Chapter One

This is how it is when winter falls. The sun rises, but a little later than it did yesterday and a little earlier than it will tomorrow. Each night is longer, darker, and colder than the one before.

Back at the beginning of winter, Vivienne Small had lined her hammock with fur and covered herself at night with an extra blanket. She had collected wood to burn in the potbelly stove on her veranda and spent the long evenings sitting close beside it, whispering to her black rat, Ermengarde, about the things they would do when springtime came. But although weeks passed, and months too, the winter did not turn. Instead it grew steadily deeper.

The snow on the Mountains of Margolov crept lower and lower, and the upper reaches of the River of Rythwyck turned to ice. The Golden Valley was no longer golden but white, and the five Cities of Luminosity were buried beneath snowdrifts. Plants no longer grew but instead lay dormant beneath the frosty earth. Hibernating animals slept on and on. The birds of the air laid no eggs; chrysalises never broke open. The creatures of the world were starving, and Vivienne could do nothing but watch as the world inched closer to complete and absolute darkness.

On a particularly bitter morning, Vivienne woke beneath a pile of blankets, a woolen hat pulled down over her ears. Despite her coverings, she was cold, and the tip of her nose was numb. The only pool of warmth was at the back of her neck, where Ermengarde was asleep beneath Vivienne’s dark, tangled hair.

Vivienne sat up and opened her wide blue wings, releasing a shower of ice crystals. Ermengarde emerged briefly, squinted disapprovingly at the morning, and retreated once again. Vivienne shook the ice off her long leather boots and pulled them stiffly onto her feet. She wrapped her arms about herself tightly as she stood at the railing of her veranda and stared out over the angry charcoal waves of the Restless Sea. The sky above was no friendlier.

The long and terrible winter had begun with an earthquake that had shaken every tree in the Peppermint Forest from the depths of its roots to the tips of its leaves. It had caused giant waves to crash against the shores, eating away at cliffs and scouring the sand from beaches. It had ruptured hills and valleys and reduced parts of the City of Clocks to rubble. Then winter had come and had not departed. There was speculation in every wild and tame place, among strangers and friends, that the world had been shaken so violently it had come loose from the turning of its seasons. Many said spring would never come again and that the winter would deepen, day by day, until it had frozen the entire world and everything in it.

For a long while, Vivienne had scoffed at such an idea. But as the weeks unraveled, growing ever darker and colder, a tiredness had stolen over her. She had begun to wonder if winter was here forever and this truly was the end of the world as she had known it. She leaned wearily on the railing, and her stomach growled. But there was no point even looking in her pantry. She and Ermengarde had shared the last of her final store of nuts and a remnant of dry cheese two days ago. She had long since visited her other homes and stores, bringing any remaining supplies back to the Peppermint Forest, and now her tree house was completely empty of anything edible. She shivered.

“It’s about time we had some sunshine!” she called to the invisible sun, trapped behind layers of stormy clouds. “This can’t go on forever!”

“Forever is a long time,” came an eerie, otherworldly voice from behind her. “A long, long time.”

Vivienne caught the scent of dank earth, but before she could turn to see who had spoken, she felt in her shoulder the sharp stab of a dart. She saw a flash of vibrant green, then her knees buckled and everything faded to black.

Text copyright © 2016 by Heather Rose and Danielle Wood

Illustrations copyright © 2017 by Stevie Lewis