Snowfall: The Wolf in the Ice

Snowfall was the first kingdom I drew, and the first one I gave a shape. According to the old kings, the land itself looks like a wolf. The Heart is its chest. The Howl is its head, far in the northeast where the Endless Sea freezes against the coast on two sides. The Tail curls southwest. The Front Paws reach toward the least snow in the kingdom, and the Back is a long stretch of coast where small tribes travel and few outsiders go. Taiga's great-grandfather Omen was the one who noticed, and he was the first king.

The culture of Snowfall borrows from Inuit tradition, filtered through a fantasy lens. The people follow the Great Light and believe snow and ice are its physical expression. Boys receive an ulu knife at sixteen to mark the beginning of their warrior journey. Warriors wear the furs of their kills or give them to their women. The dead are sent into the Endless Sea in wooden caskets while the living fire arrows and raise swords to guard the soul on its way. Kingship is hereditary, and the future king is matched at birth to a child born on the same day. Taiga and Aurora share a birthday. That is the only reason they married.

The Heart is the capital, a settlement of igloos where food and help are shared without asking. The king's igloo is the grandest, at the northern edge near the Penumbran border, and his throne is lumber set on ice, shaped like two Elah trunks fused into one square block. Taiga's crown is caribou antler. Aurora killed the caribou with three arrows and made the crown herself.

But the Heart is not Snowfall. The kingdom's military power is scattered across clans that owe the king something between loyalty and tolerance. The Zynn, four hundred strong, openly resent him. The Villmann under Hakan are raiders modeled on Norse pillagers and have long been enemies of the Heart. The Hyrox are fifty assassins living in hidden tunnels beneath the Howl who take contracts for death. The Dayidails are a hundred women warriors who answer to Koryn and no man. The Iduop live two thousand feet up the mountain called First Snow, ruled by a man they call King of the Mountain. The Yeungg brew the best ale in the north and field medics, trap-makers and strategists alongside their fighters. And on the Back, Poppy leads a tribe of women and children abandoned by their families.

Taiga has three wives. Aurora is the archer queen, matched at birth, who raised their son Aquilo to be hard. Ivory is the traditional wife who cooks and sews and has two sons of her own, Kodiak and Elder. Poppy nursed the king back to health after a snow leopard hunt nearly killed him, bore him Brooks, and stayed on the Back with her people when he took the boy to the Heart. Four sons, three mothers, one igloo. The tension writes itself.

Over all of this hangs the snow leopard. Alpha was the beast of legend, hunted by Taiga for years. His mate Neva wounded the king badly enough that Bear had to carry him to Poppy's hut. Neva died for it, and Aurora wears her fur. Their cub, Omega, is the last snow leopard in Snowfall, and Taiga wants it dead with a fervor that has very little to do with leopards.

When the book opens, a stranger with a cross on his chest has warned of a coming evil, and Taiga has decided that he, specifically, was chosen to face it. He kindles a great fire at Wolf's Tail and announces an alliance with the caves to the south. His family comes along. Snowfall is a kingdom built on tradition, and the story asks what tradition does when the ice starts to crack.