Inevitably though, all things were dominated by this untypical manifestation. No conversation ended without some allusion to it, and virtually no carving was made during those months that did not enshrine some aspect of it. In most villages, the Carvers’ Guilds held equally untypical formal meetings. Some to discuss the new devices that were being discovered to capture the subtleties and richness of their new land. Some to discuss not only that but, horror of horrors, a rationing of stone, for there was no way into the mountains to replenish stocks, and even communication between villages had become difficult and dangerous. It became a time of the miniature.

On the days when it was bright and sunny, the Orthlundyn donned their warmest clothes and wan-dered through the snow-filled streets of their villages, revelling in the sight of the white, new-shaped fields, and their houses, now strangely decorated with bellying white eaves and wind-blown buttresses. And they would stand in open admiration of the splendour of the mountains-sharp, stern and forbidding in the tingling air.

The children learned new games and devilments and accidentally stored up bright white memories for future, balmier times. The wits founded the Snow Carvers’ Guild and filled the streets with strange creatures and carved likenesses of their neighbours, to the amusement of some and the considerable indignation of others.

Only at the very heart of the winter did a little con-cern creep darkly into the lives of these civilized people. A blizzard blew for seven consecutive days, howling and screaming and so hiding the world that it was folly to take but three steps from a threshold. Then, as the land was shaped and reshaped unseen, conversations faded, chisels were laid aside, and eyes turned pensively to hearths to seek stillness and reassurance in the flickering, summer-stored glow of the radiant stones.