And who are those few who might enter? Lay that question aside for a time and look upslope, to the cottage as it emerges from the mist of time.
View the man.
He wears a uniform of black and silver, freshly tailored, but no uniform like it now exists in the Commonality of Worlds, or in the outlaw systems. His hair is curled gold, and his eyes are clear, yellow-bright like a hawk’s, and pierce with the force of a quarrel, equally antique.
As he strides down the curving walk from the small cottage under the tall oaks toward the tents of black and white, his step is quick, firm, as if he were headed for his first command.
The sky shades toward black velvet, and the first candles of night overhead are joined by their dimmer sisters. The breeze from the south brings the tinkling sound of a crystal goblet striking another ob-ject, perhaps a decanter of Springfire.
Glowlights are strewn in the close grass which appears close-clipped, but which is not, for it has been grown that way. Under the nearer tents are tables upon which rest crystal, silver, delicacies such as arlin nuts and sun cheese, and the spotless linen that is used so sparingly elsewhere in the Commonality.
The captain steps from the fine gray gravel of the flower-lined walk. His heels click faintly on the four stone steps that will bring him down to the tents and those who await him.
Nineteen faces turn toward him, and even the breeze halts for a moment.
Slowly, aware of the unspoken rules, each of the nineteen averts her gaze. One picks up a goblet of Springfire she does not want.
Another, red hair flowing, tosses her head to fling her cascade of fire back over her bare shoulders.
A third looks at the grass underfoot, points one toe like the dancer she is not before shivering once in the light night air.
The captain slows, edges toward the second tent, the one where the two decanters of Springfire sit on the middle of the single white-linened table.
To his right is a blonde woman, scarcely more than a girl, in a shift so thin it would seem poor were it not that the material catches every flicker of the candlelight and recasts it in green shimmers to match her eyes.
His eyes catch those green eyes, and pass them, and she looks downward.
From the table he picks a goblet, looks toward the decanter.
“May I, Captain?” a husky voice asks.
“If you wish.” He inclines his head, the goblet held for her to fill, and his glance rakes her with the withering fire of the corvettes he has not flown in more than twenty centuries.
“Thank you.”
His glass full, he bows to her. “Thank you.”
She steps back, black-ringleted hair falling like tears as he turns and leaves the tent.
Ile takes a dozen steps across the grass between the black and white of the tent.
The slender, brown-haired woman who had been squinting to, make out the silhouette of the cottage on the hill above catches her breath as his fingers touch her shoulder.
“No . . . ,” he says, as those fingers, gentle, unyielding, turn her to bring her face around. “Not . . . yet . . . “
His voice trails off, and his fingers slide down her arm from her shoulder to take her hand. He does not release his hold on her as I begins to speak again.
“You seem familiar. These days, everyone seems familiar. Once . . . wrote of the ‘belle dame sans merci’ . . . of enchanted hills. If you disappeared, you were gone for a century.”
He chuckles, and the golden sound is that of the young man lit appears. His face smoothes, and he leans down and places the goblet lie has not touched upright upon the turf. He straightens.
“These days . . . you have the enchanted prince who cannot member. What else can I claim?”
She takes another deeper breath, finally attempts an answer.
“No one . . . they . . . “
“Because my mind wanders, shattered with the weight of memory . . . assume I cannot reason . . . do not appreciate my position.”
Momentarily his eyes glaze, as if he has looked down the long tunnel to the past and cannot see the object for which tie has searched.
Her hand squeezes his fingertips, though she does not understand why, and she waits.
Again . . . he laughs, and the sound is harsh, barking.
“Sweet lady, not my princess, nor can I seal your eyes with kisses four. But walk with me.”
From the corners of their eyes, the other sixteen, those not already dismissed, stand, wondering, waiting . . . unsure.
The captain points, and his arm is an arrow that flies toward the stars.
“See—that faint one? Near the evening star. Beyond that, the tiny point. Helios, sun of New Augusta.” He lowers his free hand, and his eves, and resumes his walk.
“You are not . . . let me put it another way. Would you mind if I called you Caroljoy?”
“Tonight, as long as you want, I will be Caroljoy to you.
“Longer for me than you, sweet lady.” He releases her hand and stands silently for it moment that is longer than a moment.
“Sweet lady, not my princess, nor can I seal your eyes with kisses four. But walk with me yet.” As he speaks he bends toward her and offers his right arm. She takes it as they walk slowly down away from the circle of tents.
“That star I showed you, Caroljoy. Wasn’t really Helios. Cannot see it from here. But it was where I pointed. Life. You point at something and . . . not what you thought.
“Martin never lived long enough to understand that. Caroljoy . . . my first Caroljoy . . . she understood . . . told me that. Didn’t believe her.”
The two stop at the top of the grassy slope that eases down to the lake where the black swans sleep on the water.
He stops, releases her hand and arm.
“Do you know? No. You would not, but you might. I can think. But I cannot try to remember. All I am is what I remember, and I must not.”
His face creases into a smile that is not.
“Better this way. The longer sleeps through time give me some strength to be myself—‘le beau capitaine sans merci’—for a time.”
“Without mercy?”
“Without quarter.”
He whistles a single note that is two-toned, then another. The melody builds until the stars twinkle their tears into the black lake, until the eighteen who have waited behind theta slip away into the velvet night beyond the park, each one wondering what she has lost, and what her sister of this single night will gain.
At the precise moment the song has ended, without a word, the captain and his lady touch lips.
Without another word, they carefully seat themselves, side by side, holding hands, and facing the lake where the black swans sleep and where the dreams rise from the depths like the mist of the centuries past.
“My lady. . . .”
“Yes.”
“Do you mind . . . knowing what you must know . . .”
Though she says not a word, her answer is clear as they turn to each other, as their arms reach around each other, and as the summer becomes fall, and they fall into and upon each other.
The swans sleep in the almost silence, in the music that must substitute for both love and worship, for the loves that he has lost and will always lose, and for the worship all who walk the grass of Old Earth have for their captain.
Anachronistic? Barbaric?
Perhaps, but unlike other ancient rituals, there is no bloodshed. There are no sacrifices, nor is anyone compelled against her will. Nor has any woman ever been required to spend a summer/fall evening in the Park of Remembrance. At least, not in all the centuries since it was first designed, not since the days before the temporal fields enclosed the hill and the cottage upon it. Not since the days of the captain.
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The Endless Twilight Page 29
