Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

All the rest, all the other Festival pageants, had been only dress rehearsals for the next Change, this Change. They had chosen the Queen for a Day by the same ancient ritual rules, to reign over the Mask Night and make this journey at dawn. But only a pair of effigies had been given to the sea at her command, and not human lives.

And only she and the Assembly members had remained unchanged, like the ritual itself, through all of those Festivals, all the long years. But this final time would see the end of her and all her efforts to break free of them, while they went on and the system they symbolized went on forever. Her hands clenched on the soft cloth of her gown. If I could only take them all with me! But it was too late, too late for anything at all.

She saw the Summer Queen at last; standing on the pier in the open space between the red-robed stands, with the bitter-colored water lapping below her. Her mask was a thing of beauty that stirred unwilling admiration in Arienrhod’s heart. But it was made by a Winter. And who knew what homely, undeserving islander’s face was hidden beneath it; what sturdy peasant body and dull-witted mind were wrapped in the glistening fish-net cocoon of silky green mesh. The prospect of that face, that mind, taking the place of her own made her stomach twist.

Herne was silent beside her, as silent as she was. She wondered what his own thoughts were as he looked on the waiting elite of his homeworld, and the waiting sea. She could tell nothing about the expression beneath his mask. Damn him. She prayed that he was regretting his suicidal impulse now; that he felt even a fraction of the despair and regret that she knew, standing here in the ruins of her life’s ambition. Let death be oblivion, then! If I have to spend it with this symbol of all my failures, knowing that I did would be worse than all the hells of the god-damning off worlders combined!

The cart had gone forward as far as it could into the open space along the pier’s edge. The escort of her nobles slowed, stopped, let the traces settle. They circled slowly three times around her, casting their off world offerings into the back of the cart, as they sang their final song of farewell to Winter. They bowed to her at last, and she could hear their individual weeping and lamentation above the crowd’s cries as they began to file away from the cart. Some touched the hem of her cloak to their lips as they passed her for the last time. Some even dared to touch her hand — some of the oldest, the faithful followers of a century and a half — and their grief touched her suddenly, unexpectedly, deeply.

Their place was taken by a circle of Summers, also masked, also singing, a paean to the coming golden days. She closed her mind and did not listen to it. They, too, circled her three tunes around, throwing their own offerings into the cart — clattering primitive necklaces of shell and stone, colored fishing floats, sprigs of wilted greenery.

When they had finished their own song, a greater silence fell over the waiting crowd; until she could hear clearly the creakings and groans of shifting moorings, made aware of the greater alien crowd of ships that covered the water surface; a near-solid skin of wood and cloth and clanging metal. Carbuncle loomed above them like a gathering storm, but here at this edge of the city’s under structure she could see beyond its shadow, out across the gray-green open sea. Endless… eternal… is it any wonder that we worship you? Remembering that once, in a faraway time, even she had believed in the Sea.

The mask of the Summer Queen came between her and her view of the sea, as the woman came up between the cart’s traces to stand before her. “Your Majesty.” The Summer Queen bowed to her, and Arienrhod remembered that she was still the Queen, until death. “You have come.” The voice was strangely uncertain, and strangely familiar.

She nodded, regal and aloof, in control again of the one thing that was still within her power. “Yes,” recalling the ritual response, “I have come to be changed. I am the Sea incarnate; as the tide turns and the world has its seasons, so must I follow to lead. Winter has had its season… the snow dissolves on the face of the Sea, and from it soft rains are reborn.” Her voice rang eerily through the underworld. The ritual was being recorded by hidden cameras, broadcast sight and sound over screens set up throughout the city.

“Summer follows Winter as night follows day. The sea joins the land. Together the halves become whole; who can separate them? Who can deny them their place, or their time, when their time has come? They are born of a power greater than any here. Their truth is universal!” The Summer Queen lifted her arms to the crowd.

Arienrhod started slightly. She had never said that last line, never heard it before. The crowds murmured; a prickling unease crept in her.

“Who comes with you to be changed?”

“My beloved,” keeping her voice even, “whose body is like the earth, coupled with the Sea. Together beneath the sky, we can never be separated.” The cold wind burned her eyes. Herne said nothing, did nothing, waiting with appropriate stoicism.

“Then so be it.” The woman’s voice actually broke. She held out her hands, and two of the attendant Summers placed a small bowl of dark liquid in each. The Summer Queen offered a bowl to Herne; he took it willingly. She offered the other to Arienrhod. “Will you drink to the Lady’s mercy?”

Arienrhod felt her mouth stiffen against the reply; said, finally, “Yes.” The bowl held a strong drug which would dull her fear and awareness of what was coming. Beside her Herne lifted his black mask and raised the bowl to his lips, grimaced. Arienrhod raised her own. She had always intended to refuse it; rejecting the idea of dimming her awareness of the moment when her triumph would have been clear. But now she wanted oblivion. “To the Lady.” She sniffed the pungent fragrance of the herbs, felt their numbing gall burn inside her mouth. She swallowed the liquid, deadening her throat; the second swallow, and the third were as tasteless as water.

As she finished it and returned the bowl she saw Summers approaching, carrying the ropes that would bind them to the cart, and to each other, inescapably. Terror congealed in her chest, panic darkened her sight. Deaden me, for gods’ sakes! trying to feel the numbness spread. Herne almost resisted as the Summers laid hands on him; she saw his muscles twist and harden, and his weakness gave her strength. She sat perfectly still and pliant as the Summers bound her hands, her feet, bound her body tightly against Herne’s and fastened the ropes to the cart itself. Even though the cart had the form of a blunt-nosed boat, she knew that its bed gaped with holes beneath the heaps of furs and offerings, and that it would sink almost immediately. She couldn’t keep her hands from straining at their bonds, or her body from trying to pull away from Herne’s. His masked face turned toward her, but she would not look at him.

The Summer Queen was back in place before them, but turning to face the water as she recited the final Invocation to the Sea. As she finished, the silence that had fallen over the crowd continued, the silence of anticipation now. Now, at any moment, she would give the sign. Arienrhod felt a dreamlike lethargy creep along her limbs, along her spine; but her mind was still far too clear. Is it meant to work that way? At least now her body was becoming too leaden to betray her, granting her dignity in death whether she wanted it or not.

But instead of moving aside, the Summer Queen turned back to face her again. “Your Majesty.” The urgency of the muffled voice caught at her. “Would you — look on the face of Summer’s Queen before you die?”

Arienrhod stared uncomprehendingly, felt Herne stare, too. Tradition said that the new Queen did not unmask, casting off her sins, until the old one had gone into the sea; giving the sign for the crowd to follow.