Wulver woke up in bed and found himself covered with a blanket of snow. He had forgotten to close the window again. It was becoming a bad habit, especially when it was liable to give him frostbite. The trees outside were draped with the white powder, and he could see icicles dangling from the eaves of his cabin.

"Huh, it's actually happening," Wulver said.

It had been three days since the strange moan in the night along with the earthquake. A premature winter had taken hold of the valley. Autumn was over, somehow.

"Three days… it's winter," Wulver said, closing his window. The glass was hazy with mist. He carefully hoisted his blanket with the snow inside, but when he arrived at his front door, the door didn't budge. He groaned. Wearing a muffler, a wool hat and procuring a shovel from the storeroom, he escaped through the window and found his porch had become a small hill of snow. He shovelled away the snow which hugged the door.

Wulver knew the freak winter was somehow related with the moaning and the earthquake and also with the mysterious fog which had come over the sea and settled up the mountains.

The mountains were far from his place so even though he was perturbed by the season, he felt safe in his home at night. It was a nice timing too for the bears he had over dinner went away to hibernate in their caves for the winter.

They must have amassed enough fat for six winters, he thought, annoyed. While I don't have enough saved for one cold night.

The fox was gone as well the following day. Wulver didn't know if foxes hibernate like bears but he hadn't seen him since. It was good, he concluded. Peace and quiet were back into his life. All he had to do was wait out the winter to thaw. At least, he could fish from the rivers without being ambushed by lazy, hungry bears.

And so Wulver waited. And waited. And waited. And then waited some more. Three months went by. It was January. Winter was showing no sign of going away. It affected his fishing. The river had dwindled to a stream. This meant that it hardly provided him any fish. Most he could catch were the small herrings (he never enjoyed their taste) which didn't profit him much in a bait to fish ratio for the abundant bait dwindled he received from his garden due to the cold. The bugs were asleep or perished in the soil before he could make use of them.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

It was not only him who was affected though. The inhabitants of the island suffered along with him, even worse than him. On six different occasions, he found birds ranging from a small robin to a screech-owl upon the ground, twitching in the snow and shivering to its death. He brought them back to his cabin, warmed them by his hearth, fed them whatever was available at hand, and let them go. If the winter didn't let up, there would be more frozen birds than he could help.

He also worried about the bears and the other hibernating animals. Soon they would burn through their fat and wake up to not spring but winter. And no salmon to fish. They didn't come during the winter to lay their legs in the highland pools from the sea, and if the cold carried on, their eggs would not find a suitable place to hatch. The sea bed was too warm and the inland lakes too cold.

Wulver kicked the snow in a fit of frustration. He was cold. He was worried. He was unsatisfied. He felt helpless. In short, he felt the unhappiest he had ever been. "Oh, just go away!" he shouted. "It's been three months. The whole island will be one giant ice cube this way."

But the snow kept falling. He looked at the sky for a little while, sighed, went back inside, and proceeded to warm himself by the hearth.

Then, one late night, when Wulver sat at his dining table, with his meager dish of herring and roots and a spoon raised to take the first bite, there came a sound of horse hoofs in front of his house. A knock, knock, knock, knock at his door. And then, in a voice uncanny for a human and as if out of breath, called a voice:

"Wulver."

The voice sent shivers down Wulver's spine to the tip of his tail. Looking through the windows, there was no fog. At least, not the fog that came from the sea. It didn't provide any relief either. He never knew anybody from his island that could speak.

It took another set of knocks to make Wulver get up and approach the door with his axe in hand. He opened the door and all the hairs on his body stood up.

Before him stood a horse as dark as the night with two eyes which burned like embers. Holding the reins of the beast was a man who had no head! Not on his shoulders anyway. Instead on his other hand, he held a head with skin sunken and color pale like that of a corpse. Its glassy eyes stared at Wulver and blinked and twitched and the blue lips spoke in that out of breath voice:

"Sorry to trouble you on a night so late and dreary, Wulver."

Wulver was speechless.

"May I come in?"

The request brought back his senses and his speech. "Come, come in? Well, I… you, um."

"It is a matter of life and death. Mostly death."

"I, I…"

"I insist."

Wulver stepped aside.