All woods join up with all other woods.
All are one wood.
And in that wood all times join up with all other times.
All is one moment. [loc. 140]
A short story, more beautifully calligraphed and illustrated in print (to judge by photos online) but still lovely on a Kindle. It's apparently set in the same world as Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell*, but I didn't spot any overlap, and it certainly doesn't require familiarity with the earlier, much longer work.
Ysolde Scott has devised a cunning stratagem: she'll arrange visits, and let her sister Merowdis -- possibly a saint, possibly neurodivergent, possibly just antisocial -- alight en route and spend time in the woods, where she is happiest. Meanwhile Ysolde will maintain the social niceties.
Merowdis does not wander alone: on this particular excursion she has for company two dogs (Pretty and Amandier) and a pig (Apple). There is also a fox, though Pretty disdains it. And, of course, there is the Wood: which doesn't really understand why Merowdis' most fervent wish is for a midwinter child of her own, but can frame it as 'the hidden Sun'. Hence a vision: hence a choice.
This story is haunting me: I'm glad I read it just as the snow was starting, and I'm happy that Clarke's 'Afterword: Snow' teased out the resonances that reminded me of Kate Bush's album Fifty Words for Snow. A lovely wintry read -- also available, in a slightly different form, in audio format (14 mins).
* Now there's a book ripe for a reread: I haven't read it since 2004, when it was first published.
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