Nestled quietly between snowdrifts and frosty effervescence spruce, an empty and cold ramshackle shanty sits in an old and forgotten valley. Hoarfrost clings to its windows as the Great Northern Wind blows its song through gaps of the roughly made plank door. The family that had once lived there in warmth and laughter is long gone. Shadows cast by lit oil lamps no longer play across log walls and the glow thrown across the hardwood floor from a crackling fireplace has been doused. The only inhabitants of the bare and frigid Shanty are a family of shrews who have taken refuge from the severe winter.

"Oh woe is me," Cried the Shanty to the starlit winter night. "Cold, so cold am I. No family left to warm me. No toasty fireplace with the sweet smell of burning cider chips, no bread baking in the hearth and no soup bubbling on the wood stove to warm these old

timbers. Oh, woe is me!"

As Shanty wailed his unhappiness to the star-covered heavens, a deep baritone penetrated his lament.

"Now, what is this? Who calls with such loneliness? Who cries out in the Night? Come on, come on, answer me."

"Oh, it is me, the lonely and cold Shanty from whom Love has abandoned. Who calls to me in this frozen wasteland?"

"It is I, the Great Northern Wind. Every day I sing my winter songs so the world may hear and rejoice in Winter�s beauty. I send my Whistle between the spruce and conifers so they may dance covered in their frosty finery and bring joy to all who see them. I sing because I am the Great Northern Wind and that is what I do. Do I not make you happy with my songs?"

"Oh Great Northern Wind, I cry because I am lonely and cold. Your songs are beautiful but they make me sad. I have no one to share them. No more do the creaks in my door moan when children run in, no more do fresh primroses perfume my insides, and no more do my windows have tiny noses pressed against them."

As Shanty lamented to the Great Northern Wind, a shrew scurried across the cold wooden planks to the middle of the floor and sat. As she listened to Shanty, a parade of fairy-sized babies popped from their home hole in the wall and scrambled to her, their little claws screech-screeching across the floor. They snuggled against their mother�s warm and thick velvety fur just as she spoke in her tiny squeak voice.

"Ah-hem. Excuse me, mind if I say something?"

"Oh ho, what have we here," Spoke the Great Northern Wind. Come now Shanty, be quiet. Ok, Miss Shrew, continue".

"Well, Shanty, you�re wrong. You are not alone. I, Mr. Shrew, and all of our children live here now. We like our new home and enough food crumbs had fallen through the floor to feed us until spring. We are happy, the children are safe and we love you Shanty for letting us live here."

Just as Shanty was about to protest, a miracle happened. He no longer felt cold and lonely and then he understood why he had felt the cold. His heart had turned frigid. A great warmth spread from his foundation to his loft as tiny feet screeched-screeched along his floor. As the Great Northern Wind sang its song of spring and rebirth, Shanty thought he could detect the faintest odor of primroses.

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