22nd December (?)
It occurred to me today as I stood gazing out my window, which made up the entire southern wall of my chamber, that the forest was nearly buried in snow. In places, the drifts covered all but the tips of the trees.
“Has there been an avalanche?” I demanded of the small army of florists currently filling my chamber, offering me samples of this bloom or that.
The senior florist, a small woman with eyes like black ink and a dress made entirely of ice-glazed petals, frowned down at the trees.
“It is winter, Your Highness,” she said.
“Yes,” I said through my teeth. “But it seems there is rather more winter than there was before.”
She exchanged a nervous look with another florist, a narrow man holding an armful of black and grey roses. “The king has returned,” he said slowly, as if he didn’t understand my question at all and was merely taking a shot in the dark.
A little bead of fear slid down my back at that. When I next saw the king —I believe it was at supper, though it’s entirely possible I saw him before then—I raised the question with him.
“Yes, it will be a winter the likes of which has never been seen in Ljosland,” he said cheerily, helping himself to more fish. The Folk pulled their fish from a frozen mountain lake and served them raw on a bed of ice or swimming in a sweet, creamy sauce that tasted faintly of apples. Several varieties were spread before us, the smallest ones—vibrantly striped grey and green—retaining their head and bones, which were meant to be eaten together. We were seated in a cavernous banquet hall with walls of black
stone and another floor of ice cobbles, this time with leaves and fir boughs prisoned inside, so that you felt as if you were walking atop a forest canopy.
The table was crowded with Folk—what seemed like a mixture of courtly and common, though their faces often blended together in the bone- coloured light. I caught a sneer here, a beseeching look there; the minstrels were playing their flutes, and although the king had ordered them not to enchant me, their songs often made my head swim.
“But what will become of the mortal villages?” I said. “You can’t bury them in snow!”
He touched my hand reassuringly, his beautiful face full of adoration.
“The mortals here are used to winter, my dear.”
“They are not used to fifty feet of it being deposited on their doorsteps,”
I said, fists clenched on my skirts.
“It will last only as long as my coronation festivities,” he promised, and that really worried me, for it suggested that he planned to extend the winter until he had finished revelling in his triumph—and anyone who knows a thing about the Folk will easily guess that this would be a substantial period of time.
“You must pull back the snows from the mortal world,” I said. “Their animals will die. Their children will starve.”
He was only half listening—he motioned to one of the minstrels, and they switched to a song he liked better.
“Children!” he said, smiling. “I’m glad you mentioned them. Children adore winter—do you know they used to leave offerings for us at the centre of frozen lakes at the solstice, to ask us for heaps of snow on Christmas. As if we know anything about Christmas, the silly darlings. I wonder if they still do that?”
The music swelled then, and I forgot what we had been talking about.
