The Snow Queen (3 page)

She put out
her arm and
Sparks
took it somberly; they shook, hands clasping wrists. The clasp became a hug
before she knew it, and the doubts in her heart burned away like morning fog.
“Sparkie, I love you ... more than anything under the sky.” She kissed him,
tasting salt on his lips. “Let the Sea Mother witness that you hold my willing
heart, only you, now and forever.”

He repeated
the words, clearly and proudly, and together they sipped sea water from their
cupped hands to complete the vow. “Nobody can say we’re still too young to
pledge after this journey!” They had pledged their love for the first time when
they were barely old enough to recite the words, and everyone had laughed. But
they had been true to each other ever since; and through the years they had
shared everything, including the hesitant, yearning inevitability of lips
touching, and hands, and flesh ...

Moon
remembered a hidden cranny among the rocks on a leeward bay; warm callused
hands of stone cupping their shivering bodies as they lay together in love under
the bright noon, while the tide whispered far away down the beach. Now, as
then, she could feel the strength of the need that bound them together: the
heat they made between them that held the cold loneliness of their world at
bay. The union of souls that overcame them in the final moment—the height, the
wholeness, that nothing else in their world could ever give her. Together they
would enter this new life, and at last they would belong to their world as
completely as they belonged to each other ... Sparks’s lips brushed her ear;
she leaned forward, her arms going around him again. The boat nosed toward
shore, untended.

“Do you see
anything?”
Sparks
called.

Sparks
checked the boat a last time where it
lay beached firmly in shells and storm wrack, beyond the high-tide line. The
family totem carved at its prow regarded him with three staring painted eyes.
The tide was still going out, but it had already exposed enough wet-mirrored
sand so that dragging the canoe up the beach had taken away their breath. One
of the mers had actually come out onto the shore with them, let them stroke its
wet, slick, brindle fur with timid hands. He had never been close enough to
touch one before; they were as large as he was, and twice as heavy.

“Not
yet—here!” Moon’s voice reached him, along with the frantic waving of her hand.
She had followed the mer’s floundering progress as it moved on up the beach.
“Here by the stream, a path. It must be the one Gran told me about!”

He started
across the littered beach slope toward the freshwater outlet, abandoned shells
crunching under his feet. The stream had laid down a wide band of red silt in
the ochre, cut into the red with channels of moss-green water flow. Where it
left the shore, Moon stood waiting to start into the hills.

“We follow
the stream up?”

She nodded,
following the swift blue-green rise of the cloaked land with her eyes. Naked
peaks of raw red stone soared even higher. Those islands were new on the
measureless time scale of the Sea; their spines still clawed the sky, undulled
by age.

“Looks like
we climb.” He jammed his hands into his pockets, uncertain.

“Yeah.”
Moon watched the mer start back down the beach. Her hand tingled with the feel
of its heavy fur. “We’ll dance in the rigging today.” She looked back at him,
suddenly very much aware of what their presence here meant. “Well, come on,”
almost impatiently. “The first step is the hardest.” They took it together.

But it was
a step that had been taken before, Moon thought as she climbed ...
how many times?
She found the answer
engraved in the hillsides, where the passage of feet had worn down the airy
volcanic pumice until sometimes they walked in narrow tracks eaten away to the
height of their knees.
And how many have
climbed it just to be refused?
Moon thought a quick prayer, looking down as
the trail became a narrow ledge running ankle deep above a canyon of evergreen
fern and impenetrable bush. The day was utterly silent when the wind died; she
had not seen a trace of any living thing larger than a click beetle. Once,
perhaps, the distant cry of a bird ... The stream winked at her from cover
hundreds of feet below, and on her left the green-coated wall vaulted another
hundred into the sky. Though she was used to the precarious footing of sailors
and the narrow paths among fish pens, these contrasts made her giddy.

Sparks
clutched at a protruding bush,
scratching his face. “This isn’t for weak hearts,” not really meaning to say it
out loud.

“Probably
the point,” she mumbled, and wiped her own face on her sleeve.

“You mean
maybe this is the test?” They pressed gingerly past a crumbling patch of eroded
wall.

“Lady!”
half curse, half prayer. “It’s enough for me!”

“How far
does this go? What if it gets dark?”

“I don’t
know ... The valley’s closing, up there.”

“I thought
you said Grandpa did this, when he was young? I thought you knew.”

Moon
swallowed. “Gran told me he gave up and turned back. He never even found the
cave.”

“Now you
tell me!” But he began to laugh. “This isn’t what I thought it would be,
somehow.”

The stream
curved back on itself below, and beyond the next turn of the wall the ledge
widened and the trail widened with it. Here in this inland valley cut off from
the sea wind, the heat of the sun echoed and re-echoed from the heated rock.
Moon pulled off her heavy parka as she walked;
Sparks
already wore his knotted around his
shoulders. The breeze pressed her damp linen shirt against her chest. She
unlaced the shirt down to her belt, scratched herself, sighing. “I’m hot, you
know that? I’m really hot! What do people do when they get too hot? You can
always put on more clothes, but you can only take off so many.” She loosened
the waterskin from her belt and drank. Somewhere ahead she heard a rushing
sound, but she only thought of fat sizzling in a kettle.

“We
probably won’t have to worry about it.”
Sparks
shrugged with good-natured reasonableness. “High summer’s still a long way off.
We’ll probably be dead before it gets that hot.” His foot slipped; he went down
on one knee with a grunt. “Maybe sooner.”

“Funny.”
She helped him up; her own feet were as clumsy as stones. “You can already see
the Summer Star. I saw it through my fingers a few days ... Oh—” whispered. She
rubbed her stinging face with the back of her hand.

“Yes.”
Sparks
slumped against
the out curving wall. Beyond the final turn of the trail the rushing became the
roar of water flung over a precipice, battered by rocks, a silvered sacrifice
falling eternally to its death. And there the trail ended.

They stood
breathless and confused in the cacophony of sound and spray beside the falls.
“It can’t end here!”
Sparks
struck at the falling water. “We know this is the right path. Where is it?”

“Here!”
Moon crouched, peering over the edge beside the water curtain, loose strands of
hair falling forward in dripping fingers. “Handholds in the rock.” She stood up
again, wiping her hair back. “Suddenly this isn’t ...” She shook her head, the
words lost as she looked back at him and saw the anger on his face.

“What is this,
anyway?”
Sparks
shouted down the valley toward the sea. “What more proof do You want? Do we
have to kill ourselves?”

“No!” Moon
pulled at his arm, his temper grating like sand on her fatigue. “She wants us
to be sure. And we are.” She crouched down again, pulling off her boots, and
put a foot over the edge.

She began
to climb down, letting the roar and the spray fill her senses, batter down her
fear. She saw Sparks begin the climb above her; telling herself that countless
people had gone down before her, through countless years ... (foot fumbling
over wet rock) ... she would do it, too ... (another step! her fingers clutched
a lip of stone) ... this wet climb was no more than the rigging of a ship,
which she had climbed without thought countless times ... (and once more) ...
always trusting in the Sea Mother to place her hands and feet surely ...
(fingers cramping; she bit her lip)... She concentrated on belief, in the Lady,
in herself; because only if she doubted either one would she ... (her foot beat
against the wet-slimed wall, finding no crevice, no step, no—)

“Sparks!”
Her voice scaled up. “It just ends!”

“...
ledge
!
...” She heard the word, distorted by
the roaring and her own terror; clung to it desperately, as she hugged the
cliff face. “Go right!” She kicked right, opening her eyes as her foot found
the ledge of stone. Blinking hard, she saw it disappear behind the falling
water. She reached out, with a quick twist of her body pulled herself over and
into the cleft.
Sparks
came after her; she put out her hand to help him across.

“Thanks.”
He shook himself, shook his stiffened hands.

“Thank
you
.” She took a long breath. They moved
deeper into the cleft together, realizing, as their eyes adjusted to the green dappling
of light, that it pushed on into the side of the valley. “This is it—this must
be it! We’re here, the choosing-place ...”

They
stopped again, their hands reaching out for each other instinctively. They
stood breathless, waiting. Nothing called them but the voice of the falls.
Nothing touched them but the random drift of spray. “Come on,”
Sparks
tugged at her, “let’s go deeper.”

The cleft
peaked in shadows far overhead, making Moon think of praying hands, as they
followed the serpentine shaft into the rock face.
Sparks
collided abruptly with a sharp turn.
“I knew I should’ve brought a candle.”

“It’s not
dark.” Moon looked at him in surprise. “It’s strange how the light keeps
getting greener ...”

“What are
you talking about? It’s like being buried alive—I can’t even see you!”

“Come on.”
Unease began to stir in her. “It’s not that dark—just open your eyes. Come on,
Sparkie!” She pulled on his arm. “Can’t you feel it? Like music ...”

“No. This
place gives me the creeps.”

“Come on.”
She pulled harder, straining now.

“No—wait
...” He gave a few steps, and a few more.

The music
filled her now, centered at her head and spreading through her body like the
rhythm of her blood. It touched her like silk, with the taste of ambrosia and
the green light of the sea. “Don’t you feel it?”

“Moon.”
Sparks
grunted as he came
up against another wall in the darkness. “Moon, stop! It’s no good. I can’t see
anything, I don’t hear anything ... I’m—failing, Moon.” His voice wavered.

“No, you’re
not! You can’t.” She turned distractedly to the truth in his eyes, unfocused
like a blind man’s, the confusion on his face. “Oh, you can’t ...”

“I can’t
breathe, it’s like tar. We’ve got to turn back, before it’s too late.” His hand
tightened over her wrist, pulling her back toward him, away from the music and
the light.

“No.” Her
free hand closed over his, tried to break his grip. “You go back without me.”

“Moon, you
promised! We promised—you have to come.”

“I do not!”
She jerked loose, saw him stumble back, surprised and hurt. “
Sparks
, I’m sorry ...”

“Moon ...”

“I’m sorry
...” She backed away, into the arms of the music. “I have to! I can’t stop now,
I can’t help it—it’s too beautiful. Come with me! Try, please try!” getting
farther and farther away from him.

“You
promised. Come back, Moon!”

She turned
and ran, his voice drowned by the song of her breaking heart’s desire.

She ran
until the cleft widened again, spilling her out into an unnatural space lit by
the perfectly ordinary flame of an oil lamp. She rubbed her eyes in the sudden
gold, as if she had come out of darkness. When she could see again, when the
shining song fell away and released her, she was not surprised to find Clavally
waiting, and a stranger ... Clavally, whose smile she could never forget,
through years, or even a lifetime.

“You’re—Moon!
So, you did come!”

“I
remembered,” she nodded, radiant with the joy of the chosen, and wiping away
tears.

The city of
Carbuncle
sits like a great spiral shell cast up
at the edge of the sea, high in the northern latitudes on the coast of
Tiamat
’s largest island. It breathes restlessly with the
deep rhythms of the tide, and its ancient form seems to belong to the ocean
shore, as though it had actually been born of the Sea Mother’s womb. It is
called the City on Stilts, because it wades on pylons at the sea’s edge; its
cavernous underbelly provides a safe harbor for ships, sheltering them from the
vagaries of the sea and weather. It is called Starport because it is the center
of off world trade; although the real star port lies inland, and is forbidden
ground to the people of Tiamat. It is called Carbuncle because it is either a
jewel or a fester, depending on your point of view.