The ​Snow Queen (Five Hundred Kingdoms 4.) 1 csillagozás

And it was very true that in the land of the Sammi, the creatures of legend, godlets and powerful nature spirits tended to interact with humans much more than they did in the more “civilized” parts of the world.

After all, once, long ago, a great and evil Witch of the Sammi had imprisoned the Sun…and had kept all four of the Winds in chains.

Harbinger of storm and battle, black-winged, bright-eyed secret keeper, will you grace me with your presence, swift all-seeing Memory-holder?

Citrine cocked her head to one side, and regarded Aleksia thoughtfully. “I could be flippant and say that it is easy to get into the Underworld, but very hard to get out again…but more to the point, I think, would be to ask which Underworld. There are a very great many.”
“The Sammi one,” Aleksia replied, after a moment of mentally placing where the villages destroyed by the Icehart were.
“Tuonela, hmm? Give me a moment.”

When she had appeared before him on the night of the first frost—heralded by an out-of-season snowstorm—in her flying sleigh pulled by four snow-white reindeer, he had taken it as his due that such a creature should offer him her help. He had accepted her invitation, of course

He could be redeemed—he would not be here, in the Palace of Ever-Winter, the home of the Ice Fairy, if he was not capable of redemption.

Even so, things had gotten to the point that Ravens had taken to following him, which was a very ominous sign had he but known it.

He had, in the proper fashion, befriended a Salmon, who had advised him to undergo a quest to this very Palace, the Palace of Ever-Winter, and beg for one of the fruits of the trees of what was then Veroushka’s chamber. Which he did. And, of course, the fruit was the magical cure for Katya’s wasting disease.

Thread by thread, the fine brown woolen cloth built up beneath her hands; thread by thread, the subtle spell of warmth and protection she wove built with it. This was simple magic, hearth-and-fireside magic. So far as Annukka was concerned, magic was no special gift, and most women of the Sammi could do it, if they put their minds to it, if they took the time to learn how to concentrate in just the right way. The lives of the Sammi were intertwined with small magics. For most women, such things could be as natural as breathing, if they learned the tricks of it.

Time for the last brewing of mead; Annukka smiled to think of the taste of that mead on a Winter night, sweet and sharp at once, and holding the memory of Summer in it.