Once upon a spring, p.1
Once Upon a Spring, page 1
Contents
Contents
Copyright Information
Dedication
Editor's Note
Epigraph
Foreword
But For A Dream Ella T. Holmes
Far Far Awake Adie Hart
Season's Keep R. A. Gerritse
Darkness Green Laila Amado
The Circus of Forgotten Things Caroline Logan
She Vanishes Josie Jaffrey
Be Careful What You Wish For S. Markem
Forget-Me-Not Jones Jake Curran-Pipe
Lady of the Flame A. J. Van Belle
Perennial Katherine Shaw
I Like Quiet Places Fiona Simpson
Spring Tide Kate Longstone
To Name a Rose Elanna Bellows
It Started with Bluebells M. J. Weatherall
Radhakrishna Bharat Krishnan
The Girls of Spring Jenna Smithwick
Links
Acknowledgements
Copyright © 2023 to each anthology author and licensed by Macfarlane Lantern Publishing
All rights reserved.
Published by Macfarlane Lantern Publishing, 2024
Glasgow, Scotland
No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental.
Cover Art Copyright © 2024 Hayley Louise Macfarlane
For all the flowers that bloom to signal the end of winter
PLEASE NOTE: The formatting in Once Upon a Spring follows Macfarlane Lantern Publishing’s house style. However, in order to preserve the voice of each contributor in the anthology, the version of English the individual authors chose to write in has not been changed. As such some discrepancies in spelling, punctuation and language between stories should be expected.
O were my love yon Lilac fair,
Wi'’purple blossoms to the Spring,
And I, a bird to shelter there,
When wearied on my little wing!
How I wad mourn when it was torn
By Autumn wild, and Winter rude!
But I wad sing on wanton wing,
When youthfu' May its bloom renew’d.
O were my love yon Lilac fair (Robert Burns; 1793)
Foreword
H. L. Macfarlane
Spring is the time for birth, and rebirth, and the beginnings of things that will eventually come to an end. But we do not think of those ends in the throes of spring; we only think of the here and now.
Promises of abundant life. The return of light where before there had been darkness.
Hope, and all that comes with it.
But beneath that hope lurks creatures and ideas that frighten us. Deadly frosts whose fingers creep out to grasp us when we think we’ve safely left the cold behind. Shadowy figures born from the same energy which brings to us new lambs and the first of the bluebells.
Spring is therefore, dear reader, a time of contrasts and opposites and uncertainty. Of romance and revulsion; of giddiness and fear. It is with such a spirit in mind that this anthology includes just a little bit of everything. Lost souls seeking guidance and purpose from the spirit of the moon. Goddesses dreading their role of heralding in the season. Princesses and witches gardening. Yes, gardening. Nothing could invoke spring more.
I hope you enjoy the stories found within Once Upon a Spring as much as everyone involved enjoyed bringing it to life.
But For A Dream
Ella T. Holmes
Do not whistle when you enter the Springwood. Do not whisper when you hear a scuttling, scampering, scurrying in the undergrowth. And do not forget to carry a sprig of wattle where it can easily be seen.
The Springwood has fingers, and his chest is empty.
Once, where the wattle trees painted the dense forest a sunlit-amber yellow, a young man slept with his hat slung low over his freckled face. He was easily overlooked; his hair was the same brilliant yellow as the wattle flowers, and his body was long and thin, hardly much to him at all. Wolves passed him by with dismissive sniffs; ants passed over his boots in distracted trails; crows flew over him with disregard – he had no silvers or shinies to draw their eye.
But the Springwood saw this man. It was a strange enough thing to see a human in these parts, but it was stranger still to see one so uncaring. Usually, when they travelled to the wood from their villages, it was with wicker baskets on hips and in hand, swords and bows and bags in the other, always on the desperate hunt for food.
Unable to tame the hackles of curiosity rising in him, the Springwood rustled his trees and moved the roots beneath the soil. It made the air smell damp and sweet with overturned dirt.
The golden-haired man lifted his hat between pinched fingers and squinted at the blue sky, then brought it lower over his face.
How odd, thought the wood, and pinched the roots of the tree closest to the man, shaking it so wattle balls fell and fleeced his human body, tickling him to a fit of sneezing.
The man brushed himself off and looked around, sticking his head between the trees to peer into the blue-green shadows. “I apologise for taking respite in your shade without asking,” he said, no louder than he would if he were talking to himself. “It is so quiet here. I find it is the only place I can sleep.”
The Springwood smiled – though the man could not see it. “It is rare that people talk to me.”
The man staggered back, though he seemed more surprised than frightened. “It is rare that the wood replies. I had thought you a story.” He brushed himself off once more, taking care to look at his brown tunic as he did so, as though he might find what words to say next between stray thread and wattle ball. “I am Cole,” he settled on. “Cole from Tain.”
The Springwood took shape, emerging from the yellow-thistled trees as a man not unlike Cole, but not like him either. He was the wood made manifest, a body of flesh that shimmered in the sun, of sap pushed by a heart of dandelions, of five fingers on each hand. He too thought hard about how he should be known. “You may call me Brinley,” he said, and patted the new tunic he wore. It was soft and seamless, but, of course, strange.
“Are you a prince of the wood?” Cole asked, not daring to step forward. “Or a king? Or perhaps another of the beautiful magic folk?”
Brinley smiled; the human’s flushed cheeks were endearing. “I am the wood, and the wood is me. A better title might be ‘friend’.”
Cole relaxed a little. “Then you do not mind that I have taken to sleeping beneath you?” He blushed harder. “Beneath your trees, I mean.”
Brinley shook his head. “Sleep again, if you like.”
“And you would ask nothing in return?”
It was a strange question to Brinley, but nonetheless made way for his curiosity to slink out of the shadows of the underbrush and into the palm of his hand. He held it out. “Only that you would allow me to sit with you, and tell me what you dream of.”
Cole ran a hand through his hair, and the short curls stood up like barley, flopping when he nodded. He took Brinley’s hand and led him back to his favourite tree – marked so by the flattened grass around the base of the brown trunk. There they lay side by side, Cole giving voice to what thoughts entered his mind the instant they did so. And when he slept and woke, he spoke of all the peculiar human magic of glimpsing wonders behind his eyes. Brinley wished he too could dream, and so asked if Cole would return the next day to teach him how.
Cole pursed his lips. “I do not think such a thing is possible to teach,” he said. “But I would like to return anyway, if you would allow it.”
“So you might sleep again?” Brinley asked. “I would allow that.”
“And if I wish to remain awake when I am with you?”
Brinley’s heart lifted with the wind. “I would allow that, too.”
***
Cole returned throughout the summer, bringing stories from his home. He spoke of his first father baking oatcakes in the clay oven his second father sculpted, and his sister’s attempt at carving owls from softwood that had fallen to the forest floor.
Brinley could not leave the wood, and so relished these details – took them in like he did the rains that fell through the year. When he told Cole this, Cole frowned.
“That is a shame,” he said. “I wished to ask you if, in three days, you would come to the autumn festival with me.” Perhaps he was prone to blushing, or perhaps the sun’s warmth favoured his pale, freckled cheeks. “We wear crowns of twigs and berries, and dance until dawn. I started making one for you.”
At this, Brinley’s neck and face warmed, and he busied his hands by reaching out to a bunch of white tufted weeds beside him. Under the brush of his delicate fingers, they quickly wove themselves into a circlet. When it sat on Cole’s head, he found his words again. “I would have said yes.”
Cole
Brinley grinned. So it was, all the way through autumn, that they whispered and lost themselves in each other.
Winter saw hands meeting hands, fingers trailing, delving, undoing. Exploring dips and valleys. The sun averted its gaze and left them by silver moonlight, still tangling together like the roots of oaks. They lay in the crooks of each other, and Cole smiled at the touch of Brinley’s fingers against his bare chest.
Cole procured a little wooden whistle from the pocket of his trousers and played a slow song to the forest and his creatures, for, he said, one’s care for another can always be captured in a tune.
***
It was the middle of winter when Brinley’s dandelion heart took flight, sprouting bright white and fluffy in the palm of Cole’s hand. It was so small and delicate that Cole, upon learning what it was, took to shielding it with his whole body.
“It is not so frail,” Brinley said with a laugh. “But it is yours, and I would that you keep it safe.”
“Brinley,” Cole said, and paused. He cupped the little white weed in his hands and shook his head, but he was smiling so brilliantly that the entire forest knew it was not Brinley’s heart that he was saying no to. “My heart is rather firmly stuck inside me.”
Brinley only laughed louder. “Of course. I know.”
Cole frowned, then looked at Brinley. “Close your eyes.”
Brinley copied his frown. “And do what?”
“Wait.”
“And do what while I wait?”
Cole tucked Brinley’s dandelion heart right above his own in the little pocket of his coat. “Imagine the future, Brinley.” He smiled sheepishly. “Dream.”
Brinley closed his eyes and saw nothing but blackness. No – he saw the entire Springwood, for he was the Springwood and the Springwood was him. He could see the blackthorn bushes and the squirrels scampering past them. He could see flashes of tails as something scuttled up a trunk, and another blurred shape as something scurried into the shadows of the undergrowth, startling Cole. Cole.
Cole with the golden hair. The curious man who slept beneath wattle trees and spoke so readily of dreams. The night-whistler, bread maker, brother, and friend. Brinley imagined what it might be like for them in the future. What of the coming spring? Next summer, autumn, or snowy season? He could see a house made of tightly woven roots, and a carpet of hearty green moss over the roof. He could see Cole’s sister and two fathers coming to visit, perhaps to build a clay oven so they might all share oatcakes and tales around a warm hearth – for Cole grew colder than Brinley, and they would need such things. His sister could carve owls for the mantle, and Brinley could make sparrows and nightingales to join them.
So that was what it was like to dream.
“Open your eyes,” said Cole. He held out a perfect wattle ball – so big and brilliantly yellow that it was almost a match for Brinley’s dandelion. “I cannot give you my real heart,” he said and smiled. “But I would that you keep it safe, as I will yours.”
***
Do you remember how the humans desperately hunted for food in other parts of the wood? Well, not all who come to the shelter of the wood are there to hunt; some hide and lay in wait. It was in the sting of a winter dawn that others came to the Springwood wattle trees – three men, with more weapons than want for meat.
Brinley might have stopped it.
He might have seen the men crouch in the shadows of the tall trees somewhere close to where Cole emerged from the traveller’s road into Tain. He might have heard the odd scurrying and scampering of animals running from them, and the whispered plans the men had made for whichever unfortunate soul happened to choose this path out of town. He might have warned Cole not to come this way – might have grown his roots into a wall, a shield, a trap.
But Brinley had learned to dream.
When the men made their move, he was dreaming that Cole was merely asleep beneath the wattle tree with his hat still over his eyes, his whistle and Brinley’s heart still tucked in his jacket pocket, his fingers splayed over his chest as it still rose and fell. Had Brinley been awake, he might have saved him.
But, but, but.
***
If you whistle when you enter the Springwood, or whisper when you hear a scuttling, scampering, scurrying in the undergrowth, or forget to carry a sprig of wattle where it can easily be seen, best keep hold of your heart.
The Springwood has lost his own.
Ella T. Holmes always dreamed of being a Mad Hatter, Trojan horse, or a cunning princess who is definitely not a witch but reality intervened. Fortunately, she's got a knack for escaping it.
Born and raised around Australia, Ella spends her time avoiding bush turkeys, and drinking enough coffee to bring down the moon. Her work has been published in or is forthcoming in Coffin Bell Journal, Antithesis, and Macfarlane Lantern Publishing Seasonal Anthologies, among others.
You can find her non-fiction work and newsletter over on Substack as ‘ella has thoughts.’
Far Far Awake
Adie Hart
I was shelving at the moment my childhood dreams came true. To be precise, I was wrestling an extremely large leather-bound copy of Oleander’s Condensed Traveller’s Guide to the Twelve Duchies onto the second shelf from the ceiling, silently cursing whomever Oleander had been and that he couldn’t seem to write a sentence without multiple digressions and sub-clauses, and trying not to fall off the ladder.
I almost did fall off the ladder when Fiona came barrelling into the room, shouting my name.
“Cora? Cooooora!” she bellowed, peering round the stacks. “Are you in here? I need you!”
“I’m up here.” I gave Oleander one last nudge into place and more or less leapt down the ladder two steps at a time. “Look, I know we don’t call for absolute silence in the Library, but you could at least not yell. What’s the matter?”
A few of the more scholarly desk witches were already flashing us disapproving glares over their tomes. Before Fiona could answer me, I dragged her gently behind the desk and into the little room which the District liked to call the Librarians’ Office, and which we librarians liked to call the Cupboard.
As soon as the door closed behind us, Fiona squeaked, “I have the best news!”
“Did Arven tell you he loved you?” I asked. Fiona was my best friend, and I was fairly used to her bursting in on me breathlessly for advice in the middle of the day; she was a talented archivist, but something of a catastrophiser when it came to her emotions. A couple of months ago she’d finally managed to confess her feelings for her fellow archivist, Arven, with a little push from yours truly, and luckily, he was just as head over heels for her as she was for him.
Astonishingly, Fi was looking even more flustered than she’d been that day. She grabbed my hand, practically bouncing on the spot. “No, even better!” She paused her bouncing, registering what I’d said. “Wait, did he tell you he was going to? No, never mind,” she cut herself off, “that can wait. Guess what, guess what?”
“I don’t know, Fi… The District’s declared a two-week holiday? Edwin Holly finally submitted a legible report? A rabid wyvern has eaten Professor Carter?” She laughed at that – strict old Carter was the bane of all of us desk witches – but shook her head. “Oh, just tell me,” I groaned.
She grabbed my hand and beamed. “Your castle’s awake!”
I snorted. “And I’m the Empress of Benir.”
Borealis Castle had been asleep in its ring of thorns for six hundred years, slumbering in the forest to the north longer than the Academy had even been here. They said it had been cursed, long ago, but no one was quite sure why, and over the centuries it had become more an interesting puzzle to theorise about than an actual magical problem. It was a part of the furniture, practically; it had lurked there this long, resisting all attempts to enter, and as far as the District Witches were concerned, it was probably always just going to be there.
