Glossary

Italic notes below indicate the Persian, Avestan, or mythological root for each term, and how the book uses or adapts it.

Anahita

An ancient queen, said to have wept the rivers into existence and taught the first seeds to drink. Mentioned in Grandma's prayers and in Pirouz's book; her name surfaces at the river crossing.
*An ancient Iranian goddess of waters, fertility, and healing.*

Hawraman

The walled mountain settlement where the story begins, trapped in an endless winter that most of its people have never known any different.
*A real mountainous region (Hawraman / Hewraman) on the border of Iranian Kurdistan and Iraqi Kurdistan, with deep, continuous ritual and musical traditions including the ancient Pir Shalyar ceremony.*

Asha Vahishta

A feather of the Simurgh, given to Pirouz by Siyavash beneath Mount Qaf and passed to Yima. Sacred fire; warmth that answers a strike of cold.
*In Zoroastrianism, "Best Truth": one of the seven Amesha Spentas, the divine emanation associated with fire and right order.*

Aspa

The old word for a horse that is not quite a horse. Used by Pirouz when he speaks of his ancestor Siyavash and Shabrang.
*Avestan "aspa" (horse), retained in many ancient Iranian compound names.*

Atar

The sacred communal flame; the warmth that binds a hearth, a family, a people. Once tended openly, now hidden in glowing embers and the memory of dancing figures painted on cave walls.
*The Zoroastrian divinity of fire, son of Ahura Mazda. Fire is central to Zoroastrian ritual as a symbol of purity and presence.*

Atar-Patene

Three meanings the book braids together: *(i)* the watch held by Siyavash beneath Mount Qaf, where the seedbed of spring sleeps; *(ii)* a line of fire-keepers spanning generations, of whom Pirouz's family is the last; *(iii)* the word Pirouz offers in the cave at the end: a name the seven companions consider, and decline, for what they have become together.
*Historical name for a region in north-western Iran (Atropatene / Azerbaijan), literally "protected by fire."*

Aush

The healing broth Hustana brews from a single leaf of the Sarv tree. One leaf, one cure.
*In Zoroastrian tradition, ritual healing and milk-based offerings; the term carries the sense of a sacred drink.*

Amu Darya

The great frozen river the companions must cross. The crossing requires Yameh's SymphoNay, Yima's foundation note, Mitra's drum on the ice, and Shardad's ear for the river's true pitch.
*A real Central Asian river (the Oxus of antiquity), historically central to trade and to the Iranian world.*

Azhi

An orphaned servant boy whose sister Parisa dies in the first illness. Taken into King Mardas's palace as "Shadow-Son," he learns to shape his grief into frost and conviction. The book's chief antagonist, but never a stranger to the protagonists.
*Avestan "aži," serpent or dragon; the root of Aži Dahaka (Zahhak), the three-headed dragon-king of later Iranian myth.*

Bahram

King Mardas's old advisor in Hawraman. Attends court less and less as Azhi rises; replaced after Mardas's death.
*Persian form of Verethragna, the ancient Iranian divinity of victory; a common royal and personal name.*

Bardiya

A Star-Reader, childhood acquaintance of Yima, who later becomes a captain of the watch under Azhi's regime. Stationed outside the west chamber the night Yima is exiled.
*A son of Cyrus the Great in the Achaemenid period; the historical Bardiya is famous for the political intrigue surrounding his death and impersonation.*

Boteh

A small teardrop-shaped tapestry, woven by Yima and Yameh's mother before they were born. One was carried by Yima, the other secretly by Yameh; both end the journey transformed: one in the soil that cradled the Sarv, the other bound into the SymphoNay.
*The Boteh Jegheh, a classical Iranian motif (cypress, flame, or seed), the precursor of the modern paisley pattern; a symbol of life and continuity.*

Chahargah

One of the named wisdom-modes in Pirouz's book, used briefly when Pirouz first attempts to name what the companions earned in Verkana. Shardad later corrects him.
*One of the seven traditional dastgah of Persian classical music; literally "four-place," associated with vigour and resolve.*

Chamrosh

A small lion-bodied, eagle-headed creature with golden feathers; Yima's first companion from the cave. She grows steadily larger and stranger as the journey continues, and is finally revealed, in the green valley, as the Simurgh restored.
*In Iranian mythology, a giant bird that lives near Mount Alborz and gathers seeds; sometimes called the first feather of the Simurgh.*

Daha and Aka

Two ancient serpents drawn out of the reed bed at NayNava by the companions' bonfire. Healed and changed by Azhi's frost into horned, winged chimeras, they become his enforcers in Hawraman.
*"Aži Dahaka" is the dragon-king of later Iranian myth; "Aka Manah" is the Avestan demon of evil thought. The book seeds both for Book Two.*

Div

Storm-shadows; cold creatures that the people of Hawraman blame for fire-fear and for every winter that comes worse than the last.
*Demons and malevolent spirits in Iranian myth; the chief antagonists in many tales of the Shahnameh.*

Earth-Walkers

One of the four heritages of Hawraman. Builders, masons; "they treated everything as a problem to solve with their hands."
*Story-specific term for one of four traditions in the settlement.*

Espand

Aromatic seeds Hustana carries in a pouch and burns at thresholds and over fires. Their smoke "makes a space honest."
*Wild rue (Peganum harmala). Burned in many Iranian households against the evil eye; a ritual herb of long standing.*

Farr

The grace that brightens at the chest of one who walks honestly into a wisdom, and dims when they stop. Grandma names it the night Yima brings the ember back from dead ash.
*Persian form of Avestan "khvarenah," the divine glory or aura that legitimises kings, heroes, and the truthful in Iranian tradition.*

Fire-Keepers

One of the four heritages of Hawraman. Rostam's people. Reckless, strong, drawn to the old keeping of flame.
*Story-specific term for one of four traditions in the settlement.*

Goharik

One of the last named villagers in the silent village west of the Amu Darya, recorded in the second hand of the village ledger.
*A Persian name ("little jewel").*

Gordafarin

Leader of the starving tribe at Hamoon, who shares her water with the companions and warns them about the Mardkhar.
*In the Shahnameh, Gordafarid is a celebrated woman warrior who defends a fortress against an invading champion.*

Goshtasp

A smith of Hawraman, named in the unfinished letter found in the silent village's rafters; the addressee whose line never came.
*Persian form of the Avestan Vishtaspa, the Kayanian king who became the patron of Zoroaster.*

Grandma

The keeper of an old wooden chest, of older prayers, and of the seed Yima carries to the cave. Her granddaughter dies and is saved on the same night. After the journey she is found tending the Sarv tree alone.

Hamoon

The salt-flat basin south-east of Hawraman, where the air rises in fog and the Mardkhar walk.
*Hamoun: a real seasonal lake and basin in the Sistan region of Iran, frequently dry.*

Homayoun

One of the named wisdom-modes in Pirouz's book. Shardad corrects Pirouz at the fire after Verkana: *name the wisdom for what closed the door, not for what opened it.* The mode of finishing what someone refused to say, of receiving as much as speaking.
*One of the seven traditional dastgah of Persian classical music; from *Homayun*, "auspicious, blessed."*

Hormozd

The first ledger-keeper of the silent village, whose tidy hand fills three quarters of the village's record before a second, shakier hand takes over.
*Persian form of Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Wisdom in Zoroastrianism; a common given name through the Sasanian period.*

Hustana

A healer of Hawraman; calloused hands, a leather satchel of dried thyme and sharper herbs, and a manner that makes complaining feel like a personal failing. She joins the journey, breaks her arm in the avalanche, and meets her own private grief in the green valley.
*From Osthana, named in late antique sources as a famed Iranian magus and teacher.*

Karon

The King's Pact-Weaver and tribute-collector in Hawraman; Azhi's first master.
*From Qarun (Korah), known in Near Eastern tradition for great wealth and pride.*

Khorshid

An old Star-Reader of Hawraman who tells children fragmentary stories at the Festival of Atar, including the line about a queen who froze the world to keep it from changing.
*Persian for "sun."*

Mahasti

An old weaver in the lower caves of Hawraman whom Yameh visits when Yima will not. Refuses comfort she has not asked for; asks Yameh to count her breaths instead.
*A historical Persian poet; the name has the sense of "moon-essence."*

Mahur

One of the named wisdom-modes in Pirouz's book. Hustana names it at the fire in Hamoon after Rostam sits down in the salt across from his own grief: the mode that lifts the false skin from a wound so the wound underneath can be seen as one's own.
*One of the seven traditional dastgah of Persian classical music; bright, often associated with daylight.*

Mardas

King of Hawraman, ageing and exhausted. He is the king who summons Yima to play and weeps at the music; and he is the king Azhi binds to the obsidian mirror in his grief for Prince Kavus, where he dies frozen.
*A name attested in the Shahnameh as the father of the tyrant Zahhak; here, a man who inherits a stillness he did not choose.*

Mardkhar

In Hamoon, lion-bodied man-faced creatures that walk out of the fog. They turn out to be projections cast by starving villagers using a shard of dark crystal; the people behind them are, in fact, the tribe Gordafarin once called neighbours.
*"Mardkhwar": man-eater. The Iranian cousin of the Greek manticore.*

Magi (Elder Magi)

The old man Yima meets in the Mithal vision; an ancient teacher who gives him the crystal globe, names the deadline by the setting of the Bull, and tells him the casing will tire but the stone will not.
*The Magi of antiquity were Iranian priests; in Greek and Latin sources they were associated with astronomy, medicine, and arcane knowledge. The book uses the term in the inclusive sense of "wisdom-keepers."*

Mitra

Drum-player's daughter in Hawraman. Steady, observant, a quiet leader. She lost a younger brother, Yashar, to a previous winter, and drums for two until Verkana, when she lays him down. Joins the companions early and stays for every trial.
*An ancient Iranian deity associated with covenants, light, and the sworn word; also a common given name in modern Persian.*

Mithal Realm

The world-behind-the-world, glimpsed by Yima when he plays in the cave: a vast cracked dome where light-dancers (Nur-Pari) and shadow-dancers (Sayeh-Pari) braid creation together, or fail to.
*Arabic "mithal," likeness; in Sufi metaphysics the 'alam al-mithal is the imaginal realm between matter and pure spirit.*

Nay

An end-blown reed flute. Yima's instrument from the river onward; carries seven small wounds along its length, each of which warms when one of the wisdoms is honestly walked.
*The Persian end-blown reed flute, the instrument of mystics; famously the speaker of the opening lines of Rumi's *Masnavi*.*

NayNava (Hatra)

The hidden warm valley behind the great boulder in the cave above Hawraman. Reeds, river, light without source; the companions' first sanctuary, broken at the bonfire and sealed by Yima's last note over it.
*Story name: portmanteau of *Nay* (reed) and *Nava* (one of the seven dastgah; a journey-mode). Echoes the ancient caravan-city of Hatra in upper Mesopotamia, a Parthian-era ritual site renowned for its sun-temple and now a UNESCO site.*

Nowruz

"New Day." The name a child gives the morning the Simurgh's wings burn the cloud-lid from Hawraman, and the people of the square refuse to call it after one boy.
*The Iranian New Year, celebrated at the spring equinox for at least three thousand years.*

Nur-Pari

The light-dancers in the Mithal: bright spinning figures from whose movement gold threads of possibility lift toward the dome.
*"Nur" (Arabic/Persian: light) and "Pari" (Persian: spirit, fairy).*

Obsidian Mirror

A tall, dark mirror Azhi builds and learns to feed. It frosts at the touch of grief; it shows the dead son to the king who calls. It is the instrument of Mardas's death and Roya's.
*Mirrors as thresholds between worlds are old in Iranian and Near Eastern lore.*

Parisa

Azhi's younger sister, eight years old, who collects stones in two piles, warm and cold, and dies in the first illness. The wound at the centre of Azhi's philosophy.
*A common Persian name, "fairy-like."*

Pirouz

A young scholar of Hawraman; carries an ancestor's leather-bound book covered in his own marginal annotations. Wears a small charcoal mask along the jaw. Descends from the line of Siyavash; at Atar-Patene he meets his great-great-grandfather.
*Khwāje Piruz: a folk figure who appears in Iranian streets at Nowruz, soot-faced, in red, dancing with a tambourine. "Pirouz" itself means "victorious."*

Prince Kavus

King Mardas's son, who dies of the same winter-sickness as Parisa, despite the five Sarv leaves the soldiers take. His face is what the obsidian mirror shows.
*A royal name from the Iranian epic tradition.*

Qaf

The mountain at the world's edge, where the Simurgh nests in old story. The companions climb its eastern face; Pirouz, Hustana, and Shardad descend through a crevice into its inner cavern.
*Mount Qaf in Iranian and Islamic cosmology: the encircling mountain at the limit of the world.*

Roshanak

A name Yameh thinks she hears Hustana whisper in the green valley, where Hustana stands seven heartbeats holding nothing the rest of them can see.
*Roshanak ("little light"): the Persian name of Roxana, wife of Alexander; a common feminine name.*

Rostam

A Fire-Keeper of Hawraman, broad-shouldered, irreverent. Joins early; leaves at Hamoon to defend the home villages while the others go on; returns in Hawraman having waged a quieter war by telling the children stories in cellars.
*The greatest hero of the Shahnameh; the shape of his name in the book is an act of inheritance.*

Roya

A palace seer in Mardas's court. She finds Azhi after Parisa's death, teaches him the geometry of cold, and dies at the obsidian mirror trying to undo her own teaching.
*Persian for "dream" or "vision."*

Sarv

An impossible cypress that grows from the seed Grandma gives Yima, planted in the warm earth of the cave with the Boteh as a cradle. Its leaves heal the cold-in-the-blood. One leaf, one healing.
*The cypress, a sacred tree in Zoroastrianism and a recurring symbol of life and continuity in Persian poetry and gardens.*

Sayeh-Pari

The shadow-dancers in the Mithal: meant to give shape and form to what the Nur-Pari spin; in the broken dance, they strangle instead of shaping.
*"Sayeh" (Persian: shadow) and "Pari" (spirit).*

Shabrang

Siyavash's mount in the cavern beneath Qaf. A horse made of the dark between stars, with a mane that drops small comet-trails as he canters.
*In the Shahnameh, the legendary black horse of Siyavash; "Shab-rang" means "night-coloured."*

Shadow-Son

The title King Mardas gives Azhi: a surrogate child bound to the king's grief through the mirror.

Shardad

A blind boy raised by the wolves of Verkana; reads the air with his hands; conducts the companions' music from Verkana onward. Carries the song of the seedbed up out of Atar-Patene.
*A Persian given name, gesturing also toward Shardad Rohani, a noted modern Iranian conductor.*

Shur

The first of the named wisdom-modes; Grandma names it the night Yima holds Yameh against his chest and the dead ember catches a single spark. *The mode that gives a thing of itself so that another thing can stand.*
*One of the seven traditional dastgah of Persian classical music; the most beloved in the popular repertoire, often associated with longing and depth.*

Simurgh

The great bird of the world's turning. In this book, what Chamrosh becomes when Yima refuses to keep her small.
*The benevolent mythological bird of Iranian tradition, sometimes equated with the phoenix; appears throughout the Shahnameh and in Attar's Conference of the Birds.*

Siyavash

The watcher beneath Mount Qaf, made of fire. He has held the seedbed alone for so many generations that he has stopped counting them. Pirouz's great-great-grandfather; the line that did not walk until Pirouz did.
*In the Shahnameh, a prince of legendary purity and beauty, unjustly killed; his blood gives rise to a flowering plant.*

Star-Readers

One of the four heritages of Hawraman. Yameh's people by inclination if not by birth; readers of the sky.
*Story-specific term for one of four traditions in the settlement.*

SymphoNay

The instrument Yameh secretly cuts and binds at the Amu Darya, lashing twelve graduated reeds with twine wound through her half of her mother's torn Boteh. Plays chords the Nay cannot.
*Portmanteau of "symphony" and "nay."*

Vara

An old healer's word for the rare warm pockets where the deep earth still sleeps and what is in it sleeps with it. Hustana names the green valley a Vara.
*In Zoroastrian myth, the underground refuge built by Yima to preserve the best of life from a coming winter.*

Verkana (Gorgan)

The forest east of the Amu Darya where the air refuses to carry sound and the wolves feed on what has not been said aloud.
*Hyrcania of antiquity; the dense forests south of the Caspian. The name means "land of wolves" and survives in modern *Gorgan*.*

Wind-Listeners

One of the four heritages of Hawraman. Yima and Yameh's mother's line; those who listen to what the wind carries from far away.
*Story-specific term for one of four traditions in the settlement.*

Yameh

Yima's twin sister. Counts; reads stars; sees patterns; carries her own Boteh in secret. The architect of the Amu Darya crossing and, repeatedly, the first to see what Yima dismisses.
*A name shaped to pair with Yima.*

Yamshid

The name some of the people of Hawraman call Yima after the cloud-lid burns away and the sun rises: "the one who shines." Yima does not turn to it; the day takes the better word, *Nowruz*.
*Jamshid of the Shahnameh and the Avesta: the great king of the Pishdadian dynasty, traditionally credited with the first Nowruz.*

Yashar

Mitra's younger brother, lost to an earlier winter. The name she finally lets fall in the wolf-clearing of Verkana.
*A modern Iranian and Turkic name meaning "one who lives."*

Yima

A shepherd of Hawraman, fifteen, twin to Yameh; the protagonist. Carries the Nay; carries the Farr; carries, for too long, the assumption that what he sees is what there is to see.
*Yima of the Avesta and Jamshid of the Shahnameh: the foundational king who built the Vara and inaugurated the year. The book restores him to the shepherd-boy he is in the oldest layers of the tradition.*

Zemaka

The cold queen worshipped in Hawraman at the start of the book, whose ice statue stands in the square. Her face cracks the night the children come out to the fires.
*From Avestan "zima," snowstorm; here personified as the principle of fearful stillness that the settlement has confused with safety.*