Winter Court, and Mab, it's queen.

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the landscape - the loneliness of it - the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it - the whole story doesn't show."- Andrew Wyeth

Two nights ago, my husband and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. Of course, we spent the evening consulting with other faeries in their quaint little store, housing books, trinkets and various articles of clothing designed specifically for the purpose of dazzling the fey with an eye for something glittery, which excludes none of us.

The drive home was long, as we live in a fairly rural area, and the good shopping is an hour away. Even on the freeway, we oozed along at 30 miles per hour due to the raging blizzard that so calmly flitted around us, slicking the road to sleek slides of ice. The world was a silent sanctuary, the mountains, a temple. The bare trees crystallized with their arms open wide for the arrival of their most blessed queen, their rest, their refuge. Mab, in her gentle, quiet, and blatant way, ushered in her court, her lords, her ladies. Winter was finally in full bloom.

It is always hard to discuss the Winter Court without comparing it to Summer Court, and vice verse. While the two are always in contrast, they are also inseparable, because without one, the other would simply cease to exist. In such a paradox, the two are indeed sisters, if you will, and that makes things, on a general basis, much more civil.

Queen Mab, to me, is the essence of everything refined. She is tall in stature, long of neck, and straight of shoulder, breast, hip and leg. Her hair is long, coarse, and just as straight as the rest of her, though it looks to be downy white with a glimmer of silver, not from age. She has a pointed little nose, and a pointed little chin with a smile that continually plays at the right corner of her mouth. But it is a secret that she will never let loose. She prefers white, but can often be seen in rich red, with poinsettias or holly braided into her long locks.

In the winter, the world turns to glass, and bone. Everything stops, sleeps, dreams. She is the hostess of a grand ball, where the children, though invited, mustn't' touch all the splendid, glowing, effervescent things that adorn a rich home. Queen Mab is a welcoming, but strict woman, who speaks very little, so as not to disturb the peace of the ever falling snow, while Queen Titania is boisterous in her laughter, and soft feminine curves, with caramel hair that tends to be as out of control and wild as she is. The winter court is more subtle in their indulgences, their seductions. The Summer faeries are largely attracted to sex and drunkenness, but the most obvious of the Winter Court's debauchery is gluttony. Faeries rarely watch what they eat, and usually don't have to for health's sake. But for all of Summer's lovely fruits and nectars, nothing compares to the sweets of Winter's festivities.

There have always been harsh representations attached to Winter and it's Court. In literature, Winter represents the end of things. A life, a time period. It represents death, Hell, evil, darkness, and so on. But Winter isn't about death and Hell. Some destruction goes on, and of course, the dark things of the night still lurk in the shadows with fangs ready for a coat of blood, but Summer possesses her own fair share of those too. Destruction is just what happens.

Winter is about peace. It's about what's real. When everything else that is beautiful on the outside, is plentiful and abundant reveals itself to be an illusion, and it's down to the skeleton, what is left is what matters. Sometimes, what is left is rage and depression. But more often, what is left is real warmth. Real creativity. And real love.

In the spring, new life appears. Mother Earth conceives and spews forth a bounty of fruit and harvests. She adorns herself with the silky colors of flowers and trees, and the blue cloak of the sky. The rivers over flow with Winter's last gift, hopefully to remain wet throughout the heat of the next six months. Fish make their pilgrimage back to the spawning pools. Infant creatures of every ilk begin to make noise as beautiful as it is deafening. Summer Court is always wanting to create. It creates life for all the human, animal and supernatural worlds. The faeries here are lovely and inviting. They want children, they want love. But mostly they want lust. They are easier to fluster and anger than a Winter Court faerie, and more likely to exact revenge. And they are jealous.

From cotton, to dandelion fluff balls, to the white blossoms on apple trees, Summer exudes their jealousy over winter. In all their abundant, beautiful, brilliant creativity, they are never satisfied. Many of their arts are more detailed and complicated than Winter's limited expression. Their clime is livelier, more colorful, and sturdier than Winter's. Snowflakes are one of a kind, and so detailed in their tiny forms that sometimes, it is overwhelming to try to follow the delicate pattern. But Summer feels they must have it. They can never be satisfied in being what they are, and though they know the point of it is useless, they must ever try to mimic Winter. And not just because Winter possesses the precious, priceless snowflake, but because it owns a peace that the Summer court will never know. Even in the most lush and secluded meadows, during Summer reign, the place is busy with life and sound. Grass does not wave in the wind without sound. Birds tend their young with happy chirps and beetles and crickets bustle about, and sing lullabies as dusk settles. A lullaby is a sort of calm, yes. But nothing is as silent as a deep, fresh snowfall.Summer court is always becoming more complicated. It is intricate in it's life. Whenever a new life emerges from the sticky dew of the egg or womb, things become more hectic. Any mother knows this, be she human or faerie or animal. The more life there is, the more there is to do.

Winter, on the other hand, does not create. They survive. They have what is left over and are left to make it thrive. When Summer inevitably begins to sleep, though they hold on as though they are drowning, and her creativity ebbs, Winter is ready for things to be hard. And they get that way all the time. Summer is complicated. Winter is hard. And the blessed creatures of Winter court make it bearable with their merry festivals and feasts. They are not without seduction or romance, as one who finds love in Winter is likely to keep it. There are no bedazzlements, no charms, no spells to make it anything but what it is. It's just raw, blatant. They are happy and just do what they do without trying to beat Summer out of it's glory.

In the mean time, we have a family of mice who have come into our basement for refuge from Queen Mab. They have found our food storage, and felt that they were entitled. All around us, the busy, colorful, loud little creatures of Summer (and humans, if they were faeries, would largely attend to Queen Titania.) will dig themselves into the ground, or take shelter in a human home for awhile, while Winter's Queen and her beautiful, content subjects spread out a blanket of rest for them.

To some, my dear friends, the winter faeries seem cold, callous and hard. But they just can't see the whole story.

“Frost is the greatest artist in our clime - He paints in nature and describes in rime” - Thomas Hood

It was coming. I knew it was. I felt it as early as August as though it were just out of sight. If I turned my head quickly enough, I might have seen it perched at my shoulder like my conscience. Like, in trite description, a guardian angel.

But while I tasted the sweet teasing of my Autumn in apples, pears and pumpkin bread, crunched through it on curly yellow leaves and dropped nuts, Summer Court held on as though it would never have another turn. In the last two weeks, the blue of the sky was not crisp. It looked like you could dip your hand in it's luke-warm depth and swirl it around to make ripples wriggle across it like some kind of summer swimming hole. I had to shake a finger at it and tell them SHAME! After all, it is November. Winter starts in just a few weeks. Alas, the sky just smiled through it's ripples and I had no choice but to let my children revert to their barefoot, bare armed ways as they brought me, by the minute, dandelions and "blowing flowers."

Not 4 days ago, a field of these fairy umbrellas fluffed across our yard as though they were snow drops that refused to melt. Silly summer fairies trying to emulate our snowflake pixies. Summer has it's beauties. Summer has it's promises of a fertile mother earth with colors and flowers in shapes that should be impossible. They do a lot of things that stimulate and represent change for the better, transcendence and hope for the future. But there is nothing they have that can quite meet the perfect stillness and immaculate peace of an evening spent in the silence of falling snow.

But these puffs of cotton clearly belong to summer, and so it was that I began to wonder where my handsome, impish, delightful winter friend could be. How long would I ache for his arrival? How long would I yearn for his scent to numb my nostrils and turn my breath to white, smoky curls of air heated by my body, only to be replaced with the cold North Wind himself?

On Sunday, my girls and I walked our way to church and took our coats off half way there because it was too warm. On the way home, they ran across grass and plucked up purple pansies that continue to grow in my front garden despite my refusal to tend the beds. And there was nothing else to do but wait. One cannot rush Jack Frost. One can always rely on him to show up and create the doorway for winter. But he is a rogue. He is the stuff of Holiday romance and the subtle freshness of kissing. He is some kind of seducer, and we would all gladly have him.

Jack can also be permanently relied upon to leave. He is fickle, and his stay is short and unannounced. One must be constantly aware in order to catch him. And then his presence is precious and fleeting.

This morning, stumbling down the stairs at dawn with my children already rowdy as they dragged their blankets, teddy bears, baby dolls, and light sabers to the breakfast table, my skin was stung with the intense cold of a winter morning. I was near shaking with excitement as I poured coco puffs and milk into plastic bowls before running to the back door. My excuse was that my dog needed to go out, but in reality, I was looking for him. I knew his feeling from a thousand visits. I knew his smell and his hands along my skin. And I felt positively scandalous as my dog crunch-crunched his soft padded paws across the yard, wetting his fur with the dew of my one and only Jack Frost. Within the hour, though the sting of the air clung on, the white fuzz on the grass was gone, and droplets gleamed like diamonds in it's place.

I of course, being of Fae blood, have been graced with Jack's human form more than once. A reliable description would be that of Peter Pan's, though Jack is several years older, a mature, but young and spritely figure with wild eyes of ice blue, a sharp nose, and hair the color of an orange flame on the hearth, soft and out of control below a hood of goblin-make, brown and the green of fir trees. His ears are long and come to a point. He has an impish gap between his two front teeth, with which he whistles like a bird that sits among the ice encased branches of a tree that has shed all it's leaves. But Jack does not fly. He dons no wings. Instead, he leaps, blithe and graceful, in long bounds. I've seen him. And you, though likely strictly human, have probably seen him too.

Animals, of course, are magical creatures. Every single one of them from the great birds of prey to the tiniest of beetles. Every culture has tales. Every belief system hails it. But deer, in the winter, are the most magical of all. (There are many very specific reasons that Santa Claus uses deer as opposed to horses or oxen or wolves, or any other number of magical creatures. But that is a story yet to come.)

Jack Frost is a nocturnal creature. When the sun goes down, he will rest his ice across the ground, among branches, and over roads. And in the morning, he lets the sun drink it up. But he is everywhere. And when you drive in the early morning down a lonely road and see deer in the grass of a wide field, cloaked with a low rippling of clear, white fog. That is our friend Jack Frost. The young buck who puffs his chest out, unafraid and unyielding, all the while meeting his eyes to yours. And then he leaps away, hanging in the air just a smidgen too long as though he could fly away like a robin from a cold nest. Remember it, friends. This is his season.