Dear readers and everyone else who visits this blog,
it is a very special pleasure for me to publish a new episode of the Professor's Transmissions through the Aether. Today it is a quite mysterious one, but don't be afraid: you are in good hands here. So get yourself a warm drink, take a seat next to the fire and listen to the Professor's words through your receiving device:
As the winter nights draw in, I am reminded of a tale I once heard, while sheltering from a most tempestuous storm....
During the worst storm to strike the far off lands of Mirrormere, a most isolated region, which is a vast lake surrounded by jagged peaks and pitted with shadow filled valleys, a Dirigible bound for Never drift, found itself caught up in the 'Krakens breath' a term used by the Aethernauts of Old New Gate, meaning a storm strong enough to tear the envelope of an Airship and twist her structure to breaking point. And indeed the Airship was dashed on the rocky spires and all but three souls, were lost on board.
These three, a young couple and their year old daughter, found themselves lost and alone in the bitter encroaching cold, stumbling through the heavy pines rising up from the snow blanketed land and only compounding their dilemma by attempting to follow the frozen river, which ended abruptly at the edge of a precipice. Now cut off from any safe route, the slope to steep to return, all seemed lost...Until a figure emerged from the snowy night and beckoned to them, a lean almost thin figure, swathed in furs and glistening with hoarfrost, his long hair white as the snow which settled on it, and a beard bristling with frost. Without an alternative, the couple followed him, their precious cargo clutched tightly, for arduous hours they allowed themselves to be led by this would be rescuer, who never spoke, not a word, or sound from his lips emerged in that time. Finaly he paused at a mountain track which ran below the snow line, and placing his sack on the floor indicated the route they should follow to the village, which sprawled out below them, welcoming window lights in the gloom and the clattering of carts, more welcome sights and sounds than any, after such a chilly ordeal.
And then, without a word, the old man picked up his sack and climbed back up the mountain, beyond the tree line, up into the snow line and vanished into the clouds shrouding the peak...And was never heard nor seen from again.
The family now safe in the town below recounted the tail of this unspeaking guide and were met with some curious gazes from those gathered in the tavern. You see, in the most far flung and isolated corners of the world, superstition is abroad in all walks of life. The more level headed said it was just a kindly old Hermit, who lived up there high up in the ragged peaks who performed a charitable act. But some whispered of the Revenant of an old mountain guide, who perished above the snow line searching for a lost group of mountaineers, finally fulfilling his last promise to return the lost ones to safety...And some? well, some whispered that this was old Jack Frost himself, who for some reason, took pity on the man, woman and child, and in that moment, decided he would performed one kindly deed, and lead the family to safety...But as I say, there are places in the chilly furrows of the world where superstition is rife, or as some may say, older more intimate knowledge of the half seen world, we sometimes stumble across , as the shadows lengthen and the chill winds blow, in the dead of winter....
What do you think?...
Exert From
'My further travels across the 35th Dimension and other places'
Prof.Z.Wickentower.
