6
" Beware the snow dancers. They are beautiful, and pale, and oh they can dance; and you will think they are going to carry you away. They arrive with the tinkling of bells, and swirl and swish and you will run out to dance with them, and they will surround you, and beckon, ‘Come with us, child—you can dance for ever more.’ And many is the lost child who chased and ran, as the flakes swirled and laughed and moved on, leaving them frozen by the shore, craving their distant bells forever, as they heard stories of ice mountains and deep ice kings. And sometimes the child is entirely engulfed; is taken and lost by the snow dancing and never seen again. And perhaps they are happy dancing in the frozen ballroom of the Deep King. But perhaps they are not. So. Best not to risk it, la. "
― Jenny Colgan , Christmas on the Island (Mure, #3)
9
" On Mure, midwinter had been celebrated long, long before the Christians had arrived in the northern lands; way back as long as there had even been people, they had marked with standing stones the position of the heavens, and the changing of the seasons, and the very centre of the dark. Midwinter is a far deeper, wilder magic than Christmas. It began before religious divisions and is older than religion itself, beyond nativities or other portrayals. Midwinter is a human concern rooted in the earth and the body, not the heavens and the soul. "
― Jenny Colgan , Christmas on the Island (Mure, #3)
