text: The Night Mare comes with the fog. I’d heard the story all my life, we all did. “Best be sleeping when the Night Mare comes. Just one glimpse and she’ll steal your soul and carry you to the mists!” So the Elders used to say by the hearth’s fading fire to scare wee ones to bed. As a child, I’d sometimes hear a horse squeal in the night, but I couldn’t tell you if it was one of ours or The Night Mare. Not until morning broke and some poor soul from the village lay dead in their bed. Everyone feared her until we became the elders scolding wee ones by firelight. After all, she was no more than a story. I coughed hard, my chest aching something fierce. The deep rattle had been my companion since last winter, one that worsened in the damp. “...will be... the death of me,” I laughed to Ulfrik, my youngest son. “This blasted weather.” He smiled but a twinkle of fear lay in his eyes. My cough, a wretched sound, must keep him awake at night but he was never one to complain. Like his father, a stoic thing. Comfortable grief massaged my heart. “You should get to finding a wife,” my frequent reminder coaxed a sigh from my son. “I won’t be for this world forever.” Ulfric frowned. “I think you’ll be with us for a while yet.” “What of Ragna? She’s handsome enough if a bit dim.” He tried to suppress his smirk. “There’s Ingun. A set of hips on her!” “Mother!” Ulfrik scowled but his lip dared to tremble with a laugh. “Lost your chance with that girl from Holmslond. Pretty one... what was her name?” My son focused on the fire, prodding it to keep from answering. “Grelod? Greiland?” “Gyrid,” he said softly with what only a mother could recognize as regret. “That’s it, Gyrid. Lovely girl, but I am glad to be spared her *dreadful* laugh. Like twigs snapping - *Hack hack hack!*” He could hide his guilty grin no more while I wore mine wide and proud. “You’ve better things to worry on than who I might take for a wife,” he said. “Like myself? Bah.” The girls haunting rattle-laugh found friends in my chest. The company of them made my breaths ragged. “You’re a good son, Ulfrik, to care for a mother so sour.” He stood from his stool by the hearth and passed me a warm blanket. “Gladder still that you’ve noticed my plight.” We laughed, lightly, and I coughed again. For a time, he held my hand as it was, wrinkled weather thing in his strong grip. The chill air slipped in through cracks unseen and cooled the room. Ulfrik took to bed easily while I lingered by the fading fire. A fearsome neigh cracked the air like a whip. For all my years, I had heard the Mare’s cries in the night but always turned back to my sheets and slept restlessly. I did not this night. With the blanket about my shoulders, I opened the door. The fog rolled from the trees urged by a chilling wind. From its waves, she danced in and out of the shadows, her shape glistening in the moonlight. A beast too tall for a man to break, she seemed like the night itself; powerful, brisk, and inevitable. She trotted in place and I felt bidden forth, leaving blanket and hearth at my back. Strange, though, for I did not feel the cold. With her steps, she wheeled the fog forward, her head high and proud. She nodded and knelt before me and my eager fingers slid into her silken mane softer than any fur. “It is my time then,” I whispered without fear and, as though she understood, the Night Mare snorted. At my age, it was no small thing to climb atop her bareback, but I somehow found the strength. As the Mare righted, the thick mists coiled around us and I breathed my first easy breath in almost a year. “He is a good son, my Ulfrik. He deserves a good wife,” I told her as we trotted from the hearth and light. “I just hope he finds one that’s just a wee bit sour.” The Night Mare whinnied as a laugh and retreated for the trees. With us, so followed the fog.