Allegon and the Green Man

The snow blustered, swirling thick as wool through the air. Allegon staggered through the forest like a man blindfolded, blundering into tree branches and stumbling over fox holes. A gust of wind like an arrow strike drove him to his knees; cold immediately seeped into his bones, winter’s skeletal hand reaching to pull him toward his grave. Allegon struck a gloved fist into the snow with an angry shout. His panting breaths raised clouds of freezing condensation, every swallow of air like a handful of needles down his throat. Despite the misery of his circumstances, Allegon grit his teeth in an expression more grin than grimace, for the object of his quest must be near. Never in the long course of his search for the king’s scepter had Winter thrown such might against him.

Allegon raised his head. The fire of determination might fuel his body, but it would likely prove an insufficient weapon against his elemental enemy. The tracks of his blundering movements were already obscured by drifting snow. How was a man to locate anything within a landscape covered in this cold, dingy shroud?

A ray of sunlight stabbed the dark gray clouds; Allegon squinted through the glare. His mouth dropped open as he saw, in the woods ahead, a woman beckoning. Allegon struggled to his feet. With lurching lunges, he pushed through the snow, wondering how she, too, had found herself wandering in these woods. As he drew nearer, the clouds’ sunlight wound healed, turning the world dim again, and he saw he’d been rushing toward a tree. Allegon looked about in astonishment. The lady had been a mirage created by light fracturing through the snowflakes on his eyelashes, said his mind, but his heart insisted she’d been real.

“You’re not the old man.”

Allegon fell into a stumbling spin at the feminine voice. There had been a woman! Where? He could still see nothing but shades of white and gray in the surrounding woodland.

“Though you are old.”

The howling wind circled about him, making her seem everywhere and nowhere, as if she played him a game of Blind Man’s Bluff. The wind’s frigid scream brought a whisper of feminine laughter to his ears.

“I am not so old,” Allegon protested the rude remark.

“Your beard is white.” Her voice, incongruously sing-song, held a touch of petulance, as if she resented the correction.

“Rimed with frost.” Allegon shielded his eyes with his hand, trying to penetrate the veil of snow. “But where are you?”

The screen of snowflakes between them suddenly parted like a curtain. Allegon gasped. She stood barefoot in the snow, clad carelessly in a breezy yellow-green dress, her arms bare. Though she bore the figure of a woman, the eyes regarding Allegon were wide and bold as a child’s. Within that green gaze lurked a gray tempest. Gold lay like sunlight upon her lashes.

“Who … what are you?” Allegon asked, for no mortal creature could have survived with such scant protection from the cold in a storm such as this.

She smiled as if pleased to be recognized, flourishing the hem of her flimsy skirt. “I am Spring.”

Allegon bowed. He had learned respect for womankind from his father and mother, and for creatures of elemental magic from painful experience.

“I am honored to have met you, Lady Spring. My name is Allegon.”

At his formal address, she bounced, sprite-like, on her toes and clasped her hands to her throat in delight.

“You are no old man at all,” Spring said. “You are as fine a man as I ever met.”

Allegon’s chapped lips turned up at her childlike candor. “Do you meet many out here in the forest?”

“A few. Woodsmen.” Her verdant stare turned abruptly canny as she marked the strident bearing beneath his snow-covered attire. “You are no woodsman.”

“No.” Allegon agreed. “I am on a quest to find a lost scepter.”

“Scepter?” She tilted her head like a robin and gestured to the surrounding wilderness. “What a strange place to look for such a thing. Can it be any sort of scepter?”

Spring picked up a broken branch. Holding it aloft, her face screwed into an expression of mock-regality. Pink flowers burst into bloom upon the crown of the limb.

An angry gust suddenly tore across and ripped Spring’s blossoms from the bough, carrying the petals away in a flurry. Spring shrieked, running to Allegon as a boom like the heavy step of a giant sounded from the mountains beyond the trees.

“Winter’s champion, the old man.” She scowled, but cowered beneath Allegon’s arm. “How he hounds me whenever I enter the valley. It isn’t fair.” Her gray gaze flashed up toward the mountain. “It’s my turn. It’s been my turn. Winter should have long given way.”

“Until the king is restored,” Allegon revealed gravely, “Winter has rule of the land.”

“The king is restored?” Spring pouted. “How? From what?”

“By the return of his scepter. The king trusted foolish people with it,” Allegon’s brow lowered and his nostrils flared, “and when the symbol of his authority was lost, a curse was laid upon the valley. The fault, I’m afraid, is mine.”

With the snow drifting between them, Spring’s expression took on the aspect of a sage as she regarded Allegon.

“Come with me,” she said abruptly.

Spring took off like a young hart. Allegon pursued her with a clumsy gait through snow-bound thickets and trees.

She came to a stop at the edge of a small clearing. “Here,” Spring said, pointing. “Beneath the ice.”

Allegon blinked at her for a moment before understanding dawned. Then he knelt upon the snow and cleared it away with wide strokes of his arms. The winter wind howled furiously, but the pond was sheltered by thick evergreens, and the snow couldn’t keep up with Allegon’s determined shoveling.

Standing upon the ice, clear as glass, Allegon caught his breath and stared open-mouthed at the scepter encased at the bottom of the pond.

Allegon stomped his foot. The ice remained solid as steel.

“No!” Spring cried as he lifted his boot for another stamp. Allegon turned to her with a look of puzzlement. “It’s deep. Deeper than it looks.”

“I can swim,” Allegon dismissed, crushing his heel against the ice to no avail.

“It’s too cold. You will die.”

The king’s scepter glittered gold on a bed of drifting yellow grass on the bottom of the pond. Allegon’s throat tightened. The object of his quest, so close, yet so impossibly out of reach.

Allegon turned to Spring. Her eyes searched his with womanlike speculation as he took her hand.

“Spring,” he said gently. “Can you melt the ice?”

“I can,” she answered. “I think I can. But I could not unfreeze the pond and warm you afterward. Do you understand?”

Allegon nodded. “I bear a responsibility that outweighs my life. My people have been suffering Winter’s vengeance for too long. You must return to the valley, Spring.”

Her lips slowly curled like an unfurling shoot. As her hand slipped from his, steam rose to fill the forest clearing. Allegon felt his feet sink slowly, slowly, then he suddenly plunged into the frigid water.

Spring stepped back to sit upon a rock. An avalanche roared in the mountains. The old man was coming for her. She’d made him more than mad this time.

Allegon remained submerged for long moments. Finally, the gold scepter emerged, followed by the man. He crawled to the bank of the pond to lay gasping and shivering. Spring crept to him and laid her hand upon his head. A golden glow shone around his brow. King Allegon sighed at the comforting warmth, but it was too little to save him. His shivering ceased moments later.

The fearsome crashing of trees and wind and snow announced his arrival. Two towering evergreens came tearing up by their roots as the old man pulled them apart to enter the clearing.

The frost giant loomed over Spring, glaring at her from beneath eyebrows like ice-encrusted thorn bushes. At the sight of Allegon and the scepter, his angry shout shook the treetops.

Spring stood, willowy and unconcerned as a sapling as the tempest rolled into her eyes. At her bidding, life teemed beneath the surface, ready to burst forth at her command. Lightning flashed beneath her golden lashes.

“Howl and rage as you like, old man,” Spring told the furious elemental. “I have my own champion now.”

Behind her, the Green Man rose, a scepter of gold in his hand and a crown of laurel upon his head.