A slow, rolling breeze blew through the trees in the forest behind the farmhouse, and the leaves began to rustle under the sinking sun. Michael shivered, and turned his collar up against the wind. He heaved the unhitched harvester into the barn, where the workhorse slept. Seif, his daughter’s grey-coated dog, followed him into the barn and slumped impatiently, her tail wagging. While Michael coaxed his old muscles to move the steel behemoth into the structure. Straightening, he stretched his joints until they popped. Harvest season began today, and he grew weary after a good day’s harvest in his old age. Michael extinguished the lantern hanging from the rafter and called Seif as he shuffled to close the door. Her tail wagged and her tongue lolled out of her mouth as she padded her way across the yard beneath the old oak. Michael smiled, recalling how Arthia used to run and laugh with Seif under the boughs of that tree. A momentary blast of autumn wind whipped its limbs back and forth as the sun kissed the horizon and the old dog barked excitedly, her tail thrashing now as if driven by that wind.
“No need to beg there Seif, you’ll get your dinner soon enough,” Michael said, scratching her head. But she wasn’t staring at the door of their house. She was instead peering into the woods, with a wistfully longing expression fixed on her visage. Michael followed her piercing gaze and there on the edge of the wood steeped in autumn a figure of pale shadow stood. “Ho there!” He called to the figure, “You’d best come inside for some supper, you’ll freeze out here with the turn of the weather!” But the wind died down, with it Seif was calmed and Michael could no longer see the form. “Old eyes don’t work the way they used to,” he remarked to himself and trudged to his back door, Seif squeezed by his legs into the cozy interior. The home was plain to the eye but burst with an aroma of turnip and venison stew. Not a king’s meal, but compared to field rations or what old cook threw in a pot, the stew was a feast to Michael’s nose. He fished out some chunks of meat and placed them in a bowl on the floor for Seif, then he filled his own to the brim.
“Swords to ploughs,” he said, “one thing stays the same, Seif, you get hungry either way.” She gave a happy bark and devoured her food. Michael smiled at this, whispered a shadow of a prayer and then ate his stew. He cleaned the bowls, swept the floor, washed the cook pot, dusted the mantle the way Maria did when Arthia was still a child, and oiled the old twin sword he still kept beneath his bed, though it was only half of a whole and hadn’t needed drawn for many passings of the moon. He turned in for the night with Seif settling into her place curled at the foot of his bed.
Several hours of restless sleep later, Michael awoke to a pale moonbeam striking his eye. He turned over to slumber again when he felt the creeping chill of a draft wash over him. Springing up, he searched to find and close the door or window left ajar, and realized Seif was missing. He flung on a cloak, grasped for a lantern, and instinctively drew his old sword. Shambling out the back door, he searched for where Seif may have gone. There! Across the farmyard, passed the barn, and along the woods he glimpsed a shadow swiftly moving deeper into the forest.
“Drat! Seif, we don’t hunt until the weekend!” Michael called, taking off after the shape. “Seif!” he cried, “come home girl!” As he crashed through the undergrowth branches and brambles reached out to him, claws of twig and thorn grasping at his cloak. Tripping over a root, he landed on a knob of wood that dug into his thigh. On the ground, the moonlight glinted off a silver tuft of fur caught on a tree root. He looked up and spied a path of broken twigs and trampled brush. Michael lumbered to his feet and hobbled along the path, a black-and-purple mass forming where the root had struck his leg. Each new step a reminder of old wounds, the new one an echo of what once he bore.
At last, the thick foliage cleared and the moon shone thereupon a brook trickling through the trees. This was the brook Arthia used to play in, and she later learned to hunt and fish along its banks. Light glanced off the glistening water and highlighted a shadow crouching upon a moss-covered rock on the opposite bank of the creek. Elated, Michael drew a ragged breath to call Seif’s name once more, when the form stood upon its legs, and beckoned him. This creature stirred a memory in Michael, though of what he did not know. The wind drove another assault upon the forest and carried with it a sound like that of a crying dog. The figure opposite Michael leapt off the boulder and danced deeper into the trees. Clouds drifted in front of the incandescent moon, and Michael hesitated only a moment before hopping across the stream to follow the figure. He crashed through the forest again, this time determined to find this creature that took his Seif, the vestige Arthia left behind when she followed in Michael’s own footsteps.
Deeper into the woods he plunged, careening around trees, leaping over logs. The wind’s barrage heightened when he avoided crashing into one trunk. Then, a phantom shape of pitch black emerged from the next oak. The ghost brandished a misty blade. Instinct drove Michael’s sword into the shade, and it dissipated into nothing. More creatures of night arose from the foliage around him, like his many foes of old returning for revenge.
Youthful vigor seeped into Michael’s limbs with each step and swing, the familiar blade once again biting left and right to cut down those that stood in his way. “Where is a challenge!?” A shout tore its way from his throat. That voice belonged to a much younger, more vulgar man. This stirred the phantoms into a frenzy, as if they remembered the bite of his blade in their flesh and ringing of taunts in their ears. Then a tree limb broke with a crack as of bones breaking, and Michael heard again the anguish he once inflicted. And the wind driving through the trees howled as if from the wails of the wounded. Those sounds that drove him to give up the sword many moons ago rushed back to him.
This stayed his blade but a moment, and the creatures of shadow closed in, unrelenting. Just as his falter seemed to doom him, a shadow of a different, silvered hue appeared at Michael’s side, flowing and dancing betwixt the forms like a hummingbird flits between flowers. Michael swallowed his fear and pressed on just as he had in his last days as a warrior.
The two fought together, advancing one painful step after painful step into those woods. With each movement a twinge of pain lanced through his thigh and the aches of his joints became more pronounced, his body remembering it was not so young as it once was. Now Michael kept his elation in check, refusing to revel in the fight as he wished to. Instead he focused on keeping his strange partner safe from harm.
At last, he broke into a clearing and that umbral ambush vanished. The moon reemerged from the clouds, and the wind calmed. In the center of that uncharted clearing stood a gravestone. Not a monument of grandeur or ostentation as for a great knight from days of old, nor a decrepit vile cairn marking the hasty burial of a thief. But instead, a plain chiseled rock, a simple carving set a name into its smooth surface—Arthia. Beside the stone lay Seif, deep brown eyes staring up at the stone, a soft whimper escaping her lips. She reminded Michael less of the aging gray mutt, but more of a majestic great wolf of silver, honoring a fallen packmate. Upon the grave lay the twin sword to Michael’s own. He felt the strength drain from his limbs, his body grew weak, and all the aches and pains flooded over him. Tears leaked from his eyes as he struggled to approach the marker. At last, he crossed the clearing and sank to his knees in front of it. He reached a gnarled shaking hand to caress the stone, as he used to caress Arthia’s head while singing songs of his adventures. A figure of moonlit shadow approached him, laying her hand upon his back as he let the tears fall like rain, and Seif howled with the wind.