Marieke's Midwinter Blogfest

It's time for Marieke's Midwinter Blogfest, the idea being to write a piece on what your MC does for midwinter. If you've come here from there, greetings! If you haven't, greetings anyway! Warm your hands by the fire.

I have several MCs buzzing around in my head but one obvious one stuck out. What follows is a passage from an as-yet unwritten book : Lyche King, the third and concluding part of the fantasy trilogy that starts with a book I have written : Hedge Witch.

In this passage, Fer, a young witch from Andar is visiting the great city of Guilden for the first time. In years when the great river An freezes, an ice-fair is held at Guilden in the week "between the years". It's a time of joyful and riotous celebration, when everyone sets aside their normal cares. But Fer is in no mood for celebration. She knows that Andar's peace is coming to an end. The winter is unnaturally severe and the vast river is going to freeze right across, an unprecedented event. And on the other side of the "uncrossable" river is Angere, a land of mythical horrors  ...

Fer stood on the bank of the An. In normal times, the wooden steps led down to a jetty where wherries and skiffs jostled for mooring space. Now, with the river stilled by the cold, the boats had all been hauled up and the steps led directly out onto the great expanse of shining ice. A thousand lamps flared and flickered, filling the air with the smell of pine-resin and honey, the smoke hanging low in great threads through the frozen air.

A hubbub of voices from the throngs came to her : shouts, laughter, the occasional scream. She wondered if they were screams of delight or terror. Anything was permitted during an Ice Fair, of course; the only law was the goodwill of the passer-by. The midwinter week was outside of time, a break between old and new years. And the river was a non-place too : temporary land, outside the jurisdiction of city. For one week of the year the good people of Guilden put down their tools and books and, as the saying went, tried to drink the river dry.

Fer strode out on the ice, feeling the vast, sucking cold of it coming up through her boots, seeping up the bones of her legs. She walked past a fire-breather, billowing great clouds of red flame into the night sky from his mouth to roars of appreciation. The brief warmth on her face was very welcome. She wished she could stop, enjoy the entertainers, the sideshows, the games of fireball and stone-curling. She envied those around her, the laughing faces, the children skating after each other, the couples huddled together in their private worlds. This was her first Ice Fair; she was barely older than the whooping, laughing children. Still, she couldn’t stop. There were things that had to be done and she had to do them.

She allowed herself a beaker of hot, spiced ale from one of the traders and then, sipping at it as she walked, set off through the fair. She passed pitches and arenas and stages, past musicians and magicians and merchants. She was alone, not a part of the crowd.

She reached the line of ropes, strung out between posts spiked into the ice, more torches flaring from them. The edge of the ice. Yet it wasn’t the edge. She could see the frozen water stretching farther out into the river, torches reflecting on it before the greater darkness out there engulfed them. A chill wind had picked up, sharp on her cheeks. She must be nearly beyond Guilden Bay, out on the river proper, its vast waters surging somewhere beneath her feet. The question was how far? How thick was the ice, how far out did it reach? Was the end imminent, were the undain crossing even now? She imagined them : a vast, wide army marching across the ice. And, from Andar, just herself, walking out to meet them ...