CHAPTER 3
In the stillness and the silence, it was almost as if Brygida were the only one around for miles. Vast, snowy windswept fields stretched ahead, an expanse of unbroken white that abutted barely visible farm houses, their roofs overburdened beneath shrouds of snow.
As the fleeting days gave way to lengthier nights, the cold and the dark claiming the land seeped into the hearts of men; they hid behind walls and fireplaces, beneath roofs and blankets, waiting for the winter to break.
Nature, too, waited beneath the cold and the dark, eager for rebirth, for the turn of the Wheel, and the anticipation burned in her own blood. Tonight, the gloom would drown all, black waters over flood lands, the longest dark of Kolęda lit by that burning hope for light, for warmth, for spring.
She
