 | Winter Rose loosely reimagines of The Ballad of Tam Lin, where a mortal woman must hold fast to her shapeshifting fairy lover to pull him into the mortal world. The characters give this story depth:
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Soon her obsession becomes attraction when she meets Corbett at the village dance:
I felt the quick blood beat in my fingers touching his shoulder, his bare hand. His eyes came back to me, as if he felt something pass between our hands. I did not know, until then, that you could disappear into someone’s gaze, that bone and heart and breath could melt like shadow into light, until only light was left.
I felt the quick blood beat in my fingers touching his shoulder, his bare hand. His eyes came back to me, as if he felt something pass between our hands. I did not know, until then, that you could disappear into someone’s gaze, that bone and heart and breath could melt like shadow into light, until only light was left.
 | But Corbett sets his sights on her sister Laurel, wooing her with flute music: It was a song out of a forgotten kingdom, out of the deep, secret heart of the wood. It burned wild and sweet in my throat, in the back of my eyes. It lured and beckoned; it gave us glimpses of the land beyond the falling leaves . . . He stopped as abruptly as he had begun, his eyes sought Laurel; she stared at him, her face flushed, her eyes wide, startled, as if she had just seen him for the first time, stepping out of the light. |
 | The author’s prose is often poetic, and layered with symbolic impact: Fire streaked the dark; moths flew toward the flames, dancing around them, compelled and doomed, until fire touched them and they dropped like autumn leaves. Light and shadow slid randomly over our faces as we talked: now revealing one eye and concealing the other, now stroking clear a straight jawline, now hiding a smile or a little anxious frown. |
Rois glimpses the Fairyfolk who haunt the wood:
A shadow detached itself from the wind, dipped its mouth to the water and drank. Harness rang with small bells. I lifted my eyes from spark to spark: light on a stirrup, a rein, light on a pale moonlit face chiseled of ivory and ice and night.
A shadow detached itself from the wind, dipped its mouth to the water and drank. Harness rang with small bells. I lifted my eyes from spark to spark: light on a stirrup, a rein, light on a pale moonlit face chiseled of ivory and ice and night.
 | Then she meets the Fairy Queen, who shackles her with thorn bushes: She wore glittering air and spindrift snow, and a mantle made of tiny living animals in their winter white. She stroked one or two, smiling; their eyes were wide and terrified, their crying voices mute. “I know what your heart sees. I will show you.” “Who are you?” I whispered. Cold racked through me; the thorns tightened their hold. She was something wild in my wood, the glint of an eye on a lightless night, the formless shadow the moon reveals tangled in the shadow of a tree. “Who are you?” |
“I am night,” she said, and it was. “I am winter’s song,” and I heard it. “I am the shadow of the bloody moon and all the winds that harvest in it.” I felt them. “I am the dead of winter.”
Corbett disappears and Laurel starts wasting away from her love for him, similar to the myth of the Leanan sídhe. Rois is determined to find Corbett and end her sister’s wasting illness—the same strange state that led to their mother’s death.
 | The climax of the story is Rois holding tight to Corbett in Fairyland, echoing the Ballad of Tam Lin, but with visceral and powerful details: Roses bloomed in my hands; their thorns clung to me as tightly as I clung to them. Blood streaked my fingers, as if the blood-red petals bled. And then they flamed. . . . My skin was melting from my bones; finger bones were melting as I held his burning hands. I sobbed without noise; everything burned, even words. |
A Fairyland character attacks her grip on reality:
“Even now you imagine you are here, trying to rescue someone you think you love, who in the waking world scarcely noticed you. He did not love you there, so you dream a world where he must need you, where he must be grateful to you. That is why you are forcing yourself to suffer this in your dreams. So that he will be grateful and love you. In your dreams.”
“Even now you imagine you are here, trying to rescue someone you think you love, who in the waking world scarcely noticed you. He did not love you there, so you dream a world where he must need you, where he must be grateful to you. That is why you are forcing yourself to suffer this in your dreams. So that he will be grateful and love you. In your dreams.”
 | In the most poignant scene, a semblance of Corbett assaults Rois with her own fears: “I have been lying all along. I have never loved you. I don’t want you here with me. If I loved anyone at all—it was Laurel. You know that. You have always known that. . . . There’s something difficult in you to love. Something scarcely human. You are too wild, Rois.” |
When Rois returns to the mortal world, there’s no sign of Corbett and her frail sister is near death:
I did not know who I had rescued in the wood: Laurel, or Corbett, or all of us, or if, in the end, I had only rescued myself.
I did not know who I had rescued in the wood: Laurel, or Corbett, or all of us, or if, in the end, I had only rescued myself.
The ending of Winter Rose is exquisite: a chance to start anew, free of past hurts.
A great read if you enjoy Irish fairy tales, Oneiric stories exploring the boundaries between dreams and reality, romantic fantasy where love is hard-earned, or underdog characters with dogged determination.
A great read if you enjoy Irish fairy tales, Oneiric stories exploring the boundaries between dreams and reality, romantic fantasy where love is hard-earned, or underdog characters with dogged determination.
Also by Patricia McKillip: The Book of Atrix Wolf
Read other books exploring Fairyland: The River Has Roots, The Starlit Wood
Read similar romantasy novels: The Unspoken Name, Thornhedge, Paladin’s Grace,
Swordheart, Fire Logic, The Everlasting
Read other books exploring Fairyland: The River Has Roots, The Starlit Wood
Read similar romantasy novels: The Unspoken Name, Thornhedge, Paladin’s Grace,
Swordheart, Fire Logic, The Everlasting
