Mira could remember only fragments of her first Northern winter. She remembered the night her child first moved within her. Fell had not felt it, and they waited patiently, hoping the child would move again. Fell whispered to her stomach, trying to coax the child and stroking her swollen belly, but the babe was still.

“Perhaps like his father, he does not like being told what to do?”

It was only days later they figured out that if Fell were to sing, the child would thrash about within her, and they spent many starry evenings bundled up in furs in their tent with their hands on Mira’s stomach as Fell sang and the babe kicked.

Another winter day remained clear in Mira’s memory, for it was the day Mira awoke to discover white dust twirling in the air outside. She had seen snow before but never so much of it. Back home, the snow would turn to water when it hit the earth. But in the North, it kept its form, and everything was covered in a white, shiny cloak.

She could not take in enough of the sight. “The world looks like a cloud,” she whispered in amazement.

Fell laughed. “No, we are not in a cloud. Fyerd the frost god coats the world in ice and snow. Southerners think everything is dead, but it is not. Fyerd covers the earth so it can rest. When it wakes, it will be stronger, like a bear.”

Fell did not go hunting, nor did he train that day. Almost none of the Northerners worked. Everyone was outside early in the morning chasing around the children that had come to play while the earth slept, drinking pungent herbal tea and soaking in the fresh white brilliance. The world was so blazingly white that Mira could close her eyes and still see spots of the dazzling silver colour on her eyelids.

Fell picked children up and threw them into the soft fluffy powder as they shrieked, sending swirls of glittering white into the air, and Mira could not help but feel excited for the day it would be their child he tossed about.

Mira played too, helping Dania’s boys build little ships out of the snow and listening to the fantastic stories they made up about the crews of snowmen and the treasures found and their battles with giants.

The children, and a handful of adults, looked to the sky with their mouths open, catching flakes of snow between their lips and feeling the frozen drops melt.

Rowan was out as well, laughing like a Northman, just as bewildered by Fyerd’s force as Mira was. The children rolled snow into balls and threw them at him. Whenever one hit, he exaggerated the blow, acting as if it knocked him to the ground and caused him great pain. The game escalated as Rowan built walls of snow and the children organized their attacks. The little ones with bad aim made balls of snow as quickly as they were able while the older ones flung the packed snow over the wall into Rowan’s fortress.

Fyrrah and Fell joined in, crawling around on the ground like giant beasts, growling at the children as they ran away giggling, coming to Rowan’s rescue. Then Rowan became the beast, dragging Fyrrah back to his lair. Fell led the children in revolt, firing invisible arrows at the guest-slave-creature.

Most of the grown Northerners drank strong wine to keep their warmth, but by mid-afternoon, the children were drenched and cold, and only the drunkest Northmen remained outside. When all of the children had been changed into thick dry furs, they gathered in Myret’s tent to hear stories of Fyerd’s frost, the men acting out the tales for them with sparkling masks and extravagant costumes.

Rowan sat beside Mira in the tent; he leaned in to whisper to her as Fyerd battled with the sun. “My lady... I’ve had mind to speak to you for some time.”

He was drunk, Mira could tell; he moved as if he could not hold himself upright, and each of his words bled into the ones that came before and after them.

“This is much better than dying….” He frowned at his word choice and began again. “I know I am a slave here, but I am more free than I have ever been. I would not know this feeling if it were not for you.” He took her hand and kissed it the way knights back home kissed the hands of ladies.

They were speaking in their own tongue, and anyone who could understand was too far away, so Mira felt safe expressing her fears. “But if you were freed, right now, this moment, would you feel the same way?”

“I am not certain, my lady. I’ve never been freed from slavery before.” He laughed.

“Imagine you were, though, would you stay here, or would you go home?”

Rowan laughed again. “It would be nice to be warm… but I could not leave you here alone, my lady.”

Mira lowered her voice and moved closer just in case anyone could hear. “And if Dayne arrives with an army, as you said he would, which side would you fight against?”

Rowan did not look conflicted. “Neither, my lady. If Dayne attacks, Fyrrah and I will go into the hills. We have already discussed it—”

“You told her they were coming?”

“No, my lady, of course not. We spoke about it only in abstract. She wanted to know if my heart was here in the North or back home. But I could not answer her. She saw my conflict clearly and knew that choosing would bring only regret. She vowed to never make me choose between her and my home. If the Northmen win, we stay here with them. If Dayne wins, she will come south with me. The gods have chosen almost everything else for me; why would this be any different?” He shrugged. “Whether we resist or whether we cooperate, the gods get their way.”

Which gods does he mean? There was wisdom in his words, Mira knew. But Dayne is my brother. It’s not so easy for me.

“Who would you side with, my lady?”

When Mira did not answer, he spoke again. “There is no wrong in not knowing.”

They held each other’s gaze. The thing between them that had been unspoken for so long was still there, but it was softened and nostalgic—it had become something of the past, still beloved but no longer powerful. “You know, my lady, when I was a boy, all I wanted was you.” He gave her a sweet, sad smile, laughed at himself, and turned back to the show.

Hyrold (played by Eggun wearing leather died blue) had leapt from the shadows and joined Fyerd in the battle; the sun could not stop the ice storm they made together. Toke, who was playing the role of Fyerd, had long, twisted silks with shimmery coins sewn into the fabric coming out of his sleeves. As he waved his arms, the fabric danced like snow in the wind and Orvir, who was playing Oringa (the sun), got tangled in the satiny material. The more he flailed, the more tightly the fabric bound him until he was curled up in a snow-covered ball.

“I yield!” he said. “I will no longer fight the winter—”

A man came forward covered in a black cloak and mask, with shiny white pearls the size of fists sewn where the eyes should go resulting in a creepy expression where the eyes were too wide for the face. Mira could not be sure which villager was playing the role, nor did she know which god it was until nearby children whispered in hushed voices, “It is Egil!”

“Egil has come!”

“He is behind you!”

Egil crouched next to Oringa and whispered to him.

Oringa nodded and raised his head to face Hyrold and Fyerd. “For the time being, I will not battle the winter. The earth will be allowed to sleep for five moons each year as long as during this time, Egil is granted permission to enter the sleeping world and make dreams.”

Hyrold and Oringa turned to Valla, goddess of the moon and good luck, played by Inga, who was just waking from her slumber. She closed her eyes and hummed a bleak, ominous single note that stretched on for far too long.

“It is a trick, but a most marvellous one,” she said when she opened her eyes. “For in the dreams, Egil speaks to those who sleep. He tells their own secrets back to them in poetic and frightening, and beautiful ways. With your permission, father, I will allow Egil’s dreams to sink into all those who sleep while I watch over the earth.”

Gorn the cook was playing the role of Clem, god of war and poetic justice; It was he who narrated the tale. “And so it was,” he said. “That Egil outsmarted all the gods, with the help of Valla and invented the dreams that keep you confused all your lives.”

Mira frowned. “It was only the earth that was given dreams.”

Sigyn was sitting nearby and whispered. “In the story, the earth is all people. Each day we have our own summer and our own winter. The year is a perfect mirror of a day but also a lifetime. Each lifetime has four parts, a spring and autumn, a winter and a summer.”

At the time, Mira did not understand the words of Sigyn Speartooth, but later, she would come to believe that he was right, and she would think of that year as part of her spring, for it felt open and vibrant and teeming with life. And the memory of that day—the playful, lighthearted fun, the dazzling beauty of the snow, the way the light refracted off the white coating creating more shimmers and sparkles than there were in the night sky on a clear night—would keep her warm throughout the winter of her life. She would one day sit and imagine the details of it again and again and wonder if it was Fell who had worn the costume of Egil, for she could not recall seeing him once during the show.