Years collected like tree rings. Still Hana called Winter her friend, and still she opened the door when Winter showed up shrieking. Slowly, Winter began to soften her sharp edges. How could she not? Being cruel to Hana was like trying to stave off daybreak by shouting at the sun. Cruelty was wasted on the kind.

Winter stirred up snowstorms, painted the sky gray for weeks, and still Hana sang:

“Sister Winter, Sister Winter,

Let me wash your aching back.

I have watched you work from dawnbreak

Till the gloaming fell to black.”

And Winter sighed her windy sigh and let Hana wash her, and she didn’t even turn the bathwater to ice.

Hana grew into a strong young woman. Her hair was black and plaited; her eyes were rich dark earth. Her heart was a snow-bright star behind her ribs. But there must be a balance in all things, so as Hana burned brighter, Mama and Papa began to fade. Mama got very, very sick. Papa summoned healers from a dozen villages, but no mountain teas or tisanes could save Mama. She needed a medicine made only by the fishing villages on the banks of the Steorran Sea, all the way across the tundra. Papa was too old to make the journey. Mama begged Hana not to go, but for all the girl’s kindness she was still stubborn as a goat. She left the very next day.

Halfway through her journey, Hana was caught in a snowstorm and became hopelessly lost. She stumbled for days across the ice fields, starving and freezing, and she sang:

“Sister Winter, Sister Winter,

I am lost and scared to sleep.

I have kept my lantern glowing

But the dark is very deep.”

Hana was so small, and the tundra was so big. Winter didn’t hear her.

Finally, Hana was too weak to keep going. She lay down in the snow, weeping for her mama, and she sang:

“Sister Winter, Sister Winter,

Hear me knocking at your door.

Hear me whispering your name.

Hear my footsteps cross your floor.”

She settled deeper into her snow bed. She looked up at the night sky and tried to think of good things: Mama and Papa and their little cottage, their hearth fire, their mud-cobbled lives. The taste of bread and honey. Winter’s barefoot dancing, the flash of her grin. Hana thought of all those things, and the cold sank into her bones, and she sang:

“Dearest Winter, sweetest Winter,

I feel your kiss now at my core.

I will sleep with you till morning,

Then I’ll sleep forevermore.”

Hana sang until her throat was raw and her skin webbed with frost and her mouth too cold for words. Slowly, the heat left her body. The blood froze in her veins. Her heartbeat faded to a moth-wing flutter, and then silence.

Snow fell down to cover her body like pyre ash. The Northern Wind, who had sung along with Hana so many years before, swept over her and played with her black hair one last time, and then carried on westward to the mountains.