Read In The Grip Of Old Winter for Free Online

and Peter ran
to catch him up.
    “There you are.” Granddad
wiped his forehead with his jacket sleeve. “Whew! Hot work shifting this lot,
must be at least a foot deep.”
    Peter lifted his shovel.
“I’ve come to help.”
    “Good lad.” He peered ahead
and squinted. “You see that gap in the trees?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s where the track goes
down to the lane.” He took off his woollen hat and shook the snow away. “I’m
thinking you run down there and start clearing towards me.”
    Peter glanced back at the
house. His bedroom window faced out to the left of the track and when he looked
back towards the trees, he guessed that the yellow flame he’d seen in the night
must have appeared over to the right.
    Granddad muttered. “Not much
fallen under them trees. Not so hard to shift.”
    “Last night, I saw...”
    Granddad thrust his shovel
into the snow and lifted up a huge pile. “Off you go now. We’ll meet somewhere
in the middle.”
    Peter swallowed. Did granddad
already know that somebody walked through the trees with a burning torch at
night? Did granddad want him to go and look?
     
    ***
     
    Peter jumped onto the
unbroken snow and it crunched under his weight. He held the shovel in both
hands and took one big running stride after another. When he stopped to catch
his breath, he saw the huge holes he’d made.
    I’m a giant and this is
the snow-land where I live. Everyone hides when I go stomping.
    He took three more big jumps.
Nothing moved in the wood, no birds sang or squirrel scampered and when he
passed beneath the branches laden with snow, the immediate sensation of being
watched and of something waiting took him by surprise.
    The fear that accompanied it
yesterday didn’t overwhelm him this time, for wherever he looked, nothing
unexpected appeared. The track dipped between the steep banks, its mud rutted
into frozen ridges, as it went down to meet the lane.
    The snow, less thick here,
clumped in pockets inside hollows and between tree roots, blown there by the
wind.
    He left the track and
underfoot, frozen leaves, brown and brittle, crackled. He didn’t know if he was
searching for something obvious, or to find evidence that the yellow light he’d
seen last night wasn’t his imagination. Boot marks perhaps, or broken twigs.
    Leonor spoke about the light,
but she might have meant something different, something that only she might
see. If Leonor wasn’t real, then she might see anything. Granddad might know,
but because he didn’t tell, perhaps not. As Peter moved further into the
forest, the repetitious slice and thump of granddad’s shovel as he cleared the
snow, diminished.
    He passed a fallen tree and
where the trunk had cracked, green moss gleamed. Just beyond it, a tree,
patch-worked with moss and twisted with age, grew apart from the others. Low
branches coiled above the forest floor. High up, the trunk split into two, so
its canopy of twigs grew downwards.
    He glanced at the house. His
bedroom and this tree lined up, though the tree grew back from the edge of the
wood and that would make it difficult to see from his window.
    The tree’s roots emerged from
the frozen woodland soil in contorted and writhing loops. Peter imagined that
they might crush and strangle any bush or plant they encountered, for nothing
grew around this tree for as far as its branches spread.
    Propped between two roots, so
close to the trunk that it might be part of the bark, stood a charred branch, blackened
by fire. Soot smudged the snow that gathered at its base. Is this where the
flame burned last night?
    He glanced around, for the
sensation of being watched and as if something waited, flowed very strong.
    In the distance, granddad
shovelled snow. Big white flakes drifted through the branches and whenever one
landed on the charred branch, it melted. It must still be warm. Peter dropped
the shovel. How warm? And he took off his glove and touched the branch with his
fingertips.
    The light changed from day