The Stillings of Connor Frost
The miracles of Connor Frost are called Stillings, because each one stills some warmth, motion, decay, or fever and restores a thing to the keeping of the Cold. The Glacials record over thirty; tradition counts the Forty Stillings. They fall into four kinds.
I. Stillings over Nature
- The Water into Ice at Caldmere — Connor’s first public sign, at a wedding feast: the wine ran out, and he bade the servants fill the jars with meltwater and froze it into “the clearest, sweetest ice ever tasted,” that the feast might not fail. (Glacial of Voss 2)
- The Stilling of the Storm — a tempest rose on the frozen lake of Wintermere and the ice began to crack beneath the boat; Connor, asleep on the stern, rose and said “Be still and cold,” and the wind died and the ice knit whole. (Glacial of Maren 8)
- The Walking on the Frozen Lake — Connor walked upon new, thin ice that would bear no man; Corin stepped out to meet him, but his faith “thawed” and the ice gave, and Connor caught him: “O you of little frost, why did you doubt?” (Glacial of Maren 14)
- The Cursing of the Warm Fig — finding a fig-tree of the warm south fruiting out of season “in a false summer,” he stilled it, and it froze and bore no more — a sign against false, unseasonable warmth. (Glacial of Corin 11)
II. Stillings of Provision
- The Feeding of the Frozen Multitude — five thousand on the slopes, with five loaves of Snow-bread and two skins of meltwater, which multiplied and re-froze in the breaking; twelve baskets of snow-bread were gathered after. (Glacial of Lucan 9; in all four Glacials)
- The Second Feeding — four thousand of the warm south, “that the Savor might be shared even with the warm.” (Glacial of Maren 15)
- The Endless Frost-Oil — at the house of a poor widow of Hollowfrost, a single cruse of frost-oil did not fail through the whole Long Winter. (Glacial of Lucan 7)
III. Stillings of the Body (Healings)
- The Cleansing of the Fevered — many burning with the heat of disease were healed by the laying-on of his cold hands; “the fever went out of them like steam off a thawing field.”
- The Mending of the Frost-bitten — he restored limbs blackened and dying with frostbite (showing the Cold he brought was keeping, not killing — see The Two Frosts (Doctrine)).
- The Opening of the Snow-Blind — he gave sight to those blinded by the glare of the ice-fields.
- The Stilling of the Bleeding Woman — a woman whose warm blood would not cease flowing was healed by touching the hem of his frost-white robe.
IV. Stillings over Death (the Raisings)
- The Daughter of the Drift-Warden — a girl newly dead, “only beginning to cool”; he took her cold hand and said, “Little one, the Cold is not done with you,” and she woke.
- The Widow’s Son at Caldhaven — halted at his bier and called back.
- The Raising of Lazren — the greatest of the raisings and the turning-point of the ministry. Lazren had been four days in the tomb and already thawing (decaying) in the warm season; Connor wept (“the frost ran from his eyes”), then cried, “Lazren, come back into the cold!” and Lazren came forth, bound in grave-furs, alive — the twice-frozen. So great was the sign that the Solarite council resolved from that day to compass Connor’s death. (Glacial of Voss 11; see Lazren)
The Meaning of the Stillings
Frostian teaching insists the Stillings are not mere wonders but signs of the Rewhitening in miniature: each one is a small, local victory of keeping over melting, a foretaste of the day when the whole world will be stilled and kept. The greatest Stilling of all is the Whitening itself — Connor stilling his own death.
“He did not work wonders to be wondered at, but to show what the world will be when the Long Fever breaks.” — The Sayings of the Hoary 11:4