The Calendar
The present year is 917, counted from the first year the survivors recorded. Nobody living knows what that first year was the first year of.
At a glance
- A year, a Yeirath, is eight months of forty-five days plus five festival days: 365 days.
- A month is five weeks of nine days. Every month begins on Daun and ends on Stil, so any date falls on the same weekday in every month of every year.
- The festival days stand outside the months and outside the week.
- Every fourth year Reimach runs two days; every 128th year it does not.
- The day begins at midnight and is sixteen Spaen; a Spaen is sixty-four Maerk; a Maerk is sixty-four Teich.
The week
| Day | Meaning | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Daun | dawn-day; the cycle begins with first light |
| 2 | Wym | light-day; clarity and illumination |
| 3 | Veinth | wind-day; movement and change |
| 4 | Reinei | rain-day; nourishment and sustenance |
| 5 | Soel | sun-day; warmth and energy |
| 6 | Stoen | stone-day; earth and stability |
| 7 | Staer | star-day; distance and wonder — the last working day, and payday |
| 8 | Mwyn | moon-day; reflection and tides — rest |
| 9 | Stil | still-day; quiet — rest |
Mwyn and Stil are the week's rest, and most trades work neither. Because every month begins on Daun, the eleventh of Foerg falls on the same weekday as the eleventh of Endwr, in 917 or in 200; a child learns the pattern once and nobody consults a table. The festival days belong to no week, and the week resumes on the far side of them exactly where it stopped.
The day
Sixteen Spaen of about ninety minutes, beginning at midnight. A tower clock strikes at the end of each, so the bells ring sixteen times between one midnight and the next. People speak in Spaen: a man who says he will come at the sixth bell means the end of the sixth Spaen, halfway through the morning. Sunrise falls in the fourth or fifth Spaen depending on the season, and nobody adjusts anything to suit it. A Maerk (about 84 seconds) is a sixty-fourth of a Spaen; a Teich (about 1.3 seconds) a sixty-fourth of a Maerk. A physician counts a pulse in Teich.
The months
Each month carries a season, a theme, and one of the four aspects of the Oathbond, two months to each.
| Month | Season | Theme | Aspect | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Naethwr | late winter | genuine nature, self-examination | Personal |
| 2 | Eiveil | early spring | awakening, renewal | Personal |
| 3 | Rwyth | spring | roots, lineage, bloodline | Family |
| 4 | Boend | late spring | bonds, love, nurturing | Family |
| 5 | Foerg | summer | craft, labor, building | Station |
| 6 | Abwynd | late summer | harvest, abundance | Station |
| 7 | Gaedhr | autumn | community, civic duty | City |
| 8 | Endwr | winter | endurance, shelter | City |
The five festival days
They fall at the joins, belong to no week, and every city keeps all five, because they come from the calendar rather than anybody's custom. Four sit on the turning points of the year; Dar is the odd one. They are the only days on which the whole world is doing the same thing at the same time.
- Reimach — the Remaking
- Between Endwr and Naethwr; midwinter and the turn of the year. The oldest festival and the largest. Households clean out what is broken, mend what can be mended, and burn what cannot; debts are settled before the year turns if they can be; feasting, gifts, and a toast in every house to the year gone. Nobody renews an Oathbond, because it is not a thing to renew, but a great many people say aloud what they intend to do better, and their households remember.
- Eimr — the Emergence
- Between Eiveil and Rwyth; the spring equinox. Shutters come off, houses are aired, and the first Grael of the year is eaten by people who have been eating preserved Stoek since Endwr. Children are taken outside the walls for the first time since winter, as far as the ring and no further. The noisiest of the five and the least formal.
- Soyl — the Longest Light
- Between Boend and Foerg; midsummer. Nobody sleeps much; fires are lit on high ground and work stops entirely. Stormharbor and Eldershore keep the old rituals involving the Oelwy until dawn. The festival most associated with courtship, and most of the world's proposals are made on it.
- Graedd — the Gratitude
- Between Abwynd and Gaedhr; the autumn equinox. The harvest is in and counted, and the day is given to thanking whoever the household thanks — ancestors in Eldershore, the dead in Stormharbor, teachers and masters in Clearhold and Forgegate, and everywhere the people who kept the household through the year. Debts of gratitude are named out loud; it is the one day saying you owe somebody teis is a public act.
- Dar — the Darkest Day
- Between Gaedhr and Endwr, halfway between the autumn turn and midwinter. Not the shortest day but the day the dark is acknowledged. The hearth festival: households gather indoors, lights burn all night, and the dead and the absent are spoken of by name. Every faith has laid something over Dar and all of them keep the hearth, the light, and the names. A person alone on Dar is a person somebody has failed, and households take in whoever has nowhere else.
The extra day
Reimach is one day in most years; every fourth year it runs two, and one year in every 128 that would have had two does not. The second day carries nothing of its own — the same festival, one day longer. The skipped year is the only thing anybody has to track; Clearhold's Registrars keep the count and send word, and a person may live a whole life without seeing one.
Dating
A date is the day, the month, and the year: the twelfth of Foerg, 917. Festival days are named rather than numbered: Graedd, 917. Clearhold's Registrars keep the most exact records in the world; Eldershore's lineage halls keep the oldest.
Age and birthdays
Everyone born on the twelfth of Foerg was born on the same weekday. A person gives their age in years and their birth date as day and month; where records are kept, the year is kept too, and a Waendra may give it in seasons. Birthdays are marked in the household and not much beyond — a meal the person likes, a small gift. What a city notices instead is an apprenticeship taken, an examination sat, a first voyage crewed: the days somebody's conduct became their own. A person born on a festival day has no weekday at all, which is treated as mildly remarkable and entirely meaningless; a child born on the second day of Reimach gets the birthday kept on the ordinary Reimach in the years between.
Local festivals
Everything else in the year is local, movable, and owned by whoever holds it. Athletic festivals are held in most cities at whatever time suits them — wrestling, fencing, shooting, riding, strength, crowds, betting, and a feast. The Summer Games are the greatest, held in Foerg every fourth year in the same years Reimach runs long, hosted in rotation by Shining Reach and Forgegate; competitors come from every city, the Roedhavens, and the Iron Coves, and for the duration a general truce holds — no raids, no feuds, no boarding — the only arrangement in the world every city and the Coves have kept without a treaty. Nobody learns who won for weeks; the result travels with the caravans and the ships, and the returning competitors are the news themselves. Entry is by capability and not by sex, and a woman who has won at the Games is known by name in six cities for the rest of her life. Stormharbor takes the Games more seriously than anybody and has never hosted them. Carnivals are the other kind — loud, drunken, and unguarded, several times a year in the Coves, the port quarters of Stormharbor and Eldershore, the Frontier Roedhavens, and any town with sailors in it; Clearhold holds nothing of the kind and says so. Beyond those, every city keeps its own days: Forgegate's guild days, Stormharbor's fleet departure in Eiveil and return in Gaedhr, Clearhold's examination days, Eldershore's dozens of lineage founding days, Shining Reach's civic days and its argument about which to keep.
Seasons by region
The months carry seasons in their names, written by people living north of the Frostline. North of it the months mean what they say; Clearhold, south of the line, has a winter anyway. South of the Greenline the year divides into wet and dry rather than warm and cold — the rains come through Foerg and Abwynd, the dry months run from Gaedhr into Eiveil, and Endwr, the month of endurance, is one of the pleasantest months of Eldershore's year, which northerners find funny. The Coves reckon by the storm season and by when the Long Reach is worth sailing. None of this changes the calendar: a date is a date in every city.