Her concern was well justified, and her guesses not far from the truth.
Two things had occurred simultaneously which had made him very
uneasy. And in his mind, once more isolated, they seemed indelibly
linked, a kind of hard message from the nameless God, which he must
unravel and accept.
The first thing that troubled him was the rebound of harsh winter
weather. For a time the days had turned relatively mild, and he had
secretly hoped that the worst was passed. But his optimism was
premature. The Cold World was a long way from spent.
The second occurrence, inevitable though it might have been, was the
discovery, real or imagined, of a spiritual world to parallel the
physical. Always before the wind had been simply wind, the sun, sun,
and his environment, with its natural currents and disturbances, just
and only that. If forced to give a name to these patterns and fluxes of
life and death, he would merely have said ‘Nature', or ‘the
ways of the Valley'.
But with the introduction of religion into his thoughts and
observations, came its often inseparable counterpart: superstition. Was
there an intelligence behind the winds and storms around him, the
dangers and trials of his world? For if so, clearly they bore him no
good intention, and possibly considerable malice.
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