Rosemary Kirstein

Snow.

Well, it didn’t last, but it’s definitely a harbinger.  I do hope we don’t have another Hallowe’en Blizzard, as we did a few years ago.

And by the way, when did we stop putting the apostrophe in Hallowe’en?  We’re spelling it Halloween now, according to my spell checker – to which I say, Fie!  It’s spookier with the apostrophe.  It just is.  I shall dig in my heels on this.

As it happens, snow figures rather largely in the next book — and the book after that, too.  Here’s an excerpt from Book 6, The City in the Crags:

 

Rowan was alone with the old counter-man, who seemed to have fallen asleep.  She waited until the sounds of the workers faded, then gathered her maps, donned her cloak, delivered her empty mug, and stepped outside.

It was snowing. 

Great, fat flakes, big as her thumb, drifting down smoothly and lightly, filling the air and all the empty spaces about with gentleness, and silence, and motion.  The city itself, seen through this fall, was softened, with all its wild masses and angles rendered sweetly mysterious. 

And the steerswoman felt her heart lift, in an ascent so sudden and swift that her spirit seemed for a moment something other than her own possession: something free, that flew.  This sort of snowfall always affected her so.

 At the edge of the Red Desert, where Rowan was raised, winters were ironbound, cracking with cold, but it almost never snowed. Snow came so rarely that each time was a new wonder, yet often enough across the years that her heart did learn it.  For the rest of her life, even when she became a steerswoman and knew that heavy snow meant slow and heavy traveling later — even then, whenever Rowan saw this kind of snowfall she felt a perfect joy, however briefly: a child’s joy magnified into a woman’s heart.  It was a happiness of utter simplicity, knowing neither future nor past — only the single present wonder of soft whiteness falling from the sky.   It made her want to laugh, and if she were alone, she always did.  She was alone now; she laughed, holding her open hands up to the sky.

 Refreshed in body and spirit, she continued to the foot of the next stairs, stepped to the rail of the landing, and stood facing outward into an emptiness now filled with fat, fast flakes.   She savored the sight of snow falling unimpeded for such a great distance: flakes high above her, beside her, beneath her.  How odd and lovely, to stand above falling snow; to watch it drift down and down to the harbor, invisible in whiteness, so far below.  

Well.  Back to the task at hand (Book 5, which still has not title) — since I’ll be occupied all weekend with non-writing activities!.

If it’s been snowing where you are, do drive carefully…