I was in so much pain last night that I actually slept out most of today and still feel vague and hollow, although at least I don't have to worry about dinner for several days.
It only took me thirty years out of my life to realize that the four later, more closely tied books of The Dark Is Rising Sequence are the quarter-years: the winter solstice for The Dark Is Rising (1973), obviously, and midsummer for Silver on the Tree (1977), but Greenwitch (1974) occurs over the Easter holidays and The Grey King (1975) on either side of All Hallows' Eve. I was assured of not forgetting the latter thanks to the day of the dead when the year too dies, besides which it is the most haunted of the novels, but in the former I always remember the descent of the Wild Magic on Trewissick more than the actual making of the Greenwitch, even though it is textually identified as a pre-Christian spring rite, for fruitfulness of harvest and fishing and the wishes of the women who make it. Over Sea, Under Stone (1965) feels like even more of a prologue not merely because of the gap in time and style, but because it is outside of this pattern which is not actually ordered sequentially—winter, spring, fall, then at last summer—but is still vivid enough in the narrative that it feels stamped in the quartered circle of the sign of the Light, which is not in any case linear with Cooper's handling of time. As with everything else I read as a child, different pieces come into focus over the years. In this case, it feels like stepping back far enough to see the field-spanning cropmark.
It only took me thirty years out of my life to realize that the four later, more closely tied books of The Dark Is Rising Sequence are the quarter-years: the winter solstice for The Dark Is Rising (1973), obviously, and midsummer for Silver on the Tree (1977), but Greenwitch (1974) occurs over the Easter holidays and The Grey King (1975) on either side of All Hallows' Eve. I was assured of not forgetting the latter thanks to the day of the dead when the year too dies, besides which it is the most haunted of the novels, but in the former I always remember the descent of the Wild Magic on Trewissick more than the actual making of the Greenwitch, even though it is textually identified as a pre-Christian spring rite, for fruitfulness of harvest and fishing and the wishes of the women who make it. Over Sea, Under Stone (1965) feels like even more of a prologue not merely because of the gap in time and style, but because it is outside of this pattern which is not actually ordered sequentially—winter, spring, fall, then at last summer—but is still vivid enough in the narrative that it feels stamped in the quartered circle of the sign of the Light, which is not in any case linear with Cooper's handling of time. As with everything else I read as a child, different pieces come into focus over the years. In this case, it feels like stepping back far enough to see the field-spanning cropmark.
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