Snow Queen

North.

Perhaps I was a little overenthusiastic, Annukka thought, looking a bit ruefully, and yet with pardonable pride, at a smokehouse so full of pig and venison sausage that it could not have held another link. She closed the door on it all, sealing the door tightly with wax from her hives. She would not open it again for another three days, by which time the sausages would be cured and ready to hang in the rafters, where they would get a bit more smoke, which would do them no harm.

Now, every year, she sat up all night on the first full moon of Autumn, the first harvest moon, and sang for a full, rich harvest. But this year, something — she was not sure what, a feeling of unease perhaps, or just the small indications that the Winter would be hard, cold and long — had prompted her to put a little more emphasis in her song than usual. She absolutely would not interfere with the weather — be it sent by gods or the winds, it was not hers to meddle with. But there was no harm in singing for enough, even abundance, to carry the village through a bad Winter, if one was to come. If the weather was to be that bad, things would die in the cold anyway, and if a few more birds and fish and animals died now, beneath the hunters' hands, it was a quicker, easier death than starving to death or freezing in the night. It was a good balance. It was also a good balance to ask the crops to be abundant — if the Winter was a hard one, then an abundant crop now meant that there would be seed to plant when Spring came.

So she sat up and sang, for everyone with a Mage rune knew that the most powerful spells were sung, not spoken. There was something about music, and the way it was easy to get lost in it, the way it was easy to call up mental images of what you wanted, that made sung magic, for the Sammi at least, that much more powerful.

Now it seemed that her spells had been very effective indeed. The cellars were full of beets, onions, turnips and cabbage, dried blueberries, lingonberries and cloudberries, dried mushrooms, sacks of rye and barley flour, sacks of whole barley, stacks of dried cheese, waxed wheels of aging cheese, casks of dried and salted fish, potted birds and meat. Hams and sausage hung from every ceiling. Cupboards were full of preserved pots of butter, lard, jam and honey. The entire village had been feasting for days on the traditional foods of Autumn, butchery-time — blood pancakes, blood dumplings, blood soup, fried cracklings, stews and soups rich with meat scraps, and dishes made with various organs that could not be preserved — for nothing, nothing went to waste, not even, or especially, in times of abundance. Fish had almost been leaping into the nets, and game flung itself in the way of the hunters. There were peddlers and traveling entertainers coming through at this time of year, and they generally tried to spend as much time as they could in the villages that had a reputation for generous hospitality. The Sammi did not have harvest fairs of the sort that Annukka had heard of; Autumn was too busy a time for that. But anyone that came through was more than welcome to partake of the ongoing feast of things that could not be stored for the Winter.

One such peddler, very, very fond of Annukka's sausages, had just been through. He had left with some of the first batch of the season stowed in his cart, and she was now the owner of a curious and very beautiful mother-of-pearl comb. That might have seemed a very uneven trade for a couple of strings of sausages, but he had confided in her that no one wanted it once they heard he had traded for it with one of the seal-people.

Now she had no particular aversion for the seal-people, although it was generally held to be bad luck for someone who made his living fishing to have anything of theirs. After all, they might want it back, and their way of getting it back might well be to drown you….

But the peddler, who she knew to be an honest fellow, had sworn he had come by it honorably. And it was a lovely piece, carved with swirling waves and fronds of kelp. She intended to give it to Kaari for her bride's-gift.

As she sealed up the door of the smokehouse, she smiled a little, thinking about that particular peddler. He was the one with the most beautiful pieces of amber, and sweet ambergris for making scents. Suvi-Marja had seen one particular necklace in his store, three big drops like huge drops of honey, suspended from a delicate chain of amber beads, and it was clear to anyone with eyes that she wanted the piece. Between the two of them, she and Kaari had managed to put it into Essa's thick skull that this would be a grand betrothal token for Suvi, and even more cleverly, managed to make him believe that he had thought of it.

I wonder if she has even taken it off to wash, Annukka thought with powerful amusement. Well, at least that was settled. She had known Essa since his birth, and never once had she known him to go back on a thing once he had decided to do it. That girl was as good as married this moment.

But the recollection of the peddler suddenly made her frown, because goods were not the only things that peddlers brought with them. They also brought news. And some of his stories were…disquieting.

There had always been tales of a strange, magical creature that some called the Winter Witch, some the Ice Fairy and others the Snow Queen. She was said to live up so far north — or else, in the mountains — that there was no other season but Winter there. That was not at all disturbing. There were all manner of things in that region that were magical in nature. If she were to concern herself with all of them, she would spend her time constructing defenses and never get anything done. This creature had been up there for generations, it seemed, and most of the stories were about people who had been stupidly or criminally foolish and had essentially gotten their comeuppance.

But these stories were different. The creature had suddenly turned malicious, and rather than sitting in her fortress or castle or ice-cave or whatever it was she lived in, she was extending her domain into places she had never been known to walk before. There were stories now of a Winter come so early that the snow caught apples not yet ripe on the trees, and grapes were frozen on the vine. There were stories of a killing kind of cold that swept down out of nowhere and froze birds and animals in their place. And there were stories of young men just — taken. For no apparent reason.

So far, none of those stories had been about anywhere too near the Sammi “kingdom” of Karelia. But Annukka knew her tales, and she knew that when bad things were on the move, they didn't stop for borders.

She bent down to apply the wax she was warming to the crack where the door met the frame. The rest of the smokehouse was tightly chinked with moss and clay, so this would be the only place where smoke could get out except the vent in the roof. It was taking extra care like this that made her sausages so good. And there was nothing like sausage on a cold morning.

If the Sammi had an enemy, it was Winter. There was not enough in the way of riches here for anyone to want to conquer their land; they were in no way strategic; and the very nature of the people, so dependant on the reindeer herds as they were, made them difficult to confine and fight. Sammi warriors did not make stands. Sammi warriors faded into the forest and the snow, struck from shadows, let the landscape wear the enemy down. Not that they did not, individually, fight valiantly toe-to-toe with the best of them! But as an army, as a force — no. When they organized, it was to divide the enemy, make him come to ground of their choosing and fight him as ghosts in the night.

But they could not do that with Winter. Winter was implacable. Winter's cold sought you out and tried to kill you and could not be hidden from. The only defenses against Winter were food, shelter and warmth. As the days grew shorter and the nights longer, there was always that fear in the back of every mind: what if the sun faded and