The Girl with No Shadow (Chocolat, #2)

by Joanne Harris

AND NOW AT LAST, HERE IT COMES, THAT DECEMBER WIND, SCREAMING down the narrow streets, stripping the year-end rags from the trees. December, beware; December, despair, as my mother always said. And once again, as the year draws in, it feels as if a page has turned. A page—a card—the wind, perhaps. And December was always a bad time for us. The last month; the dregs of the year; slouching toward Christmas with its skirt of tinsel dragging in the mud. The dead-end part of the year looms; the trees are stripped three-quarters bare; the light is like scorched newspaper; and all my ghosts come out to play like fireflies in the spectral sky— We came on the wind of the carnival. A wind of change, of promises. The merry wind, the magical wind, making March hares of everyone, tumbling blossoms and coattails and hats; rushing toward summer in a frenzy of exuberance.