During the land’s long-lost misty days when the gods still fought the giants for the spiritual dominance of the White Isle — the Island of the Mighty. Echoes, writ large, of the human conflicts that one day would supplant the machinations of the gods. Their world was one of conflict — sky and underworld, winter and summer, death and life. Wolf-time and sun-time; leaf-time and bare-branch time.

Wolves howled their frustration, even as their panting progress across the deadened wasteland of moonlit snow inexorably brought them closer to their quarry. Ætherial hounds, each with their shaggy coats bleached as white as the snow itself. Their splayed snowshoe paws supporting them atop the snow’s brittle surface.

Their quarry fled before them, his hide-booted feet mal-adapted to the conditions and sinking deeply into the snow before him. The gaunt, lanky, stick-like form, sheathed in rough-hewn animal skin garments stumbled at each footfall as he sank to his knees in the undulating serpentine drifts of snow. Loosing his footing once again he sprawled headlong into a snow-bank. Desperately he scrambled to his feet, only just managing to right himself and stay ahead of the pursuing hounds. Heart hammering in his chest, breath rasping as the frigid air seared his lungs, he drove himself forwards despite the pain of exhaustion that threatened to lock his legs with cramp. This was a flight for life. A hunt that represented the final, almost inevitable, move in the fateful gwyddbwyll game of his life. Though on this throw of the dice, as the pieces re-arranged themselves on the snow-field board it seemed that his foe had won. Which was not to say that he was going to make the process an easy one. He would fight.

Drawing on the final reserves of his strength he angled his body into the biting wind and drawing the deer-pelt tighter about his gaunt frame he drove himself forwards through the drifts of snow. Eyes narrowing against the frigid gale, he could just make out a dark shape in the distance. With an almost overwhelming sense of relief he realised what this must be and adjusted his headlong flight to veer towards the stand of distant trees. Perhaps, on its very last cast, the die had rolled for him and with his sole remaining piece he might just check his foe’s advance upon the gameboard.

The wolf-hounds’ efficient, loping, gait brought them ever closer to their prey. And as the stench of his fear threatened to overwhelm their nostrils they somehow, almost perversely, seemed to become calmer — more focussed in their intent. Thirteen beasts, each near-enough identical to the other, advancing across the tundra in the double-rowed arc of a tautened bow. Seven to the fore, six behind and the Dark One, their master, an unseen presence to the hindmost. Heads held low, noses tilted upwards to catch their quarry’s scent, tongues lolling from the sides of agape jaws, the wolves made good progress across the snowed-in clearing. Coats gleamed in the moonlight as muscles bunched beneath the skins fluid motions inexorably drawing them towards their quarry. Who remained, to canine eyes at least, a dark form lurching a zig-zag path through the deepening snow. From the clear scent trail it was apparent that their quarry was making his way with some purpose. Heading towards something that only he could see.

With the scent of their quarry now an overwhelming presence in their nostrils the wolves surged forwards. As they gained on their quarry, intent solely on the kill, their forms seemed to shift and change. Bodies lengthened, their pelts shimmering from white to silver, as if bleached and burnished by the moon. Conversely, their ears turned bright red as if dipped in crimson blood. Accompanying this transformation came a renewed burst of speed where the blur of the creatures’ paws seemed barely to make contact with the snow beneath them. Finally, they had assumed their true forms — spectral hounds who ruled the dark half of the year.

Finally, darting a single glance over his shoulder the quarry just caught the tail end wolves’ transformation sequence. Which only acted to confirm that the Hounds of Annwfn were truly on his trail. Consequently he redoubled his efforts at evasion, though deep down he knew that his life was forfeit, once again. This was his eternal, recurrent, fate: to lose the woman he loved to the Dark Lord and as the Summer King it was his destiny to lose his own life at midwinter. It had always been this way and with the ceaseless turning of the seasons it would always be this way. He was the Summer King; an archetype, a cipher for the harvest days of late summer — patron of the evergreen — who would one day become the humanized spirit of the grain, John Barleycorn…

But for now the Wolves of Winter — apple Jack, oak Jack, willow Jack, beech Jack, hazel Jack, rowan Jack, ash Jack, alder Jack, plum Jack, chestnut Jack, elm Jack, birch Jack and blackthorn Jack — each the avatar of a sacred, sleeping, tree were upon his tree. Each one his opponent and his executioner. His only hope — what little hope was left to him now — lay in the power of the treeline which was still at least a hundred strides away. However, it might just be…

Collapsing to his knees the fugitive slowly sank, uncaring, into the deep powdery depths of the midwinter snowfall. Head bowed, he projected a single, urgent, telepathic call. Exhausted with his exertions he collapsed, somehow fully expecting to feel the trap-like grasp of canine teeth closing about his throat. Then, just as he had begun to believe that all was lost he caught a strange rumbling and creaking emerging from the moonlit snowscape just ahead of him. But surely the pursuing wolf-pack was behind him and not in front? Surely it couldn't be…

Despite the fear he somehow managed to raise his head and crack-open his eyes. Though the sight that greeted him nearly made him collapse from shock. Three verdant humaniform figures were jerkily approaching him from the direction of the woods. Man-shaped giants bedecked with freshly-growing leaves. Forms cast in vivid contrast to the stark austerity of the winter scene about them. Each creaked as it moved, as if they were ancient vessels adrift upon a sea of snow. Clearing the crest of a drift the three figures began to accelerate — breaking into a lope and then a run. As their speed increased the rustling leaves covering the three forms darkened and distended, feathering into fur as they shambled onto all fours, assuming ursine forms. Bears with grey-green pelts, scarlet feet and crimson ears. These were his avatars — representatives of the trees of ever-summer: holly Jack, yew Jack and ivy Jack. Roaring in unison the tree-bear triumvirate accelerated and within a few bounds they were upon him, rearing as they stationed themselves as a protective triangle around the crumpled, cowering, form of the human who had summoned them.

Bears shook their protective shaggy coats, reared and roared their rage; wolves howled and snarled. The forces of winter and summer warily circled one another. Two errant orbits destined for an inevitable clash. As the opposing forces came together a ring of snow around the quarry simply exploded, throwing geysers of white snow high into the clear star-studded sky. A lone man, outside his own place and time, circled by bears, ensnared within a ring of wolves. He was the centre of a confluence of sacred numbers where two creatures, the avatars of the great evergreen and deciduous trees, met in a battle that had been played out and replayed many times across the intervening millennia. Two orders of carnivora, the ursine and the canine engaged in battle.

The wolves darted in to attack continuously in bands of threes and fours before retreating to safety even as the bears rose on their hind-quarters, claws and teeth flashing as they sought to make lethal contact with their foes. Canids, dealt a side-swipe by a bear's powerful forepaw rolled to safety, whining, before making a hasty retreat. Snarling, more wolves advanced to cover their brethren’s retreat. Despite their apparent advantage in size the bears were losing ground against the wolves’ continuous harrying attacks. Forced to hold their ground and protect the human who now stood at the centre of their triangle the bears were at a positional disadvantage.

Forced to stand their ground the bears could only swat at the attacking dogs, as a man might swat at a swarm of biting insects. The overall effect was almost as ineffectual. For though a bear might make contact with a single wolf three or four others would instantly arrive in their stead; their jaws clamping into bears’ haunches and flanks. Each contact drew fresh blood or excised another chunk of flesh and sapped a little more of the bears’ strength. Not exactly a battle, but more a feral ballet danced in blood. Though the bears, in their desperate ferocity, did cause damage the wolves’ hit-and-run attacks were more debilitating in the long run and the bears’ strength inevitably began to wane. Exhausted and badly injured they fell back to form an impenetrable wall of flesh around their master and creator.

Maddened by the stench of blood and sensing the weakness of their foes the wolves fell upon the weakened bears and began tearing into them with a vengeance. Claws scrabbled for purchase on shaggy pelts as the wolves' snouts darted forwards to seek-out vulnerable flesh. Howls intermingled with the sounds of rending flesh as the snow became smeared and stained with gore. Each gifting the winter realm with their own essence; for blood is the most precious gift that any being can give. And for these creatures, just as the sun bleeds into the sea at dusk, bringing with it the promise of renewal and rebirth at the next day's dawn. But this game had already gone too far…

Forcing himself fully erect the hunted man raised his arms as if in benediction. Instantly the wolves fell back as the stricken bears collapsed to the ground before melting away before being replaced by three evergreen saplings. His guardians gone, the man lowered his arms and his head as he resigned himself to his fate. Seeing his acquiescence the wolves closed in as one. They fell upon him as a single entity, teeth rending and flashing as his form vanished beneath the snarling, yapping press of canine flesh. Seeping into the snow his lifeblood fed the evergreen saplings that were his winter form as, in death, he fulfilled his mythical purpose. He had become the greenjack.

Only with death can there be the hope of rebirth…