The North Pole had no autumn, of course. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t borrow one.
“I have to,” Elara said. “The melt is violent. The old patterns are waking.”
Her job was simple, which meant it was terrifying. She maintained the Balance. She adjusted the brass-and-obsidian gears buried three miles beneath the ice, the ones the old maps called Verldsnavel —the world’s navel. If she turned the Chronostat left, winter stretched. If she turned it right, summer lurched forward. She did neither. She held it steady, listening to the groan of glaciers and the frantic heartbeat of a planet that wanted to tip over.
She turned. The aurora had condensed at the far end of the chamber into a tall, translucently blue figure—a woman made of solar wind and magnetic flux. The North itself, given a shape.