‘This is yet to happen which has never happened and will happen again.

‘An old woman returns to the village she was born in after years of travelling. There is one journey left and this she has saved for the last. She has roamed far, telling her stories, some years have been better than others. She has left the man she lived with. He loved her more than she could ever love him; some say that was what kept him close to her. They parted at a railway station. He knew this day would come because she had told him this much of their future.

‘She finds a house outside the village, she keeps a sheep for company and promises it will never smell mutton cooking. Villagers come to her, feeling her stories calm a trouble mind, put right a wrong, and there she stays until the sheep dies and autumn turns to winter. She knows the snow is coming. She has waited for this snow for a long time. One morning she wakes to the chiming of the snow, the music of a winter sky. She leaves a note on the table as she did many years ago when she first left her house to go travelling. This time she won’t take the violin, there’s no point. In her mind she has made this journey a thousand times. She has no fear of the frost, no fear of the snow. All that matters is that she finds the two dancing fir trees.

‘The day is drawing in and never once does she doubt the trees. She hears the wolf howl, hears the bear growl and is not afraid. When the moon rises the two mighty fir trees stand before her like gossiping ladies in their dancing white skirts. She pushes through their soft caresses until she is in the clearing with the wooden cabin.

‘The moonlight shines silver on him; he is beautiful, untouched by time, and all age falls from her as she goes to him. He puts his hand to her face. His eyes are the blue of a winter’s sky and she knows she is home.’

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the lobster. First, I must thank Clio Cornish, who over lunch, suggested I write a story set in snow – though at the time my mind went completely blank while the lobster congealed on its bed of noodles.

It took a while to come up with the story until Emily Gerard’s excellent book The Land Beyond the Forest led me to the location. My thanks to her and to other writers whose adventures and pens took them among the Saxon and Roma peoples of the region.