The Reckoning of Births is an ancient way of naming people by when they were born. It predates the Houses and the Rift; no account settles where it began. It survives in ordinary speech rather than in House registers.
Two Halves
The Reckoning's winter half runs from the autumn equinox to the spring equinox; its summer half runs from spring to autumn. Each half passes through six named turns in the same order: Bear, Swallow, Hare, Deer, Toad, Salmon. The names return, but each has a winter and a summer face. The face belongs to the time of birth; weather, work and age do not change it. The Calendar from the Rift begins its year at the winter solstice and calls the share beginning at the autumn equinox the autumn dolnik. The Reckoning begins its winter half at that same autumn equinox. One stretch of time thus has two seasonal names without either calendar moving the boundary.
The Six and Their Faces
These are portraits people tell about the signs, with a gift and a danger in each face. They are not laws about anyone born under them.
Bear
A Winter Bear sleeps and keeps strength for a long need; the danger is waking too late when others need it. A Summer Bear ranges widely for food and can feed a broad country; the danger is coming to regard that country as its own.
Swallow
A Winter Swallow is absent from this shore, held in other people's waiting; distance can preserve a tie, but it can also make the swallow never wholly present. A Summer Swallow returns to build under an old eave; it knows how to make a place again, but the roof belongs to someone else.
Hare
A Winter Hare whitens and holds still in snow; it sees danger from cover, but may remain still when it ought to run. A Summer Hare twists its track and escapes quickly; the same turn can take it away from an answer it owes.
Deer
A Winter Deer has shed its antlers; it can lay down a burden without complaint, but stands exposed and may yield too soon. A Summer Deer grows new antlers in velvet, changing in the open; every touch can hurt while they grow.
Toad
A Winter Toad waits beneath the earth and outlasts the cold; it may wait out more than the cold — even its own life. In the Summer Toad's telling, the young leave the water for many paths; they carry life beyond one pool, but can scatter too far from one another.
Salmon
A Winter Salmon begins as roe beneath the river stones; its work starts unseen, and may remain unseen too long. A Summer Salmon goes upstream toward its source against the current; the return gives it direction, but may consume all its strength.
The Eel
The Eel is named beside the six, but it has no settled winter or summer face and no agreed turn in the round. In old shore tellings no one has seen an eel born. Some place the name on the two equinox nights, where the halves meet; others say it marks no interval and is spoken so that the round never quite closes. Whether anyone can be born an Eel remains in dispute. It is not a thirteenth turn.
In Speech
People call themselves by a face of birth and sometimes guess another person's from conduct; such guesses can be wrong. A sign may be an excuse, a joke or an argument at a table. It does not explain a person's choices. In Chapter 5 of the first novel, a child calls herself a Summer Bear and claims the first bread at breakfast; the woman cutting it says that rule does not hold at their table. In Chapter 6, Kakhenor answers the same child's question by naming himself a Summer Swallow. In Chapter 11 of the second novel, Plitsa's mother fondly calls her "my Winter Hare" while offering her the rest of a coil; Plitsa sets it back because the Salt Court will need it.