‘As far as your Earth Mother is concerned . . .’ he shook his head in frustration. ‘I just don’t get it! To me, such things are just so many words. But it’s more than that. I mean, Malina takes such things for granted . . . like it’s built into her . . . like magic itself. With me, it’s like trying to explain colour to a blind person.
‘And as far as magic goes . . . when I work with metal, I’m not thinking in terms of magic. The closest I can come to explaining what I do is that it’s mostly instinct. But if I want to make an arrowhead or a knife, then I have to concentrate mostly on the design. That’s not the same thing; or at least, I don’t think it is.
‘I have felt that I could make something purely by instinct,’ he added, carefully, ‘but I have no idea what that something would be.’
‘Well,’ Pran said doubtfully, ‘even were you to make some sort of curiosity, still I think that you should make the effort, if only to find out where your instincts may lead.’
By midafternoon the air had become very cold. The ground became hard and frozen, and the breath of riders and horses alike steamed in the crystalline air. People began to lag a bit as they donned more clothing which inadvertently served to encumber them. There having been no winter in living memory, they possessed no heavy winter clothing, and had to compensate for this lack by wearing successively larger layers of oversized clothing not designed for cold weather. The sky gradually began to pale from its usual deep blue to the pale grey of winter. They were still some ten miles from the break in the mountains when it began to snow lightly. The wind picked up, sending the light snow scudding like dust about their feet. For many who had never seen snow, the landscape began to appear lonely, sullen, desolate, and inhospitable.