A thick, billowy duvet of snow coated the ground, making dark sentinels of the smooth-trunked beeches. It squeaked at each footfall from the shadowy figure as he puffed his way through the sparse undergrowth. Over a head of knee-length dreadlocks, the moon ghosted towards the horizon, painting the eiderdown sky with a watery wash of silver.
The frigid air rippled and shivered, a balmy breeze reaching out to caress his umber cheek. From behind a basalt-dark tree stepped another figure. It trembled in the spring-like air, spider-silk bright and just as diaphanous.
The dark figure froze. Thick fingers reached for the copper rod hitched over his shoulder, laid beside a bulging pack. The light figure gave a glittering laugh and spoke in a strange flowing tongue. More laughter, high and bright, came from either side. The shadow turned to see more gossamer figures appear, reaching out with beckoning hands, chattering in that same strange tongue, the vowels sliding over consonants like water over river pebbles.
The rod freed, the Shadow held it crosswise over his chest. Though he trembled and his breath caught, the dark figure tutted.
"Come now, come now," he said, his voice the rumble of a brewer's dray. "I'm a simple man – no saint for sure – but even I can tell the Shades apart. You are different... No mere shade has the power of spring in the dead of winter." The man raised the copper rod higher. "Kirth vin dah. Kirth vin dah. Let me pass."
The Gossamer shivered, the trill of a rippling brook filling the air. Their silvery shapes wavered, slipping closer to each other.
"So. You want to do this the hard way?" The shadowy figure held his copper rod out, clasped in the centre like a shield, and stepped forward. "Se netto! Se netto! Move aside! Fotex consabel da'hriim! I claim the right of Traveler's Passage!"
The Gossamer shivered again, the air heating to a summer's dryness, the trilling deepening into the roar of wind-tossed trees in full leaf.
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"Do not test me, creature," the Shadow called, taking a step forward, the rod still extended in a warding gesture. The Gossamer contorted now – the mockery of a human face with wide empty eyes and gasping mouths filled deep like mercury. They gaped – as if in shock – as Shadow took another and yet another step towards them. The fell wind rose, dusty air grasping at hair and linens – yet not a single tree limb quivered. The Gossamer gibbered, voices rising to the rushing of spring melt-water.
"I no longer ask, creature: You will let me pass! Netto, netto! Begone from this place!"
The Gossamer shivered and shook, their forms wavering like old cobwebs blown by the wind, as Shadow waved the copper rod in wafting arcs. They shrilled, clustered so close they seemed to become one. Shadow stopped, waiting, the rod still held before him.
With an inhuman shriek, the wind turned blistering hot, sweeping towards him like the breath of a dragon. Shadow ducked, planting the rod into the snow, hunkering down as if behind a shield. The ends of his locs frazzled. The point of his cap charred in the searing wind. The ground around him thawed to mud.
A letter slipped from his pack, the blush envelope twisting towards the canopy, disintegrating to ash as it flew.
Shadow frowned, dark eyes flashing with anger as he watched it scatter on the torrid wind. From beneath his thick furs, he drew an amulet of blacked cast-iron.
"It is one thing, creature, to mess with me," he said, anger darkening his voice further, "and quite another to mess with my client's property."
Clutching the amulet before him, Shadow slowly stood, speaking further incantations, his voice even and unyielding as the basalt-dark trees. The gossamer creatures wailed and shrieked, slipping backwards away from the unrelenting tide of Shadow's words, setting frozen again that which was unnaturally thawed.
Fully on his feet, Shadow took a step, firmly planting himself before taking the next, never once letting up the calling in the Gossamer's tongue as he fought on through the supernatural wind. With a shrill cry, one by one the Gossamer fell, dispersed like smoke back into the fae realm they had sprung from. Then all that remained was the first, with its empty eyes and silver mouth agog, the hands beckoning sweetly as if Shadow might change his mind.
"She'rath," Shadow murmured to it. "Go, go home."
The Gossamer tilted its head.
Shadow levelled the copper rod at its chest. "One final chance, creature: she'rath."
The Gossamer curled its spindly, sharp fingers back towards itself and, with one final pealing giggle, vanished like a dream.