The Weeping House

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There was a winter once, colder than any before it. The rivers froze too deep to break, the winds howled through the mountain passes, and the food stores emptied long before the sun returned. The village of Brannen huddled in its homes, waiting for the cold to take them. It would not be the first time a village had been swallowed by the winter, nor the last.   One man, a hunter named Aldric, swore that he would not let them die. He took his spear and left in search of food, though he knew in his heart there was none to be found. He walked through the frozen woods, his breath thick in the air, his steps slow and stumbling as hunger gnawed at him. He did not recognize the paths he walked, though he had hunted these forests all his life. The trees looked taller, their branches twisted as if reaching, the wind whistling through them like voices whispering his name. The ground beneath him felt unfamiliar, though his feet left no tracks behind.   And then, through the snowfall, he saw it.   A house.   It should not have been there. The walls were bowed, sagging under their own weight, though they did not fall. Ice clung to the roof in long, glassy fingers, yet water trickled from the eaves as if something inside was weeping. The windows were streaked with frost, but behind them, shadows moved. The air around it was too still, the cold strangely dull, as if the wind dared not touch the place at all.   The door opened.   Aldric did not step forward, but he did not run either. Something inside called to him—not with words, but with a voice he felt in his bones. It made him an offer. A gift. Food enough to save his people, enough to last the whole winter. But there would be a price.   Two children.   Aldric did not ask what would happen to them. He did not want to know.   He returned to the village with his arms full of grain, of dried meat, of food that should not have been possible to find in the dead of winter. He said nothing of where it came from, only that the gods had provided. That night, the wind howled louder than before. And by morning, two children were missing.   No doors had been broken. No footprints led into the snow. Their beds were simply empty.   No one spoke of it. The grief was swallowed in silence.   But the village ate.   And when the hunger returned, when the food stores emptied once more, Aldric knew what had to be done. He took his spear and left, and when he returned, his hands were warm, his pack was heavy—and two more children were gone.   The winters stretched longer. The price grew steeper. First two, then four. Then six. The villagers turned their faces away, pretending not to see, pretending not to know.   And then the children came back.   It began with knocking.   Soft at first.   Gentle.   Always in pairs.   Late at night, long after the fires had died, small voices called from outside the doors. They asked to come inside. They said they were lost. Cold. Hungry. They sounded like children. They looked like children. But their breath did not cloud in the air. Their skin was too smooth, too still, untouched by the wind. Their lips curled in quiet, patient smiles, and their eyes—   Black as the river beneath the ice.   Black as the mouth of the Weeping House itself.   The villagers bolted their doors. They whispered prayers. They did not answer.   But the children did not leave.   They only stood there, waiting.   The Weeping House no longer needed Aldric to bring its offerings. The Children of the Ice would bring them instead.   They wandered the roads, standing at the edges of villages, watching from the treelines. They did not chase. They did not steal. They only whispered.   "Come with us."   "There’s food inside."   "You must be so hungry."   And when another child went missing, no one searched for them.   Some say Aldric never returned from the woods the next year. Some say he was taken by the Weeping House at last. Others say he never left it at all, that he had become part of the thing he had served.   Even now, when the winters grow too long and the food runs low, people claim to hear knocking in the night. And when a child is taken by the cold, the villagers pray that it was truly the storm that took them.   Because if it wasn’t—   Then the Weeping House has opened its doors again.   And the Children of the Ice are waiting.
   

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