The Gilded Winter (eBook)

A Multiverse on the Brink

Emeran Youa, Ai (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
203 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-0-00-110367-2 (ISBN)

Infos

In the shadow of Mont Blanc lies Saint-Clément, a timeless
Alpine village hiding chilling secrets beneath its snow-covered
charm. For seven summers, history professor Étienne Mercier
has visited this haven to escape the pressures of academia and
delve into Alpine folklore. But in the summer of 1984, his
retreat takes a darker turn.
When Étienne stumbles upon an 18th-century journal hidden in
a crumbling estate, he uncovers haunting accounts of
mysterious disappearances and cryptic warnings about 'the
mountain keepers.' As he delves deeper into the journal's
chilling details, he begins to notice eerie parallels between the
past and the present, including a sinister forty-year cycle of
vanishings-one that aligns ominously with the current year.
With the reluctant help of Hélène Rousseau, Saint-Clément's
enigmatic archivist, and under the wary gaze of the village's
powerful mayor, Étienne pieces together a web of folklore,
forbidden rituals, and ancient guardianship. But his discoveries
come at a cost. The more he learns, the more the village
closes ranks, and the deeper he is drawn into its shadowy
traditions.
As winter creeps in, isolating Saint-Clément beneath heavy
snow, Étienne realizes he has become part of the cycle he's
trying to unravel. With the lives of innocents-and his
own-hanging in the balance, Étienne must confront an
impossible choice: expose the truth and risk unleashing an
ancient force, or accept a dark legacy that has kept the village
safe for centuries.
Atmospheric, suspenseful, and unnervingly human, The Gilded
Winter is a gripping tale of sacrifice, love, and the chilling cost
of secrets buried in the heart of the mountains.

Textauszug

Chapter 1: Arrival in Saint-Clément

The road narrowed to a single thread of frost-cracked asphalt as Étienne Mercier eased the Citroën through the last hairpin. Mont Blanc floated ahead of him like a cathedral of ice, its upper slopes already catching the dawn in pale rose and gold, while the valley below remained steeped in violet shadow. He lowered the window. Cold air rushed in, smelling of stone and snow and something faintly metallic that reminded him of old coins. A hawk turned overhead, wings motionless. For a moment the scholar in him tried to name the bird, but the man merely breathed, letting the altitude thin his blood and his worries in equal measure.

Saint-Clément appeared suddenly: a cluster of slate roofs caught in a half-circle of granite cliffs, as though the mountain had cupped its hand to shelter a handful of dark seeds. Étienne slowed to walking pace. The village seemed smaller each summer, as if it were very slowly folding itself inward. Shutters the color of storm clouds barred every window; only the church spire, capped with verdigrised copper, pointed outward to the sky. He felt the familiar hush settle over him—that Alpine silence that is not empty but full of things refusing to speak.

At the fountain in place de l’Église, Madame Fournier was scrubbing lettuce. She did not look up as the car passed. Étienne lifted two fingers from the wheel in greeting anyway, and felt the familiar small sting when her head stayed bent over the verdant leaves, water running pink over her knuckles. Three years of summer visits, and still he was the stranger who arrived when the edelweiss embroidery came out of drawers and the cowbells were polished for tourists who never quite materialized.

He parked beneath the lime tree beside the bakery. The engine cougped once and died. For a moment he sat with his hands on the wheel, listening to the ticking metal, then reached across to the passenger seat for the leather satchel that held his notebooks. The divorce papers were folded inside them like a shameful bookmark; he felt their presence each time he opened the flap. Three years separated, one year divorced, and still the memory of Hélène’s voice—his ex-wife, not the archivist—whispered, You care more for dead villages than for living people. He pushed the thought away, climbed out, and set his shoulders against the June chill.

The cottage he rented each summer stood at the village’s upper edge, where the lane tapered into a footpath that zig-zagged toward the old copper mine. Its walls were three feet thick; morning frost still sparkled in the mortar joints. He wrestled the key from under the cracked flowerpot, stepped inside, and smelled the interior’s particular perfume of larch smoke, dried lavender, and mouse droppings. Someone—old Marthe, presumably—had been in: firewood lay stacked beside the hearth, and a jug of blue hydrangeas sweated on the pine table. He set the satchel down, opened the shutters, and admitted a rectangle of white light that illuminated dust motes drifting like tiny planets.

While the kettle hissed on the enamel stove he unpacked: two changes of shirts, the heavy fountain pen Hélène had given him on their fifth wedding anniversary, and the stack of index cards rubber-banded by subject—customs, beliefs, calendar rites, weather lore. On the top card he had written in his cramped academic hand: Investigate les gardiens des montagnes—why do children still whisper this phrase? He tapped the card against his teeth, then slipped it into his pocket. From the window he could see the roof of the Mairie; smoke already rose from its chimney although the air was barely cool. Philippe Montand would be at his desk, drafting courteous letters to regional bureaucrats, preserving the illusion of a village like any other.

He drank the coffee scalding, scalding his tongue, and felt the familiar lift of anticipation. Field season: nine weeks in which the University of Lyon ceased to matter, in which his lectures on folkloric survival dissolved into the lived texture of bells, processions, candle-smoke. This year he had promised himself a monograph: Alpine Thresholds—Continuity and Rupture in High-Altitude Oral Culture. The subtitle was cumbersome; he would refine it. He took his tweed jacket from the hook, though summer sun drenched the courtyard, and stepped outside.

The lane climbed past ancient hay barns whose wooden flanks were the color of weathered bone. A cat watched him from a windowsill, tail curled like a question mark. Halfway to the church he heard voices drifting from the boulangerie—two women discussing the estate sale of Marcel Girard, who had died in April. Girard had been ninety-four, the last of the itinerant blacksmiths; Étienne had bought iron trivets from him two summers ago and listened to his slurred stories of winter nights when the forge fire turned green. The women’s voices dropped when they saw him; he caught only the phrase “…pas avant la mi-juin…” not before mid-June. A date, perhaps. A warning.

He continued upward. The church of Saint Clément crouched on a natural ledge, its bell rope hanging motionless. Inside, the air smelled of damp stone and extinguished candles. Étienne genuflected from habit, though belief had left him years ago, and studied the southern wall where the carved capital jutted: two serpents devouring their own tails around a pinecone. A local antiquarian had once explained them as symbols of eternity; Étienne suspected older provenance. He took out the fountain pen, flipped open his notebook, and began to sketch. Footsteps scuffed behind him.

“Professor Mercier. Early for you to be at devotion.”

He turned. Father Benoît, cassock pinned with a wooden brooch carved like an edelweiss, stood with his arms folded so the sleeves made a black cylinder across his chest. His smile was cordial, yet his eyes flicked to the notebook as though it might contain heresy.

“Observation, not devotion,” Étienne said. “I wondered whether the serpents might relate to local stories of mountain guardians.”

The priest’s lips thinned. “Old stone. Old superstitions. Faith supplants them.”

“Yet the stone remains.”

“So does faith.” Father Benoît’s gaze slid past him to the altar. “You will attend the sale at Girard’s house?”

“I’d like to see his tools.”

“A man leaves more than tools. He leaves debts of memory.” The priest crossed himself, turned, and walked toward the sacristy with a stride that was almost angry. Étienne watched the black robe disappear, then returned to the capital. The serpents’ eyes were blank, but their scales bore the crescent nick of a mason’s chisel. He touched the mark; cold granite yielded nothing.

Outside, clouds had gathered, white and dense as fresh carded wool. They flattened the light, erasing shadows, so the village appeared to exist in a photographer’s developing tray—image emerging in monochrome. Étienne descended past the cemetery where the first spring buttercups glimmered between headstones. One fresh grave lay at the far end: plain wooden cross, name not yet carved. He thought of Marcel Girard’s hands, broad and scarred, lifting coffee cups in the café last August. The memory felt suddenly urgent, as if the old man had tried to tell him something that would now remain forever unspoken.

At the intersection by the fountain, a trio of children played hopscotch. They froze when they saw him, small faces tight, then scattered toward their respective houses with the nervous precision of starlings. One girl lingered long enough to drop her stone; it rolled and stopped against Étienne’s shoe. He picked it up: a chip of glazed pottery, blue glaze abraded to white. When he held it out she snatched it and fled. The door of her house slammed, and the metal latch fell with a sound like a guillotine.

A flyer fluttered from the notice board: VENTE DE SUCCESSION, Saturday next, 14 h précises. Household effects, forge implements, library. The notary’s stamp smudged where rain had fallen. Étienne copied the details into his notebook, feeling the first prickle of academic hunger. Estate sales were archaeological sites in miniature—every object a stratum, every ledger a codex. Girard had been private, almost secretive; his library might contain journals, almanacs, perhaps even handwritten charms passed down through forge families. He underlined the date twice, aware that villagers would watch who attended, who bid, who lingered too long over certain lots.

Footsteps approached—measured, deliberate. He looked up into eyes the color of river stone.

“Madame Rousseau.”

“Monsieur le professeur.” Hélène Rousseau inclined her head. She wore charcoal wool despite the warmth, the collar fastened by a silver pin shaped like a tiny key. Her hair, dark threaded with silver, was coiled so severely that the temples looked stretched. “You study our advertisements now?”

“Your notice board studies me,” he said, gesturing at the layered papers. “It remembers which names appear each season.”

A flicker—amusement?—touched her mouth. “Memory is selective. Archives less so. If you require access, the mairie has approved your request for the older parish registers.”

“I’m grateful.” He hesitated, then ventured: “I hoped to ask about the guardians mentioned in carols children sing at Advent. The phrase les gardiens des montagnes appears in variants from Val d’Aosta to Savoie, yet local documentation is…sparse.”

Her lashes dropped, shuttering the gray irises. “Sparse things are often deliberate. Mountains teach economy.” She stepped past him, her...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 2.10.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction
• ISBN-10: 0-00-110367-9 / 0001103679
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-110367-2 / 9780001103672