Free Winterwood by JG Faherty

—and he knew Willa had been right. He’d been a fool to try and raise his daughter the old-fashioned way in a modern world. Still, Paul had asked, and he deserved to know.
    â€œI come from a small town in the Black Forest of Germany. In those days, everyone believed in the old ways. In the weeks leading up to Weihnachten —Christmas to you—the whole village would prepare for the holiday. Wreaths hung on doors to show belief in the Holly King, and a tree stood in the house to represent Winterwood. Boys and girls would be on their best behavior to make sure they had a gift waiting under the tree so the Yule Cat wouldn’t come for them. The whole town would smell of roasting ham and duck and rabbit. And the desserts—oh, the desserts. Stollen, lebkuchen, plätzchen. Parents would mull wine, and even the children would get a taste on the coldest nights.”
    Anders paused, the memories coming alive after so many years, the sounds and smells real again, as vibrant as they’d been in his childhood.
    Anna cleared her throat, and Anders took a deep breath. “I digress. When I was ten, my friends and I snuck out of our houses on a dare. It was forbidden to walk the streets at night during Yule, but we were foolish, the way young boys usually are. We didn’t believe. We almost made it back, but on an empty street, it came for us.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe Yule Cat. Bigger than a tiger or lion and twice as fast. We had a head start, but it wasn’t enough. It killed two of my friends and then caught me as I climbed into my bedroom window. I would have died right there but my father chased it away with a present.”
    â€œA cat the size of a lion?” Paul’s eyebrows went up. “Are you for real?”
    Anders lifted his coat and sweater, exposing the three long scars that twisted across his left side.
    â€œDoes this look real? That cat has haunted my dreams all my life. I was lucky. Others were not.”
    â€œI always thought you made that up just to scare us,” Anna said. “Mom told us you got those scars in the war.”
    â€œYour mother came from the city. She wasn’t brought up with the same traditions.” Anders pulled his clothes back down, covering flesh already growing chill. “She said the old ways should be left in the Old Country.”
    Paul looked ready to ask another question, but a thunderous trumpeting of horns echoed through the castle, the strident notes amplified and spread by the giant tree’s passages and chambers.
    â€œThe Hunt!”
    Anders caught a glimpse of Ulaf’s eyes widening before the elf covered the jar of glowing mold and darkness took charge of the room again.
    The absence of light only served to emphasize the menacing sounds of the Wild Hunt returning to the castle. A vibration rumbled to life in the floor and grew stronger, a rhythm felt more than heard, yet somehow perfectly in time with the oddly nasal blasts of the horns. An image came to Anders: a hundred enraged elephants stampeding across a plain, their trunks heralding the inevitable arrival of destruction and Death.
    After a few moments, the shuddering of the floor evolved into actual hoofbeats and Anders’s vision of a stampede grew stronger. Soon the sounds of voices calling out reached them through the dense wood. Anders imagined elves and ogres running to and fro outside and inside the castle, preparing the way for their malevolent tyrant’s return.
    The rapid drumming of hooves shook the very air around them, and Anders’s heart sped up in response, taking on the same cadence. In his head, the herd of rampaging elephants gave way to the pictures of the Hunt he’d seen in books as a child, the same pictures that had haunted him in his dreams during the cold winter nights of Yule. The King, his moon-white hair flying madly behind him, his pale hands gripping the reins of a giant stag, grinning madly as he led his men