleepy town… and to take the winter with me.