Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

But this woman had stumbled off the ritual path once already. Is she so stupid? Or was it something else? “I would see your face, yes,” forcing the words out between numb lips.

The Summer Queen moved closer to the cart, where the crowd could not see her clearly. Slowly she put her hands to the mask, and lifted it off her head.

A cascade of silvery hair tumbled out and down. Arienrhod gaped at the face that the mask revealed. The ring of Summers surrounding the cart gaped, too. She heard their voices murmur as the wonder spread, as they all saw what she saw… face to face with her own face.

“Moon—” barely even a whisper to betray her. Her body sat perfectly still, as though it saw nothing unusual, nothing remarkable, incredible, impossible. Not in vain. It was not in vain!

“Gods,” Herne mumbled thickly. “How? How’d you do it, Arienrhod?”

She only smiled.

Moon shook out her hair, meeting the smile with forgiveness, and defiance, and compassion. “Change has come… because of you, in spite of you, Your Majesty.” She lowered the mask over her head again.

The Summers around the cart drew away, looking from face to face, their own expressions caught between amazement and fear. “The Queen! They’re both the Queen—” an augury, an omen. The sibyl tattoo was clearly visible on Moon’s throat; they pointed at it and murmured again.

Herne chuckled with difficulty. “The secret’s out… it’s out at last. She’s been off world, she knows what she is.”

“What? What, Herne?” trying to turn her head.

“Sibyls are everywhere! You never knew, did you; you never even suspected. And those stuffed dummies—” glancing toward the off worlders in the stands, “they don’t suspect a thing.” His mangled laughter left him gasping.

Sibyls are everywhere?… Can they be real? No, it isn’t fair, there’s so much left to learn! Closing her eyes, unable to focus her inner sight. But it wasn’t in vain.

The chorus of wailing and execration began to press again, inexorable like the process of change, impatient for the sacrifice. All of the crowd’s overflowing grief, all of its blame, all of its hostility and resentment and fear poured into this fragile boat, onto the helpless beings of herself and Herne, to be taken down with them at the ritual’s culmination. She no longer strained against the contact between her body and Herne’s, grateful at last for someone to share the trial, and this last moment, with her… the passing through into another plane. She had seen too many visions of heaven, too many hells, to choose among them. I hope we make our own.

She turned her gaze outward a last time, to see Moon standing aside from the cart’s path: Her body was taut with strain, as though she were about to speak an unforgivable curse, one that she could never take back. Why should it hurt her? I would rejoice — Not able to remember why she would rejoice, or even whether it was true. She rallied her mind one last time, before Moon could speak the fateful words, to speak her own last words. “My people—” half obliterated by their cries. “Winter is gone! Obey the new Queen… as you would your own. For she is your own now.” She dropped her head, catching only Moon’s eyes. “Where… is he?”

Moon moved her head slightly, a twinge of jealousy in it, but granting her clone-mother’s last request. Arienrhod followed her glance to find Sparks standing among the honored Summers, by the empty place that was the Summer Queen’s own in the stands. But he stood with his eyes closed against the parting moment; or against the chance that she might look up and see him one last time… He cares… he does care. She looked back again at Moon. They both do. In that moment infinitely surprised, eternally confounded, by life’s imperviousness to reason or justice.

Herne’s smoldering stare lay waiting for her when she turned her head back again — knowing whom her thoughts belonged to in this final moment.

“Forever… Herne.”

He shook his head once. “We’re forever. This is. Death is. Life’s what doesn’t last.”

“We live while someone remembers us. And they’ll never forget me now—” Because her reincarnation already stood in her place. She had no will left to let her look back at Moon once more, or at Sparks. Never look back.

Moon raised her hands to the Sea, crying like a gull into the storm of the crowd’s anticipation. “Lady Sea, Mother of us all, accept our gifts and return them ninefold, accept our sins and bring us renewal, accept the soul of Winter and let it be — reborn.” She faltered imperceptibly. “Let spring come to Summer!”

Arienrhod felt the cart lurch as the Summers pushed it forward, watched the oily water surface draw near. The tide was at full, and it lay below the pier’s edge like a distorted mirror. Let it happen. It was not in vain. The howls and moans of the crowd were a hymn to the future, praising her memory. The cart began to tilt under her; she leaned forward, looking for her reflection as it slipped…

Moon saw the cart strike the water, plunge and reemerge; heard it, felt its impact vibrate in her bones. The crowd’s roaring went on and on, hideously. The boat form drifted away from the dock, lowering in the water, swinging slowly until she could see Starbuck’s hidden face and the face of the Snow Queen, Arienrhod… herself: serene with drug stupor, bound to her impotent lover in a grotesque parody of an embrace. The boat began to spiral more rapidly as it filled with water. Moon tried to shut her eyes, but they would not close against the hypnotic final movement of the death dance on the water. She remembered her own ordeal by sea, remembered all that had brought her to this place, again, sacrifice upon sacrifice. And still she could not look away The boat lurched suddenly, as the faces revolved again toward the crowd, and in the blink of an eye it was gone. Moon blinked again and again, but it did not reappear. The sea surface lay in unperturbed undulation, with only a telltale litter of boughs to mark Her acceptance of Her peoples’ offering. The crowd’s roaring was like a storm, and the underworld trembled. Moon watched the lazy motion of the swells, standing as fluid and unresponsive as the Sea Herself.

One of the Summers came forward at last, touched her arm hesitantly. Moon shuddered under the touch, and breathed again. “Lady?” He bowed as Moon turned at last. The Summers acknowledged their Queen’s role as the Sea Mother incarnate, and did not use the artificial off world form of royal address. “The unmasking—”

“I know.” She nodded, looking back over her shoulder at the sea even as she spoke. Fair voyage, safe haven. She moved away from the edge of the dock, into the crowd’s eye once more. “Lady”… I am the Queen.

“The Queen… the Queen… the Queen is dead. Long live the Queen!” The shouts of the Summers echoed inside her, a mockery.

She placed her hands on her mask, hands that felt damp and chill like the wind through the underworld. “My people—” She felt her body resist the motion of exposing her face again; suddenly, disconcertingly aware of the danger she had only glimpsed in the eyes of the Summers who stood here on the pier around her. Now her resemblance to Arienrhod would be obvious to everyone — and especially to the off worlders. If they even suspected the truth… She shook her head, shaking the rest of the words loose that she must say to the waiting crowd: “Winter is past, Summer has come at last. The Lady has taken our offering, and will return it ninefold. The life that was is dead — let it be cast away, like a battered mask, an outgrown shell. Rejoice now, and make a new beginning!” She lifted the mask from her head.