Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!
The title of this chapter comes from George Darley's poem Nepenthe.
Chapter Fifty-Five: Till Earth-Life Grow Elysian ThereHarry felt the winds close around him as they rose, curling under his robes, playing with the hem of his jumper, skimming his skin like teeth bared just enough to hurt. He shivered, and then resolutely opened his eyes and peered upwards. The wild Dark had chosen to take the form of rain, not of snow, so the air could not be as cold as it normally would be in winter. He would not allow the wild Dark to reverse its orientation now, and pretend to be something it was not.
Not that it seemed to be pretending as he rose to meet it. It spread its claws wide, and shrieked at him, and he saw the same ill-defined body he had seen when it attacked him that night outside Hogwarts.
The Hungarian Horntail stopped rising and spread her wings, hovering. Harry wondered why for a time, then realized that she saw little reason to close with an enemy in air of his choosing. She would wait here for the strike, where the winds were less violent and the wild Dark would have to come at them nearer to the bottom of its own cloud.
The wild Dark laughed, as if it could sense every thought in the dragon's head and disdained them all, and then it came for them.
Harry felt a shuddering power slam through him, as though he were back in the dream—of the graveyard, he knew now—where this creature had hit him with its neck. Pain followed pain like bruise following bruise, but he knew he didn't just bear bruises now. He had broken ribs. He coughed, and the Light fluttering in the heart of him answered with its best flare.
The wild Dark coiled around him, black scale next to black scale, pale belly arching for yards above his head. Then its claws reached out, and plucked the Light magic Harry's allies had sent him.
Harry sagged as the power left him. He turned his head to see the wild Dark ball it up into a tiny white bundle and toss it contemptuously down through the storm. Clouds parted for it, and then it was gone.
A voice spoke into his mind as if it would smash his skull to pulp. Here is only the Light you bring with you—your gifts, not your borrowings.
The claws closed around Harry's waist and snatched him from the dragon. Then the Dark was flying, heading straight up so fast that Harry felt his lashes freeze and his ears pop several times. The roar of the dragon was so far behind them that it quickly became indistinguishable from the roar of the winds. Harry could not hear Fawkes at all.
Here we are.
"Here" was evidently the top of the cloud, the top of the storm. Harry looked around, blinking dazed eyes—somehow, his glasses had not fallen off—and saw the lights of Little Hangleton off to one side. Directly below, bits of stone danced like leaves in an eddy. The storm must have uprooted the graves, he thought.
"What do you want of me?" he asked. The wind blew away his words the moment he formed them, but Harry had no doubt that the Dark heard him. Those golden eyes and serpentine neck cocked to look at him.
Your attention. Your admiration. It is wrong that you are always thinking of other things, and not of me. The Dark's tone had a wild petulance to it that reminded Harry of Connor when he didn't get a favorite sweet. When you have paid enough attention to me, then I will suck out your magic, and you will become a wind. I will show you all the dark spaces between the stars. They contain mysteries that no mortal has ever seen. You will like them.
"I can't leave my friends, the magical creatures, my home," Harry said quietly. He didn't know if reason was the best course to try on the wild Dark, but fighting had got him absolutely nowhere. "Those are all my duties, as well. I can try to give you more attention than I have, but if you insist on all of it, then you're depriving others of the same gift that you want."
The wild Dark laughed at him. Harry felt another rib break, but he couldn't tell if that came from the laughter or the tightening grip of the claws on him. He held still and tried to breathe as shallowly as he could. Broken ribs hurt so badly.
I do not care about the others. You are a Lord-level wizard, and you can pay attention to me and give gifts to me. We will go shake the stars when we are done here, and make the stars fall down. We will dance with the winds, and freeze the winds and turn them into ice crystals and leave them for future Muggles to discover. We will coat the world with night for three nights and allow no sun to rise. We will be free, and you cannot blame me for that, because you are freedom's servant.
Harry could see why there were Declared Dark Lords in that moment. Most of them probably hadn't Declared with the intention of conquering the world like Voldemort and Grindelwald had, even though that was what ended up happening. Many of them had probably wanted the secrets the Dark was promising, the questions parting to become answers, the endless freedom of venturing into corners of the universe that no one else would dare to probe.
But the road of the wild Dark was no more human than the road of the highest Light. Go with it, Harry knew, and he would lose what he most valued: his own sense of limitations on himself, the knowledge of when to use his power and when to cage it, his own tendency to hesitate instead of simply imposing his will on the world. He would become all "I can, and I want to, and therefore I should," and judgment would be alien to him.
"I don't want to do this," he said.
I know you don't. Your unwillingness tastes sweet. An enormous tongue flapped above him, like a black version of Voldemort's worn. But I will consume it, and it will become willingness, and then you will see what I see. For now, look down.
Harry looked down. He could have refused and kept looking straight, he knew, but then the wild Dark would have interfered with his vision and made him see what it wanted him to see anyway. If he got out of this alive—and a small part of him said that he might—Harry wanted his normal vision.
The land beneath him throbbed and changed like lightning in the midst of the storm, like wind or water. Harry saw houses dancing on their foundations, the hill outside Little Hangleton rippling up and down as though an army of worms moved beneath it, lights going out one by one as the enormous hand of the Dark stroked them into silence and darkness. He noticed a shape flying parallel to them, too, a grand shape, and tried to turn his eyes away and not notice it. The dragon was following them, waiting for a chance to strike. He didn't want the wild Dark to see her.
That thing? Oh.
And there came a violent snapping sound, and when Harry looked at the dragon, she was dead, her head lolling on her neck, her wings spread and shredding as particles of ice tore through them, her talons fluttering as though she played a tune. The wild Dark heard Harry's little pathetic cry of anguish, and laughed. Harry spun around twice in its glee.
You care, don't you? You still care. You look down at the land and you think more of them than you do of me. For a moment, the enormous voice was displeased, but it recovered its cheerfulness soon enough. I'll keep you caring, for a little while. You're fun when you're in pain.
Harry closed his eyes. There had to be some way he could defeat the storm. This wasn't like the situation with Durmstrang and the children trapped there, where he would handle it best by leaving it up to other people. There was no one but him who stood a chance of stopping the wild Dark. Voldemort was out of the way, and his allies could not send power to him from beyond the winds.
Here is only the Light you bring with you, the Dark had said.
Was that a clue?
Harry reached into the center of himself, trying to think of all the Light he knew. He turned his thoughts away from things like the green fire of the Killing Curse. There was the white radiance that had saved Connor's life at the end of first year, and the light of fire in the hearth at Godric's Hollow as the family sat around it telling stories, and the brilliant fireworks exploding behind his eyes when he and Draco kissed, and the sunrise when he swam with the unicorns on the sea—
The wild Dark shook him, and he lost the thread of his thoughts. When he opened his eyes, the wild Dark said, I thought you would like to see this. You did dream of protecting them from me, after all.
Harry had to look again, and he saw a Muggle woman being decapitated, wind sharp as a steel sword sweeping her head from her body. Harry made an inarticulate noise, especially when the wind blew knowledge of him up to her. She had lived in Little Hangleton, and her name was Marie, and she had a daughter named Sarah, and she was concerned about money, scraping it together, just barely making a living selling her paintings.
She would make no paintings ever again. She would never smile at Sarah again, or look out the window at a sunrise she'd seen after hours of being up to create, or do anything but drift as pieces in the Dark's grip, frozen meat, a victim of forces that Harry should have been able to keep away from her and had not.
"Stop!"
The wild Dark laughed in delight at the force of Harry's cry. It turned its gaze from the other floating Muggles, awaiting death with terror on their faces, to him. The dark tongue came into being again, and curled, as if tasting and savoring Harry's anguish.
Yes?
"What can I offer you to make you stop doing this?" Harry whispered. He felt the strength piling up behind him, and knew there was more where that came from. This was only the beginning, the Muggles it was killing and the houses it had pulled down so far. The wild Dark had not used the smallest part of its magic. The dawn would stop it, but it was the longest night of the year, and dawn was hours away. "What do you want of me that would make it worth your while to spare these Muggles and their homes?"
The wild Dark cocked its head reflectively. There are many things you might give me, it said. So many things that I will have to think of them—no, no, I need not. The first thing you can give me is a Declaration to the Dark. Become a Dark Lord.
Harry shivered, and saw his hopes for his future as vates collapse. "You know what I am," he said.
I do. The Dark bounced like an overexcited child. That is what makes this so much fun!
Harry swallowed, and swallowed, and swallowed again. His eyes locked on the drifting Muggles in the Dark's care. He saw Sarah, the dead woman's daughter; he knew her as well as Marie would have, with Marie's memory in his head now. Her eyes were wide, and she choked on tears. In her own life, she laughed and cried and was frustrated and grew angry, but here, all emotions save horror had been wiped out of her. No one should have to live like that.
But no one should have to live like the magical creatures, either, imprisoned under webs that stripped all sense of possibility from their futures. And if he Declared now, then he would be taking their best chance at freedom from them. He knew neither Dumbledore nor Voldemort would become vates, and he had no chance of knowing when another Lord-level wizard might emerge.
I grow bored, the Dark announced, and snapped Sarah's neck. She joined her mother as a dangling bit of trash in its currents, all the life and possibility fled her in an instant.
"All right!" Harry shouted, the words torn from him by the vision of more Muggles, and wizards, and witches, and magical creatures, dangling like that. "Damn you, all right!"
The Dark purred at him and coiled around him. We will do this correctly, it said. A full Declaration to the Dark is a ritual, you know, and not just a matter of announcing your new allegiance. I will show you all the steps, and you will dance them. A stage, flat and white, appeared beneath Harry's feet, then sprouted decorations of mottled gray. Around him, the wind stopped blowing, and Harry staggered as he landed, wincing as his ribs jostled and poked him. First, you must stand, and turn to the west. That is the proper ritual direction, since the sun sets there.
Harry rose and turned shakily to where he thought the west was. The storm approved in a deep rumble, and said, Now raise your right arm.
Harry lifted his right arm. He felt hatred dance in his veins like boiling water, and forced himself to breathe. The Dark would win a victory indeed if it made him hate it. He would not hate it. The wild Dark alone was making him hate it. The other parts of the Dark, the parts that wizards like Snape had seen and chosen to serve, were just as worthy of love and devotion as the Light.
But it's Light I need now.
The storm said, Raise your left—
The Dark didn't get to complete its instruction, because its words melted in a flood of song. Harry turned his head. He saw a flake of gold blowing towards him up the rogue winds beyond the stage, bright wings spread, song traveling before and behind it and seeming to smooth the air.
The wild Dark laughed. Your phoenix has come to say farewell to you. Of course, a phoenix will not serve a Dark wizard. How sweet. I am inclined to permit this, just so that you will have no distractions when you are completing the ritual. Listen to his pretty little song, then, Harry.
Harry fastened his gaze on Fawkes. The phoenix had tears in his eyes, and Harry wondered why. Had he tried to heal the dying Muggles? Had he tried to heal others Harry didn't know about, those people he should have managed to protect and had not?
He winced, and Fawkes answered him with a croon, as much to say that that had not been his fault and he was silly for thinking otherwise. Harry nodded. He kept his right arm up, since moving it might make the Dark rethink its permission for Fawkes to sing. He stood there, and awaited the last sound he suspected he would ever hear as a free wizard.
Fawkes spread his wings wide, looking more like an eagle than a phoenix in that moment, and started with a low warble. It rose from deep in his belly, traveled up his throat, and left his beak as shining notes. Harry saw them form and fall, drops of rain like honey. He could not see what happened to them. They seemed to part and become golden steam moments after they were born.
In the middle of them, Fawkes sang, and Harry saw endless golden pastures, shifting with flames. No, they were flowers, bowing and dancing in time to a wind he could not feel, their gauzy petals clasping each other, their stems entwining, their red centers opening to the sun. When the sun rose fully, then they burst into flame, but Harry knew that, even as they burned, they would resurrect themselves during the night, ready to complete a daily cycle.
Like the phoenixes.
There were phoenixes flying above those pastures, their tails outstretched behind them, their plumes bobbing, their talons tucked close to their breasts. Harry heard their voices answering each other, one song prompting a hundred others, warble answering warble, croon answering croon, and he had tears in his eyes as he watched one rise out of all of them and look towards the east.
That one was Fawkes.
The vision superimposed the imaginary bird over the real thing, and then Harry was looking at Fawkes again as he was here, as he hung suspended in the middle of this monstrous darkness and sang his heart out.
The music altered, leaping faster and faster, swirling like a tame waterfall down a series of steps. Harry could see a vision of that, now, as Fawkes sat beside such a cataract and drank from it by the light of the full moon, the moon itself reflected in the water but continually broken and disrupted by the coming of a new rivulet.
A free unicorn came to the cataract, shining like wonder. She had never known imprisonment. Beside her stood a foal who had never known it either, and who tossed his head and snorted in excitement at the song of the waterfall. It was music he had never heard before. He began an awkward dance to it, flecks of foam on his coat giving back the moonlight. Fawkes voiced notes he could dance more easily to, and phoenix and river, fire and water, sang together under the moon while the foal danced and the unicorn mare bowed her head and drank, her horn cleaving the waterfall into wilder and wilder reflections.
A blink, and the vision dissipated again. Harry looked up at Fawkes hanging above him, and wondered why the phoenix had chosen to share that with him. Was it a dear memory that he wanted Harry to retain when he was gone? A particularly beautiful shard of Light to clutch when he was all Dark?
Fawkes gazed back at him, eyes wild and black and wise, and then did a half-turn to the left and began another part of the song.
This time, Harry saw the stars. They shone like gems in a mine, but they were the stars, though shaken and rung as Harry had never imagined could happen. He could see immense silver strings running from them, and giant fingers flashing between them, and he realized he heard the harp of the stars being played. Was it real? At least as real as the way that wizards and witches saw the stars, he thought, for this was the way that a phoenix saw them.
Fawkes flew under the stars, and beside him was a creature Harry had never seen before, a winged horse made of silver wire and filled in with silver light. His wings rose and fell with a noise like flutes, just barely audible beneath the sound of the harp of the stars. His tail looped and curled, a shining river of diamonds, down into the night, and his mane brushed Fawkes like the scent of flowers. He flew, and whatever turn Fawkes made, whatever loop he curled, whatever straight-up ascent he executed at an impossible angle, the winged horse was right there beside him. Harry knew, as he watched, that this was a fragile creature, though incredibly strong while he existed, a child of the stars destroyed by the music's ending or a cloud passing over the light that bore him. Even for a phoenix, this was a rare night, a wild night.
That vision, too, ended, and Harry blinked at Fawkes and wondered again why the phoenix had shared that. Fawkes's visions were usually not only shorter, but clearer in their import. What message did he mean Harry to carry into darkness? Was it really just a way of saying farewell?
It couldn't be, Harry thought. The visions were too regular, too detailed. And they all contained creatures that he had never seen before, except for the one with the unicorns—and that contained unicorns who had never known the touch of a wizard's hand or a wizard's web. Fawkes would not be so cruel as to remind him of all he was giving up by making the Declaration for Dark. So it must be something else. What?
And then he knew, and felt like a fool for not seeing it earlier. One vision of the sun, one of the moon, one of the stars. Fawkes was showing him all the different kinds of Light.
But why?
Harry frowned, and Fawkes crooned. Then he spread his wings wide and began to dance.
Harry watched him. His heart ached as Fawkes continued, for with every shake of scarlet plumes, golden crest, coruscating blue tail, he knew another moment passed, and he traveled closer and closer to giving up everything he was so that others would not be hurt. Sacrifice had never seemed so bitter.
Fawkes tilted his neck and let fall another stream of honey-colored notes, as if to scold Harry for being so negative. Harry swallowed and tried to stand straighter. Fawkes was right. He had made his choice, even if it was under duress. He couldn't blame the phoenix, even if he had chosen the visions to show Harry what he would never have. The phoenix had done an enormous amount of work to help advance his cause as vates. He had the right to be disappointed that Harry had chosen continued life for some over freedom for all the magical creatures.
The phoenix grew brighter and brighter, deeper and deeper. Harry could hear his song rising in crescendo, and knew the moment was coming when it would finish, and he would have to say farewell. He swallowed again, and tried to brace himself, determined that no tears would cloud his voice in the final moment.
Fawkes spread his wings wide, and turned entirely gold. Harry tried to hide his eyes, and could not. Light flared, dazzling in the midst of the darkness, a second sunrise, like the one Augustus had brought to the graveyard far below.
Abruptly, the Dark screamed. No! You cannot! This is not allowed! This cannot be done!
Fawkes, in the midst of a spin, spread his wings wider, and wider still. By now, Harry knew they were longer than they actually were, and suspected they had begun to blend into the light the phoenix shed. He still could not hide his eyes, and still, somehow, he could see, rather than his vision going dark the way he thought it should have. Wider, and wider, and Fawkes seemed all wing and scarcely any body, dancing, a shadow against the gold.
The light soared. The song soared. Harry thought they were twinned, and when one died, so would the other. He knew his right arm was shaking from being held aloft for so long, but it did not seem important.
Fawkes sang. Fawkes danced. Harry could hear the tenor of his music now—or perhaps he had merely become better at reading the phoenix's mind, after the visions that had let him see more of his past life. The song had passed a lament and escalated into a celebration. Perhaps for the things Harry had done when he was still free?
No! the Dark screamed again.
The sunrise grew. Harry thought of the meadows far away covered with immortal blossoms, and all the phoenixes flying. He wondered if Fawkes would ever return there.
The song turned.
Harry felt it come for him like an arrow.
Fawkes sang. Fawkes danced. The song was more than a celebration now; it was a triumph, a symphony of joy. Harry heard notes in the music he would not have thought it possible to achieve, springing up the scale of delight, soaring and finding their place in a dazzling array of exaltation.
Light welled all around him, deep and tender, a spreading hand of gold in the midst of the darkness.
Harry felt it surround him, slam into him, fill him. Fire swelled beneath his chest. Wings lifted from his shoulders. Golden-white force of being fledged him and made him begin to burn.
Fawkes sang. Fawkes danced. Harry could feel him intimately now, as if the bond in his mind that connected him to the phoenix had spread to encompass the whole of his body, as if Fawkes were becoming only song and only dance and only light, as if they vibrated in harmony.
Fawkes sang. Fawkes danced. Harry felt him climb, spiraling, looking to the stars that shone beyond the clouds, which the Dark storm could dim but not extinguish.
And then Fawkes gave his life away.
Harry felt him die, assumed into the light, ascending into the dawn, a joyous and a willing sacrifice, a gift permanently passed to Harry, rather than borrowed, as the magic from his allies had been.
The Dark screamed in anger, in terror, in fear.
Harry lifted his hand, and it spread feathers of light, the way it had earlier, when he faced Tom. Wings beat from his shoulders, and he felt his face mold and bend into a beak as hard as diamond. His eyes sharpened, his sight turning almost painfully clear. His fingers curled and hardened, and his body slid into a long, sleek shape—lion, he knew, without being told. He felt feathers and fur nip together in the middle of his back, joining. He spread his wings and screamed.
He was a gryphon, the gryphon of the Light—the Light, called and given passage into the middle of the Dark storm by the death of Fawkes, a creature of ultimate Light, the gift of his fire acting as a gateway, doubled or tripled in power by the willing sacrifice of it. For a phoenix, a creature that might live forever, dying and being reborn, to give up his life and interrupt the cycle, was something that snared the Light's attention. And that death was powerful enough to call it forth on this longest night of the year, this night without a moon, into the heart of the Dark storm.
The Dark had said, Here is only the Light you bring with you—your gifts, not your borrowings.
And the Light had been given, and the Light had come.
Harry swam somewhere in the middle of it, his mind ablaze with grief and rage and joy, strands of diamond intermingled with the gold. He felt himself lift, gryphon and human and Light all at once, mortal and immortal and force, and fly forward. The storm was breaking around him. The clouds were no longer thunderheads, but the clouds of sunrise, clinging to the beams but always dissipated by them, melting away before the birth of day and the death of night.
The Dark was revealed now, a looping, ungainly body clumsier than any dragon, retreating hastily before the flying gryphon. Harry wondered why for a moment, and then had his answer, handed to him before he could wonder. So long as it hid, the Dark could draw substance from the night and the storm around it, and appear as graceful as it wished. With the radiance eating into and destroying it, it had to make do with what clumps of black flesh it could gather.
The gryphon slammed into the Dark, and tore through it. Aurora ades dum, Harry thought, as he felt his enemy shred before talons that were and were not his own. Dawn come hither.
Dawn had come, at least in this place, and as the Dark lashed and hissed and tried to fight back, it kept returning. It shone from every flash of the gryphon's feathers; it pulsed in every return of Harry's grief for Fawkes; it leaped from cloud to cloud like the lightning. The sky they fought in was golden and black, and Harry could feel the Dark's influence retreating, falling away like torn rags, no sturdier than the petals of the phoenix flowers in their faraway meadows.
It retreated only so far and no farther, but that was all right. The Dark could not be stronger than the Light, only as strong. It had broken the laws and disobeyed the rules by gathering up so much power and storming across Britain like this. The Light, which did obey the laws and the rules, had had to have the invitation of mortal and immortal creatures to counter it, but now that it was here, it pinned the Dark to the air and forced it to acknowledge that dawn would come again, that Midsummer would come again, that even as the sun danced far away in the longest night, it was already making the turn that would see light come back once more. Tomorrow's night would be a little shorter than this one, and on, and on, and on, the summer and the season rising, in the endless dance of dances.
The wild Dark wailed, at last, scolded like a naughty child before the gryphon's claws. There were parts of it that were majestic, and strong, and even lovable, Harry thought, deep in the Light, but not this one. It wailed, and sobbed, and agreed to the Light's terms, and the storm broke.
For a moment, the gryphon hung in the midst of the vanishing clouds, gold tearing the black apart, a second sunrise in a night that would not see a sunrise for a very long time yet. And then the Light began gently to separate itself from Harry, brushing his face with its feathers and rubbing his neck with its beak, healing his ribs as it transformed them. Now that the Dark was defeated and the laws of the world set in balance once more, it had no right to stay.
Harry closed his eyes as grief came back to him, as he lost the perspective that one had by existing forever. The Light boiled all around him, a stream of steam and white in mourning for Fawkes, Sarah, Marie, the dragon. It could have been so much worse, and those were the terms in which the Light thought, but it understood that they did not comfort Harry.
The wind bore him gently to the ground, and Harry landed in the middle of the graveyard, catching himself with his knees and his hand. He kept his head bowed. He was certain that his allies stood around him, but he could not bear to meet their eyes as yet.
"Harry?"
That was Draco's voice, and he only spoke when a moment had passed, meaning Harry was more ready to look. He blinked at him, and then realized the night was brighter than it should have been. He glanced down.
Pale fire shone through his skin, reflections of red and gold and white and blue that seemed to come from far away. Harry drew a deep breath. He knew it was Fawkes's gift. He wondered how long it would last. Not long, he thought. He was no phoenix, to die and be reborn. Perhaps it would last only the night, or one burning cycle, and then be gone.
While he was like that, he probably had some phoenix gifts. He could do nothing to heal the dead, but there was one here who needed healing. The pain spoke from behind him, a wrongness in the world.
Harry turned and looked up. Yaxley's thorns still writhed around the graves, and in the middle of them still hung Evan Rosier. Harry lifted his hand, and the fire spread around his fingers and then emerged into a misty, five-pronged shape, part human and part phoenix claw and part gryphon talon. It drifted forward and began to puff the thorns that twined into Rosier's face and back and sides gently into ash.
Harry stood there, watching. No one said anything. Draco gripped his shoulder, once, but didn't speak. Harry was grateful for it. He watched Rosier's dazed face as the pain ceased, little by little, and then the five-pronged shape expanded, gripped him, and hauled him towards the ground, laying him on his stomach.
Harry knelt over him and blinked. For the first and only time, he cried phoenix tears. It was like crying hot flowers. They welled past his lids and fell onto the immense wound in Rosier's back, and it turned gold instead of red, little by little. The gold hardened into a scab so beautiful that Harry had to resist the urge to touch it. Then Rosier moved, and it peeled and tumbled away from him, leaving unmarred skin in its place.
Rosier rolled over and stared up at him. Harry stared back. He could not make out anything in those dark eyes. He found that he didn't want to.
"Sometimes," Rosier breathed, "I hate you, Harry."
He stood up, and clutched something in his pocket Harry thought must have been his wand—it would have amused Voldemort to leave it with him while he hung helpless from the thorns, unable to access it—and then Apparated. Harry knelt in the grass, and blinked.
A cold feeling infested his eyelid. He rubbed at it, wondering what it could be. Normal tears? Draco's arms were around him now, light and hesitant, as if afraid to touch. Harry leaned back into him.
Another cold kiss brushed his cheek. Harry blinked, and looked up, and realized then what it was.
Snow.
Snow snow snow, tumbling from the sky as if the stars were shedding it between the tattered shreds of clouds, shaking out like salt from a cellar, coming to coat Britain, as the natural balance of the seasons was restored and winter came at last.