Authors: Joan D. Vinge
The Snow Queen (2 page)
Moon kept
his tech secrets from Gran and the world, grateful that he at least shared them
with her, but nursing a secret resentment. For all she knew her own father
could have been a Winter or even an off worlder, but she was content with
building a future that fit under her own sky. Because of that it was hard for
her to be patient with
who was not, who was caught in the space between the heritage he lived and the
one he saw in starlight.
“Oh,
Sparks.” She leaned forward, rested a chilly hand on his shoulder, massaging
the knotted muscles through the thickness of cloth and oilskins. “I’m not
teasing. I didn’t mean to; I’m sorry,” thinking, I’d rather have no father at
all than live with a shadow all my life. “Don’t be sad. Look there!” Blue
sparks danced on the ocean beyond red sparks gleaming in his hair. Wingfish
flashed and soared above the swells of the
and she saw the island clearly now, leeward, the highest of three. Serpentine
lace marked the distant meeting of sea and shore. “The choosing-place! And
look, mers!” She blew a kiss in awed reverence.
Long,
sinuous, brindle-colored necks were breaking the water surface around and ahead
of them; ebony eyes studied them with inscrutable knowledge. The mers were the Sea’s
children, and a sailor’s luck. Their presence could only mean that the Lady was
smiling.
smiling too, and caught her hand. “They’re leading us in—She knows why we’ve
come. We’ve really come, we’re going to be chosen at last.” He pulled the
coiled shell flute out of the pouch at his hip and set free a joyous run of
notes. The mers’ heads began to weave with the music, and their own eerie
whistles and cries sang counterpoint. The old tales said that they lamented a terrible
loss, and a terrible wrong; but no two tales agreed on what the loss or the
wrong had been.
Moon
listened to their music, not finding it sad at all. Her own throat was suddenly
too tight for song: She saw in her mind another shore, half their lifetime ago,
where two children had picked up a dream lying like a rare coiled shell in the
sand at the feet of a stranger. She followed the memory back through
time ...
Moon and
the rough walls between the shallow harbor pens, a net slung swaying like a
hammock from shoulder to slim shoulder between them. Their deft, callused feet
slapped and splashed along the piled-stone pathways, immune to bruises and the
lapping icy water. The klee in the pens, usually as sluggish as stones on the
weedy bottom, surfaced with ungainly haste to watch the children pass. They
blew spray and grunted with hunger; but the net was empty, its burden of dried
sea hair already dumped into the family stock-pens for the midday feeding.
“Hurry up,
Sparkie!” Moon, in the lead as usual, pulled the netting taut between them,
hauling her shorter cousin along like a reluctant load of fish. She swept the
white fall of her bangs back from her face, eyes on the deep-water channel that
drove straight in to shore beyond the fish yards Already the tall tops of the
cloven sails—all she could see of the fishing fleet from here—were sweeping
ahead. “We’ll never get to the docks first!” She pulled harder, in frustration.
“I’m
hurry
ing, Moon. It’s almost like
my
mother coming home, too!”
burst of speed; she felt him catch up behind her, heard him panting. “Do you
think Gran will make honey cake
“For sure!”
Leaping, she almost stumbled. “I saw her getting out the pot.”
They ran
on, dancing over the stones toward the gleaming noonday beach and the village
beyond. Moon pictured the brown, smiling face of her mother as they had last
seen her, three months ago: thick sand-colored braids piled on her head, hidden
under a dark knit cap; the thick high-necked sweater, slicker, and heavy boots
that made her indistinguishable from her crew as she tossed them a last kiss,
while the double-hulled fishing boat leaned into the winds of sunrise.
But today
she was home again. They would all go down to the village hall with the other
fishing families, to celebrate and dance. And then, very late at night, she
would curl up in her mother’s lap (although she was getting too big to curl up
in her mother’s lap), held close in the sturdy arms; watching Sparks through
heavy lids to see if he fell asleep first, in Gran’s arms. There would be the
warm snap and whisper of flames on the hearth, the smell of sea and ships that
clung to her mother’s hair, the hypnotic flow of voices as Gran reclaimed her
own daughter from the Sea, who was Mother to them all.
Moon leaped
down into the soft, golden-brown beach sand.
their shadows tangling in the noonday glare. With her eyes fixed on the
cluttered stone houses of the village and the boats dropping sail in the bay,
she almost darted past the stranger who stood waiting, watching, as they came.
Almost
sand exploded around their ankles.
She threw
her arms around him for balance, squeezed the indignation out of him as her own
amazement tightened her hold.
their reunion. Moon tugged at the hem of her hand-me down sweater, knitting her
fingers into the heavy rust-red yarn.
The woman
smiled down at them, the radiant oval of her face touched with windburn above
her ancient gray parka, the thick pants and clumsy boots worn by any islander.
But she was not from Neith, not simply from any island ...
“Did—did
you come out of the Sea?” Moon gasped.
The woman
laughed; her laughter broke the spell of otherworldliness like window glass.
“No ... only across it, on a ship.”
“Why?”
“Who are
you?” Their questions ran together.
And in answer
to both, the woman held out the medallion she wore on a chain: a barbed trefoil
like a bouquet of fish hooks, glittering with the darkly sinister beauty of a
reptile’s eye. “Do you know what this is?” She went down on one knee in the
sand, her black braids dropping forward. They shuffled closer, blinking.
“Sibyl ...
?” Moon whispered timidly, seeing
the woman’s, and she knew why the dark, compelling eyes seemed to open on
infinity. A sibyl was the earthly channel for supernatural wisdom, chosen
through the Lady’s Own judgment, who by temperament and training had the
strength to withstand a holy visitation.
The woman
nodded. “I am Clavally Bluestone Summer.” She set her hands against her
forehead. “Ask, and I will answer.”
They did
not ask, dazed by the knowledge that she would—could—answer any question they
could imagine; or that the Lady Herself would answer them with Clavally’s lips,
while the sibyl was swept away in a trance.
“No
questions?” Formality fell away again, held at bay by her good humor. “Then
tell me who you are, who already know everything you need to know?”
“I’m Moon,”
Moon said, pushing at her bangs. “Moon Dawntreader Summer. This’s my cousin,
Sparks Dawntreader Summer, and I don’t know enough to ask about anything!” she
finished miserably.
“I do.”
holding out his medal. “What did this used to be?”
“
Input ...
” Clavally took it between her
fingers, frowned faintly,
murmuring
. Her eyes turned
to smoky quartz, moved wildly, like a dreamer’s; her hand fisted over the disc.
“Sign of the Hegemony—two crosses bound within a circle symbolize the unity of
Kharemough and its seven subordinate worlds ... medal awarded for valorous
service, Kispah uprising: “What all may strive for, this one has found. To our
beloved son Temmon Ashwini Sirus, this day, 9:113:07.” Sandhi, official
language of Kharemough and the Hegemony.
No
further analysis
.” Her head dropped forward, let go by an unseen force. She
swayed gently on her knees, sighed, sat back. “Well.”
“But what
does it
mean
?”
danced against his parka front, and his mouth formed an uncertain line.
Clavally
shook her head. “I don’t know. The Lady only speaks through me, not to me.
That’s the Transfer—the way it is.”
“The
Hegemony,” Moon said quickly. “What’s the Hegemony, Clavally?”
“The off
worlders.” Clavally’s eyes widened slightly. “The Hegemony is what they call
themselves. So it’s an off world thing, then ... I’ve never been to Carbuncle.”
Her glance went to it again. “How did this get here, so far from the star port
and the Winters?” And back to their faces, “You’re merrybegots, aren’t you?
Your mothers went to the last Festival together, and were lucky enough to come
back with you ... and also this keepsake?”
logic as he was of the Lady’s trances, “Then ... my father isn’t a Summer; he
isn’t even on Tiamat?”
“That I
can’t tell you.” Clavally stood up. Moon saw a strange concern cross her face
as she looked back at
“But I do know that merrybegots are specially blessed. Do you know why I’m
here?”
They shook
their heads.
“Do you
know what you want to be when you grow up?”
“Together,”
Moon answered without thinking.
Again the
bright laughter. “Good! I’m making this journey through the Windwards to urge
all the young Summers, before they settle into life, to remember that they can
dedicate themselves to the Sea in another way than as fishers or farmers. They
can serve the Lady by serving their fellow human beings as sibyls, as I do.
Some of us are born with a special seed inside us, and it only waits for the
Lady to touch us and make it grow. When you’re old enough, maybe you two will hear
Her call, and go to a choosing place.”
“Oh.” Moon
shivered slightly. “I think I hear Her now!” She pressed cold hands against her
leaping heart, where a dream seed sprouted.
“Me too, me
too!”
Clavally
pulled up the hood of her parka against a sudden buffet of wind. “No, not yet.
Wait a little longer; until you’re certain of what you hear.”
“How long?”
“A month?”
She rested
her hands on the two small shoulders. “More like years, I think.”
“Years!”
Moon protested.
“By then
you’ll be sure it isn’t just the crying of sea birds you hear. But always
remember, in the end it won’t be you who will choose the Lady, but the Lady Who
will choose you.” She looked again, almost pointedly, at
“All
right.” Moon wondered at the look, and straightened her shoulders resolutely
under the hand. “We’ll wait. And we’ll remember.”
“And now—”
the sibyl dropped her hands—“I think someone is waiting for you.”
Time began
to flow forward again, and they fled, running—with many backward glances—toward
town.
“Moon,
remember the last thing she said to us?” The silver play of notes dissolved as
and looked back, breaking in on Moon’s memory. The mers stopped their own song,
looking toward the boat.
“Clavally?”
Moon guided the outrigger around the point of land that jagged inward at the
mouth of the bay. The shoreline of the
waiting for us?”
“No. That
the Lady chooses us, not the other way around.”
eyes come back to her face. “I mean ... what if She only chooses one of us?
What will we do?”
“She’ll
choose us both!” Moon grinned. “How could She do anything else? We’re
merrybegots—we’re lucky.”
“But what
if She doesn’t?” He fingered the packing of moss where the halves of the wooden
hull had been lashed together.
Inseparable
... he frowned slightly. “Nobody
makes
you become a sibyl, do they, just because you pass the test? We can swear to
each other now, that if only one of us is chosen, that one will turn it down.
For the sake of the other.”
“For the
sake of us both.” Moon nodded.
But
She
will choose us both
. She had never doubted, since
that moment years ago, that she would come to this place and hear the Lady call
her. It had been her heart’s desire for half a lifetime; and she had made
certain
common goal.