Cold Fire

Kate Elliott

The Spiritwalker books take place on a different Earth, with magic. Almost all the names and words are real, not made up. Although the world may seem like an attempt to write alternate history, it isn’t true alternate history. It’s more like a fantasia of an Earth that might have been had conditions included an extended Ice Age, the intelligent descendants of troodons, nested planes of interleaved worlds, and human access to magical forces that can redirect the normal flow of entropy.

Calendar Notes

The “Roman” days of the week commonly used in this world are Sunday, Moonday, Marsday, Mercuriday, Jovesday, Venerday, and Saturnday. The months are close enough to our own that they don’t need translating. From the Celtic tradition, I’ve used the “cross-?quarter days” of Samhain (November 1), Imbolc (February 2), Beltain (May 1), and Lughnasad (August 2), although it’s unlikely Samhain was considered the turn of the year.

Creole

Part of this story takes place in the Antilles, the Caribbean, which has developed within a very different history from the one that shaped our own world. For that reason I decided to create my own creole rather than attempt (badly) to replicate any of the various historical or modern Caribbean dialects or patois.

With the heroic assistance of Dr. Fragano Ledgister and additional advice from Katharine Kerr, I instituted specific linguistic rules common to creoles and applied them with a few nods toward the languages that would have been part of Expedition’s creole, most importantly Taino but secondarily Latin and Bambara. Obviously because I write and think in English I did also borrow heavily from elements of modern creoles as well. Insofar as the three levels of creole (as per Mervyn Alleyne’s definition of a hierolect, mesolect, and basilect in Jamaican English) used in this book sound reasonable to the reader, it is due to the generous advice I received. Any faults and flaws are my own.

Our Caribbean, by the way, has an astonishing and marvelous literary and musical tradition so extensive there is not room here to even begin to discuss it, but I would urge you to explore it on your own.