Today is the darkest day of the year, the winter solstice, when the sun is over the horizon in the Northern Hemisphere for the shortest amount of time in a day. It always perplexed me as a child that the shortest day was the start of winter, and not the middle of winter. After all, for the next few months it gets colder in New England where I live. It seemed to me only common sense that the coldest days should be the shortest days, a bit of common sense that just didn’t happen to fit the actual facts of the case. I didn’t know anything about how heat is captured and retained by the soil, the oceans, and the atmosphere, or jet streams, or anything like that.

But to every dark day comes some light, except if you live in the polar regions, so I here offer the 21st chapter of Nightfeather: Ghosts, “Finding homes.” Sanderson has to get home herself, and then figure out how to get the three remaining ghosts to their rest. And for once, she doesn’t mind her expectations being confounded.