No one on Ingram Fell sweeps frost off a fence rail before noon on the morning after the first deep freeze, and every household has hung a garland along its fence line before that. The reason is a spirit about seven feet tall, slender and radiant, with a kind face, who glides along the pastures at daybreak with both arms spread, scattering snowflakes, and who likes to find her work already decorated. Dorrit Vane, who farms the lowest pasture, has watched her do it for thirty-one winters.
The fell knows she is near by three signs. The frost ferns on the windowpanes turn overnight into holly leaves, always with berries. The snow on the lane brightens as though a lamp stood behind it. And the air smells of pine and sugar. What the neighbors do is hang lights, strings of colored ones along the rail and a wreath on the gate. Where they go astray is the bows. For decades every post on the fell wore a big red bow, because bows seemed to please her. They do not. The children of the fell have a game of guessing which bulb she will brighten next, and nobody has ever won it. She likes lights, which she can lean into, and she touches each bulb with a fingertip as she passes, turning it brighter. The bows she walks around. Dorrit's brother Ferris once tied a bow so large that a gust carried a whole rail's worth of garland down the hill, and the spirit spent a morning putting it back, post by post.
She wears a gown of silvery frost trimmed with evergreen sprigs and holly berries, and a crown of icicles strung with tiny golden lights. Her hair streams out behind her like a drift in a wind, and her cheeks glow rose-pink. I measured her stride on Pettigrew Ridge in fresh snow: eleven feet, with no footprints, only a long, faint polish on the crust, and I measured by the polish. She cannot resist blowing on garlands to make them dance. Every garland on the fell leans downhill because of it, and the children are sure this is the whole point of garlands. On windless mornings you can hear her humming, a clear low note that sets the milk pails ringing on their hooks.
On the second of January she is gone. Dorrit's fence line, that morning, held one thing she had not hung: a single snowflake as wide as a serving platter, lying unmelted on the top rail in the sun.
- Classification
- Frost-bodied seasonal spirit
- Habitat
- Snowy pastures and fence lines
- Danger
- Minimal
- Size
- 7 ft tall, slender
- Activity
- Seasonal
- Realm
- Frozen fields and winter hills
- Binomial
- Pruinaria hiemalis
- Diet
- Cold air, sunrise and string lights
- Temperament
- Radiant, kind, vain about her sparkle