Author's Note/Historical Background: I'm so sorry this has been so long coming, like two months. But, hopefully things should be less busy now. I know. I should stop apologizing and just write more. Anyways, this chapter's kind of a short skip ahead. We have to start picking up speed or things will never get anywhere. So, here's a quick overview of what's been happening with both Antonio and Gilbert. Historically, most of Gilbert's stories are random Germanic myths, common among many countries. I chose Wodan because most people know Odin, and there is a proven correlation between his myths and the Roman god Mercury. Just another way the Romans influenced other cultures that I felt like adding in. As always, reviews and criticism are more than welcome.

11. Winter Crept Slowly

Winter crept upon the villa slowly, and somehow it surprised them when they woke up to find their breaths wisping away from them like the ghosts of the dying year. The trees let their leaves drift to the ground like old men, skeletal arms clutching up at the empty sky in search of covering for their bald pates. Only the kitchen hummed with life as servants scurried about preserving fruit and taking inventory for the cold months. The kitchen was always filled with the crackle of meat turning on spits, wine simmering over the fire, the low rush of contented chatter.

Lovina showed Antonio how to cut back the rose bushes for the frost. They would steal into the kitchen, unnoticed among the bustle, and snatch rolls, burning hot from the oven. They would carry them under their tunics, savoring the heat pressed up against their cold skin, and clamber into the loft of the stables to split their prize. They spent the long winter nights huddled in the hay, wrapping their wool cloaks about them like roosting chicks and sipping hot wine sweetened with honey and laced with spices. As the nights grew colder the space between them grew smaller, until Antonio would doze off with his face pressed into her hair, which smelled of wood smoke and clay and growing things. But always he would wake up in the still air of dawn alone, with her cloak wrapped about his shoulders. Every morning he would look for her among the hay, but he knew she'd slipped her fingers from his and scurried back up to her room over the roof before anyone had time to notice she was gone.

Lovina found herself waiting by the stable almost every morning. She would curl up on the hard ground and listen to him cleaning up the horses' stalls. He would greet each one by name, asking a certain bay how her foot was feeling this morning, or a finicky rowan if he had finally stopped his feud with the neighboring chestnut mare. He would sing as he worked, low and honey thick, without words. Lovina would close her eyes and let the low tide of sound fill up the space between her breaths until she heard the stable door slam behind him and she would scurry off so he wouldn't see her there.

Lovina still bristled at everything he said. He chased her up into the barren vineyards one day to apologize for having laughed at her after she'd dropped a sack of flour on herself and coated herself white. She had stormed off without even grabbing a wool cloak. They twined through the vines, her marching briskly ahead and him trailing behind, half bemused and half exasperated, when the first thick flakes started to flutter towards the ground. By the time he'd caught up to her, the world was already covered in a thin veil of white.

She stood, frozen as the flakes caught in her auburn curls. Her eyes were wide open in shock; her fingers chased the flurries through the air. Snow gathered in her hair and on her pale skin, mixing with the flour still caked across her face and tunic. Her lips and cheeks were bright red with the cold. Heavy flakes clung to her eyelashes as she watched the snow drape across the vineyard. Antonio paused to catch his breath. Her hair billowed about her face as she turned back to look at him, all anger dissipating.

"Is this snow Antonio?" She asked breathlessly, holding out her palms to catch each bright shard. She was white and bright red and a flash of green and, for the first time he realized, beautiful.

"Yeah," Antonio mumbled, captivated as her hands trailed sinuously through the air, swirling the snow about her. "I think it is."

"I can't remember the last time it snowed here," she answered giddily. And then she started to laugh, spinning wildly with her head thrown back. Her curls tumbled from the loose knot on top of her head and flew about her face in the cold breeze. She tripped over to him, catching up his hands and spinning him around until they were both laughing. Their breaths mixed together in the frozen air as they laughed and whooped and kicked up flurries behind them. By the time they came to a halt they were both red-faced and breathless. Lovina clasped her bare arms across her chest, shivering, until Antonio wrapped her up in his cloak. She burrowed her back into his chest and together they walked back to the villa, tripping over each other's legs and giggling, blanketed by the lush quiet of the falling snow.

As winter hobbled lethargically through the south, it howled and raged through the north. It pounded down snow throughout the mountains, scattering the deer down to the more sheltered valleys and freezing the flocks in their fields. It ripped that year's new babes from their mothers' arms. It brought with it the cold and the darkness, and the chilling fear of living day by day in a land made barren white.

Gilbert and his little bright-faced brother huddled down in their wooden hut, sheltered as much by the drafty boards as by the words of his stories. As the wind screeched outside, and battered at the small fire built in the middle of the hut, Gilbert spoke. He spoke of Wodan, chief among gods. He spoke of giants as fistfuls of snow beat upon the walls, and of the nixies as the wood moaned against the fits of wind. He spoke of the lion boy and the little princess bird when his brother clutched at his tunic, tears freezing to his cheeks. He spoke to quell the rage of the storm. He spoke to reassure himself that his breath still clouded in front of his numb mouth. He spoke to give some beginning and some end to the everlasting white and wind and cold.

But it was when the little boy became feverish that Gilbert spoke the hardest. They wrapped him up in furs until only his fringe of blond hair could be seen. Germania trapped them scrawny hares and a few starving deer. He would be gone for days on end in the woods, searching through the white for herbs buried in feet of snow. Gilbert would mix up broths of grain and gently pull back the furs. He would cup his brother's face in his hands, skin clammy and burning, and cradle the boy's head in his lap as he gently spooned thin broth into his mouth. He could feel the boy's fluttering pulse through his tunic, his gasping breaths. He spoke to keep from crying. He spoke to keep his brother's eyes open, to keep him from drifting into that sleep from which he wouldn't wake. He spoke because there was nothing else to do.

His words became a chant, a ritual, a prayer. Always he returned to the story of the lion and his princess. He would reach into Ludwig's tunic and gently pull out the yellowed shard of bone, rubbing it with the pad of his thumb. Always he would end his story by pressing the charm into his brother's clammy palm and telling him that one day he would find the princess and make her smile. One day he would be great. Ludwig would close his bright blue eyes and drift off with a half-smile on his face, and Gilbert would brush his fingers over the little bone charm for hours on end. It was a gift, a gift of his life, and now it had to give him his brother's.

Germania would return, perhaps with a handful of herbs in a leather pouch, or maybe with nothing more than the banks of snow that billowed in after him. He would wrap another fur about both boys' shoulders, throw another log on the dying fire, and he would wait. There was nothing else to do. He would curse. He cursed the cruel winter, the crushing snows. He cursed his own uselessness. But most of all he looked across the flickering fire at the two boys dozing in the corner, and he hoped.