Winter's Tales by Lari Don Page A

anyway? Weed the garden and thin out the carrots? She’s wasted there. Tell Zeus I’m keeping her here.”
    Hermes took that message back to Zeus, who shrugged and said there was nothing he could do.
    Demeter wailed and screamed and stomped around the marble halls of Olympus. Then she calmed down and said in a quiet voice, “If you are going to do nothing, then I will do nothing too. I will do nothing at all.”
    And she did indeed do nothing. Demeter refused to help the plants and grass and crops grow.
    She sat in a corner, weeping and muttering and refusing to do anything. While she was in such a dark mood, nothing could grow. No grass, no flowers, no fruit, no crops. Nothing grew.
    When the grass stopped growing, the animals became thin and hungry.
    When the crops failed, the people were soon thin and hungry as well.
    Eventually the people had so little food, they stopped sending up offerings to the gods.
    The gods became hungry too.
    Zeus looked around at the barren hungryworld and decided that he’d better get Persephone back after all.
    So he summoned Hermes. “Return to the underworld and demand that Hades hand over Persephone, and make that demand in the name of the highest god, in the name of Zeus the god of thunder…”
    Before Hermes started on his journey to the underworld, Hades and Persephone already knew he was coming. When Zeus thundered, everyone heard, so everyone knew what Hermes’ mission was.
    Hades turned to Persephone, as they sat on their ivory thrones, and held out a handful of blood-red seeds. “You must be hungry, my dear. Please accept these seeds.”
    Persephone knew it was time to make a choice.
    She could eat the twelve blood-red seeds and stay forever in the underworld, with all the power of the queen of the dead.
    Or she could refuse to eat the twelve blood-red seeds and return to the light, to be her mother’s daughter forever.
    Persephone took the twelve seeds from Hades’ white hand.
    As she raised the seeds to her lips, Hermes arrived on his feathered feet and announced, “Zeus the thunderer demands the return of his daughter.”
    â€œIt’s too late,” smiled Hades. “She has already eaten the food of the underworld. She must stay here forever.”
    â€œNot forever,” said Persephone.
    She opened her fingers and showed eight blood-red seeds still glowing in the palm of her hand.
    â€œI only ate four of the twelve seeds. So I will stay with you for four months of the year, and I will return to the sunlight and my mother’s fields for the rest of the year.”
    So now the gods are older, and we have winter.
    We have winter for the four months of the year that Persephone is in the underworld, when Demeter grieves for her daughter and refuses to let the plants grow.
    Then comes spring, when Persephonereturns and Demeter’s joy brings life and growth.
    Then summer, when everyone is settled into contented happiness.
    Then autumn, when Demeter sinks slowly into sadness as she remembers her daughter must leave again.
    And then winter returns, when Demeter grieves once more and no plants grow anywhere.
    No plants, except the glittering black flowers that Persephone grows in the underworld.

The Snow Bear and the Trolls
    Norwegian folktale

    The King of Denmark wanted a snow bear. Other kings owned lions and tigers and giraffes and unicorns, so he wanted a big fancy pet too. He offered a reward to the first man to bring a snow bear to his palace.
    Lars was a farmboy who had always wanted to see the king’s palace. So he travelled to Finnmark, in the far north of Norway, andhe tracked a great white snow bear. He laid a trap, baited it with seal meat, then he caught the bear in his net and locked an iron chain round her neck.
    He said, “Come on, my beautiful white bear. I will take you to the King of Denmark and you will wear gold chains round your neck, and be admired and fed all sorts of good food.