Daughter of Winter

Chapter 1

Repressing memories with the sole intention of forgetting them is a very messy and inaccurate process. It's like trying to cover up a few words of a story with nothing but a bucket full of ink, you're going to damage a lot more than you mean to. But that did not stop me from trying to forget what shaped me.

As a result I do not remember much from my childhood. I like to think it was not a terrible one, nor was it all that good. My first few memories are from after I was tossed on the doorstep of my grandfather, after I was abandoned by my parents. They are a blur of household chores and staying in a cold cabin alone, locked in a room with a handful of simple, yet productive, things to do. I was taught how to knit and sew, cook, and read at an exceptionally young age by my grandfather, who made sure I was putting my time to good use while he was away.

My grandfather worked as a knight in the baron's army, training the new recruits diligently and with little rest. He was so skilled with a blade that, if he chose to, he could have challenged both the baron and his heir to a duel and slain them both before you could count to sixty. He never told anyone the truth as to how he acquired these skills, instead coming up with some sort of fantastical story that a faerie in a pond had taught him, he had been personally trained as a member of the Queen's Royal Guard, or that he was a librarian on the continent before he picked up an ancient book and found himself bathed in the blood of ten guardsmen hours later. The morbidity of the story depended on his mood.

He was a kind man, one who disliked leaving me at the cabin alone in my younger years but saw no way around it, so he made up for it by spending any free time he could with me. He was always teaching me some new life lesson or how to act like a royal, telling me stories about the fae on the other side of The Boundary or about the legendary adventurer Alexander The Adventurous (who was my idol for much of my childhood), or passing on a bit of his skill with the sword or bow.

He always made sure to tell me that, even though I may not have been wanted by my parents, I was always wanted and loved by him. "The day that I found you, swaddled up in a bundle of blankets on my doorstep, was the best day of my life," he would tell me whenever I was feeling particularly sad or alone. He had enough love for me to cover for two parents, even though it did not show at all times.

I loved him dearly, but I could never call him a saint. I'd tried and failed to blot out many memories he had created.

He made me to hunt and trap game long before any child should, resulting in a few times when I found myself on the brink of death, only to use the skills that he taught me to save myself.

He was prone to infrequent bouts of extreme anger that would often result in me running away for a day or two, waiting for him to cool off. I never blamed him for this anger, it only showed as his sickness progressed.

Whenever his temper flared - it only happened once or twice a year - I would hide out in the forest somewhere, as I did not have any friends who's homes I could run to. I'd wait it out and come back to his open, loving arms. The sickness mercifully made him forget what happened during those harrowing hours and he was spared the guilt of his actions.

But the worse thing he did - and I cannot truly blame him for this as he did as much as he could to prevent it - was sow the seeds of a deep loneliness within me. The hours left alone at the cabin as a child and the times spent out in the forest, wishing my mother or father would come save me from his wrath, created a deep void in my heart that yearned to be filled more than a Peregryn yearns for the sky.

The isolation from my peers fed this void. Even though I was half-human, I appeared to be a fae at first glance. My hair, as white as freshly fallen snow, striking blue eyes, and pointed ears made me about as different as other humans in the mortal realms as you could get while still claiming to be human. This would have been fine if I had some iota of magic to call upon and put to work - maybe then I could have earned my worth in town - but I had none, at least none yet.

The only thing these fae features did for me was serve as a constant reminder of the circumstances that most likely resulted in my unfortunate birth. Few half-faes were made consensually. Most were the result of a particularly silly human running across The Boundary and into the Spring Court. To the fae there, humans were quaint and funny at best and a personal plaything at worst. The end result of humans with poor life choices and fae who cared little for them was half-fae like me, unwanted and often left to die.

But deep down, I clung to a vestige of a hope. Before the sickness had taken too much of my grandfather away from me, I sat down and spoke with him one day about my past. A few things had happened relatively recently - an event I blacked out as best I could - and I wanted to know if I truly was the result of a rape.

After much arguing, he relented. He told me about a letter that was inside of the crib he claimed to have found me in. The letter, he said, was short. "Love her as I hope to someday," read the words, black as night against the pale parchment. To me, these words only had one interpretation. One of my parents was still out there somewhere, waiting for me.

Somewhere out there I was still wanted.