O Great Skadi, Lady of Winter,
Spare us your hammer blow,
Until the barleycorn is in,
And the apples, and the rye,
All safe and sound and gathered ‘round,
Great Lady, Winter’s Herald,
Spare us the hammer blow.

- A common prayer for the surface harvest.

Land-bound

My brother is a navigator. Or he will be, one day. He’s learning to work the melody in the clouds. Our Uncle was, too. When we were small, he’d come back for the midwinter feasts, and sit with us by the fire and tell us stories.

“You’d never believe the storms up there - the winds, screaming through the rigging like a banshee, and the ice! Huge shards of it, larger than a man, moving so fast they cleave right through even the strongest mast and sail, and sharp enough to take your head clean off...”

“There are islands up there, you know, and you’ll never know what you find on them. Mostly they’re just barren rock, or snowballs, sealed up in ice, but every so often - if the winds are fair - you’ll find one rich with gems and lined with gold...”

“You can’t hear it down here, but way up there - far, far above the clouds - there’s song in the winds. That’s why they need me. My lungs and my ears. I hear the melody and tell Captain how to follow it. If I do it right, we find the great gates, to slip through to other worlds - but do it wrong, and there’s nothing but siren calls, leading us all to our doom...”

We could never get enough of those stories.

Eventually, when my brother was old enough, he followed Uncle away. He went off to the docklands and sang his way into an apprenticeship to a navigator in the trade winds. He’ll pass it in a few years and he’ll come home wearing a guild coat, with a commission on a vessel, set for a life above the clouds.

I can’t leave the surface. Just climbing a ladder paralyses me with fear. I went up into the high mountains when I was little, and my dad had to carry me half the way as I couldn’t bear to look down. Any height makes me so dizzy I can’t breathe. So, while Uncle taught me to sing like a navigator, and while my brother works up in the high winds, I have to keep my feet very firmly on the ground.

In fairness, it’s not bad ground to stand on. My family farm land in the mountain foothills, in a valley overlooking a lake, and the town on its shores. The mountains glow pink and peach in the morning light and our grasslands are lush with flowers all spring and summer. We grow fruit and vegetables for the village, flowers for the market in town, and barley and wheat and corn.

My brother was meant to learn the farm, but he went away to the sky, to chase the melody. So instead, it falls to me.

The first days of harvest

Dad gets nervous in the days before the harvest starts. He’ll be up before dawn, walking around the fields, thumbing through the ears of wheat and rattling the bean pods. We don’t have much time to do the work up here, up in the mountains. Once the midsummer day is done we’re racing the encroaching snowline and the night-time frosts. “It’s just time before Skadi says we’re done,” says Dad, and everyone knows Skadi cannot be reasoned with.

She’s the Lady of the mountains. A giantess, gliding across the snow with her wolves as she hunts. All of us in the mountains know that it’s on her word that winter arrives. One day, every year, she’ll look down the valley and decide that now is the time. On that day, she’ll take up her hammer and strike, and the cold will set in until the warmth arrives again in spring.

We cannot think to stop her, and we don’t want to either, because if we didn’t have the winter, we wouldn’t have the snowfields - the glistening pines - the warmth and comfort of home, after a long day toiling in the cold. But she is merciless. Once her hammer strikes, there’s no going back to summer. Our harvest must be in by then, or everything that remains in the fields will be lost.

In our valley, every harvest, someone leads the singing that keeps her at bay. “We have to draw her out to dance,” said Dad, when I was little and I asked him why. “We have to entertain her - make her welcome. That way, she won’t think to bring the winter early. And she’s a mountain spirit, cousin of the winds. So there’s nothing more she loves than a song.”

Dad was Uncle’s brother. He talked about the melody like Uncle did, sometimes. How, if you knew the right words, and the right way to weave them, you could draw out strange spirits, and they would sit and listen. He said Skadi was the same. You had to reach out to her, and offer her a song, and if she liked it, well, then the winter wouldn’t come just yet. She would stay her fearsome hammer, and the food could be brought in safely.

They all thought my brother would lead it this year but he’d left for the high winds. Late in spring, when we were dividing up the work between the families that lived in the valley, they asked again and again when he might be back, and Dad almost cried, saying, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

I’ve never hated my brother. We’d spatted and quarrelled and fought, as siblings do, but I’d never hated him. I nearly hated him then - how dare he, how could he, bringing Dad to tears in front of the valley - how could he think to do it, leaving us alone like this...

“Why don’t you do it?” they asked me, to my horror. “You’ve just as good a voice.” “I can’t,” I said. “I’ve never been up there. I’ve never heard the melody. I can’t.”

“Try,” they said, and someone had to - and what would happen to the harvest if nobody else did? - so I agreed, though it worried me sleepless.

When the first days of harvest came, disaster struck. I lost my voice. Everyone working the fields would join in when they could - everyone had to do their part - but they needed someone to set the pace. To lead. To spin the right melody, the one that would reach out to the Lady and invite her out to dance - and I couldn’t.

My brother could have done it. He would have found it easy. But as soon as they all looked at me to lead, I lost my voice and nearly fled home in shame.

We got by, those first days, but it was hard. Rains struck from the windward side of the valley and the nights were damp and cold. Dad worried that the beans would never dry out - that they would rot in their pods, and the whole crop would be wasted. Mum watched the kitchen garden, anxious, as nothing grew close to ripening.

I can’t do it, I thought, I’m going to fail them all, and many of our neighbours seemed to think the same, from the looks they gave me and the badly-hidden arguments they had with Dad. One day I watched the rain pelt down from the shelter of the stables and had to hide in the hayloft and cry with fear.

One of the old hands found me there. “Don’t you know any of Skadi’s songs?” he asked, gently, once I’d dried my eyes.

“Some, I think. Uncle taught me. But I can’t-”

“You can. You just need a bit of practice.”

“My brother could.”

“Well, try it with him then.”

“He’s not here.”

“Ah, that’s the joy of the melody. It’s not just great sky-gates it opens. Wherever there’s wind,

it’s there, and if you join in and he’s up there listening, he’ll hear you. I’m sure of it.”

He taught me a new one and we watched the rain come down as we sang -

Oh, the harvest’s got sharp teeth and it’s dragging me under
Put down the sword, turn the millstone round
Oh Demeter’s embrace holds the sun to the land
Until Skadi brings her hammer down...

Finding the rhythm

Uncle told me what it was like to work the melody in the winds, once. How the music and the words, if directed properly, could open up great bridges between worlds. “It makes things thin up there,” he said, in his rough voice, like old rope. “With the right harmony, you can just - reach out - and something else - somewhere else - is right there.”

I can’t do that on the ground. Not in the way he said. There are no great bridges down here, in the thicker air, where the birds sing. My brother knew this and went up to the sky to find them. He wanted to see the other worlds - and so did I, we’d dreamed of it together - but he could go and I couldn’t. So I made do, alone.

I learned a few more songs early that summer, and, slowly the rain cleared and the air warmed. As I walked the fields and sang, the hands joining in as they saw me and their voices fading away on the wind as I walked by, I wondered if any of it would reach my brother. Did we have to be singing the same song? Listening out for the same melody? I couldn’t hear the melody on the ground - everyone knew that - but could he hear me? Uncle never told us how it worked.

Time passed, the days lengthening, and I settled into the harvest routine. Awake at first light - gather at the stables - out with the hands - pace the fields while they worked, and sing.

As the rhythm grew familiar I didn’t have to think about it quite so much, and I found I could listen instead. Not that there was much to listen for, beyond the normal summer sounds of the valley. But just in case, even though I knew I was too far away and my brother’s voice would never reach me - I listened.

Midsummer

The weather grew hot. Some days the mountain winds would die altogether, and the air seemed to thicken to a stew. We did our work early in the morning on those days and retreated to the shade by noon. I would lie under the apple trees by the house and, through their leaves, watch the distant trails of ships in the sky, pale as smoke. Are you up there?

I hummed a song Uncle had taught both of us, and hoped it would reach him safely.

The other side of midsummer, I had little time to think of my brother. The days were growing shorter, hour by hour, day by day, unstoppably, and that meant Skadi was turning her eyes to the valley. One day, maybe very soon, she would strike, and we all had to hold her at bay.

“There’s no malice to her,” Dad said, one evening, once we were finished for the day. I had to rest my voice but looked askance at him, wondering how that could be true. He laughed at me and continued. “She’s part of the mountains. It’s just her nature. She loves the summer as much as the winter - where else would she get the flowers for her hair? But she’s as old as the mountains, and she’s wise. She knows that each season has their time. We need her hammer strike, though we all complain about it. If the year never turned, then we’d all be in trouble. All we can do is give her some joy while it lasts, and that’s what you’re doing. Reaching out and giving her a song.”

Sometimes, in the early evening when the work was coming to an end and the mountain peaks turned gold, I would do my final walk of the fields near the forest and feel something watching me from the trees. I never saw it, and it might have just been the birds, and it never felt dangerous. Not a wolf, or a bear, or anything hungry. But I was sure there was something. It grew stronger as the nights encroached, and it was strongest when I sang.

It felt like someone was there, watching me through the dense branches, listening.

Harvest festival

At last, it was done. The final fields were cleared. The stores were full - not as full as some years, but not as empty as others. More than enough for the valley to last the winter, with plenty to trade. We’d be all right - until next summer, at least.

We marked the end of the year with the equinox, when the night and day were equal. We gave thanks to the rains and the fields and the sun, made our offerings to the fire for next year’s harvest, and then there was the usual feast and dancing and drinking.

I left as the sun went down and went to the forest edge. I didn’t like the crowd of people; I didn’t like how rowdy and loud they grew as the evening drew in. I slipped away, unnoticed, and went to the treeline, where pine needles crushed under my feet and the breeze rustled the branches.

I hummed one of Skadi’s songs while I walked. It wasn’t the one I’d been taught when summer began. I’d added to it - changed it, slightly, to something that felt like mine. It meant the same, more or less. Just sounded like it came from my lungs, not anyone else’s.

Uncle once said that the melody was particularly strong on equinox days. They were the best days to open the great gates and trade between worlds. Maybe that was why I didn’t feel alone under the trees with my song. Maybe my song was reaching out, and others could hear it. Could my brother? Would he hear? He’d never missed a harvest festival before. Was he thinking of me, too?

I walked aimlessly for a while, lost in the sound, and then I came across a clearing and - for the first time - I saw her.

It was the very last hour of sunset. The low light turned her hair to flame, scarlet and orange against white skin, and the eyes of the huge wolves walking at her side burned just as bright. She was as tall as a young tree and as muscled as a huntress, and she waved the trunks aside like grass as she walked. A bow lay across her back, and on her belt hung a quiver of arrows and a blacksmith’s hammer, silvered with frost.

She saw me, startled and frozen at the edge of the clearing, and she smiled. She said nothing, and I’m glad she didn’t, because I wouldn’t have known how to reply. She watched me for a while, and then she turned and walked into the forest, softly singing my song as she went.

The hammer blow

Summer lingered a while, once the harvest was done. We had warm clear evenings butterflies in the garden for some time after the work was complete. Dad and I fixed the roof of the stables while the weather was fine, and I kept up my singing while I did so, but the Lady didn’t join me. Maybe she didn’t hear. All I had was my voice in the autumn air, and my dad’s humming, joining in.

So yes, summer stayed a while, and for a while it felt like it would never leave, and that our little valley would be blessed with a mild winter.

And then, all at once, it was over. One morning I awoke and went into the kitchen, and through the window I saw that Skadi had struck the first blow of winter. A fine silver frost lay over the grass. The last flowers on the rosebush wilted sadly under ice. The sky hung low and grey, a mist obscuring the mountains and the islands far above. When I went outside, my breath steamed, and the cold stung my cheeks.

The lady had had her summer dance. I’d held her at bay long enough. Now she took up her hammer and worked the land into something hard and frozen, sleeping, until spring came again.

Midwinter

My brother came home for midwinter. He was taller, stronger, but didn’t have his guild coat just yet. He didn’t have many stories to tell, though I pestered him for them. Instead he looked pensive, and said, “It’s hard up there. And cold. Seems much warmer, down here.”

So instead we ate and drank and walked the farm together. I showed him all we had done since he’d last visited - the new trees, the better fences, the winter lambs wobbling about in the barns. And then, inside, we sang together.

He taught me some of the navigator songs - the harmonies they used to find their ways across the skies - and I, in turn, taught him the songs of summer, the ones that drew Skadi out to dance, so she might spare the hammer until the harvest was done.

One night, he said, “I heard you all summer. Singing for Skadi.”

“You heard?”

“I listened out for you when I could. Those trade winds travel a long way. It’s amazing, what you did. Uncle would be proud.”

He was gone again before spring, but those songs stay with me. Sometimes, when I sing them, I can feel he’s singing them too. It’s no great bridge. No pathway to another world. But it’s enough.

He’s still there, when I sing with him. And he knows I’m here too. Even if we’re worlds away, we’re there, together, somewhere, in the winds.