Winter Door by Isobelle Carmody

whether I desire it or not.”
    Rage hardly heard the exchange, for she was trying to think of a way to ask how the woman had come to age so much. “Has a lot of time passed since I left Valley?” she finally asked.
    Rue smiled wryly. “Time has passed, as it is wont to do, even in Valley, but not as much as you may think to look at me. It is three years since you left us by the count of time in your world.”
    “Three years !” Rage cried in disbelief. “It’s only been a few months since I left there.”
    “You mean since you left here, ” Rue said, making a gesture with her long, thin arms that encompassed the forest and the mountains. Rage shivered and Rue looked concerned. “You are half frozen. Puck?”
    The little fairy man produced an enormous cloak out of a tiny waist pack, and he flew up to swirl it around Rage’s shoulders. It was a lovely thing: silvery gray as a dawn sky after rain, light as a cobweb, silken to the touch, and amazingly warm. All at once Rage was struck by something that the witch woman had said. “What did you mean, ‘since I left here’ ?” Rage asked.
    “Since you left Valley,” Rue said, a line between her brows. “Where we now stand.”
    “I don’t understand….”
    “In your world, you are dreaming, but here you are real enough. What you have done is called dream-traveling. Only part of your self is here, and it will remain here until you wake in your own world.” Without waiting for a response, Rue went on briskly. “There is much to say before you leave, but we must not stay in the open like this.” She glanced about before setting off back the way she had come. Rage followed her to a small clearing in the midst of the trees. A small, pale green silk tent was under the branches of an enormous tree. Rage sat beside a small fire that blazed cheerfully. Tapestry cushions lay atop split logs arranged about the campfire.
    Three seats, Rage noted.
    “You were expecting me,” she murmured.
    “Did I not say so?” Rue asked with faint impatience.
    Puck fussed with a pot of water that had been suspended over the fire and a teapot. His mistress seated herself opposite Rage. The play of flame-glow highlighted the deep grooves on either side of Rue’s nose as she began to speak. “You asked if this was a dream. Better if you had asked if it is a nightmare. You see this dull gray light? This is day in Valley now, and a time may come when this seems bright. You see, the sun cannot shine through the storm clouds that fill the sky. It is so long since we have seen it that I feel that true sunlight was a kind of lovely dream.”
    “But why?” Rage asked. “What has happened?”
    “Almost a year ago in Valley time, the firecat opened a world gate to an unknown land and winter began leaking through it. The firecat claims to have created the gateway, which we call the winter door, but it has not the power for such an undertaking. First winter came to the wizard’s castle and Deepwood. Then it flowed to Wildwood. You have just walked upon the frozen heart lake.” There was real pain in her face. “Now the River of No Return begins to freeze, and although Fork resists, its powers are limited. It is weakened by the fear and anxieties of its inhabitants. Wildwood and the castle are resisting, too, as best they can, but Fork is the last stronghold. Once it fails, the magical waters in the caverns beneath the land will begin to freeze. When they no longer flow, Valley will cease to be.”
    “Don’t say that!” Rage cried. It was too dreadful to return to Valley, after longing for it, to discover that it was again in danger of destruction. “But where is the wizard? Can’t he do something?”
    “He is not in Valley,” Rue said. “He left some time ago.”
    Fury rose in Rage’s heart. “How convenient for the wizard that he should decide to travel when Valley is in such terrible trouble. What a fearful coward he is not to stay and try to help!” she said.
    Rue shook her