Wren squinted at the spot.
The spot hopped nearer.
As the spot approached them, further details emerged to Wren’s inferior human eyes. He beheld an animal no larger than a bread-box. It had the antlers of a stag, the wings of a pheasant, and the body and head of a fluffy white rabbit.
“What,” Wren whispered, “is that?”
“Wulpertinger,” said Shrike, as though that were a word.
The wulpertinger continued advancing towards them. Unlike Wren, it did not sink a single inch into the snow. When it drew but a stone’s throw away, it paused and sat up on its haunches. Its little black rabbit’s nose twitched as it regarded them.
“There is a pocket inside my cloak,” Shrike murmured so low Wren almost didn’t hear him. “By your left hand.”
Wren fumbled through the cloak’s folds. As his numb fingers slipped through the rabbit-fur lining, he keenly felt the wulpertinger’s stare upon him. He hoped the creature took no offense. Thus distracted, it took him by surprise when his hand plunged into a pocket full of notions. By touch he recognized the fortune-telling knucklebones, a thimble, several rings, a fragment of leather cord, a pair of scissors small enough to fit into his palm, and a songbird’s skull, amidst a dozen other unknown oddments and ends. He wondered what, out of all of this, Shrike wanted him to pull from this tiny treasure trove. Just when he opened his lips on the verge of asking this question, his fingertips fell on something smooth and round, capped at one end and tapered at the other.
An acorn.
Wren withdrew it from the pocket and held it out to the wulpertinger. Under other circumstances he would have knelt to make his offering. At present, with himself sunken into the snow and the wulpertinger sitting atop it, he hardly had to bend forward to bow.
The wulpertinger closed the distance between them in a few gentle hops. It stretched out its neck, its wings unfurling with the strain, and took the acorn between its teeth. Then it hopped out of reach again and turned its back to munch the treat.
Wren waited, glancing at Shrike to see if this had all gone as he expected. Shrike’s expression remained unreadable in its stoicism. Still, Wren took heart that he seemed neither surprised nor disappointed.
The wulpertinger began hopping away.
Shrike strode off after it. Wren struggled to forge his own path ahead through the snow. After a few paces, Shrike halted and peered ‘round. When his eyes found Wren, he looked startled to see how far Wren had fallen behind. He quickly turned and made his way back to him.
The wulpertinger hopped on ahead, heedless of Wren’s plight.
“Don’t worry about me,” said Wren as Shrike appeared ready to hoist him out of the snow again. “Let’s just keep moving. I’ll catch you up.”
Shrike glanced behind Wren at the deep trench his shambling steps had carved in the snow, but said nothing and led on, which earned him Wren’s undying gratitude.
The cloak trailed along, buoyed by the snow-drifts and doing nothing to keep warm any part of Wren below his thighs. While he could keep his arms comfortable by wrapping his hands in the furred folds and tucking them close to his chest, his toes went numb within minutes, and his shins stung with cold.
Shrike strode on, as Wren had asked him to, but hung back from the wulpertinger and more than once cast a surreptitious glance behind, as if to assure himself that Wren hadn’t vanished into the snow entirely.
And though Wren’s legs and nose remained bitterly cold, each backwards glance from Shrike warmed his heart.
Still, Wren felt a great deal of relief when he glanced up from his miserable trudging to find a mound had appeared on the frozen field with several streams of smoke spiralling up from it.
Where there was smoke, there must be fire, and Wren redoubled his march in the hopes of reaching it before frost-bite set in. When he opened his mouth to ask Shrike if this was the fabled brugh, the wind dove down his throat, making his lungs seize up with cold and choking him as surely as if it had closed its fist ‘round his neck.
Shrike glanced back again and, realizing Wren’s distress, bolted back for him. This time Wren offered no resistance as Shrike hauled him up out of the snow.
“I’m fine,” Wren tried to say. It came out as a weak wheeze.
Shrike took Wren’s arm and twined it with his own. “Lean on me.”
His warmth had always felt welcome to Wren, but never moreso than now. It seemed a bonfire burned beneath Shrike’s skin as Wren draped himself against his much taller frame. Wren basked in all the heat he could soak up through the layers of linen and wool between them and cursed the wind for robbing him of what little he could retain.
Thus, Shrike half-carried him the remaining distance to the mound, where the wulpertinger waited on its haunches, preening its feathers.
“You have our thanks, friend,” Shrike said when they halted before it.
The wulpertinger scratched itself behind an ear with its hind leg, then hopped away.
Through the side of the hill.
