The Snow Queen (13 page)
Authors: Joan D. Vinge
Moon
blinked, frowned; remembered their childhood, and how rarely he had tried to
disagree with her. But when they did argue, he would run away and leave her
alone. He would hold his anger for hours, even days. And in the lonely space he
left behind, she would turn her own anger in on herself. She would go to him
every time, and apologize, even when she knew he was wrong. “I guess I would
have. Even though it’s nobody’s fault. But that’s wrong, too.”
“Yes ...
except that it hurts no one but you. And I think that’s the difference.”
Two sudden
drops of rain pelted Moon’s uncovered head; she looked up, confused and
startled. She pulled up her hood as Clavally got to her feet and gestured
toward shelter.
They ducked
under a stand of young tree-ferns. The rain smothered all other sound for a
space of minutes. They stood silently, blinded by a field of molten gray, until
the rain squall moved off across the sea on the back of the wind. Moon stirred
away from the fern’s dark, pithy trunk; watched the pattern of droplets
stranded like pearls in the fragile lacework of its canopy, watched them fall.
She put out a hand. “It’s stopped already.” Her anger at
had as little effect on the greater pattern of her life. But when they met
again, so much would be different between them .... “I know people have to
change. But I wonder if they know when to stop.”
Clavally
shook her head; they began to walk back together along the path, sidestepping
the sudden stream that it had become. “Not even the Lady can answer that. I hope
you’ll find that
Moon turned
in the track, walking a few strides backwards as she looked out across the
restless sea toward home.
“... And
then a part of the wealth from the last Festival was put into a new fund for
me, so that I could begin work without interruption on the masks for this one
... almost nineteen years ago.
How time
slips past, masked in the rhythm of the days! That’s the rhythm of creation for
you—individual creation, universal creation. Red-orange feathers, please.” The
mask maker held out her hand.
reached into one of the trays scattered in the doorway between them and passed
her a handful. Malkin, her long-limbed gray cat, poked a surreptitious paw
among the feathers still in the holder.
their appropriate cups. He looked up and down until it made him dizzy, trying
to watch her work while he worked himself. “I don’t know how you do it. How can
you create so many masks, and every one different? When you can hardly—” He
stopped, still unsure of his words in spite of her reassurances.
“—tell a
red feather from a green one?” She smiled, lifting her head to look at him with
the dark windows of her eyes, and the light sensor on the band across her
forehead. “Well, you know, it wasn’t easy in the beginning. But I had a desire
to learn—a need to create something beautiful myself. I couldn’t paint or draw,
but this is more like sculpture, really, a creation of touch and texture. And
the craft is hereditary in the Ravenglass family, you know; like blindness.
Being born blind, and then being given half-sight—sometimes I think that
combination creates a heightening of imagination. All forms are vague and
wonderful ... you see in them what you want to see. I have two sisters who are
both blind too, and who have their own shops here in the city. And many other
relatives as well, all doing the same, though not all blind. It takes a lot of
creative energy to make certain that there’s a mask for every reveller who will
be dancing in these streets at the next Festival time. And you know something?”
She smiled, the pride shining through it. “Mine are the best of all. I, Fate Ravenglass
Winter, will make the mask of the Summer Queen .... A piece of red velvet,
please.”
letting it slither sensuously between his fingers. “But all this work—half a
life’s work—it’s only for one night! And then it’s gone. How can you bear
that?”
“Because
it’s so important to Tiamat’s identity as a separate world —our heritage. The
rituals of the Change are a tradition that reaches back into the clouded times
before the Hegemony and its rulers ever set foot on our world ... some of it
into the time when we were off worlders here ourselves—”
“How do you
know?” interrupting. “How do you know what anybody did before the first ships
sailed down out of the Great Storm?” He slipped absentmindedly into the
language of myth.
“All I know
is what I hear on the threedy She smiled. “The off worlders have archaeologists
who study the Old Empire’s records and ruins. They claim we came here as
refugees from a world called Trista, after some interstellar war near the end
of the Old Empire. These fantasy faces I make began as real creatures; once
they were on the standards of the first ship families that ancestored Summer
and Winter. You probably recognize some of them—in Summer they still have
meaning. Your ship name Dawntreader, is one of the original dozen names—did you
know that?”
‘primitive’ traditions; so now we only bring them out at the Festival, not
really celebrating the Prime Minister’s visit, but our own heritage.”
“Oh.” He
was still confused and disturbed by the Winters’ Ladyless view of history,
although he would never admit it.
“Anyway,
some things are more beautiful simply because they are ephemeral. Think of a
flower opening, or a song as you play it, or a rainbow ... think of making
love.”
“What if there were no more rainbows ...”
lip. “I guess it’s stupid to look back and be sorry they’re gone, then.”
“It’s
human.” She tilted her head quizzically, as though she were listening to his
thoughts. “But for the artist the real joy is in the creation of the thing.
When you feel something growing under your hands, you grow with it. You’re
alive, the energy flows. When it’s finished, you stop growing. You stop living.
You only live for the next act of creation. Don’t you feel that, when you play
your music?”
“Yes.” He
picked up his flute, running his fingers along the hair fine seams left like
scars on the wounded shell, where she had put it back together for him. She had
done her work so well that even its sound had scarcely been altered. “I guess
so. I never thought about it. But I guess I do.”
“The
blue-violet beetle’s wing, please ... thank you. I don’t know how I got along
before you came.” Malkin sidled along Fate’s hip and crept up into her lap,
kneading the cloth of her loose skirt.
self-deprecating sound that told her truth was flowing upstream. In spite of her
prediction to him the first time they met, the competition of the Maze’s
numberless delights was too much for his fragile island music; he barely earned
enough with his street-corner songs to put food in his mouth. He inhaled,
breathing in the confusion of exotic smells from the Newhavenese botanery next
door and the Samathan restaurant across the alley. If she hadn’t given him the
shelter of her back room, instead of sleeping under the watchful gaze of a
thousand spirit face masks he would be sleeping in the gutter ... or worse.
He looked
back at her, grateful at last that she had forced him to go to the off worlder
police to make his accusation against the slavers. He remembered the surprise
on the face of the Blue who had saved his life when she saw him again, and the
guilt that had reflected on his own. He sighed. “Are the off worlders really
all going to just pack up and leave Tiamat after the next Festival? Abandon
everything they have here? It’s hard to believe.”
“Yes,
almost all of them will go.” She twisted a tassel from golden cord. “Their
preparations have already begun, just as ours have. You could sense the changes
if you’d grown up here. Will that make you sad?”
He looked
up, because it wasn’t the question he had expected. “I—don’t know. Everybody in
Summer always said it was a day to look forward to, the Change; that we’d come
into our own. And I hate how the off worlders blind Winter with a lot of glory
while they take what they want, and then think they can just forget about us.”
His hand closed over his medal; he twisted his fingers through the openings.
“But—”
“But you’ve
been blinded by the glory, just like all of us Winters.” She broke off her knot
tying to stroke Malkin’s silvery, sleeping back.
“I_
She smiled,
watching him with her third eye. “What’s wrong with that? Nothing. You asked me
once whether I resented not being able to leave our world, when I might have my
blindness cured somewhere else. You were thinking that I must resent being
given these sensors instead—having to settle for half-sight instead of full
vision. If I looked at it with perfect eyes, that’s what I might have seen,
too. But I looked with blind eyes ... and to me they look wonderful,”
“Wonder-full.”
back against the wall of the shop, looking away down the alley. “And after the
Festival it all ends.”
“Yes. The
last Festival. Then the off worlders will abandon us, and the Summers will have
to move north again, and life as I’ve always lived it will cease. This time the
choosing of the Queen for a Day will be in earnest ... the Summer Queen’s mask
will be my last and best creation.”
“What will
you do after the Festival is over?” He realized suddenly that the question was
more than rhetorical.
“Begin a
new life.” She tightened a final knot. “Just like everyone else in Carbuncle.
That’s why it’s called the Change, you know.” She held the finished mask up
like an offering to the people passing in the alleyway. He saw some of them
stare and smile.
“Why did
they call you Fate? Your parents, I mean.”
“My mother.
Haven’t you guessed? For the same reason you were called
“You mean,
two Festivals ago—?”
She nodded.
“And it’s been a heavy load, to carry a name like that around for a lifetime.
Be glad you don’t have to.”
He laughed.
“It’s hard enough to carry “Summer’ around, in Carbuncle. It’s like an anchor,
it keeps me from getting anywhere.” He picked up his flute again and put it to
his lips; put it down, looking toward the alley entrance as a murmur of
surprise traveled from person to person toward them.
“What is
it?” Fate put the mask aside, her forehead wrinkling in an unconscious squint.
“Somebody’s
coming up the alley. Somebody rich.” He could see the fineness of the clothing
before he could make out the faces as the strangers came up the narrow way.
There were half a dozen women and men, but his gaze caught on the one who
clearly led the rest. The richness of her exotic clothing suddenly meant
nothing, as he saw her face clearly’ Sparks Fate’s hand found his arm and tightened
around it.
He didn’t
answer. He stood up slowly, feeling the world draw back until he was left alone
in a private space with only ... “Moon!”
She
stopped, smiling recognition at him, and waited while he crossed the space to
her.
“Moon, what
are you—?”
Her
attendants closed around him, catching his arms, holding him back from her.
“What’s the matter with you, boy? You dare to approach the Queen?”
But she
lifted her hand, signaling them to let him go. “It’s all right. I remind him of
someone else, that’s all ... Isn’t that right, Sparks Dawntreader Summer?”
They all
looked at her, but none of them could match his own disbelief. She was Moon,
she was Moon ... but
not
Moon, too.
He shook his head.
Not Moon. The Queen
...
Then this was the Snow Queen, the Queen of Winter, who stood before
him. Embarrassed, half-frightened, he dropped to his knees before her.
She reached
down, took his hand, and drew him to his feet. “That isn’t necessary.” He
raised his head, found her studying his face with an intensity that made him
blush and look away. “How rare to find a Summer with any respect. Who is it
that I reminded you of so much that you saw her instead?” Even the voice was
the same; and yet something in it mocked him.
“My—cousin,
Your Majesty. My cousin Moon.” He swallowed. “H-how did you know who I am?” She
laughed. “If you were a Winter, you wouldn’t ask that. Nothing in this city
escapes my attention. For instance, I’ve heard about your unusual talent as a
musician. In fact, I’ve come here today just to meet you. To ask you to come to
the palace and play for me.”
“Me?”
suddenly not sure whether he was awake. “But, nobody even listens to my music—”
He felt the day’s few coins rattle in his half-empty pocket.