Joan Vinge - The Snow Queen

“Are you — are you Fate Ravenglass, the mask maker She wondered what she had been expecting, relieved that this woman wasn’t it.

“Yes.” The woman rubbed her face. “But all my masks are gone. You’ll have to go to one of the displays to look at them. There are warehouses and vacant stores full of them all over the city.”

“No, I don’t want a mask. I want to ask you about — Sparks. Sparks Dawntreader.”

“Sparks?” The reaction she had waited for, prayed for, filled the woman’s face. She opened the bottom of the door. “Come in then! Come in.”

Moon entered the shop, blinked with the dimming of light. As her eyes readjusted, she saw boxes and baskets piled in precisely ordered confusion in the room’s four quarters — remnants of cloth, face forms, feathers, bangles, beads. Her foot skidded on a bead as she moved forward; she picked it up carefully and held it in her hand. The walls of the room were empty now, but they bristled with hooks where a hundred masks must have hung like rare flowers until only two or three days ago… The last wall space was not empty. On it hung one mask all alone, and she stood staring, transfixed by the shimmering vision of a summer’s day: mist-rainbows reflecting in pied pools, emerald-velvet moss underfoot and the green-gold silk of new grasses springing up on the hillsides; hoards of wildflowers, frag ant with life, berries and birds’ wings dappled with shadow; and in their midst a face of radiant innocence captive to wonder, crowned by the rays of the twin suns. “Is that — the Summer Queen?” she whispered, awed.

The woman turned to face it instinctively. “That is her mask. Who she will be, herself, is still a mystery known only to the gods.”

“To the Lady,” Moon said, without thinking.

“Yes, of course.” The mask maker smiled a little sadly; Moon realized all the things this mask would mean to a Winter, and that none of them were the same things that moved her.

“You’ve made her so beautiful; when she’s come to take your life away.”

“Thank you.” The woman smiled again, proudly this time. “But that’s the price any artist pays — to lose a part of herself each time she creates something she hopes will live on after her. And perhaps if I make her fair and kind, the Summer Queen will fulfill the prophecy, and be those things to us.”

“She will,” Moon murmured. But she won’t understand you — so how can she be?

“Now, tell me, Summer girl” — Moon glanced around in half surprise—”why you’ve come asking about Sparks Dawntreader.”

“I’m his cousin, Moon Dawntreader.”

“Moon!” The mask maker frowned at nothing. “Wait, wait just a minute.” She went surely through a doorway into another room, and was back in a moment wearing a peculiar headband. “He told me so much about you, the two of you. Come over by the door, where I can see you better with my ‘third eye.”“

Moon obeyed. The woman held her with her face to the light, slowly grew rigid. “Sparks said that you were like her… like her…” She seemed to shiver suddenly.

“Like who?” Moon forced the words out through stiff lips.

“Like Arienrhod, like the Snow Queen. But I’ve seen you, another time, in another place, somewhere.” She lifted her hand to map ^ Moon’s face with sensitive fingertips, keeping her from asking another question. Fate led her back inside to the one round, glue dribbled table with chairs that was all the room’s real furniture. “Where have I seen you, Moon?” A large gray cat appeared out of nowhere on the tabletop, came to sniff questioningly at Moon’s hands. Moon scratched him absently under the chin.

“I — I don’t think you have.” Moon sat down, following Fate’s motion, unclenched her fist and laid the single red bead on the table.

Fate’s breath caught. “Yes. You’re a sibyl.”

Moon’s hands flew to her throat. “No—”

“Your cousin told me; it’s all right.” Fate shook her head reassuringly. “Your secret is safe. And it means I can trust you with mine now.” She pulled down the high neckline of her sleeping gown, exposing her throat.

Moon felt her own breath stop. “You’re a sibyl, here? But how? How do you dare?” She remembered Danaquil Lu, and the scars he wore as a warning.

“I have a very — select clientele.” Fate turned her face away. “Maybe that’s selfish of me, maybe I’m not doing all I can with the gift, but… I feel that there is a need for me to be here, somehow. As an… outlet, if nothing else.” Her hands found a stray feather on the tabletop. She picked it up, running it between her fingers. The cat watched her, its ears flickering. “I have strange ideas about sibyls, you see; maybe they’re absurd, but…” Her shoulders twitched.

Moon leaned forward. “You mean, you think there might be sibyls on other worlds than this one?”

The feather fluttered down, the cat pounced. “Yes! Oh, by the gods, have you felt it too?” Fate reached out for reassurance.

“I’ve seen it.” Moon touched her hand. “I met a sibyl on another world. There are sibyls everywhere, part of an information network the Old Empire left to help us now. The Hegemony lies to us.”

“I thought as much — I knew there was something more! Yes, it makes so much sense.” Her smile was a candle being lit in darkness. “Is that where I saw you, then? On another world? Asking about him…”

“I did ask about him! That’s why I came back. Then it was you who told me about him…” That he loved someone else. “That it wasn’t finished yet, that he needed me,” raising her voice to drown out doubt’s.,”But how do you know that? Can we remember what we say, and see? I’ve never been called.”

“Yes, you remember it. Clearly.” Fate smiled at the memory of clear sight. “It happens to me rather often, and that’s why I feel I’m needed here. I may be the only answer there is to questions about Carbuncle. And that’s why I began to suspect there was more to us than anyone pretended to know. How could the Hedge not know what we did was real?”

“There are a lot of things they lie about.” The mers… is that the real reason they don’t want us in Carbuncle — so no one can prove that they’ve lied about the mers? And about how many other things? “But we could change that, now that we know the truth. When the off worlders go—”

“Then Summer will reign, and they won’t listen.”

“I listened.” Moon felt her gaze drawn away to the mask on the wall. Would they listen to a sibyl Queen? A tingling excitement ran along her nerves from spine to fingertips. “Fate, in Transfer you said . you said I could be the Queen. What did it mean?”

“That was years ago…” Fate pressed a hand over her sensor eye. “I suppose I meant that you looked like Arienrhod.” She took her hand away, looking toward the mask on the wall. “But — maybe not. I called you back; it seemed important. If you ran the race with the others on the day of choosing, who can say? You could be chosen Queen.”

“How long is it until they choose?”

“It’s the day that leads into the Mask Night — the day after tomorrow.”

Moon wove her tingling hands together, completing the circuit, felt the current of terrifying certainty surge through her. This is the reason. This is why I’ve come. To make this a real Change, to open the circle… “Yes, I can; I know I can! I was meant to!” Possibilities exploded inside her eyes.

But it won’t save Sparks. The fire of revelation drowned in the cold waters of truth. There would be no rebirth without death; she would have no power until the Snow Queen died… “But that’s why I came!” She shook her head angrily; Fate’s face turned quizzical, listening. “Fate, I came to find Sparks, I want to help him, if I can. If he still needs me, if he even wants me…” She faltered.