The Door to the Shadows

Trafford Publishing

Chapter One

The shout came from a heavyset man in a spacious courtyard, after a snowball had splattered across the back of his head.

"And I'll do it again!" replied the tousle-haired girl, her voice a cascade of impish, well-meaning giggles. She dodged a return volley, and retaliated with a direct hit. She watched pridefully as the slushy snow ran down the other's roughened cheeks and into a scruffy, gray-brown beard that appeared not to have been combed for months. They laughed heartily and continued with their late winter hijinks.

The young girl's mother watched the spectacle from a second-floor window of her home. Melissa Freeman-Pitworth sighed and shook her head. That daughter of mine! Mathilde's behaving like a toddler, not a young woman of twenty.

Twenty.

That plain fact took her back a few years (no; more than a few years), to a time when she was that age; when she, too, gamboled in the snow. But that was a different world, a different time.

The people were different, too. When Melissa was Mati's age (and almost everyone called her that) she ran and played with boys and girls her own age. Now Mati was running and giggling, but with someone a good deal older.

That produced a quixotic smile, for the one she was playing with was Harald, her grandfather. No; that wasn't quite right: Harald was her godfather. Early on, Mati insisted on calling him "grampa," and it stuck.

Harald did not mind. In fact, he liked it, even encouraged it. Perhaps to fill a void in his life? For Harald was a widower. Long ago, there had been a wife and children, but they all died tragically. He had not remarried.

A demonstrative knock on the door shook Melissa back to the present. Instinctively, she knew who it must be.

"Come in, Woodmaker."

In walked a squat figure, all a-bluster and in a mock dither. He approached and shared the view from the window.

"Look at that old man," he harrumphed. "Sloshing about in the snow like some young colt, instead of the doddering old plow horse that he is. Silly old fool!"

She turned to face him, a small, tolerant smile framed upon her lips. He'd changed not one iota in the score of years she had known him. He was still irascible and cantankerous - ever quick with a snipe for friend and foe alike. That tickled her, for beneath that gruff exterior was a gentle soul, mostly mush and kind-heartedness, and almost painfully shy.

Only in a physical sense had the passage of time made any perceptible inroads. His face was creased and leathery, steady witness to a full life, one with no small measure of grief. The hair also betrayed him: from the deep, rich chocolate-brown of his youth, it had become a dull iron gray. Ah, but the eyes! For all that they had seen, they still boasted a youthful sparkle.

No; in some very noticeable ways Woodmaker had not changed. A lifelong bachelor, he was happy and content, especially in his position as the land's preeminent folklorist. He was an invaluable resource, an exuberant storyteller, and a treasured member of the community.

"When the old fool's done mushin' about," he announced, "will he be takin' supper with us?"

"Oh, I don't think he'd miss that for the world. For Mati's sake, if nothing else."

"Your Tom ... will he be here?"

Melissa winced and hoped that it didn't show. Of late, she was a veritable sea of turmoil. Tom had not "been himself." Since the onset of winter he had become inexplicably moody, even distant. More and more he had been going off - to who knew where? - to "think things over." Afterwards, he refused to say just what those "things" were.

At first, she chalked this up to the onrush of middle age, that frantic time in a man's life when "oddish behavior" is not exactly uncommon. That was a rational explanation, but a voice from deep within cautioned otherwise. Something was wrong. She could feel it.

Still, she could do little more than hope he would soon divorce himself from his melancholy, and say what was so conspicuously bothering him.

No, Tom would not be coming to dinner. Melissa turned her gaze back to the window and watched Mati and Harald play and laugh in the snow. They were behaving like two people who had not a care in the world.

Woodmaker filled the room with more colorful remarks about the spectacle, but Melissa was no longer paying attention.

Chapter Two

Harald was in fine form. All evening he had been taking playful umbrage of Woodmaker, and for the first time in recent memory he seemed to be getting the best of his dearest friend.

Mati was enjoying the show. She watched, with summer eyes, and listened intently as two old compatriots locked horns in mock indignation. She giggled, and brought her hands together in an almost childlike display of delight and appreciation. It was splendid theater!

Even Melissa was caught up in the revelry. The antics did much to take her mind off her husband's absence. He's probably in the hills; standing on a hilltop, looking out at who knows what; trying to figure something out. In all the years they'd been married, he had been a considerate husband ... and her best friend. So far as she knew, he'd kept nothing important from her. And a more caring, doting father to their only child it would be hard to imagine.

So what was happening now was very disturbing. Was this just a bumpy moment in life's vexing passage? If that was it, she understood, having already made that taxing journey herself. Was it more than that? Was she reading something into recent events that was not there?

"You wouldn't know the right thing if it fell on you!" Woodmaker yelled across the food-laden table.

"Wouldn't I?" countered Harald, the grease from a chicken leg glistening through his stringy beard.

"Listen to the old coot! Him, with his way of manglin' the land's lore ... and gettin' paid for it!"

This was an oft-heard insult, so Melissa just smiled, and looked demurely at her supper. She slowly shook her head.

They're like two little boys!

"The trust of the people of the land is well-placed, you stooped-over old wastrel," answered Woodmaker. "Only Alaric knows more about the lore, and he'd vouch for my accountin' of it in a flash, if he were here!" He punctuated the salvo with a snap of his fingers.

"Oh?" snorted Harald. "So now you hide behind Alaric's shade! You know no one has seen him in years. By the One Soul, no one even knows if he's still alive. You'll have to do better than that, you pompous old fraud!"

Woodmaker released an emphatic harrumph, and followed it with a most indelicate description of his friend's mental capabilities.

"Anyway," he continued, "I certainly don't need Alaric to verify my account, but he would, if he still lives."

"But he does live."

The new voice broke through the din like a lone sound in an empty room and effectively stopped the shouting match. Everyone turned to identify the source of the interruption and saw a familiar figure standing in the shadows.

"Uncle Thalik!" squeaked Mati, bringing her...