Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

Even so, she did not recognize the stranger who sat self-consciously on the bench under the vine-covered courtyard wall, as her mother led her to “a suitor,” and left her to stand awkward and uncertain in the man’s eager scrutiny. He was conservatively dressed in a business suit and cloak; the shadow of a wide-brimmed hat half obscured his face. But what she could see of the face, dimly through her veil, was purple and green.

Apprehensively she threw back her dark blue head veil to let him see her own face, keeping her eyes averted. She curtseyed, her necklace of silver bells singing in the quiet air.

“Elsevier. You don’ recognize me, do you?” The words slurred, but his disappointment reached her clearly. He pulled off his hat.

But she had recognized his voice, even distorted as it was, and sat down on the bench beside him with a small cry of astonishment. “You! Oh… hallowed Calavre!” barely aware that she swore. Her hand rose to, but didn’t touch, his face; the warm brown of his skin was a tapestry of half-healed cuts and bruises, the sharp line of his jaw was still blurred and swollen.

“I toF your fadder I was in an acciden’.” He smiled with his lips and his eyes; pointed, “Jaw’s ‘ired shut,” in explanation.

Her own face furrowed with empathy, she twisted her hands in her lap.

“It’s aw right Hardly hurts at all now.” The inquisitors had not given him to the Blues, but instead had taken turns beating him bloody in holy vengeance for a day and a night, finally throwing him out into the street at dawn, to crawl away as fast as he could. “I don’t wanna think about it eidder…” He laughed once; but many years would pass before he even told her the smallest part of the truth. He fell silent, looking at her as though he expected something. “Is your jaw ‘ired shut too, sister?”

“No!” She shook her head, jingling. “I — I have thought about you. Over and over. I thought I’d never see you again; I was afraid for you.” She felt a sudden desire to cradle his bruised face against her heart. “Why did you come here?” She wove the cloth of her veil between her fingers. Not as a suitor. But she did not re-cover her face, or feel a need to, with him.

“I had to be sure you ‘ere aw right You are aw right He leaned forward.

“Yes. My father came… You were so land to me. My father would—”

“No. Blease don’ tell him about me. Jus’ tell me you listened to my ideas. Tell me I Planted a seed in your mind… Tell me you want to know more.”

“Why?” Of all the questions and answers that filled her mind, all that escaped her mouth was the one that told him nothing.

“ ‘Why?’ ” But she saw in his eyes that he understood.

“Ell… because I ’ant to see you again.”

“Oh! I could touch the sky with my finger!” She giggled inanely; put her hands over her mouth at the look on his face. The woman who won this man’s love would have to win his respect first. “Yes.” She met his eyes boldly, impulsively, but with a muscle quivering in her cheek. “I do want to know more. Please come again.”

He grinned. “When?”

“My father—”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.” Her gaze broke.

“I’ll come.” He nodded his promise.

“H-how many wives do you have?” hating herself for asking it.

“How many?” He looked indignant. “None. On Kharemough we believe in one at a time. One is enough for a lifetime… if she’s d’ right one.” He reached into his jacket, pulled out a handful of pamphlets. “I brought you dese, ‘cause I can’t shpeak for myself yet. But I wrote dis one… an’ dis one. Will you read ‘em?”

She nodded, feeling as though a shock ran up her arm as they touched her hand.

“You have a beautiful garden here.” A kind of longing crept into his voice. “Do you tend the flowers yourself?”

“Oh, no.” She shook her head, a little sadly. “I’m only allowed to come here on special occasions. And I’m never allowed to do anything that would get me dirty. But I love flowers. I’d spend all my time here, if I could.”

A look of peculiar resolution settled over his bruised face. Very deliberately he reached up to pluck a many-petaled lavender blossom from the vine above their heads. He put it into her hands. “We all die, someday. Better to live a free life than die on the vine.”

She cupped the flower in her hands, inhaling its fragrance. She smiled at him more than at his words.

He smiled back. “Till tomorrow, den.” He got stiffly to his feet.

“You’re going—”

“Godda meeting at d’ university over in Merdy, tonight.” He beamed at her disappointment, and leaned down, conspiratorial. “I’m an outside agitator, y’ know.”

“You won’t—?” She dared to touch him.

“Uh-uh.” He pulled his hat down over his eyes. “No more shpeeches; at leas’ till I can open my mouf again… Goodbye, sister.” He moved away across the courtyard with a rolling lurch, before she could realize that she still didn’t know his name. She looked down at the stack of propaganda, read, “Partners in a New World” by TJ Aspundh. She sighed. “What’s that he gave you?” Her mother peered at the pamphlets suspiciously.

“Uh… l-love poems.” Elsevier tucked them hastily into her waistband and pulled down her veil. “He wrote some of them himself.”

“Hmm.” Her mother shook her head, and bells sang. “But he’s a Kharemoughi; he gave your father a video com outlet for the right to see you. My lord was very pleased. And it’s up to him in the end, after all… not to us.”

“Why?” Elsevier got up, crinkling with papers. “Why isn’t it?”

Her mother took the flower out of her hand and led her back to the women’s quarters.

TJ came faithfully to see her, a paragon of respectability before her parents, in private a headstrong dreamer falling in love not with the girl she was, but the woman she could be. He brought her more revolutionary literature disguised as love poems; but before she could begin to explore the new world whose horizons he widened every day, her halting attempts to assert herself with her family led to the discovery of her hidden cache of pamphlets, and he was banished from her life.

“But you didn’t let them keep you apart.” Moon leaned on the seat back. “Did you run away?”

“No, my dear.” Elsevier shook her head, folding her hands with remembered obedience. “My father locked me in the tower room because he was afraid I would, before I even thought of it.” She smiled. “But TJ was dauntless. He came back one night in a hovercraft, climbed in my window, and kidnapped me.”

“And you—”

“I was frantic! I wasn’t nearly as enlightened as he thought I was; or I did; in asserting myself I’d really only been pleasing someone else again… him. And now he’d ruined my reputation. I nearly died of shame that night. But by morning we’d reached the spaceport, and there was no going back.” She looked out at the city, seeing another place and time. “We were always like that, all our lives, I suppose: him believing in “Be certain you’re right, and then go ahead,” me believing in “Do what you must.”… But even that terrible night, there was no doubt in my mind that he’d done the deed with the purest of hearts, that he loved me in a way I had never dared to dream about being loved. I chided him — years later — for committing such a male-dominant act. He only laughed, and told me he was just trying to work within the system.

“We were married at the spaceport by one of those dreadful notary machines, and the passage to Kharemough was our honeymoon. Poor TJ! We were halfway across the galaxy before I let him touch me. But once I learned that all I’d been told about — my body all my life was a lie, it was easier to believe that I had a mind as well, and nourish it. We were different in many ways… but our souls were one.” She sighed.