Adammair Walker

There had been no visions and Adam’s dreams were only dreams.

He had a sense of something unseen passing and a curious disinterest in what the sense might portend.

Perhaps it was summer’s end – the season, certainly not the woman, for she seemed as bright and vibrant as ever, perhaps even more so than she had been when first they met, as though the seasons of the carnival had somehow invigorated her.

There would be one more carnival at least, in Trinsic, but beyond that Adam could not see, as though a corner was yet unturned and the vista beyond it hidden, even from Alraune’s cards.

Adam had seen no more direct evidence of the Elder Arcana, though Decardo had stirred the interest of others with hints and bits of information, so that a man named Goober came to the Salon door seeking further knowledge, and even Stewan hinted at some premonition or feeling connected to the hypothetical spirits.

But perhaps it was the way of the Arcana – if indeed they existed – to work hidden among men, as influences and currents. Maybe it was some acolyte of lassitude that filled Adam with the strange passivity that claimed him now, and there were other behaviors that made him think there might be eldritch influences at work.

Summer still held mysteries and, with every passing day, Adam was willing to spend more of himself to learn them.

And the fire Adam saw in the man Dust’s eyes when he looked at Alraune troubled Adam still, not mere desire, but something far darker, as though one of the primal spirits burned in him as well.

“Perhaps I will steal her from you,” Dust had said, as though Alraune was a mere possession.

“I am not so easily stolen,” Alraune had answered him and the spark of danger had flared between them.

Adam and Alraune, Dust and Summer, had journeyed together to Yew, dined together at the very doorstep of Stonekeep, with laughter and song, heralds perhaps of what might happen one day if the Carnival came to Yew.

Pressed for a song, Adam had found an old one that he had sung long ago, in another age, at the crux of another turning. The song was called Autumn.

On burning nights, in fields of rye,
My loving lass and I did lie,
And all our hopes and all of bliss
Passed ‘tween us with sweet Spring’s kiss.
And we knew we would never die.

So in the spreading of the days,
We practiced old, forgotten ways,
Fertile fields and willing miss
And endless, burning summer’s kiss
We loved all in a fever’s haze.

Then autumn came, and chilling frost.
Who lies in rye may pay a cost.
One thing I know I know is this,
Mortality is the autumn’s kiss,
And fate but a die that’s tossed.

For he the snares of fall have caught
The winter slays with frozen shot,
An’ all I’d known from pain to bliss
I knew no more with winter’s kiss.
No memories, no dreams, no thought.

But, in fertile May, by the fields of green rye,
Not far from the place where my poor bones lie,
There the spring sun shines on my darling miss
As she gives our son his father’s kiss.
And I know I never will die.

The words held the moment, and his mood, the certainty of change and the shape of eternity. Men and women were only playthings, of the seasons, of their passions, and of cycles vast beyond understanding.

And yet they endured.

__________________