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when I knew in my heart that the snows did not hear me?
    “My second question is this. Is there a woman here from Woodbourne, in the south, a woman of the lineage of Dirna Urlasdaughter?”
    “Yes, of course I’m here!” snapped Meena from the ground. “Help me up, some of you. Look sharp! Don’t hang about!”
    The man she had shoved off the hummock lifted her to her feet and stood her on it, and the people just below her cleared to either side so that everyone could see her. Her head went back and her chin stuck out, as if she were facing down an assembly of unjust accusers.
    “Well, here I am,” she snapped. “Take a good look at me. I’m Meena Urlasdaughter from Woodbourne, and I’m here to tell you the old gaffer’s right. Something’s up, and he knows it, and I know it, and if you’ve got any sense in your heads you know it, and that’s why you’re here, like he told you.
    “I’ll tell you how I know it. First snows, one of our women goes into the forest and leaves a couple of sacks of barley under the cedars by the lake, and sings to the cedars. Dirna started it, because Faheel told her, like he told Reyel to sing to the snows, and we’ve done it ever since. It’s what keeps the forest like it is, with the sickness in it, so that men can’t go in there, and the Emperor can’t get at us like he used to, any more than the horsemen can get past the glacier at us to come murdering and looting. At least you know about the sickness. None of you men who live along by the forest will go in there, not for more than a minute or two, like my fool of a son-in-law tried the day I’m going to tell you about. Went in to look for my daughter Selva who’d gone to sing to the cedars, and came out all dizzy and sick, and stupider than he is by nature. But not so stupid he didn’t send for me, which he should have done in the first place, and me and Tilja here had to go in and get my daughter out.
    “Wait. There’s more to it than that. We found my daughter lying by the lake, unconscious, and we couldn’t wake her, so we brought her home on the sled, and she didn’t stir for six whole days, and then she couldn’t remember anything of what had happened to her, nor why she had this mark on her forehead I’ve never seen the like of. Since Dirna’s day we’ve sung to the cedars, I tell you, and nothing like this has happened in all those years, only now it has, the selfsame year, what’s more, as the old gaffer went up to sing to the snows and they didn’t hear him, and we’ve got this weather no one’s ever known to happen before.
    “I tell you something’s wrong with the forest, just like something’s wrong with the mountains, and if we don’t do something about it the sickness will be gone, and next thing the Emperor will be sending his tax collectors up here, with his armies to back them up, and they won’t just be after this year’s taxes either. It’ll be all the taxes we’ve not being paying these last twenty generations! And if you think what we’ve been talking about, Alnor and me, is all just chance-come things, might have happened any of these years, only now they’ve all come together, then you’re bigger fools than I took you for.”
    She stopped abruptly, and the man helped her down onto the hummock. The drummer beat a short roll and a number of people put up their hands to speak. The convenors took them in turn. Most of them simply wanted to confirm that they’d had a dream, or some odd feeling telling them to come. One woman said she hadn’t meant to until the last minute, but her old dog had tugged at her cloak and pretty well led her to the Gathering. Then a burly man on the slope opposite Tilja said, “This is all very well, and something strange may be happening, if you want to believe in that sort of thing. For myself, I don’t, but supposing I did, what then? What are we supposed to do about it? Try if anyone else has better luck, singing to the snows and the trees? Bit