As a child my granddad taught me how to interpret the old weather warnings based on observing wild life. If you want to know what the weather of the season is going to be like, watching the birds’ behavior will be a good indicator. In Denmark, it heralds a long and hard winter, if the Yellowhammer gathers around farms and houses. This winter a Yellowhammer has been visiting every day right outside my kitchen window. I think the first time I noticed it was in the end of November, so the hard winter hasn't come as a surprise to me at all.

As usually I had prepared breakfast, and while I was waiting for the toasts to get ready, I had time to take a look outside the kitchen window to watch the birds. I was met by a delightful sight of icicles covering the old hawthorn growing on an arc at my garden gate. The icicles were sparkling in the early morning sun, and formed a magic entrance to our garden; it looked almost like the entrance of King Winter’s palace. A Yellowhammer was waiting impatiently for Ebbe to come out to feed the birds with the left over bread crumbs from our toasts. When we had finished our toasts Ebbe went outside with the crumbs, but this morning he stayed outside much longer than usually. I called for him, but he was out of sight. It’s not the first time Ebbe has been flying of on his own, so I decided to go inside to get a cup of coffee and wait for him. After an hour Selene and I started to worry about Ebbe’s disappearing. It was freezing cold outside. The sun had disappeared and the Northern Wind swept over the roof, and made the snow drift. I put on my coat and boots to go outside to search for Ebbe. Selene didn’t want to come. “I am not going to get frozen wings, just because that daft lad has to disappear” She said while she was hanging above the door with crossed arms. I knew Ebbe had been attracted to some empty bird nests in the trees behind our house, so I went to the back side of the house to see if I could spot him. I couldn’t see him, so I called for him. The Yellowhammer came around the corner and landed on a bush right in front of me. It started to behave very strangely; it stepped from side to side on the branch, flapping its left wing. I knew it was trying to tell me something. It sounded as if it was singing “hurry, hurry” as it set of towards the field behind our house.

I followed the bird across the field. We crossed the main road, and went into another larger field on the other side of the road. The Yellowhammer was far ahead of me. I was struggling through the deep snow; the strength of the wind had increased more and more. I had forgotten to put on some gloves, so my fingers had started to hurt from the cold.  “How much further do we have to go?” I shouted to the Yellowhammer, but it was to far away to hear me. It had started to snow, and I could hardly see the road when I looked back. It looked like the Yellowhammer was heading towards an old tree at the end of the Field. At this point, I had seriously started to worry about Ebbe, he isn’t fitted to live in the cold, and I knew he hadn’t been wearing the tiny wool jumper I had made for him. When I reached the tree the Yellowhammer was out of sight, I called for Ebbe, but there was no reply. I went around the tree, and there I spotted a poorly made ladder. It was banging against the trunk of the tree. I looked up to find out where the ladder was leading to. I could discern a small tree house. A light was coming from a small window, and I could see a small green door. I tried to call for Ebbe but the wind was howling, and I didn’t get a reply, so I carefully examined the ladder to see if it was safe for me to climb it. It looked a bit unsafe, but now I had become curious to find out if there was someone in the small tree house.

My feet slipped a few times on the ladder, but I managed to pull myself into safety on a big branch in front of the tree house. I knocked on the small green door. I could hear something being dragged or pushed inside the house. I thought it was some kids from the farm near by the tree, so I opened the door myself to look inside. It definitely wasn’t a child I saw inside the house, it was a creature I never had seen before. It had a face like a bird with a big purple and yellow bird beak. It was about the size of a cat. It was wearing a brown coat, and it had bony white hands. I was a bit chocked to see this strange creature, and I had no idea if it was friendly or not, but now I was happy I had remembered to put on my fairy communicator, and I just hoped that it would work. I have always believed in, that one comes courtesy of the longest, so I reached out my hand to greet the bird creature hello, and at the same time I tried to look over the shoulder of the creature to see if I could spot Ebbe inside the house. The bird creature took a step forward with his hands stretched out, and it attempted to push me away from the door. Now I heard a noise inside the house, so I forced myself back into the house. It was impossible for me to get my whole body inside, but I had my head and chest inside. I looked around. However, I couldn’t see Ebbe, I called for him, and then I heard a weak call right above my head. It was hard for me to turn my head inside the house so that I could look up above my head, but I was so excited that I tore the door of in my eagerness to find Ebbe. I saw a bundle that hung in the limbs in a rope, and I could see that the bundle had a pair of shoes that looked exactly like Ebbe’s shoes. “I will get you down!” I shouted to Ebbe, but I had to pull myself out of the doorway to be able to grab him. Now the bird creature was pulling my hair, so I had to pacify the angry beast. I pulled myself back and when I was free of the doorway, I grabbed the bird creature by the legs and pulled it out of the house, and then I put it on a tree branch above the tree house. I turned myself so that I could get an arm inside the house to free Ebbe from the robe. It took me some time to free him. The bird creature had done a good job on fixing him with the robe. Ebbe was very scared and he wept all the way down the ladder. The bird creature had jumped my bag, to try to get me away from Ebbe, but at last it gave up retreating back into the tree.

I had to make sure Ebbe got warm again, so I covered him with my coat. We walked back to our house as fast as I could. When we returned home, Selene was out of her mind of worries. I had been away much longer than I thought. Selene and I demanded an explanation from Ebbe, as soon as he was warm enough to talk. He told us how the bird creature had lured him away from our garden. The beast had told Ebbe that Sir Treebreaker (Ebbe’s flying instructor) had broken a wing, and that he had knocked on the bird creature’s door in the tree house to get help. The bird creature had told Ebbe that Sir Treebreaker had asked the beast to find Ebbe. I felt very badly after this incident, I should have warned the twins not to go with any strangers. I know I always told Bjarne and Camilla not to talk to any strangers, when they were children, but I hadn’t had this conversation with the twines jet.

Sir Treebreaker hasn’t been around since late October, when Ebbe had finished his flying lessons. Most butterflies only live for one season, but I couldn’t get it over my heart to tell Ebbe that Sir Treebreaker properly had gone to Valhal by now. I decide that it was time to tell him, and I think it was just about one of the hardest things I ever had to do, because Ebbe had been very fond of Sir Treebreaker, the White Cabbage Butterfly  with the strange name and the lovely deep voice, so he cried the whole afternoon. Selene and I tried to cheer him up; after all we didn’t know if he actually was dead, moreover he was a very strange butterfly.

I was worried about the bird creature, how did it know about Ebbe’s flying instructor, and why had it captured Ebbe? To me, it had looked like Ebbe was kept captive to be handed over to someone else, or perhaps the beast had kept him for supper? Who knows? I have decided to ask Mama Kauppa and Plotka if they know of this creature, and if they don’t, I will have to go to the whispering library to see if I can look it up some how.

Read the blog: Ebbe Got a Flying Instructor

 Selene and I found this dress in front of our house last week.

This is a new painting of Selene. She is a steam punk kind of girl. I have created 3 paintings and 1 drawing of her so far. Next time I am going to paint her will be in a painting of both the twins. This painting was partly done as colour pencils and digital art. I used Corel Paint Shop Pro X.

In this painting she is wearing a dress created from leaves from my garden. She has created her necklace herself. I think she had a bit of help from Camilla. On her left hand, she has a lace glove and on her right a blue fur glove. The two bugs on her on her hand are both her pets. She calls them Mr. Mrs. Dot.

This is a painting of her as a baby.

This is water colour and and colour pencils.

It is a pencil drawing.

The days are getting shorter and shorter every week here in Denmark. The Northern wind is howling in the tree tops and the nights are bitterly cold.  Last night my apple trees dropped their last brown leaves in the heavy storm coming from the north.  I couldn't sleep, because some branches were banging on the roof. My bag door blow up and I had to go to the backside of the house to secure it. As I turned around the corner of the house, I saw what had caused the door to blow up! King Winter had rumbled by my house in his wagon pulled by his two white Tundra Wolves, his white coat was blowing in the wind behind the wagon, and I saw how it left a carpet of rime frost over the garden. I went inside and asked Ebbe and Selene to help light candles in my windows as a celebration of the return of King Winter.

Last winter Ebbe was asleep most of the time, but it seams like he has grown out of his need for the long winter sleep. Selene was very disappointed that I hadn't called her when King Winter passed by, she has a list of things she wants to ask him, and now it's too late. I told her that we could send him a letter to calm her down. I asked Ebbe to find his bundle of whispering leaves with all the stories about the seasons.  I had traded a broken teapot for this lovely collection of stories at the Kaputs Caves, and they have become Ebbe's favorite Nidlongdir stories. I asked the twins to snuggle into their tiny beds; we rolled the whispering leaves, and pushed them into our ears so that we could listen to the story about King Winter.

If you follow the trail  of the reindeers as fare north as you can, and you find the spot where you are standing exactly under the North Star, a big grey seal will pick you up, and offer you a ride to the ice palace Kylmä. Kylmä is the home of King Winter and his ice dragon, also known as The Northern Wind. During most of the summer the ice dragon is resting under Kylmä to gather all the strength it can to blow heavy ice storms at sea, and keep King Winter's white fur coat full of ice and snow. 

King Winter lives alone with his dragon, because no one can stand the cold at Kylmä for very long. Many have tried to enter Kylmä, and never returned, it is said that the entrance of Kylmä is filled with frozen visitors.  Only a very few visitors are known to have returned safely from a stay at King Winter's palace. One of them is Santa Clause. He passes Kylmä every year at the end of the autumn to open the gate of Kylmä, and awake the ice dragon to make sure he will get lots of Christmas snow. When  the spring is near, the Spring Maiden will close the gate of  Kylmä with her green key of spring, to make sure King Winter will be able to rest in peace until it's time for him to go to work again.  Some say the Spring Maiden is deeply in love with King Winter. To show him her affection, she weaves his beard with flowers before she closes the gate. In return King Winter lets millions of ice bells tinkle in her honor, and if you listen to the sound of melting snow and ice in the spring, you can hear his bells greeting her welcome!

To the south in the other end of King Winter's kingdom, he keeps his army of penguins. To call them an army may sound strange, but they are indeed one of the most powerful armies in the world. Not that they ever have been into a battle, no they keep order at the south pole by making sure the Queen Of Summer wont melt the poles and create chaos. But what powers can an army of penguins possibly have you might ask! The penguin's power lies in their black feathers, the Queen Of Summer fear to be wrapped in a coat of black feathers, but she is very vain and the black coat of penguin feathers is irresistible beautiful. The penguins work every day of the year on preparing the black feather coat in case the queen should pass by, and try to heat up the South Pole, she will be wrapped in the isolating coat and King Winter will come and carry her away from his kingdom.

There is an old tale that tells how King Winter got his two white tundra wolves. At the time when the world was still very young King Winter ruled the world! The other seasons only had very little powers, but he was getting tired and felt he needed a rest. He used to ride on the back of the ice dragon the Northern Wind, but the dragon was very wild and hard to tame. One Night King Winter fell of the Northern Wind. He fell into a deep gap of ice. His broad shoulders was stuck in the gap, he desperately struggled to get free, but no matter how hard he struggled he was trapped. King Winter called the Northern Wind but it had run wild and didn't listen to his calls. King Winter sat in the ice gap for many days and nights, there were no sign of the Northern Wind, and one day the sun broke through, and a small white flower had found its way through the snow and ice and started to bloom. The next day the Spring Maiden felt her powers had increased, and she started her long walk of rebirth to turn the world green. The small white flower called for the Spring Maiden to come and rescue it from the cold surroundings. The Spring Maiden never had a call form a flower that fare to the north, so she decided to help the poor flower growing in the cold north.  To walk into King Winter's kingdom would be risky, so she asked Mother Wolf if she would lend her two of her wolf pups to accompany her on her journey. Mother Wolf was very clever she had her spies every where, and she knew King Winter was trapped in the ice gap, but she didn't want him to rule the world any more, she wanted spring to get more power, so that her pups wouldn't have to starve all the time.  Mother Wolf agreed to let her two oldest pups follow the Maiden Of Spring on her journey on one condition, the Spring Maiden should offer to help King Winter out of the ice gap, if he in return would retrieve into his palace in the spring every year. As a gift from Mother Wolf, King Winter was to receive the two white wolf pups so that he would be able to travel safely in a wagon pulled by the two strong white wolves. The Spring Maiden walked for many days, and when she finely reached King Winter in the ice gap he was so tired that he had gone to sleep. His long white beard was wrapped around the white flower. The Spring Maiden felt sorry for the once so powerful king, he looked so lost trapped in the ice gap, that she sat down beside him and started to weave his beard with flowers. The King felt the tenderness deep into his frozen heart, and when he opened his eyes, the Spring Maiden gave him a kiss of rebirth. He soon regained his strength and pulled himself out of the ice gap. The King gladly accepted Mother Wolf's gift,  he was so happy that the beautiful Spring Maiden had offered him kindness in his darkest hour, that he created millions of ice bells to follow the Spring Maiden on her spring journey of rebirth. King Winter fed the two wolf pups with big fat fish and he purchase a wagon from the grey dwarfs living in the mountains on the border of his kingdom. The two wolf pups grew into the two strongest tundra wolves ever seen, and some even say that King Winter's wagon is made of the same stuff as Santa's sleigh.    

gothicfaerytales.com/

 New closeup photo of the dress

When I woke up this morning I discovered that I had forgotten to take of the fairy communicator when I went to bed last night. I have to tell you, that wearing the communicator is kind of strange, because your hearing sense and smelling sense is improved dramatically. I can even understand what our pets are saying, and most of the time it's quit annoying to listen to our guinea pig Nico. He is a big male, and he doesn't have a wife or girl friend, which makes him very depressed.  He is begging for food all the time, and he has gained too much weight, so I told him he had to go on a diet. He wouldn't listen to me when I told him that his health was at stake.  I gave him a mirror so that he could see for himself that something had to be done, that of cause didn't help on his depression, so I promised him that if he lost 100g I would try to find him a girlfriend. So Nico started on his diet, but much to my surprise he didn't lose any weight.  

Someone had to be feeding Nico beside me, so I confronted the rest of the family with the fact that Nico has to lose weight, and if I ever caught them feeding him nuts or other kind of guinea pig candy, I would come down on them hard. No one would confess to feeding him, so I just had to wait to catch the mischief.

It hadn't occurred to me until this morning that it wasn't my husband or any of the kids who had been feeding Nico, no it was Selene. I lay there in my bed enjoying the morning sun shining though the top of the apple trees; I could smell fresh made coffee from the kitchen, where I could hear my husband making breakfast, when I heard Nico's voice loud and clearly. He was talking to Selene. Nico told Selene to hurry with the nuts, and he asked her to scratch his back, where he couldn't reach because he is to heavy.  I heard him promise Selene to collect treasures in the house when he was on his daily walk around the house.

I was a bit shame full that I had blamed my family for  feeding Nico, and I went out of bed to have a serious talk with Selene, because obviously she didn't know she wasn't helping Nico by giving him the extra nuts.

Selene is growing much faster than Ebbe at this point; she is like a 5 year old while Ebbe still looks like a baby. He is sleeping most of the time he only wakes up in the middle of the day when the sun stands high on the winter sky.  Remember how I feared that Selene was ill when I first got the twines, well now she  is fare ahead in every way. She is walking and talking, she likes the dark winter sky, and she seems to like all kind of bright color full junk.  I wasn't surprised that she would exchange color full junk for nuts with Nico, so I explained to her how Nico would get ill if she didn't stop feeding him.  Selene looked at me with her big dark eyes, and she nodded her head eagerly to show that she understood how important it is that we all help Nico with his diet. I told Selene that she didn't have to hide her treasures, and that she just has to ask, to get the things she would like to have .

Selene was very excited, but all of a sudden she looked down into the floor, I could see her purple ears get more and more purple. I asked her what's the matter and she looked at me with tears in her eyes. I smiled at her and asked her to tell me what was bothering her so much? She said, can I please ask you a question? I said of cause! Well as I understand it, you are not allowed to steal from other people, she said still looking down. That's right I said. But isn't that what I have been doing collecting my treasures, she asked.  I felt sorry for her, and took her tiny hand. Well perhaps in a way, but you didn't steal any ting out of the house, you just played with them, and that is not stealing, I said. Oh mum she said (for the first time), I gave some of my treasures away. I winkled my eyebrows, in concern. Who did you give the things to? I gave them to the tradeing lady. Who is the tradeing lady, and where did you meet her, I asked. She is the lady that visits me when I go to sleep; she comes in a wagon pulled by a bat.  Is she paying you for the treasures I asked? Yes she pays me with nuts and tree juice, from the apple trees. So that is why she is growing so fast I thought to myself. As you know I have worried about what kind of food I should give the twins. I smiled at Selene, and told her that she could get whatever she needed if she could trade her treasures for tree juice.  I know she needs to get tree juice, but I had no idea how to get it. I had even called a company that sells juice from birch trees, to get food for Selene, but she didn't like it, and her skin turned all green when she had the birch juice, so I went back to feeding her with normal apple juice.

I was quit relieved that we had this talk, and told Selene to run off and play before breakfast.  I went down stairs to collect our mail in the mail box, and much to my surprise I found a new kind of fairy dress hanging on the trunk of the tree right outside my front door. This dress was clearly created from my old junk, I could recognize part of a yellow plastic bag from our local grocer, a net from my oranges, and some wrapping paper from the flower I had from my husband yester day.  

I took the dress with me inside as I could see that it would blow away if it was left there on the tree trunk. I also had a feeling that I was going to need the dress if I let it stay there to blow of in the wind.

The dress was clearly not created by the fairies living in the apple tree; it had to be one of the black nosed fairies who live beneath the earth.

I have been studying the stone map I found, but I still haven't, figured out what to do with it or what it means. I have planned to keep an eye on Selene to try to get in touch with the tradeing fairy; perhaps she can tell me more about the black nosed fairies. I have also decided that Selene should start her flying lessons soon, and I think she will need a bat to teach her how to fly, as her wings looks like the wings of a bat.

 This is a close up of the tiny hat that goes with the dress.  

There even was a small wand. I think it's cool that the black nosed fairies use Recycling for their dresses :)

My Friend Sussi asked me why I found the fairy twins in an apple, and I have also thought about that my self.

In the Old Norse Mythology one of the goddes Iðunn provided apples to the gods to give them eternal youthfullness, and as you all know fairies and elves are belived to have that.

There was a tribe of gods called Vanir, who is related to the elves in the Old Norse Mythology, they where minor gods of fetility. The best known God from this tribe was Freyr. He ruled over the elves in a place called Alfheim. This place was later called Elfhame and Elphame, and in more modren times Elfland or Elfenland.

It is most likely that some fairies are born inside apples if they are related to this old tribe. I think the fairies in my garden are, because I heard them sing a song about the God Freyr. It goes like this;

Ydalir call they .... the place where  Ull
A hall for himself hath set;
And Alfheim the gods...to Freyr once gave
As a tooth-gift in ancient times.

This pome is the fist in the world to tell about the tooth fairy. The pome is from the Old Edda.

The Old edda also tells that there was two kind of fairies in Alfhime; the Light Elves who loved the sun, and the Dark Elves who dwelled down under the earth.

The story about the Fairy king and queen who abandoned their son is not told in the Old Edda, but perhaps this story was lost or never told to any humans.

I think Selene is a dark fairy and the boy fairy, now named Ebbe is a light fairy.