Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

“No.” She glanced away toward the Hall of the Winds. “I have other plans for her. She’ll pay her debt… believe me, she will. Now go. I want it to happen soon.”

He bowed, and left the hall. She sat alone in the vast white silence.

Sparks lay spread-eagled across the bed in his private suite of rooms, his fingers tracing the tendrils of an alien vine across the elaborately carven headboard, and retracing them. Gone. She’s gone . repeating the words as he repeated the pattern, over and over. But he had no strength to believe — no strength to react, to move, to feel. No tears. How could she be gone — gone from his world as irretrievably as if she had died? Not Moon, who had been a part of his life from the day he was born. Not Moon, who had pledged herself to be a part of him forever…

Moon who had broken her pledge, and become a sibyl. Why? Why had she done that to him? Why had she done this to him now? Because shed believed he was never coming back? Then why hadn’t he gone back to Neith long ago! If he’d been there when she came home, this wouldn’t have happened.

But he hadn’t gone back. First because of all that had gone wrong, and then, after the Queen had come to find him, because of everything that had gone right. And always, because of Carbuncle. Neith and the whole of Summer’s world seemed as distant and gray as a bank of fog now; the only reality was the kaleidoscope of city images that had expanded his senses and his awareness until he would never be content in that narrow world of islands and sea again. The Sea… the sea was no more than a film of water on a ball of stone to the people of the city. They swore by a thousand gods, and prayed to them rarely — and the answers they really wanted they got from their machines.

He had an outlet for one of those machines here on a table in the next room. He had filled up the absurd amount of space the Queen had set aside for him with instruments that talked and sang and even listened, that took pictures and showed pictures, that told him the time or the distance to the nearest stars. Sometimes he had tried to take them apart, only to find that their workings crumbled to dust in his hand, or that they were empty, except for flakes of metal painted with insect tracks and furred with filaments. But the Queen had encouraged him to do it, let him explore the tech devices of the palace; even sent him out into the labyrinth of shops in the Maze to choose more.

He still wondered why she had chosen him, and why she had rewarded him so greatly for the little he had to offer. Although he no longer wondered about it as much as he had in the beginning. He had first grown aware of the way the Queen watched him while he played for her — the intensity that had nothing to do with his music, that made his fingers begin to stumble, and left him feeling as though he stood before her naked. And later there had been a touch, a whispered word, a kiss, a chance encounter in a private place… And she was so like Moon that he had found it hard to keep his own eyes off her, hard not to meet her gaze, hard not to match the emotion and answer the demand he found there.

But she was not Moon, she was the ageless Queen of Winter, and as he watched her deal with the off worlders and nobles who came before her at court that truth was made plain to him over and over. There were things she was that Moon lacked the years for — the wisdom, the calculating judgment, the depths of experience that lay behind her knowing smile. And there were things she was that Moon would never be, things he found harder to name… like the nameless things that were Moon which he never saw in her. And she could never become the memories, never be the one he had shared everything with.

Yet they were so alike, and it had been so long… until sometimes, like the city, Arienrhod became the reality, Moon only an afterimage. And that made him afraid; the fear of losing his own reality stopped his tongue when he would have taken her invitation.

But now the string had been cut that kept him bound to the Summer half of his life. Moon was gone. She was gone. There was no

Ill reason now for him ever to go home… they would never unravel the tangle they had made of their future now. He would never see her again; he would never lie beside her again, as he had lain beside her for the first time on the braided rug before the hearth, while the wind rattled and wailed through a midnight blackness beyond the walls and Gran slept peacefully in the next room… The tears came at last, he rolled onto his side and buried them in the soft darkness of his pillow.

He did not hear so much as feel someone enter the room, a chill draft as the door opened and closed again silently. He sat up, wiping at his face, started to rise as he recognized the Queen.

But Arienrhod put a hand on his shoulder, forced him gently back down onto the bed. “No. Tonight we aren’t subject and queen, but only two people who have both lost someone they loved.” She sat down beside him, the pleated fluidness of the robe she wore baring one shoulder. She was dressed almost plainly, with no jewels but a necklace of beaten metal leaves on a knotted silk cord.

He wiped his face again, wiping away his embarrassment but not his confusion. “I — I don’t understand… Your Majesty.” Seeing her beside him here, it occurred to him at last to wonder… “How did you know? About Moon. About Moon and me?”

“You’re still asking me how I know things, after all the time you’ve been here?” She smiled.

He looked down, pressed his hands over his knees. “But… why us? Out of everyone in the world — we were just Summers.”

“Haven’t you guessed even a little of it by now, Sparks ? Look at me.” He looked up again. “I reminded you of someone… I remind you of Moon, don’t I?” He nodded. “You thought I didn’t understand,” she touched his arm. “But I did; I know it — bothered you. She is my kin, my flesh and blood, closer to me than even you are to her.”

“Are you… ?” He tried to imagine what relation they could be, who were so alike in every feature. “Moon’s aunt? Her father’s—”

She shook her head; a creamy strand of hair came loose and uncoiled along her neck. “Moon has no father… any more. And we don’t have her any more, you and I. I never even had the chance to meet her, but she was as important, as precious to me as she was to you. Perhaps even more so. I had hoped, in time, that we could have her with us here in the city.” Her eyes left him, moving restlessly over the ornate, cluttered table along the wall.

“She wouldn’t have come.” His voice went flat. “Not after she was a sibyl.”

“You think not? Not even for you?” The hand still rested sympathetically on his arm.

He sighed. “I wasn’t ever as important to her as being a sibyl was. But why didn’t you tell me about — her, and you, and — and us?” Somehow he was no longer speaking to the Queen, but to the one person who understood his own loss.

“I would have told you. I am telling you now. But I wanted to know what sort of lover my… kinswoman would choose over all the rest. 1 wanted to know you for myself first. And I approve of her choice, very much.” The hand squeezed lightly, left his arm again; she brushed irritably at the loose strand of her hair, only setting more free. He had never seen her like this, weary and distraught and disappointed. So very human, so much like he was… so much like Moon.

“I’ll never know Moon now, Sparks . I only have you to tell me about her, to remind me of her. Tell me what you remember most clearly, and feel the most deeply about her. What things did she love — what things about her did you love more than all the rest? Tell me how much you loved her…”