Cards of Grief

by Jane Yolen

  She was waiting at the gates, so still and unsmiling and, I thought, infinitely more beautiful than the Queen. The Queen had—I’m not sure if I am remembering this correctly, but it seems to me I noticed it even then—a predatory quality to her beauty. But Linni seemed an armored innocent, armored in silence.

  She joined the processional only a step behind the Queen and to the right of the priestess. Behind them ranged the acolytes and princes, and behind them the archers. We were relegated to last place, which was just as well, because we had trouble keeping up. Our line of marchers was fairly ragged by the time we reached the city. Only Hopfner and I didn’t fall behind, he because of his long legs and I because of my silly pride.

  The city is a maze of streets complicated by market-stands. There were trogs everywhere, but they stood aside when the Queen came through, pulling back almost as if afraid her touch might sear them.

  And like a great wave, we rolled along, gathering up flotsam as we went, so that by the time we had reached the palace—a strange building of shell-spackled stone and wooden beams—there were hundreds of people in our wake.

  The trogs were stopped by guards at the Queen’s Apartments, but we were passed through into a dizzying series of whorled passageways. We went too quickly to map the place and ended up in a great hall that seemed littered with cushions but no other furnishings except drapes.

  In the center of the hall was a raised dais and the Queen made for that at once.

  Lieutenant Hopfner started after her, but I managed to hold on to his sleeve.

  “Wait and let them instruct us,” I whispered.

  And since I was an Anthro First, he agreed.

  The archers meanwhile had ranged themselves around the walls of the room, their wooden bows slung across their backs carelessly. Hopfner had checked that out, I’m sure, before agreeing. The princes had plunked themselves down on the cushions so unobtrusively, it was clear that what had seemed scattered and casual at first glance was a precise and exact floor plan to them. I have no doubt it was made up of carefully calibrated or marked-off territories signifying status.

  Two older princes, their mustaches announcing their age, lay down on the steps that led to the platform. On the highest tier the Queen sank back onto a profusion of boldly marked pillows, the so-called thirty cushions of Queenship. At her feet sat the tall, unsmiling girl in gray. Linni.

  The Queen waved the priestess to her. They have a complicated kind of hand code which we do not yet fully understand. It seems as quick and supple as sign language, though it may be quite simple. Royal to Royal it appears to be conversation, but when used with servants, it gives the appearance of command and reply.

  Lieutenant, note that as soon as possible I want videos made of that signing and get some anthros on it. I don’t like my people in a culture that can converse secretly.

  Yes, sir.

  “Come to me, strangers from the sky,” the Queen said, her hand wigwagging at us as she spoke.

  All eight of us found ourselves firmly escorted to the base of the dais by the archers. They were very strong.

  Dr. Zambreno and the other anthros bowed their heads, and reluctantly Hopfner and his aides followed suit. For a moment, though, I forgot my training and stared openly at the tall girl. She stared back at me for a long golden moment, then slowly looked at her queen.

  “So, you are not a quarreling woman,” the Queen said at last to the lieutenant.

  Her people made a strange sound, more a buzz than a laugh.

  “Are you a man?”

  “I am,” said Hopfner. “But not all of us are.” He made a broad gesture toward us, careful to keep it slow and wide and nonthreatening.

  “Show me which is which,” demanded the Queen.

  “The men will stand by me, the women will stand over there,” he said.

  We followed his instructions, which meant we were four and four. We had thought that, with a strong matriarchy, it was best to keep our numbers even. We were also four anthros and four military, but that difference was not immediately apparent.

  “Why does a man lead?” asked the Queen.

  “It is our way to share the lead, man and woman,” said Hopfner.

  “It is not our way.”

  There was another buzz stir around us, a small undercurrent of whispers, as the princes shifted on their cushions. Then the Queen raised her hand and there was an immediate silence. The only one in the room who had not stirred noticeably during that exchange was the girl at the Queen’s feet.

  Lieutenant Hopfner bowed his head again. He knew that he was in troubled waters, moving over into anthro territory.

  “Come up to me. Here,” the Queen demanded, pointing to Hopfner.

  He hesitated a moment and I whispered, “Move slowly, Lieutenant. And go only to the step below the top riser. No further unless she directs it.”

  He grunted a response and moved up the stairs carefully. When he reached the next-to-the-top step, he stopped. He was then between the two older princes who reached up simultaneously and touched his hands, indicating that he should kneel. He did it stiffly, reluctance showing in his rigid backbone and the way his hands remained unmoving at his sides.

  The Queen ran her fingers lightly across his face, almost as if she were blind, seeing him with her fingertips. Her hands lingered on his beard and the lines around his eyes the longest. Then, with a flick, she dismissed him. The princes tugged at his suit, and he backed down the stairs.

  “You!” the Queen said, pointing this time at me.

  Having watched Hopfner’s performance, I knew what to do. I went up the stairs slowly as if I were a dancer, and when I reached the next-to-last tier, I went down on one knee but kept my face turned up toward the Queen.

  You dance, do you, son?

  A little, sir. It’s part of our training, folk dancing. But ritual moves are much the same, culture to culture. We practice them in school. They are much more fluid than military movements, though equally precise. The lieutenant moved as an aggressor would, and the Queen sensed it immediately. And she found something on his face—age, perhaps—that she didn’t like. I made my body language promise fealty-of-the-moment, an invitation to exploration.

  Well, her fingers fairly danced across my face. I come from a soft-skinned family anyway, and I am younger by fifteen years than the lieutenant, twenty years younger than Dr. N’Jymnbo, and a bit younger than the military attached The L’Lal’lorian culture favors young men in some things, so I naturally became the favored one of our group. The Queen signaled me to sit at her feet by the girl Linni.

  Then the Queen examined each of us in turn, though she was frustrated by the seamless suits and puzzled by the metal zippers and clasps.

  The lieutenant later commented that it had been like being fingered by a herd of monkeys.

  Paula Sigman, our Anthro Second, corrected him.

  “Troop,” she said.

  Hopfner looked surprised.

  “Monkeys come in troops.”

  We had a good laugh at that since, as the lieutenant pointed out, the trogs did look like monkeys and they were the military. Sort of. But that came later, when we were back in the ship for the night. First nights planetside are usually full of such bad jokes and small puns. We need laughter to settle us down, I guess.

  You said that was later, Aaron. What else happened in the Queen’s room? Was there entertainment? Did you give them gifts?

  We didn’t bring gifts because our studies of the tapes had indicated that the L’Lal’lorians were not a gift-giving people. Except at times of grieving, in the Halls, there was little exchange of monies or presents. Rather they paid for things with a kind of elaborate bartering system and the Royals paid for things with public touching and private tumbling and the ultimate gift of a Royal-bred child. Also, it is a recent Anthro Central policy not to bring gifts.

  Is that a regulation? I have no record of it.

  Not exactly a regulation, sir. Just a policy, though with time i
t may become reg. We call it the Manhattan Policy. A recent Funded Study showed that such transfers of gifts, like the ancient buying of the island of Manhattan on Earth leads only to misunderstandings and misappropriations and years of bad feelings. So—no gifts. Of course, since it’s policy and not reg, we can bend it a bit if necessary.

  Sir, should I get all of this down?

  All of it, Malkin.

  They fed us with sweet fruits and cakes and tumblers of a honey-based wine. It was very mild. And we were each supplied with a couple of pillows apiece and had to lie down on them for eating. The lieutenant and his aides seemed uncomfortable, but we anthros fared well enough, even in our landing suits. After learning to eat raw invertebrates while kneeling for hours on the shells with the jung! GRAN’OTYLI, cushions and sweet succulents were a pleasure. I did my training under Dr. Z on jung!

  The Queen herself peeled grapelike sweets for me, but she let Linni teach me how to eat them. If you bite into one quickly, it releases a bitter spurt which even the sweet aftertaste does not erase. But if you first roll it around your mouth for a moment, then squeeze gently with your lips, the juice runs back into your mouth and is incredibly sweet with just a taste of tart. The grapes are called loro’pae.

  Then Prince B’oremos sang for us. After about three or four songs, I asked to see the instrument. It was a plecta, not too different from our mandolin in looks, but with a surprisingly deep tone. I experimented with several runs up and down the fretted neckboard and won a startled, shy, beginning smile from Linni.

  Emboldened, I asked the Queen if I might sing for her.

  “What can you sing, sky-wanderer?” she asked.

  “I can sing one or two of your songs, my lady,” I said. Actually I had about thirty of them in my repertoire but most were their sacred grief songs and not appropriate. “And many more of our own.”

  She mused a bit, then said, “I know all of our songs and they interest me not in the least in the mouth of a man from the sky. But what kind of songs do your people grieve with?”

  “We sing many kinds of songs,” I said, “and only a few of them are for grief. We also sing for love.”

  “What is this word?” she asked, for I had said love in English since they hadn’t the word for it.

  “It is like—and unlike—your ladanna.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath in the room and I wondered if I had misspoken, using a taboo word. Yet there had been nothing in the tapes to indicate that. Perhaps the problem was not with us but with the trogs in the room.

  “What do you, sky-farer, know of ladanna?” the Queen asked.

  I looked over at Dr. Z. She moved her hand back and forth as if to caution me to tread with care.

  “I know…” I began. “I know that it is like—and unlike—plukenna.”

  The Queen was silent for a moment, but Linni spoke.

  “There is a story, one of the lesser tales, that talks of that difference,” she said. “For it was and it was not that a Queen wanted to know whether it was better to be plowed by a Common Griever or to be sown by a prince. But she knew there was none but a prince past his mission year who could touch her without being consumed by the fire in her skin. So she lay down in the sand and commanded the waves to wash over her and put her fires out. Well, the waters lapped her head and shoulder all that day and the next, but still her skin was hot and dry to the touch. So she went deeper even beneath the waves. Little colored fish swam in between her fingers and seashells washed through the dark ropes of her hair. But still her skin was dry and hot. So she went deeper still till the water washed away her skin and hair and she was nothing but a ligature of bones that neither prince nor commoner could plow. She was grieved by all but sown again by none, so for her, plukenna and ladanna became one and the same. For no one else are they even similar.”

  I nodded. “We have a song about the difference ourselves,” I said. I began the old ballad of ‘Tam Lin,’ explaining the story to them as I sang, about the fairy Queen and the girl Fair Janet, both of whom were sown by the young knight Tam Lin. But of course the ending was unsatisfactory to them, for the human girl wins back her own true love from the Queen. I was about halfway through the song when I knew I was going to be in trouble by the end, so I let it trail off.

  “Your song does not please me, for it has unpleasant sounds and no real ending, but your singing is pleasant enough,” said the Queen. “Is that a song not of grieving but of…What was your word?”

  “Love,” said Dr. Z, standing slowly and moving forward with the easy practiced grace of an anthro, though she weighs close to three hundred pounds. I saw that she had, in the interval of my song, taken the pins out of her hair and it fell in long spirals over her back, down to her waist. There were heavy gray streaks running through the black, which makes her hair even more striking. She has used that trick often with humanoid civs. Have you read her paper on that? It’s brilliant! She stood at the bottom of the dais and bowed her head, letting the hair come forward over her shoulders.

  “You are one of those who sometimes leads?” asked the Queen.

  “I am,” Dr. Z said and looked up. She was careful not to smile. “Our boys sing almost as nicely as yours, but of course our songs talk of different things. We are a different people.”

  “From the sky,” said the Queen.

  “Where love is—and is not—the same as it is here on your world,” Dr. Z said.

  “Run along, boy,” said the Queen, dismissing me with short, quick flicks of her hand. “I would speak to your Queen.”

  We have a full account of Dr. Z’s notes, sir.

  I’ve read them. Seems the two “Queens” talked of ruling the trogs and a bit of history and pretty young boys, but no more specifically about Aaron Spenser. And since it is with Anthro First Class Spenser we are concerned, I see no need to read it into the official record, Lieutenant.

  As you wish, sir.

  I was sent away with the others in the charge of Linni, who showed us around the apartments and who entertained us in a little courtyard with still more food. And though the lieutenant was worried about Dr. Z, worried that we were slowly being split up, nothing bad came of it. In fact, everyone was very pleasant to us; there was an aura of gentleness and good breeding about it all. No one’s voice was ever raised above a whisper. I think it was that that bothered Hopfner the most. He said afterward a good shout once in a while might purge them.

  Thinking back on it, I guess what they desperately needed was to laugh. But perhaps for them laughing was sacrilegious, like telling a dirty joke in a convent.

  Around dark, which seems to seep in slowly around the edges of the sky like long black fingers pointing toward the palace, we were summoned by the Queen. And after much ritual bowing and signing, we were escorted back to the ship. Dr. Z had us give report, which is not so different from what I’m telling you now, except for the use of technical terms which defined the anthropological aspects. Dr. Z coordinated our notes with Hopfner’s.

  We have those, sir.

  And she told me that I handled myself well under pressure. She did warn me, however, that more pressures were likely to be exerted—on me in particular. And by the Queen.

  “She sees young, sweet-faced boys as her own private hunting grounds, Aaron,” Dr. Z said. “And as she is not now grieving anyone important and has nothing better to think about, she is just as likely to want to try you. But be careful. That story the girl told has some truth to it. The Queen held my hand at one point, sister to sister, Queen to Queen, and after a minute, I could feel her skin growing noticeably hotter on mine. A long touch brings it out. Their metabolism is probably very different from ours.”

  “I’ll take care,” I said seriously.

  She winked at me, and we both laughed.

  We went the next day without our heavy suits. The lieutenant and his aides wore dress blues, which were still too hot for the planet. Dr. Z had the anthros dress in white shorts and short-sleeve shirts. Because of her
weight—though she said it was because she was our Queen!—Dr. Z wore one of the silky baptism robes from jung! instead. The back of her robe was embroidered with a red lizardlike creature, the famous “dragons” or morgs of jung!, though they are really more like eels and live underwater. Of course the Queen wanted the robe but Dr. Z did not give it to her, though she let her borrow it for a day. The next morning the Queen had an exact duplicate, or as close a copy as L’Lal’lorian hands could come. Evidently six apprentice grievers, all artists, stayed up the night working on the embroidery.

  Didn’t that violate your Manhattan Policy?

  Dr. Z didn’t actually give the robe to the Queen, sir. She lent it. And got it back.

  You seem to have a problem distinguishing between the letter and the spirit of the law, son.

  It’s not exactly a law, sir.

  Hmmm. There seems to be more than one way to contaminate a culture. Perhaps the wrong person is on trial here. Strike that, Lieutenant. Just my musing.

  Let me say, sir, that any contact is a kind of contamination. That’s the first corollary to the Anthro Oath—“to observe, to study, to learn,” is what we say. But we know that anytime you study a culture face-to-face, by the very act of studying, you change it. It’s known as Mead’s Law, sir.

  That’s like Heisenberg, sir.

  Lieutenant, why don’t you keep your musings to yourself. That way they won’t contaminate mine.

  Yes, sir.

  The point is to keep the contamination as insignificant as possible and to always understand in what way the culture under study has changed because of the contact. I hope that you’ll come to see that it was I—not the culture—that was the most changed.

  That, son, will certainly come into our final judgment.

  While the Queen and Dr. Z continued their talk, the rest of us went exploring in other ways. Dr. Z had given us assignments, which we were—within limits set by the civs—supposed to carry out. I was to try to visit the Hall of Grief because of my interest in artistic expression. It was my luck to be accompanied by B’oremos, the Singer of Dirges, as he was called.

  The prince who had sung for you the day before?