Twisted Winter Read online

  After my abduction the days lengthened into weeks, the weeks cast a long shadow into months and I began to fear that years might pass in that unchanging empty land. The Fates themselves had ruled that anyone who ate or drank in the underworld must remain there forever. When the minions of the deadlands brought me their delicacies I pressed my lips shut and shook my head.

  Then the lord of the underworld brought me a pomegranate, my favourite fruit. A familiar taste and scent and touch, a little round world of my own.

  What power these little globes hold. A woman eats a fruit and the world changes. Was it greed or did a serpent tempt her? One bite of the fruit, four seeds, and she is complicit in her own disaster.

  When it was revealed that I had eaten those four pomegranate seeds, Zeus determined that I must spend a quarter of the year underground in payment. From then on I would not belong to myself but to my story: daughter of summer, bride of winter, a shuttle on the loom of fate.

  My white teeth bite into the sweet flesh. What harm can come to me now? I could strip the orchard bare and gorge myself sick on pomegranates if I wished. I spit the seeds on to the cold earth.

  I enter the Hall of Hades. It is majestic, overpowering, threatening. The hosts of hell draw back from the red ribbon of my pathway, sheathing their claws and fangs and mandibles, folding their wings and closing their carapaces, their seething snakes and barking dogs quieting as I walk among them.

  I draw my hands through my hair and away fall the flowers, the dead leaves, ice crystals, spiderwebs, bone dust and pomegranate blossom. My summer gold hair cloaks me, my skin glows honey sweet in the halls of bleached bone, my eyes are the blue of a clear and endless sky.

  The wine velvet carpet is soft beneath my feet as I approach the throne. Cerberus pads past me to lie down at his master’s feet. The host does not dance or sing or cry out but they are celebrating their own rituals in their own fashion.

  He is waiting for me. He has waited an eternity, a season, a portion of a year. The winter king, the lord of the deadlands, the third son of the Titans. Hades. My husband.

  His skin is pale as ashes, as dry as bone, as cold as ice. His body is a skeleton in a shroud of flesh – as is all that is mortal – a disguise for a god. He is clothed in shadow and smoke. His hair is raven black, his eyes are winter grey, his mouth is pale and bloodless.

  Death claims all of us eventually. With black wings he stoops from the sky, lifts us from the earth and drags us away from home. Is it a sin to surrender when he will triumph either way? No one asked me my desires when they decided who would own me and how.

  What if they asked me now? What would I say, what would I choose? No one ever does ask.

  I think my mother is afraid to ask my about my life in the dead lands because she doesn’t want to hear about the horror, the terror and the dread. She prefers pretence: a beautiful dream is better than an ugly reality.

  My husband fears nothing, or so he would claim. But he does not ask either. I think he knows no woman would ever choose this desolation over the sunlight world above. Why else did he steal me? He could have come as a suitor. He could have asked – but he never asked and so I never said yes or no.

  It is too late for choices. I am at the end of my story. My tale is told. The decisions made for me by distant powers. Still I ask myself the question. I ask it every season. If I could choose, what land would I call home? If love was mine to give, not theirs to take, where would I gift it and to whom?

  I climb the steps to the dais. The host abases itself before us. I take my seat beside the dark lord.

  He turns his skull-like visage towards me; his eyes are dark stars in the hollow sockets, his touch is as cold as the grave.

  And his mouth tastes of pomegranates.

  About the Contributors

  Catherine Butler was born in Hampshire, where she grew up in a small market town near the New Forest. As a child, she spent most of her time wandering woods, trying to learn musical instruments, and learning about myths. She also loved reading ghost stories (both fictional and real) and scaring herself silly. Catherine now lives in Bristol, where she teaches English at a local university. As well as writing books for children and young adults, Catherine writes books about children’s books. Some people think her obsessed. Her books (most of them published under the name Charles Butler) are fantasies, but they are fantasies set in our own world – or in worlds set at a slight, disconcerting angle to our own. They include Calypso Dreaming, The Fetch of Mardy Watt, Death of a Ghost and The Lurkers.

  Susan Cooper wrote the classic five-book fantasy sequence The Dark Is Rising, in which one quiet little scene still scares people. She grew up in England but now lives in America, on an island in a Massachusetts saltmarsh. Besides novels and short stories, she has written screenplays and (just once, as co-author) a Broadway play. Her latest book for young adults is called Ghost Hawk, and yes, of course, there’s a ghost in it.

  Frances Hardinge was brought up in a sequence of small, sinister English villages, and spent a number of formative years living in a Gothic-looking, mouse-infested hilltop house in Kent. She studied English Language and Literature at Oxford, fell in love with the city’s crazed, archaic beauty, and never found a good enough reason to leave.

  Whilst working full time as a technical author for a software company she started writing her first children’s novel, Fly by Night, and was with difficulty persuaded by a good friend to submit the manuscript to Macmillan. Fly by Night went on to win the Branford Boase Award, and was also shortlisted for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award. Her subsequent books, Verdigris Deep, Gullstruck Island, Twilight Robbery and A Face Like Glass are also aimed at children and young adults.

  Frances is seldom seen without her hat and is addicted to volcanoes.

  Katherine Langrish is the internationally published author of several children’s fantasy novels including the Viking trilogy Troll Fell, Troll Mill and Troll Blood (HarperCollins), recommended in the School Library Association’s ‘Top 160 Books for Boys’, republished in one volume as West of the Moon. Her fourth book, Dark Angels (US title The Shadow Hunt, HarperCollins) was listed as one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books for Children 2010, and the US Board on Books for Young People’s Outstanding International Books 2011. Her writing is strongly influenced by folklore and legends, and has often been compared with Alan Garner’s. Katherine lives in Oxfordshire and is currently writing a two-part YA dystopia.

  Rhiannon Lassiter is an author of science fiction, fantasy, contemporary, ‘realist magicism’, psychological horror and thriller novels for juniors, teenagers and young adults. She was born in 1977 and is the eldest daughter of award-winning children’s author Mary Hoffman.

  Rhiannon’s first novel, Hex, was accepted for publication when she was nineteen years old. She completed the book and a sequel while at university reading English Literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

  Rhiannon has published eleven further novels, a non-fiction book about the supernatural and co-edited an anti-war anthology of poetry and prose, Lines in the Sand. Her psychological horror novel Bad Blood was nominated for six awards including the Guardian Prize and the BookTrust Prize. Her most recent novel, Ghost of a Chance, was published in February 2011.

  Her favourite authors include Ursula LeGuin, Margaret Mahy and Octavia Butler. Her own novels explore themes of identity, change and becoming.

  Rhiannon lives and works in Oxford, United Kingdom. Her ambition is to be the first writer-in-residence on the Moon.

  Frances Thomas was born in Wales, but brought up in South London. She has written many books, including, for children, I Found Your Diary and Polly’s Running Away Book. Her most recent adult book is a A Bracelet of Bright Hair and her biography of Christina Rossetti has also just been reissued. She has won the Tir na nOg prize four times for her children’s books. Before she retired she used to also work as a teacher of dyslexic children. Now she lives with her husband in the middle of Wales.

  Li
z Williams is a science fiction and fantasy writer living in Glastonbury, England, where she is co-director of a witchcraft supply business. She is currently published by Bantam Spectra (US) and Tor Macmillan (UK), also Night Shade Press, and appears regularly in Realms of Fantasy, Asimov’s and other magazines. She is the secretary of the Milford SF Writers’ Workshop, and also teaches creative writing and the history of Science Fiction.

  This electronic edition published in September 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing

  Collection copyright © 2013 Catherine Butler

  Stories copyright © 2013 Katherine Langrish, Susan Cooper,

  Liz Williams, Frances Hardinge, Frances Thomas,

  Catherine Butler, Rhiannon Lassiter

  First published 2013 by

  A & C Black

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  50 Bedford Square,

  London, WC1B 3DP

  www.bloomsbury.com

  The right of Catherine Butler to be identified as the compiler of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library.

  eISBN: 978-1-4081-9305-1

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