ARIA:A MIDWINTER’S DREAM

Appearances of ARIA in Image Comics

Release date : Jan 15 2002 IMAGE COMICS
ARIA:THE SOUL MARKET	ARIA:SUMMER’S SPELL

SUMMARY :Pass through the veil of twilight to visit the fantastic world of ARIA, a world where fairy princesses and creatures of ancient myth walk unnoticed through the streets of our modern world. Featuring four magical, unforgettable tales, woven together into a single, magnificent tapestry, this special stand-alone edition provides glimpses into the secret lives of Lady Kildare, Pug, Ondine and others as you’ve never seen them before. This collection is an ideal primer for readers new to the series, and a welcome addition for long-time fans. A mix of story and art, prose and pictures, ARIA: A Midwinter’s Dream features ALL NEW art by superstar illustrator JAY ANACLETO. Not to be missed.

Jan 15 2002:ARIA:A Midwinter’s Dream

黄昏のベールをくぐって、ARIA の幻想的な世界を訪れましょう。この世界では、妖精の王女や古代神話の生き物たちが現代の街路を人知れず歩いています。魔法のような忘れられない 4 つの物語が 1 枚の壮大なタペストリーに織り込まれているこの特別な独立版では、レディ キルデア、パグ、オンディーンなど、これまで見たことのない秘密の生活を垣間見ることができます。このコレクションは、シリーズを初めて読む読者にとっては理想的な入門書であり、長年のファンにとっては歓迎すべき追加です。ストーリーとアート、散文と絵が融合した ARIA: A MidWinter’s Dream には、スーパースター イラストレーターの JAY ANACLETO によるまったく新しいアートがフィーチャーされています。

Kildare’s Tale
he countryside surrounding the chateau at Villa Deodati was dusted sugar white, the sky cloaked in soft gray bolts of fog that wafted in off of Lake Geneva.
The party roared inside, hearty souls warmed by drink and hearth fire, when the doors of the south wing burst open. Kildare, laughing a pirate’s laugh, ran barefoot out into the snow, a bottle of claret clutched in one hand. She was followed by the party’s host, a wicked poet armed with brandy and mistletoe.
“You’ll never catch me,” Kildare shouted over her shoulder. “Ah!” said the Englishman. “The bootless cry of one who desper- ately dreams of being caught.”
Kildare spun and faced her pursuer, her arms stretched out in a gesture of mock surrender.
“What shall you do with me, milord? Have me stuffed and mounted? Pinned to a board and placed under glass?”
“Something rather like that, I think.”
The Englishman came towards her, slowed slightly by the lameness in his right leg. Kildare stood waiting in the snow, hands linked behind her back now, eyes closed, lips pursed for a kiss. But when he came within a yard or two, she whirled around and dashed into the woods.
“You mad little thing.” he shouted as her wild laughter echoed in the distance. He considered for a moment whether or not to follow. At last he turned and walked back towards the house, to other, easier prey.
She was of a race apart from that of man, a golden child of story and fable. Sea-green eyes and gold-spun hair, with the face of an angel and the heart of a lion. She was born long ago among the spiraling towers and dream-scaped gardens of Far Lands. But she loved this world more than any other. Loved its whims and caprices, its varied climes and seasons. No other world could hold so many surprises, she often thought.
She ventured farther into the wood, a gentle snowfall tickling her face. Twirling like a child, arms outstretched, her laughter shook the tree branches. When she paused, the steam of her breath rising in front of her, she thought she could her the winds whisper back to her. She looked around. Ahead, in a small clearing, someone was standing there, like a wisp of moonlight. A man. He was young, or certainly looked young. He stood still as the air. Eyes pale as ice, hair like winter straw, skin like flawless ivory. He saw her, smiled faintly for a moment and was gone.
The trees around her quaked gently, alive with distant music. They seemed to call to her, their branches like beckoning fingers. As she followed the Pale Stranger into the hollow, she noted the only footprints on the ground were hers.
She neared the clearing. Snowflakes cascaded down around her, dancing in slow motion. Each one like a tiny prism, casting glitter- ing colors onto the white canvas of the world. It grew so bright that she could barely see. Then, after a while, the snowfall parted like an opera curtain and she entered his Kingdom.
He stood in the middle of a great hall, which seemed carved from crystal ice and frozen air. He was dressed in clothes of silver, blue and white and bent gently at the waist, bowing to his guest. “Welcome,” said the Pale Stranger. The word seemed to come not from his mouth but from all around her, from every direction at once.
Kildare curtseyed and thanked him.
He stepped forward and extended his hand to her. She took it. It was cool and soft, like running water. He drew her to him and together they fell into a gentle waltz, moving around the hall. Slow and tentative and first, music rose up from the air as they stepped, rising in time as they fell into a comfortable rhythm. His eyes held hers as they danced round the room, the sun and the moon, orbiting each other in celestial perfection.
In her time, she had known many men, rich and poor, mortal and otherwise, who spirited young maids off to their own humble kingdoms. It was a hunt as old as time. Bluebeards and Princes Charming, Beasts and Benefactors. But he was like none of them. He said little and asked nothing of her. Offered no promises and asked none in return.
He showed her around the Tower of Frosts, which rose high into the cold gray clouds. He walked her through the moonlit gardens where white roses climbed the tower walls and silver orchids bloomed in the night. He did his best to make her comfortable. In the great hall there was a fireplace that burned without fuel, and he sat her down beside it and served her hot wine. He told her to make herself at home, to wander freely around the grounds.
She felt different here than she ever had in any of the places she had traveled. Suspended on the edge of a breath, half in and half out of the lands we know. Time moved differently, or perhaps didn’t move at all. She felt a stillness she had never known, and yet a quickening as well. Perhaps this is what the bare trees know, she thought. Or the cold stones blanketed beneath the snow. Floating, weightless like a dream, like a lazy cloud. Yet anchored to the heart of the world.
Or perhaps this was how Heaven felt.
Kildare drained the cup of wine and drew the Pale Stranger to her side.
She cupped his face with her warm hands and they kissed. His touch was cold yet somehow warmed her flesh. They sank into one another, fingers moving with glacial slowness. Soft as a sigh, powerful as oceans, they moved together, two passing clouds, exchanging gentle thunders.
Afterwards, she stretched out in front of a fire, muscles languid and flushed with the memory of his touch. She closed her eyes. Can one dream within a dream she thought?
When she woke, she was alone. She wandered the Tower of Frosts, she scaled the highest steps, and looked out from the highest window. From there she could see the lands we know, but they looked somehow different. A shadow, a phantasm of what she knew to be true. Ghostly, like fragments from a pleasant dream which is forgotten upon waking. Her old life seemed so distant from her
now.
She idled away her days in the Tower. The Pale Stranger would leave her for long stretches of time, only to return without a word and lie by her side. She found that she did not mind the solitude. She spent the season in his company, in the walls of his garden. Sometimes she thought him a bit sad, a prisoner of some cold and sterile land. But that wasn’t the case. This world was subtle and
slow, but alive in its own ways.
One night, she went walking alone in the Garden. As she admired a certain rose, white as snow in the moonlight, she pricked her finger on the vine. It surprised her to see her own blood trickling from her finger, to see anything so warm and richly colored in this pale kingdom. The rose, for all its beauty, wilted in her hand, its petals falling limp to the ground.
It seemed things do change in this strange land, she thought. Sometimes, in the highest spire of the tower, as she looked out across the distant world, she could her whispers. Voices, soft and ethereal, that uttered no words but spoke just the same. Perhaps they were ghosts, phantoms of the Pale Stranger’s former mistresses. Ghosts of those who had come to dance away a season or a year or a lifetime, and then departed to wander the skies forever, soaring on the wings of zephyrs.
From the highest window, she could see the world awakening with the slow, steady greening of the land. Even in the tower of frosts, the clouds seemed less leaden and gray.
Things indeed were changing.
He came to her that evening, and walked her to a bridge that spanned the distant clouds.
“I must be going soon,” he told her. “Will you come?”
She looked in to his eyes, pale and still.
“If I go, can I return?” she asked.
He shook his head no.
“I see” was all she said.
That night, they danced one last time, circling around the great hall. She knew she would miss this strange music, this strange world
of stillness and quiet. But it was not her world and she did not belong.
He stood at the bridge and they said their good-byes. She kissed him one last time, and a single tear escaped from her eye, freezing like a diamond as it fell. And then she turned to go.
What marvels lie on the other side of that bridge she would always wonder, and there would be times she would regret not crossing its span. But the world was waking from its Winter Dream and she must wake with it. Twelve weeks she spent in the Pale Kingdom, time which passed in a heartbeat, in an eternity.
She stepped out of the hollow into the mottled green-leaf light of the woods. Everything was so alive, so filled with light and sound and scent. And so she walked out into the world again, into the springtime of the year, the earth waking from a well-earned slumber.
She smiled as the sunlight kissed her check, welcoming her home. It was good to be back. There is so much yet to be done.