"Silver From Gold (Preface)"

The story starting on Saturday isn’t a Christmas story. It isn’t even a winter story since it takes place at the turn of spring, but the protagonist has survived the hardest winter of her life and is about to face her greatest challenge yet. I consider it a story for the holiday season because I was inspired to write it based on two Christmas songs that struck me particularly hard.

For years, every year, a Christmas song called Breathof Heaven, recorded by Amy Grant in 1992, brought to mind the dilemma of the girl who my Castasian hero, the indomitable Lucius Aurelius, left behind. The lyric is a plea from the Virgin Mary to the heavens, but it easily fit the situation that young Analise faced when her beloved went into exile. It was a story I wanted to write, but somehow never did … until December 2008.

That year, Ter and I were testing twinkle lights prior to putting up the tree. Enya’s then-new Christmas album, And Winter Came …, was playing for the first time. She sings the most haunting version of OCome O Come Emmanuel that I have ever heard, and when that track began, a voice whispered to me that Reijo was born at night. Reijo is one of my favourite characters, my princely white knight in dented armour, the eldest son of Luko and Analise, but who he is and how he got there really isn’t relevant at this point.

“Silver From Gold” is his mother's story about the night when he was born.

Enjoy.