the shortest day

 

I know, it's saturday.  but it's Midwinter's Eve and I'm not around today--off to Edinburgh to the Frost Fair and to see the Scottish Ballet dance The Snowman.  So I thought I'd post this now and try to make up for my truly lame-o Midwinter’s Day greeting of last year.

 

This year I have got a reminder in my mailbox that it is illgotten’s birthday.  ahahahahaha.  I would argue that his birthday more correctly falls on May Day (in the official calendar of My Brain it falls on Old May Day, 13 May, which obscure fact I learned from Mary Stewart’s Wildfire at Midnight).

 

At any rate, I thought I would make a few seasonal offerings to those of you who might enjoy such things. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!

 

First, The Rhymers’ Pageant revisited.  From the unpublished, unfinished and ALREADY FAR TOO LONG thing called The Sword Dance, which follows The Empty Kingdom.  No spoilers unless you count the fact that no one you are likely to care about has died.

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( the sword dance )

 

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And also, the poem that The Unwieldy Thing hinges on, which admirers of the Loathly Lady, in her various forms, may appreciate.  (Apologies for repetition, to anybody who heard me reading this at Readercon last summer.)

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( the maiden's riddle )

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Enjoy the dark season, the cold season.  And if you're lucky enough to live near the equator or in the southern hemisphere, ENJOY THE LIGHT.
"Listen.  All the long echoes sing the same delight this shortest day."
(--Susan Cooper for The Revels)
 
ETA: this morning it is so foggy we can't see Kinnoull Hill a mile across the valley and *everything* is covered in hoar frost.  Every now and then a few flakes of snow drift down.  It is the first we have had any winter weather at all and it is *perfect*. (The hoar frost is spectacular.)



our front garden



view from the attic