To anyone who found their way here looking for Neil Gaiman's Calendar of
Tales: I'm sorry to disappoint you. This is just a random person online
taking his idea and his questions, and doing her own Calendar of Tales.
You're more than welcome to stay and read my story too if you have a few minutes to spare, though I have
to warn you, I am definitely no Neil Gaiman.
Here's how this
works: I asked a question. People answered the question. I used one of
the answers to write a short story based on it.
_______________________________________
What mythical creature would you like to meet in October? Why?
I’d love to walk through the golden birch tree forest to meet a dryad and talk about our wonderful seasons. (answer from Retu)
Summer
She didn’t want to move, but it wasn’t like she had a choice. If her parents moved, she moved. Especially when they moved so far away. She had tried to stay behind. She had suggested she could stay with one of the aunts or grandma or someone for the year, and then she would graduate and could go live alone. But her parents wanted her to come along. It would be good for her to go to a school where she could learn some ice magic for a while, or whatever. As if she wanted to learn ice magic.
At least they had moved during the summer. She had heard of the winters in the far north, where water froze to snow and ice, the sun never shone and nature simply stopped. At least for now it was green, sunny, and warm, and she had some time to get used to being far away from her friends and everything else she had ever known before the cold hit.
That said, she was bored out of her mind. There was nothing to do. Usually she would be out somewhere with her friends, but there weren’t any friends here, like there was nothing else interesting either.
“Well, you can go outside,” her mother said in an offhand way, clearly too busy emptying a box into the kitchen cupboard to truly pay attention to her complaints. “There’s a big forest close by. Go take a walk.”
So she did. The forest was easy to find. She picked a path at random, hoped she would find her way back and simply started walking. For a moment she just marched forwards, giving her feet something to do, but after a while she couldn’t help but start looking around. The forest was actually quite nice, even if she didn’t really recognise any of the plants. The ground was covered in moss and subshrubs, the trees around her mostly white-trunked and straight, but there were some others too, all of them unfamiliar. She could hear birds, though she recognised none of the calls, and there were squirrels running up and down the trees. It had rained last night, and that made the whole forest smell earthy and alive.
She walked a little farther, truly looking around now, until she came to a big stone on the side of the path. The sun was shining right onto it, and the moss made it look almost a soft place to sit. It was a pretty spot, so she climbed onto the stone and sat down.
She closed her eyes and simply felt the forest around her. The sun was warm on her face and bare arms, the birds chirping in the trees. There was a woodpecker somewhere in the distance. Insects buzzed around her. The stone was rough beneath her hands and legs. It smelled warm, and the forest smelled green, with a hint of wild flowers.
“Hi!” came a voice, and she opened her eyes. There was a girl standing next to her stone. She was about her age, her skin a light brown and her hair dyed a leafy green color, her flowing summer dress a matching color. She hadn’t heard the girl approach.
“Hi,” she said, not knowing how to react to this stranger in the woods talking to her.
“You look happy,” the girl said. “But also kind of lonely. Can I join you?”
She nodded and made space for the girl on her rock. For a while they sat there in silence, listening and watching and feeling the forest around them.
“Can I ask?” she finally said. “Who are you?”
“Rowan,” the girl said.
“That’s a kind of tree, right?” she asked. The girl nodded. “Are there any here?”
The girl pointed.
“Well, at least you look a lot more like a rowan than I look like a willow,” she said. “Hi, my name is Willow. Because my parents liked that name, for a reason I’ll never understand.”
Rowan eyed her for a moment.
“You’re right. You don’t look much like a willow. More like a maple, maybe.”
After a second of silence they both burst out laughing.
“So you live around here?” Willow asked after she was able to catch her breath again. She already liked Rowan. Maybe, just maybe, she had found someone who could be a friend, and who lived somewhere close.
Rowan pointed to the direction of the rowan again.
“How far?” Willow had the time to ask before she realised Rowan wasn’t pointing in the direction of the rowan. She was pointing at it. “Wait, you live in the rowan? You’re a dryad?”
“Yeah,” Rowan said, “I thought that was obvious.”
Now that Willow was really looking at her, it was.
“It is,” she admitted. “You just look different than the dryads I know, so I didn’t realise at first. I’m not from here. I’m from a lot farther south. The dryads look different there.”
Rowan nodded.
“So why are you here now?” she asked.
“My family moved,” Willow told her. “I didn’t want to, but I had to. We’ve been here two days and I already don’t like it. I don’t know anyone from here, and I know it’s going to get really cold during the winter. I’m pretty sure I’ll like it even less when it’s cold.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Rowan said with a huge grin on her face. “We’ll get you to like it here, winter and all.”
Fall
“Be back for dinner!”
Her mom’s voice barely reached Willow before the door closed behind her and she was racing down the stairs. It was cool outside. It always was, these past couple of weeks. The days were getting shorter with a speed Willow hadn’t even thought possible before now, and the first leaves in the trees had started to change color from green to yellow and red and orange. She would have liked to stop the turn of seasons right there until it was spring.This was cold enough for her.
She was running along the path, almost out of breath by the time she made it to the stone that had become her and Rowan’s spot. Rowan was waiting for her, her bare feet swinging off the side of the huge stone.
“Hey, you,” Rowan said as she saw her.
“Hi, sorry I’m late. Mom insisted I do my spellcasting homework before I come out.”
“That’s ok. We’re not in a hurry.”
“Well, I do have to go back by dinner,” Willow said, climbing to sit next to her on the stone. She was about to say something more, but the words slipped from her mind as she looked at Rowan.
“There’s a streak of red in your hair,” she said instead. Rowan’s hair had stayed the same bright, lively green all summer, but now there was a faint streak of red in the midst of the green.
“Yeah,” Rowan said after a brief pause, clearly confused about the comment, like it was obvious there would be red in her always green hair.
Willow’s eyes found Rowan’s rowan behind her friend. The first of the leaves had the same hints of red as Rowan’s hair.
“Your hair is changing with the tree,” she blurted.
“Oh. Yes,” Rowan agreed. “Of course it does.”
“I didn’t know that happened,” Willow said, suddenly embarrassed. “How did I not know that happened?”
“It doesn’t happen far south,” Rowan consoled her. “If the tree stays green, so does the dryad.”
“So what happens when the leaves fall? You’ll spend all winter bald?” Willow tried to make it a joke, but Rowan simply nodded.
“And asleep,” she added.
“And… Wait, what? No.”
“The trees go dormant for the winter. They wouldn’t survive otherwise. The same for us.”
“You’re going to leave me alone for the entire winter?”
“It’s not in my control.”
“We… we can take your rowan inside! It’s warm there, and there’s light, and you can stay awake.”
“No, we can’t. Because the tree is big. And because that would cut the roots. And because the soil around the roots is kind of important.
“But…”
“Willow,” Rowan took her hands and looked deep into her eyes. There was a twinkle in Rowan’s eyes that normally made Willow smile. Not today. “This is just the way it is. You can’t change it. I’ll be awake for a long while still, and I will be back in the spring. You will be fine.”
Willow nodded, a lump in her throat.
After that, Rowan changed fast. Every time Willow saw her her hair and dress were a little more red and brown, her eyes a little more tired. But she still kept being her bright self, and the twinkle in her eyes never completely disappeared. They spent a lot of time walking through the forest, which was now a golden yellow with some orange and red and brown splashed in, smelling of dead leaves and wet earth.
It was Rowan’s favorite time of the year: “It’s so green for such a long time, it gets boring. Now it’s finally all the colors all at once!”
Willow had to admit the forest was more beautiful this way.
It got colder, and Rowan started to get visibly sleepy.
“Sometimes I wish I was human,” she told Willow. “I like it when it’s chilly outside, and the air is crisp and clear and fresh, but I also kind of wish after a good walk I could go inside and get warm and cozy with you.”
And she was right, Willow thought those things were kind of great. Even if Rowan couldn’t go inside with her.
“When winter comes, you have to go skating. And sledding,” Rowan encouraged her once. “You’re going to love it. Just remember to wear enough layers and you won’t be cold. And in the spring, I want you to tell me all about it. I’ve always wanted to go skating.”
And then one sunny and cold day Rowan was barely awake when Willow walked down to see her, frosty leaves crunching beneath her boots. She tried to talk to her, but only got muttered responses. She had known this was coming, but still all she wanted to do was carry Rowan somewhere warm where they could keep being together.
“No, Rowan, you can’t leave me all alone for the whole winter!”
“I’ll see you in the spring,” was the last thing Rowan muttered to her.
Winter
The winter lasted forever. It was dark, and it was cold, and Willow was all alone. She had made some friends at school, but they’d never spent time outside of classes much. That time had been for Rowan. Snow fell, and it was less dark, even more cold, and she agreed to go skating with a couple of the girls from school. They said it was something she absolutely needed to try. She didn’t want to, but she thought of Rowan, and she went.
It was a disaster. Willow could barely stand on the skates on the ice without falling, let alone move. It took a week for the bruises to heal. But somehow, it was also fun. So she went again, when they asked a second time a couple of weeks later.
Willow learned to skate. Not well, but she was moving, and not falling very much. She went sledding, and found she liked the speed. The longer the hill was, the better, even though that meant she also had to climb up the whole hill. Over winter break, when the snow had had time to get deep, they built a huge snow castle with her school friends. It took days to finish. She got used to the sound of snow squeaking under her boots. She went skiing, just to try it, but decided she preferred skating. She even went for a walk with snowshoes one weekend in late winter.
The sun shone bright and the snow shone brighter, the white reflecting all that light everywhere. Her lungs ached from the cold, her face turned a bright red and lost some of its feeling, and the snow that stubbornly found its way into her coat and down the back of her neck every time she fell melted into an icy stream down her back. Some afternoons outside the cold seemed to seep all the way into her bones, and in those moments she was sure she would never be truly warm again. Despite all that Willow still found herself grinning at the camera when her mom turned it to her to document their first winter in the cold, even if only to have pictures to show Rowan that she didn’t completely hate the thing Rowan had wanted her to enjoy.
And after all of it she returned inside, took off her cold and wet clothes and cuddled on the couch with her parents, some blankets and a steaming cup of whatever she felt like that day. Eventually the cold always made way for the warmth.
Winter lasted forever, but despite what Willow had strongly believed, she found Rowan was right and it wasn’t all bad.
Spring
The birds began to sing. The days grew long, the sun warm, and the snow began to melt, forming tiny burbling streams along the side of every road. Streets became dry and gravel-free. Every day Willow went for a walk past Rowan’s tree to see if she was awake yet. Every day she was disappointed. There was still too much snow in the forest. The ground was still frozen, her parents told her. It would take some time before Rowan woke up.
It seemed to take almost longer than winter had taken. Any day now, Willow told herself. Any day now Rowan would be awake. But she wasn’t. She had waited for her friend for so long, and she wanted to tell Rowan of her winter, and she wanted to be with her again. She wanted to yell at Rowan’s tree to wake up, but she knew it wouldn’t help anything.
And then, finally, one day she answered when Willow talked to her.
“Mmmh?” she said. Willow almost died of joy.
“Rowan! I have so much to tell you!”
“Too early to wake,” Rowan muttered, and Willow didn’t manage to get anything more out of her.
It took another week before Willow was awake enough to have a full conversation with. Willow found her sitting on their stone, stretching and yawning, her hair short and light green.
“Hey, Willow,” she grinned as Willow climbed to sit next to her on the cold stone. “Did you miss me?”
“You know I did. And I have so much to tell you.”
