Broken fences and weary-eyed farmers.. it was always the same, each winter in the valley. Cradled by the Razine mountains on every side, the sheltered village was, at first glance, idyllic to those rare travelers who made their way through on their journies to far more important destinations, hoping for a detour past the snow-packed and treacherous passes. Most such enterprising wanderers found themselves prey to the deep forest and the many predators within it, the elements themselves, or simply disappeared without a trace. Some few, though, whether through skill or luck, found their way to the heart of the alpine dell, where the tiny town nestled in snows that never seemed to quite fully vanish, even when flowers flourished through the fields.

In the winter, though, no one ever arrived. Perhaps it was the blizzards that whipped near-constantly through the encircling mountains, turning them from things of deadly, impersonal beauty into jagged, malevolent teeth of lethal intent. Perhaps it was the wolves that stalked through the storms, at home in the tempest and always, always hungry. Perhaps people simply did not travel that way at that time of the year. Perhaps something worse still. Whatever the reason, all the villagers knew was that after the fall equinox, not a soul would ever find shelter in their village until the first tulips pushed through the early spring frosts.

In the winter, they were truly alone.

Except that in the winter, they were not.

It always began the same way. A few snapped posts here and there, and strange prints in the snow. No two prints were ever the same- sometimes pawlike, sometimes inscrutable glyphs, sometimes amorphous shapes. But always, they led away into the heart of the forest, where the wild things dwelled. The villagers were a stalwart people, uncomplaining, though highly superstitious. Each morning they would rebuild or mend what had been broken, carefully maintaining the wooden barrier against what lay beyond.

Then, the wards were tested. By the time winter solstice came each year, the sturdy wards of ritual and prayer woven around the village had been probed at least once. Claw marks in the snow, burnt patches around the effigies. But when solstice passed, the pressure began in earnest. Fences snapped like twigs, weak spots in the wards ripped at during the night. No villager left their threshold past sunset, for fear of the shadows that slinked and lurked beyond the fences, splintering posts here and cracking beams there, always seeking to open the village to what lay beyond.

No villager, that is, save for the sole shepherd designated to stay up with the livestock through the frigid nights. Though the fold on the village outskirts was sheltered, enclosed on all sides as a barrier against weather and predator, things whispered within it after eventide fell. Shadows would move apart from their owners, and the animals were still, so very still. While they were watched, though, that was all that occurred. But should the shepherd fall asleep, or leave them unattended... the bones of animals snapped as easily as the fence posts did. Sometimes, though, it was the shepherd whose body was found broken in the morning.

The valley was lush in the summer and bleak in the winter- not just for the weather, but in the hearts of those who dwelled within it. Those least useful to the village, those without one to speak on their behalf, and those outliers who were considered a bit strange, these were the pool from which the shepherds were drawn. Shepherds, in name. Sacrifices, in reality.

The dark-eyed elder reflected on this as she sat in the enclosure, her array of tools before her. The youth- child, really- who had been chosen as the night's shepherd dozed beside her, his cheeks flushed rosy with the chill that encroached even past the heat of the crowded animals. The shadows hungered tonight, more fiercely than they had in her recent memory. Quivering sheep and stock-still cows stared into the corners of the fold with white-rimmed eyes, not a one of them willing to fall asleep. Not this night. Her grandson, though.. weary from the trials of the day, he had succumbed to slumber as she had known he would.

It was alright. She watched him, and held the shadows at bay, as she had since she was a child. As her mother had before her, and her mother's father before, going back until time beyond memory.

The lad meant well- brilliant in his way, even, but as elusive as the brownies that tended their hearths and as fey as the pooka that plagued the herders. The old woman smiled to herself as she selected a hooked eagle quill and a skein of black wool. He had always been her favorite, the lad. Just a little strange, just like herself. Unfazed by the tension around her or the way her exhaled breaths crystallized into insidious patterns before fading away, she began to knit, the smile fading as she watched him sleep.

She was here to shelter him- him, and so many others through her life- but she would not be here forever. Already, the deep ache of the sickness gripped her lungs inexorably. Already, the withering burn of that which ate her from within began to steal the strength from her fingers. Still, she worked with a nimble, practiced skill, the dark strands taking on vivid color as they flowed into a swiftly growing tapestry. And as it grew, the elder began to murmur, her eyes closing as she reached out for threads of a different sort- the threads of story.

"Story will be our shield against the darkness." The words drift through her memory, eerily echoed a hundredfold by her ancestors as the skein transformed from dull wool into vivid reality under her wrinkled fingers. "Sacrifice will be our sword against destruction."

As her spirit lifted free from her body, the dark-eyed woman watched her fingers continue to knit, hooking and pulling and twisting the wool. Around her, now, the nightmares were shadows no more. Here, in this form, they were fully fleshed. Strengthened by cold, hunger, and despair, blazing eyes watched her from twisted forms with an unfathomable hunger, but did not move. They watched her the way a pack of half-starved wolves watches a manticore- wary, respectful, and awaiting the spoils of its next kill. Ignoring them, the elder reached out into the night and caught a strand of something- the notes of a distant song.

This, she took in spectral fingers unwrinkled by age and fed it into the wool even as her other hand snagged the heat of a distant bonfire to do the same. Unsettled dreams followed, thread by thread, then hopes and memories, all flowing to her waiting fingers. Below her, her frail body shook with strain. Over the years, fewer and fewer mortal skeins came close enough to draw from, and this one was barely within her range. Still, the tapestry came to life with the story of the traveler sleeping in front of his fire, a short distance from the trail beyond the mountains.

As wool became the croaking exhale of congested lungs snoring, the recollection of a young daughter awaiting his return, the enjoyment of tree climbing and heated whiskey, the fears of heights and the dark, the tiny tapestry woven by the old woman's fingers took on the image of the traveler himself, as clearly as if it were a window. And when she knotted the piece with the snippets of childhood memories, the vivid picture began to move subtly with the motion of wind through snow-laden boughs above and the faltering rise and fall of the man's pneumatic chest, jerking now and then with a thickened cough.

The nightmares in the room watched, a familiarity to the sharpness of their stares. The hunger was palpable, thick, and desperate. A hard winter for everyone, and each one harder than the last. As she lifted the fully-woven story of the traveling merchant up for the inspection of the creatures, they surged forward, snatching it from her hands and writhing in it, around it, through it, soaking in the essence of it. And then- they turned as one and flowed out into the night, leaving the shadows in the room simply shadows.

As the animals slowly began to stir and murmur, relaxing slightly, the dark-eyed woman eased back down into the body below her, letting herself feel the trembling of her hands, the racing of her heart, the weakness in her arms. Her gaze drifted to the child, still dozing and dreaming, and her expression turned troubled. Not many more tapestries left in her weary hands.. it was time to pass the gift on while she still had the ability to train him in it.

The last lingering hints of the woven story strengthened suddenly with something new- terror, rank and stark in its sudden ferocity. The elder paid no heed to the familiar sensation, placing her dark wool and feather hook back among her tools. In their place, she reverently selected a small bag of aubergine velvet, straining with the uncanny weight of it as she brought it to her lap. Open, its contents rolled out almost of their own will. A jagged shard of blood agate, an ancient bowl crafted of petrified wood, a tiny sack of ground herbs and dirt painstakingly selected and harvested by hand under the new moon's embrace, and a crystalline stamp with an intricate rune.

Working slowly and carefully, the elder did not allow herself to become distracted by the sharp threads of agony that fluttered around her from the traveler's story, melding with the terror and becoming despair. She gave them no more heed than those pains of a birthing ewe or a dying hare. Prey to the predators, the natural order of life. The agate parted the papery flesh of her palm effortlessly, gliding through callouses wrought by a lifetime of labor with little resistance. In the dark of the fold, the blood that welled in the gash was nearly as black as the shadows around her until she tipped her hand to the side to let it flow into the bowl.

Far away, unheard but felt by the tale-witch, the story of the traveler came to an abrupt end, consumed by the hungering phantasms. With a sense of grim satisfaction at work well done, she poured the gritty mixture from the sack into the collected blood, beginning to stir with the tip of the agate utensil. She waited, the elder, for what she knew would come next- the relaxing of tension through the frigid night, the lessening of the glacial winds, the disembarking of fears from the currents of ravenous anticipation that infused the valley with trembling tautness.

She waited.. and waited, her hands working steadily.. and it did not come.

The realization dawned just as the mixture was ready, the thick fluid gleaming deep sanguine in the low light of the enclosure. Slowly, it occurred to her that the sense of hunger, of danger, was unabated. No.. it was stronger, and edged now with a touch of desperation. Setting the bowl down, the tale-witch reached out for any threads of story within range. She found a few, even a few rich ones, but they slipped away from her incorporeal fingers. A second realization arose in her mind: time had run out.

With a new urgency to her motions, she retrieved the crystal stamp, snagging the thin wrist of the sleeping youth in her time-ravaged fingers. She shook with the effort of lifting the ancient tool, weighty beyond what it had any physical right to be, made heavy with the centuries of promise and portent. Still, fuelled by sheer determination and need, the elder dipped the runed seal into the hallowed blood and brought it to the back of the child's hand. Rather than pressing it firmly against the tender young flesh, though, she stopped as clarity flooded her as surely as the swift-rising tide of dark portent.

She knew what must come next - the flaring of sanguine light, the youth's waking in screams, the agonizing flow of power from herself to him. The woken ancestors, the binding vows, the training.

The training.

The imminent danger was palpable, even to the ungifted. Already, she heard the cries of waking babes as the hungering swarm approached, saw the unsettled stirring of her own grandchild before her, and she knew. She knew as certainly as her own name and heritage that there was no time for even the most basic of lessons, and to transfer the gift now would spell death for them all, would leave them defenseless against the coming avalanche of shadows.

Crystal clattered across the packed earth of the sheepfold, splattering blood and herbs with its impact, let fall from a trembling hand veined with blue and black. Withered fingers took up the knitting needles once more instead, drawing thick black yarn into the first knot as she left her corporeal self behind and reached out for the forbidden. For the unthinkable. For the story of her mother, pulled piece by rich, potent piece from the crystal stamp until she stood there in the air before her, incorporeal but wholly aware. The woven spirit watched, silent, her eyes wordlessly approving, needing no explanation for what was transpiring.

Her grandfather followed, the tapestry taking on a second vividly real manifestation, every bit the man himself, just as she was herself, lacking only flesh. Her great-grandmother next, and her grandmother's mother after, each intently watching as the atmosphere grew heavy with lethal anticipation, the night itself holding its breath against the coming blow. Faster now, her fingers shaking but unerring, the elder wove the stories of generations, reaching in and knitting together memories of family, duty, fears, love, all stunningly powerful with their potency, the richness of lives lived long and fully, imbued with purpose and magic alike.

They were close now, and she could hear the whispers on the wind, hungry and maddening in their glacial susurrations, reaching for every primal instinct to run and hide. With renewed determination, even as she watched her body flag below her projected spirit, she knitted her ancestors' stories into reality, summoning their spirits anew.

When the last spectral ancestor was pulled forth from the faded, now-cracked crystal, he turned not to the elder with her tale-weaving, but outward toward the deep mountains, expression troubled.

"It will not be enough," he rasped softly. "They are past all logic, all bargains, and are coming to devour. We will not be enough."

The first tale-witch turned to study the last, with her failing body and vibrant spirit, his eyes shadowed. "You, though.. with you, it will suffice."

"I have not yet passed the gift," the elder gasped, even as the body below her slumped forward in a faint. "It would die with me."

The ancestors nodded as one, eerily synchronized, and whispered, "Precisely."

"That is all that will sate them," whispered the first witch grimly. "Perhaps for a very long time to come. Perhaps forever."

"If you are wrong.. the village will have no protection," breathed the last tale-witch as her eyes drifted to her sleeping grandson with trepidation, the youth's sleep turning fitful as nightmares began to creep in.

"What choice is there? Death now or later, or the possibility of survival? It must be done, and may the Fates guide them," replied all in unsettling harmony.

Scattered through the fold, lambs here and there began to emit high, keening sounds of stark terror, each animal to the last turned as one to face outward toward the forest's heart. The sound of breaking branches and whipping wind swelled, the shouts of waking villagers arising as the night churned with dread that reached down into the very core of instinct itself.

With a single, terse nod of acceptance, the elder slipped back into her body one last time, straightening from her slumped unconsciousness with a jerk. Taking up her last skein of yarn, pale and undyed, she began to knit one more story - her own. With no need to reserve strength for the long fight of life and survival, she poured out the last bits of her fading lifeforce into the working of yarn and memory. The latter flowed like blood into the threads, turning them into something far more than mundane. Picking up her puckish grandson from the ground after he was told he was to be the night's watcher. The berries they'd eaten for breakfast before it. The long nights of that hungry winter.

Backwards, farther and faster as the double doors of the fold slammed open with the force of gale, snow, and the nightmarish entities that rode atop them. The memory of her daughter's wedding poured into the yarn as the eldest tale-witch was consumed, the vibrant remembrances of her childhood and its joys and disappoints following. One by one, with frightening speed and ferocity, the creatures tore into the incorporeal but fully realized stories, drawn by their richness and potency. In the fray, the animals stampeded out the battered door, waking the youth beside the woman.

"Go," she told him without looking away from the threads holding the vivid memory of disappointment and fear over a blooded stamp on her daughter's wrist not flaring to life. When the lad hesitated, she raised her quavering voice and infused it with eldritch authority. "GO!"

As the boy fled with the lambs into the hungering night, she redoubled her efforts, agonizingly aware of the tattered shreds of soul and tale falling around her like rain from the sundered ancestors, snatched up and swallowed by wicked jaws and slavering maws. Now, the recollection of her mother's death, her daughter's birth, then her conception, her own wedding, the courtship, each one flowing like the glacial rapids into the shape of .. herself. And as her own spirit took form before her, watching her, her quaking hands grew weaker.

A free and wild adolescence, frolicking in the dark of the woods with the wolves and the fae, flipped through and passed on in lucid but fleeting detail. Few of the ancestors remained now, each facing their obliteration and consumption with the stalwart grace of the strong-hearted, and still the witch wove. Backward yet further, the remembrances of childhood and the burn of the stamp upon her palm, the flood of the power. The gift. Her mother's hand upon her own.. and then, it was there once more, steadying the ancient flesh with its incorporeal luminance as surely as it had in life. Just as quickly it was gone, ripped away and devoured.

In the feral darkness of the night around her, the swarm raged, circling in upon that most tempting brightness in the center of the fold, the dual form of physicality and incorporeality so powerfully infused with magic and memory. Sated near-fully, they now took their time, prowling in the shadows and waiting for the hand of power to try to scatter them away into the mountains once more. Fascination held them there, fascination and hunger never-ceasing.

As the bright first light of a newborn's opened eyes passed into the woven spirit of the tale-witch, it took with it the brilliant radiance of magic and life. Withered to an empty husk, the body of the elder fell lifeless to the cold earth of the sheepfold, packed hard by countless hooves over the years. And yet, there she still stood, luminous and young and strong with power, hands clasped to her chest covering something glowing brightly there. As she watched the slowing horde, packed deep into the shadows in numbers incomprehensible, those hands slowly lowered, one of them incandescent with a rune in just the spot a stamp had once kissed her flesh.

With the same authority she had once commanded and directed the nightmares, she held out her arms to either side and silently bade them feast. No loyalty among those dark entities, no hint of hesitation or morality stayed their jaws. In but an instant, the spirit was engulfed in a tempest of darkness, silent as they ripped away her vitality, ravenously consuming each and every memory and the magic that imbued them.

When the last one loped away into the forest to melt into deep, sedate shadow, fat and pleased and now somehow strangely mundane, the fold lay empty. Not a trace of the unfathomable violence could be seen, the only blood staining the frozen earth spilled from a single broken bowl.

Nothing remained.

In the years that followed, passing into decades, then centuries, there were still broken fences and tracks in the snow. Wolves hungered, after all, and would try to reach the meat that lay within the wooden boundaries. There were still eerie whispers in the wind, and shepherds in the fold. But slowly, over time, with the night was no more deadly than the implacable day, torches lit the village as families visited one another under the starlight without fear.

In the winter of that remote village, no one ever arrived. Perhaps it was the blizzards that whipped near-constantly through the encircling mountains, turning them from things of deadly, impersonal beauty into jagged, malevolent teeth of lethal intent. Perhaps it was the wolves that stalked through the storms, at home in the tempest and always, always hungry. Perhaps people simply did not travel that way at that time of the year, whether from fell rumor or simple inconvenience. Whatever the reason, all the villagers knew was that after the fall equinox, not a soul would ever find shelter in their village until the first tulips pushed through the early spring frosts.

In the winter, they were truly alone.