Wind Daughter

This YA fantasy is set in a world where the Four Winds are immortal beings, children of the Sun and the Moon, and where old magic weaves the fabric of the universe.

Satu, whose name means "Story," is the daughter of Ivan, once the immortal North Wind and now a storyteller, and Isidor, a weaver from a nomadic herding family. Ivan bargained with the Wolf Queen, trading his immortality for a mortal life with Isidor, but the bargain flung them four centuries into the future, separating Isidor from her family. Satu grows up on a remote mountain, overwhelmed by heat, crowds, and noise, feeling others' emotions as her own. At seven, she encounters a winter demon on the mountaintop who creates pictures from snow and once saves her from falling. She befriends the bees the winds send her rather than returning to school. Echo, who defeated the Wolf Queen, and Hal, formerly the Queen's enchanted white wolf, visit and marry on Satu's rock ledge. Satu begins writing to Inna, Echo's half sister. By seventeen, she remains on her mountain, too anxious to leave.

A freak June snowstorm changes everything. The winter demon, now calling himself the Jökull, the Winter Lord, appears as black lines crawl over Satu's parents' bodies. Both vanish, Unraveled from existence. The Jökull explains that Ivan's magic, left unbound too long, has gone wild, tearing the world apart thread by thread. He tells Satu she alone can collect her father's power because Wind magic runs in her blood, and demands the magic as payment. Satu refuses and flees as the Unraveling swallows the village. Her uncle, the West Wind, confirms her task: She must gather her father's magic and bind it to herself, becoming the new North Wind. He gives her a white feather, then hurls himself with the other Winds into the Unraveling to contain it.

At the mountain's base, Satu meets Fann, a translucent, ghostly boy visible only to her who cannot remember his identity and exists in a nightmare of darkness when not near her. The Jökull kills Satu's surviving bees, destroys the feather, and demands a bargain she refuses.

Traveling south, Satu reunites with Inna among reindeer herders led by Taisia, an elder with Sight, a prophetic ability. Taisia reveals the herders descend from Isidor's family and shares an untold truth: Ivan and Isidor married among the herders before the bargain, and Isidor wanted to petition the Great Weaver, the creator deity, to make Ivan mortal, but Ivan chose the Wolf Queen instead. The Unraveling strikes the camp, dissolving Taisia's grandchild Manya. Taisia, who foresaw the disaster, sends Satu and Inna away. Satu insists Inna go to the city of Gradeslav for safety.

Alone with Fann, Satu pulls threads from her own magic and ties them into his heart to keep him from vanishing. She enters her father's ruined library through a mirror shard and reaches the Temple of the Winds, a sacred sanctuary. Her father's shade confesses he chose the Wolf Queen, fearing the Weaver's price might cost him Isidor or their child. The Jökull helps Satu draw the North Wind's first cerulean threads into her heart. As payment, she consents to a kiss rather than surrender her magic.

In Gradeslav, Satu reunites with Echo, Hal, and Inna. Hal recalls a painting in his father's house that Satu resembles. Echo discovers magical tools, including golden scissors and a needle. The Unraveling strikes, taking Echo, Hal, and Inna. Satu escapes on a Sky Horse, a shimmering wind creature. At the West Wind's house, Mokosh, the Wolf Queen's daughter and West's wife, reveals the Queen is not truly gone: The Jökull preserved a piece of her magic as a failsafe. Mokosh gives Satu one of the Queen's claws as a weapon.

Fann reveals the partial magic Satu gave him is killing him and begs her to sever the threads. She cuts them with the golden scissors, and he vanishes. Flying north, the Jökull confesses he wants not the magic but Satu herself. He freezes time and tries to take her magic by force. Satu stabs him with the Queen's claw and frees Fann from the spell before they flee. At a frozen lake, Satu claims a massive cache of threads from turquoise ice. The winds crown her, but one piece remains.

At the Wolf Queen's mountain, Fann presses Satu's blood against twisted roots, awakening the sleeping Queen. The Queen seizes Fann, rips out every thread Satu placed in him, and reveals him as a corpse she animated to manipulate Satu. She calls the Winter Lord by his true name, Fannaris, and commands him forward. He obeys, weeping, but Satu reads his intent and slips the claw into his hand. He drives it into the Queen's neck, killing her.

Fannaris takes Satu to a glacier where his true body lies entombed, a shard of the North Wind's ice in his heart, the last piece of her father's magic. He reveals he was Fannaris Wintar, a young nobleman and aspiring painter who deserted the army, was shipwrecked, and bargained with the Queen as he lay dying. She froze his body and created the Winter Lord to serve her. Hal is his youngest brother. Knowing it will kill him, Fannaris drives the shard into Satu's heart.

The magic transforms Satu into the North Wind. She emerges clothed in wind with silver in her skin. Fannaris whispers her name, then fragments into snow. Satu names the feeling breaking her: She loves him.

Driven by love, Satu flies into the Unraveling with the golden needle and thread pulled from her heart. She commands the Threads of Time, the universe's temporal currents, to take navigable form and sails through Fannaris's life. She catches him when he throws himself from a balcony at seventeen, and he paints her portrait, the same painting Hal recalled. She shields him through his desertion but cannot pull him from his timeline before his bargain. Forced to watch as the Queen claims him, she returns to the glacier after her transformation and carries his dying body to her mountain. They dance as ice claims him.

Satu stitches the universe with her needle and thread until she reaches the Great Weaver in his tower. He weaves the universe while moths, the Unraveling's loose magic, devour it, and Satu repairs it with her uncles' help. The Weaver tells her he would have helped Ivan if asked. When her thread breaks, the work is finished. He guides her to the Between, the space holding Unraveled souls. She cuts them free with the golden scissors: Taisia, Echo, Hal, Inna, and her parents. She finds Fannaris, but when they emerge into light, he is gone.

Satu sails her parents through the Threads of Time to Isidor's original era, where they live out their mortal lives. She returns to her mountain, lonely and grieving, until her bees return, alive, sent by Fannaris. On a winter solstice night, he appears in snow. A splinter of ice remained in his heart, rewriting his body before death claimed it. Saved from the Between by Satu, he spent months gathering cold-weather magic to become solid. He confesses centuries of anger: He saw her watching the day the Queen claimed him and believed she chose not to help. They confess their love. Satu privately resolves to one day become mortal and grow old beside him. Two horses, one of wind and one of snow, leap from the mountain into the sky.