A Wintery Tale...by Susan Price

A Merry Christmas

and a Prosperous New Year

to all our readers!

But it's Christmas Day and you want something a little different from the usual blog.

So I offer you this wintery tale...Or, at least, its first chapter.

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Ghost Dance

Or, The Czar's Black Angel

'Are you cold, my children? Are you cold?'

Chapter 1

In a place far distant from where you are now grows an oak tree by a lake.

Round the oak's trunk is a chain of golden links.

Tethered to the chain is a learned cat, and this most learned of all cats walks round and round the tree continually.

As it walks one way, it sings songs.

As it walks the other, it tells stories.

This is one of the stories the cat tells.

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I tell (says the cat) of the Northlands, where, in the long, dark winter, the white snow falls out of the black, black sky. Soft, silent, it falls through the branches of the pines and birch, and mounts, thin flake on thin flake, until the snow lies ten cold feet deep, and the silence is frozen to the darkness.

This (says the cat) is the land where that white, sharp-backed horse, North Wind, carries Granddad Frost swiftly through the trees. The old man breathes to the left and right, and what his breath touches is blasted and withered, and his rasping voice whispers, 'Are you cold, children? Are you cold?'