concept
The Kraetan Year
Also called voidek, or day without form
First appears in Chapter 1
You are ahead of your reading. This entry first appears in Chapter 1; nothing below is hidden from you, but it may say more than you have met.
THE KRAETAN YEAR Thirteen months of twenty-eight days, and one day that does not exist.
Length: 364 days, plus Voidek Months: Thirteen, each of twenty-eight days, one full moon to the next New year: Voidek
Kraeta has no seasons. There is no frost, no drought, no month hotter or colder than any other. It is growing weather every day of the year, and every year, nothing grows. With no harvest to mark time by, Kraetans count by the moon: thirteen months of twenty-eight days, each running from one full moon to the next, and each with a name that predates the kingdom.
Thirteen such months come one day short of the sun’s year. Kraetans have known this for as long as they have kept records, and their answer is Voidek: a single day belonging to no month, on which the year is said not to be running. The name is old Kraetan and means “day without form,” and it is the one holiday every soul in the kingdom keeps, from the castle to the last hut on the coast. Nothing done on Voidek is counted. No debts come due, no birthdays fall, no contracts are signed, and no child born on it is given that as a birth date. It is the new year, and the custom is to spend it as if it were not happening: doors open, work put down, a meal shared with whoever is nearest.
Older people will tell you it was once kept in silence. Nobody remembers why.
This goes past where you have read. Reveal anyway.
Beyond
The day is a seam. For one turn of the sun the count that binds Kraeta to the sky is set down, and the land is, briefly, off the calendar.