Cards of Grief

by Jane Yolen

  Came to you?

  To be caressed, though I was not expecting it. The Queen’s Own Griever is an Untouchable. Her vows are ones of celibacy and tears. I had been mourning all one evening, less for the old Griever than for my lost chances with Gray, flinging myself angrily at my pillows. And when called to the Queen—who was always insatiable through periods of grief—I performed the rites of sowing with such thrusts and groaning, I all but damaged us both, to her pleasure and my everlasting shame. So I was there with the Queen a long time, for though other princes had been called upon earlier, I was that year’s favorite and I had been called upon the most. I went each night, sometimes twice a night, returning to my rooms exhausted but unrelieved, covered with my own perspiration and the Queen’s scent. Queens, as I have said, do not sweat but their touch leaves a man smelling in a way that baths do not quickly erase.

  It was the tenth day after the death of the old Master, and when I came into my apartment, Gray was pacing in front of the wall of viols. Mar-keshan was pleading with her to leave. They were so engrossed with their argument they did not hear me enter.

  “He may be hours getting back,” Mar-keshan said. “The Queen keeps him until she tires him or tires of him, whichever comes first.”

  “I must speak to him,” Gray insisted. “Mar, please. I must.”

  “He is not here.”

  “I am here.”

  They turned to me at the same time and, with a small cry like that of a wounded creature, Gray ran to me and threw herself into my arms.

  Mar-keshan bowed quickly and left before I had a chance to read his face.

  I put my hands on either side of Gray’s head and turned her face up to me. “I am here,” I said again, this time as softly as a touch.

  And…

  And that was it. We sat together and talked all night. I was too tired for anything else and she had her vows, after all. Often we lay back on my cushions and my fingers gently outlined her face, her lips, as she spoke, but otherwise…

  I knew that.

  You guessed that.

  As you will.

  She came to me another time. Long after.

  Long after?

  Long after I had betrayed her a second and yet a third time. Long after my five years of sowing were done and I could not have sown her even if I had desired it. We lay together all night in one another’s arms, for it was the night that Mar-keshan died. And it mattered not between friends, then, that in the past there had been betrayals.

  You said there was really no betrayal.

  And what a King says is true. But there was—and there was not—betrayal. Let me tell you of the second and you may judge for yourself.

  It was a season later that the first of your sky-ships came down. It landed, as you know, just outside L’Lal’dome. The priestess went with rood and orb, surrounded by her archers, and proclaimed that this was as the old prophesy foretold.

  The Queen, who watched from the Jutting tower, sent word: “Which prophesy?”

  And the answer came back, “The one made in the Tenth Matriarchy which said that the sky will open and spit forth a wonder.”

  The Queen spoke with C’arrademos, who remembered vaguely such a warning. D’oremos reminded them both that the prophesy had been fulfilled in the Twelfth Matriarchy when there had been a brief rain of hard stones. The Queen then thought about both these things and went down the tower and onto the plain herself.

  Behind her traipsed a handful of the young princes. I was by her side, being the current favorite. She pushed through the archers and then she and I—the other princes remaining prudently behind the company of Arcs and Bow—stood face-to-face with the priestess.

  “What do you read in the orb, sister?” the Queen asked.

  The priestess shook her head. “The Light has failed, my Queen. There is nothing to be read there; the shadow of this great moving tower puts out the small light of the orb.”

  The Queen looked at the orb and saw it was true.

  “Let me go and call out what dwells within this thing,” I said, thinking that if I died for the Queen I would at least have Gray to grieve for me.

  “Go,” she said, a bit more quickly than I had expected.

  I turned and looked at the other princes, and T’arremos smirked openly. So I squared my shoulders and walked over to the great silver tower and rang my knuckles against its side. It echoed strangely, a hollow sound that told me it was not solid throughout. And then a door on the side opened and a silver stair unfolded, after which the first of you sky-farers came down.

  I will tell you how he looked to us: tall, unflinching, with that great globe upon his head which was subsequently discarded but which at first we thought was his head. We marveled at his silver garment that did not shift or change in the wind.

  Then he took off the helm, which had showed us only reflections of ourselves, to display a face that seemed almost a parody of our own. He held up his hand in a sign we later understood meant peace. Then he smiled, a grimace as broad as any dying man’s.

  “I am not an enemy,” he said, his voice thick around our words, but still understandable.

  “Why should you be?” asked the Queen.

  Then the ship disgorged seven more just like the first and the last one was you, Man Without Tears.

  How did I look to you?

  As you do now, A’ron. Oh, your hair is longer, but it is still that same gold, the color of a meadow flower, of the Queen’s eyes, of the sun. We all marvelled at that. And though you now cover your face with a beard as golden as your head of hair, the broad planes of the face under it are the same. And the green of your eyes. Though it is fifty years since last we met, you look the same.

  The years sit well on you, too, B’oremos.

  That is yet another prerogative of Royals. We do not age as the Common Grievers do. You do not age, either.

  I age normally. But my time—up there—is different.

  So we have surmised. But then we have had a long time for making guesses and wondering.

  Are we sky-farers, then, still a wonder to you?

  You are something to wonder at. But the six Common Grievers came from caves and we Royals from a cask in the sea. Why should there not be a people come down from the sky?

  Are you afraid of us?

  I was a little, at first. And then I was not. And then it was too late to be afraid. In a time of changes, one does not fear a little change. One fears the end of all changes.

  Then, if you are not afraid of me, tell me about that second betrayal.

  The second betrayal had to do with you, A’ron. And Gray long since forgave me. I wonder if you will do the same.

  Do I know what it is?

  I think you do.

  Then I have already forgiven you. If I know it not, then it was not important enough to forgive.

  You knew—and you did not know. Search your own story, A’ron, for the betrayal is there.

  Tape 8: THE MAN WITHOUT TEARS

  Place: Space Lab Common Room

  Time: 2132.9 A.D.

  Speaker: Captain James Macdonald of USS Venture; Lieutenant Debra Malkin; various other unidentified officers; Aaron Spenser, B.S., M.S., Ph.D., Star Certificate 9876433680K

  Permission: Captain’s log, mandated USS Code #09863

  THIS INQUIRY INTO THE actions of Aaron Spenser, Anthropologist First Class re Mission Henderson’s IV is declared open on A.D. 9/11/2132, at 1100 hours. The charge is Cultural Contamination as defined by the USS Code #27. The specification is that you, Aaron Spenser, did willfully and unlawfully violate the Cultural Contact Contamination Act in regards to your relationship with an inhabitant or inhabitants of the newly opened planet Henderson’s IV in such a way that you have influenced—to the good or to the bad—all culture within their closed system forever. How say you to the specification, guilty or not guilty?

  I have been more changed than they by the contact, Lieutenant Malkin.

  Guilty or not guilty to the spe
cification?

  Guilty—and not guilty, Lieutenant.

  How say you to the charge?

  Guilty—I guess. But Captain, ladies and gentlemen, it is not that cut and dried, if you’ll forgive me. There were circumstances—

  How say you to the charge, Anthro Spenser? Guilty or not guilty?

  I can’t answer that easily.

  You must answer. Guilty or not guilty?

  Just a minute, Lieutenant, I think we can handle this a bit less rigidly.

  But the rules of Court Martial, sir.

  This is my ship, Lieutenant, and we can make anything that does not conform strictly to the rules off the record later, if necessary.

  Yes, sir.

  Now, Aaron, you have been shipboard for almost three years, counting travel time, and we’ve gotten to know one another pretty well.

  Yes, sir.

  And in preparation for this empanelment, I even read your early papers on Egyptians with the wonderful tag from that poet. What was his name?

  Carew, sir. A favorite of mine.

  Ah, yes, Carew. Well, I’m not much for poetry myself, though I do have a fondness for another early Earth rhymer. His name was Nash.

  Not exactly the same century, sir.

  No? Well it doesn’t matter.

  I appreciate your trying to put me at my ease, sir. But what might be best is if I just simply tell the story from beginning to end: about what happened to Linni and me.

  Linni?

  Linni. The one they call the Gray Wanderer.

  That’s the formidable tall girl, right?

  Tall, yes, sir. Though not really so tall. I’m taller by a couple of inches, and I’m six two. And not so formidable. Vulnerable, really. Lonely. Hurt or wounded. Shy. And young.

  You’re not so old yourself, son.

  No, sir. I’m twenty-two, sir.

  Sir, I really must protest. The Court Martial—

  Lieutenant, if you would just listen, you would hear. We have already begun the Court Martial inquiry. Carry on, Aaron.

  Yes, sir.

  It started before we touched down. We had to learn about them as best we could before actually greeting them. We had to minimize culture shock—on their part but also, I think, on ours. What we learned, after breaking down their language, which is liquid and full of bubbling sighs and soft glottals—not unlike Earth Polynesian—is that in their folklore they referred to themselves and their world as the Land of the Grievers or the Place of Grieving. For us, though we learned about it early, it became the hardest concept to grasp, for we come from a culture that tries to push grief into the background of our lives, bury it. I was reminded, as I studied the tapes, of a tombstone next to my mother’s. She was buried in a small old country cemetery in Vermont—that’s Earth, sir—where she had lived all of her life. Where I have lived all of mine until she died and I was sent to stay with my father near the spaceport in Florida. The tombstone had been barely readable, but I’d been able to make it out. “It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch.” I carried that phrase with me for years after, a kind of grisly talisman, until I came to this place, L’Lal’lor.

  From the beginning the language came easily to me, unlike some of the other anthros who had to struggle with it. All the reports of the histog people and the geols led us to believe that the Henderson’s IV civs were going to be friendly, unwarlike, and unthreatened by us, which meant we could take along only the minimum of military advisers, which we preferred. Their air was breathable, though it would take a bit of getting used to, the oxygen count was a bit thinner than we’d have liked. But given that our guilds have worked in headhunting territories and societies where torture is an art and slogged through planets on which giant carnivores were the closest things to a civilization, Henderson’s IV was not a threat. We needed no heavy artillery to survive.

  The first five years, then, we studied their language, folklore, art forms. We listened to tapes of their songs. Since I’m a pretty fair hand on guitar and sitar and other strings—ethno-musicology was my minor at the Academy—I was able to reproduce some of the songs myself. I’ve never liked electronic stuff, which makes me something of a throwback anyway.

  But of course what we were really all working toward was the time we could go planetside and face-to-face with the civs.

  I was chosen for the first landing because of my ability with the language and my music and my knowledge of death-centered societies. I did my thesis on tomb imagery in seven First Contact civilizations. And maybe I was chosen because I was Dr. Z’s fair-haired boy—oh, I’ve overheard the whispers. But most of what I’ve learned about being an anthro, I’ve learned from her. I’m not ashamed to admit it. She’s a—a genius, sir. And we thought we had a pretty fair handle on things.

  We set down the skimmer just outside the only city on the planet, L’Lal’dome. The rest of the eastern side of the island continent is a series of small rural villages surrounded by farms and the west is mostly mountains, though there is a rough ridge of hills to the north of ’Dome.

  I can read maps, son.

  I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to imply…Well, then we waited.

  Following landing plan set by Culture Contact, sir. Sit and wait for the civs so as to appear non-threatening.

  Lieutenant, I’ve been in service longer than you’ve been able to wipe your nose.

  Yes, sir.

  It took the better part of a day, but at last a party was sent from the ’Dome to greet us led by a priestess and a company of archers.

  Women, sir. All of them.

  Don’t smirk, Lieutenant. I’ve been up against matriarchal societies before. And for your information, my first captain, aboard the USS Malthus, was a woman.

  May I continue, sir? At last the Queen herself arrived, flanked by a group of princes. One—I was later to know him quite well—was brave enough to knock upon the door. They all jumped back when it opened and the stairs dropped down.

  All eight of us came out in full landing gear, of course. Not that we needed it. The air had already been tested thoroughly and we all had our inoculations. But usually blocked cultures appreciate ceremony, so we give them the works: costumes, ritual, even magic, then speak to them in their own tongue. It establishes us with the chiefs of state quite quickly.

  At the bottom step, Lieutenant Hopfner took off his bubble, stroked his beard, and spoke what we thought were the correct ritual words. We had spent hours debating them.

  “I am not an enemy,” he said.

  The Queen gave a small smile and answered, “Why should you be?”

  What he had actually said, it turns out, was, “I am not a quarreling woman.” No wonder the Queen responded that way. It was not an auspicious beginning.

  No, I don’t expect it was. I also don’t remember reading about that exchange in any of the lieutenant’s notes—and they are vast.

  Is that an official reprimand to the lieutenant, sir? Should I include it in the tape?

  Include everything for now, Malkin. We will decide later what—if anything—needs to be deleted.

  Yes, sir.

  Continue, Aaron.

  My God, they were beautiful, sir. Our tapes, even our infrareds, had not prepared us for that. They were like something out of the old tales of the Celtic faerie.

  Explain that, son.

  The Royal women, the Queen especially, are tall, slim, golden-eyed, with masses of long dark wiry hair that refuse to lie quietly but seem almost alive with electricity. They move with a supple dancer’s grace. The men are the same, only their hair is trimmed shoulder length and bound down by metal brow bands. They all wear silken clothes whose colors seem to shift and change in every breeze. The priestess is shaven of her hair, but her acolytes are not, and they wear short skirts which show off their legs. They all—Queen, priestess, princes, and acolytes—wear metal bands encrusted with gemstones on their upper arms and at their wrists. Their feet are shod in leather sandals with thongs tied up to the knees.
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  The women of Arcs and Bow, their warriors—hunters, really, as they seem to fight no wars—are the only ones with short hair. Short and muddy-colored, cut off above the ears. And they are trogs.

  Spell that, please. For the records.

  Trogs. T-r-o-g-s. Short for troglodytes. That’s what Lieutenant Hopfner called them and the name stuck. They are short, maybe five five, squat, bandy-legged, blue-eyed as far as I could tell, well-muscled, broad-shouldered. They have small chins and largish foreheads and seem almost, well, brutish in nature. It’s a wonder that the two races—for that is what they are—can interbreed.

  Do they?

  Yes, Sir. That’s what the tapes indicate. The Royal men interbreed with the trog women. They call it plukenna, tumbling. When the Royals have intercourse with their own kind, male or female, they call it ladanna, touching with joy. But they also have a word which they use interchangeably for both races, rarredenna, which means plowing or sowing of the seed. Occasionally the Royals are able to get a tall, slim Royal-looking child on one of the trog women. It is taken away when it reaches puberty and is raised as a Royal in the city of L’Lal’dome. The crossbreeds aren’t true Royals. Often they are sterile or they don’t breed true; they die younger than their fathers, though they live longer than the trogs.

  Is that kind of crossbreeding unusual, Aaron?

  Not really, sir. I mean, it’s not so different from what we think happened between our early Earth races, fair-skinned and light-haired Neanderthals from the North mingling with darker-skinned Cro Mags from the South. Most of us inbetween types, some archeols say, are the result.

  I wasn’t really looking for a lecture, son. Yes or no would have done as well.

  No, sir. I understand, sir. May I go on?

  Do.

  We all followed Lieutenant Hopfner’s lead and took off our helmets. Our suits were a bit hot, but we were stuck with them for the day, and we followed the Queen and her entourage back into the city. It was quite a walk in our suits with the thin air and all, but we’d been through worse in other places.

  It was there that I first met Linni. The Gray Wanderer, sir.

  I remember.