The Snow Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  He rolled off of her slowly, staring at her. “What—what happened to your cheek? Did I do that to you?”

  She lifted a hand to the smudged yellow remains of the bruise, nodded.

  He got up from the bed, his face pale and expressionless, went toward his reflection waiting impassively in the wall. Their hands met at the interface; he pressed his forehead against its image, and Moon saw his body tighten like a coiled spring.

  “Sparks—”

  His hands turned into fists, and he smashed them into the mirror; sent his reflection clamoring down in a hail of splintered ice. He backed away, turned ... she saw blood trickling down his hand like zigzag lightning.

  She pushed herself up and went to him, closing his hand in hers, staunching the wound.

  “No, don’t!” he cried. “Leave it, let it bleed!” eagerly, almost joyfully. She looked up at him, sickened, but he shook his head. , “Don’t you see? I’m alive! I’m alive, Moon ...” He made a sound : that was like laughter, but wasn’t. She saw his eyes become the color I of emeralds; and tears overflowed with the flicker of the lids. He , raised his wet hand to his wet face. “Moon. My Moon.” His arms i went around her again; but this time there was nothing hurting about his embrace except the pain of rebirth and release. “Alive. Alive again ....”

  She felt sudden fire pass into her through her skin and kindle at his nearness. She reached up to unfasten her cloak, let it fall, press—I ing herself even closer. Her fingers found the slashes of his shirt; she felt his flesh, warm and smooth, his muscles sliding under her touch. His own hands slipped down along her sides, rose again, tracing the line of her back. He began to lead her to the bed, moving with her, drawing her down beside him on the cool sheets, this time with j infinite tenderness. “No, let me ... just let me ...” He kissed her I softly. He slipped her dress down over her shoulders, along her body to the floor, with hands that sang against her skin. He removed his own clothes, self-consciously; she tried not to see the scars on his body.

  They lay back together, and now looking up she saw nothing but , the moment reflected, and her heart’s desire. They began to touch f each other again; slowly, almost shyly, rediscovering the secret joys that had been theirs in Summer, Time began to spiral toward infinity, and her body became the source point of the universe as he brought every part of his own body to the realization of her pleas’ ure. He took her to the brink of ecstasy with a skill that had never I been his before, holding her there, circling in the ah-... with a motion letting her fall in glorious flames, to rise again like a phoenix ... again and again. Swept out beyond the depths of her anticipation lost in time, she answered him as best she could, murmuring the breathless love words that could not tell him enough about her joy, filling her own instinctive response with the passionate energy of her pent-up longing set free. And at last they fell together, consumed in fire; lay as soft as ashes in each other’s arms. Complete in their love, complete in each other, they slept.

  - 42 -

  “Moon ... Moon, wake up.”

  Moon sighed, dreaming in the warm embers. “Not yet.” She kept her eyes closed, half-afraid to open them.

  “Yes. You have to.” Spark’s voice stirred her gently, insistently. “We can’t stay here much longer. The reception will be over soon. We’ve got to leave the palace before Arienrhod comes looking for me.” Fear closed the words in. “But the police are looking for me too.”

  “I know.” She nodded. “We’ll find a place where you can stay until after the Change.”

  “The Change!” He turned rigid under her hand. “Oh, my gods . oh, my Lady!” He sat up, his fists clenched.

  “What is it?” Moon sat up beside him, abruptly awake, and afraid.

  He faced her, pale with anguish. “There won’t be any Change, if Arienrhod has her way. She’s going to start a plague that’ll kill most of the Summers here in the city.”

  Moon shook her head. “How? Why?”

  “She’s hired an off worlder to do it, a man called the Source. He does a lot of her dirty work; he even had the old Commander of Police poisoned. I paid him today with the water of life.” He bit his lips. “She wants to stay Queen, and keep Winter here forever; that’s why!”

  Moon shut her eyes, concentrating on the enormity of horror so that she would not see his hand in it. “We’ve got to stop it!”

  “I know.” He threw the covers back. “Go to the Blues, Moon, and tell them everything. They can stop it, if it isn’t too late al ready.” He twisted the covers between his hands. “Mother’s Eyes! How could

  I—?”

  Moon felt panic clog her throat as she remembered why she could not go to them either. “Sparks, I’ve been off world And they know that, too.”

  He looked up sharply. “They’ll deport you.”

  She nodded, pushing back her hair. “But they have to be told.”

  “Then we’ll both go. Maybe ... they’ll let us stay together.” He let his hand fall along her back.

  She felt her skin turn to gooseflesh. “Yes.” She pushed herself up and off the bed, knowing that if she hesitated she would never be able to separate herself from him again. “We’d better go now.” She remembered abruptly that BZ would be waiting; she closed her eyes again, blotting out their reflections.

  They dressed in silence and left the mirrored chamber; she glanced back one last time through the closing door, as the mirror light winked out. They moved along the empty corridor quickly and still silently, in their silence discovering that the reception hall below had grown dim and silent, too. She watched Sparks’s face turn tense and furtive. “Sparks—remember that we belong here!” She pulled her hood up, half covering the rum of her disheveled hairdo, and made her movements regal.

  He looked at her. He nodded, but his expression was equally troubled. They went on down the stairs, slipping unobtrusively past the reception hall where weary servants circled, clearing away the remains of the banquet. They reached the Hall of the Winds at last, shadowy and moaning as she remembered it, with the ghost ships eternally adrift.

  “How did you cross the Pit?” He whispered it, and she could not help whispering her answer.

  “With this.” She held up her wrist, letting him see the control box.

  He started. “Only Arienrhod—”

  “Herne. Herne showed me how to use it.”

  “Herne?” Disbelief. “How?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll tell you—everything, later.” The memory of the calling spell as she crossed the bridge came back to her vividly. “Just help me cross back now ... don’t let me stop, whatever happens.” She took a deep breath.

  “All right.” Worry touched his dim face again, without any understanding of why she was afraid.

  They started toward the lip of the Pit, toward the bridge. Moon felt the Sea breathe, cold and damp against her flushed face; raised her hand to press the first tone of the calming sequence. But Sparks turned back, for one last look into the dark past. She reached out, her doubt quickening as he turned.

  And then the rattling air filled with light, the hall was transformed. They shrank together, blinking, uncomprehending; shielded their eyes.

  They were not alone. “Arienrhod!” Sparks gasped. Moon saw a woman standing where they had stood at the entrance to the hall, around her a gathering of richly dressed nobles—and palace guards. Glancing back over her shoulder, she saw more figures waiting across the bridge.

  The Queen. The woman Sparks had named Arienrhod came toward them slowly; slowly coming into focus. Moon saw the hair, milk white like her own, twisted into an elaborate sculpture and crowned with a diadem ... saw Arienrhod’s face—her own face, as though she were moving into her own reflection. “It’s true ...”

  Sparks didn’t answer, not looking ahead but only from side to side, searching for an escape.

  Arienrhod stopped in front of them, and Moon lost track of everything but the fascination that locked the moss-agate eyes of the Queen with her own. But there
was none of her own amazement in the Queen’s gaze. She almost thought that Arienrhod had been waiting for this moment forever. “So you’ve come at last, Moon. I should have known you would survive. I should have known you wouldn’t let anything keep you from your goal.” She smiled, and there was pride in it, but curiously wrapped with envy.

  Moon met the gaze, expressionless, not understanding its implications. But at a deeper level she felt their vibration like a sonic field, disorienting her. She expected me ... how could she know that I had to come? “Yes, Your Majesty. I’ve come for Sparks.” She made it a challenge, knowing instinctively that it was something this woman would appreciate.

  The Queen laughed, a high sharp sound like wind rattling ice coated leaves; but with disconcerting echoes of her own laughter. “You’ve come to take my Starbuck away from me?” Sparks glanced up at her, and past her at the waiting nobles, as she let his secret out; but they were too far away to hear what was said over the sighing of the Pit. “Well, you’re the only one who can.” Again Moon heard the ache of secret envy. “But you wouldn’t keep him long. ; (“ You saw him hesitate. You don’t really believe that he could be content in Summer after he’s belonged to Carbuncle, do you? You don’t really believe he’ll be satisfied with you when he’s belonged to me?” almost sadly. “No, child of my mind ... you’re still only a child. An incomplete woman; a pitifully inadequate lover.”

  “Arienrhod!” Sparks cried out, his voice raw with anguish. “No—”

  “Yes, my love. I was moved. You were very tender with her.” She smiled. Moon felt her face flush, felt outrage and humiliation throb like poison in her blood. “You see, I do know everything that happens in my city.” The words glinted. “I’m disappointed in you, Star buck. Although I can’t say that I’m surprised. But I’m willing to forgive you.” She reached out to him with the words, softly, without sarcasm. “You’ll realize this was a mistake when you’ve had time to think it over.” She raised a hand, and the guards came toward them, semi circled them at the Pit’s edge. “Escort Starbuck to his chambers ... and see that he stays there.”

  Sparks stiffened. “It’s finished, Arienrhod! You know that. I’m free, no matter what you do to keep me here. I’ll never change back. You’ll never touch me again—” He took a long, unsteady breath. “Unless you let Moon go. Let her go away now, and I’ll do anything you want.”

  Moon opened her mouth, starting forward; but he froze her with a look. She followed his urgent glance across the bridge—to warn them ...

  “Very well”, Arienrhod murmured, her eyes holding his. “After we’ve talked together, alone. If she still wants to go then, I promise you I won’t stop her.” Arienrhod held out her hands to them, empty of deceit.

  “Whatever she says, don’t listen to it. Promise me, promise me you won’t believe what she’ll tell you.” Guards closed in on Sparks. Moon felt her own hands try to reach him. But Arienrhod stood watching, as she had watched ... Sparks reached out, but the same unspoken knowledge stopped him, and his hands dropped to his sides. The guards took him away.

  Moon stood alone between the Queen and the abyss. The wind lapped her, her shivering loss intensified; she kept it hidden under her cloak. “I have nothing to say to you.” The words fell from her mouth like stones. She turned her back on the Queen, took a step toward the bridge’s beginning. Don’t think, don’t think about it. You have no choice.

  “Moon ... my child. Wait!” The Queen’s voice caught her like a fishhook. “Yes, I saw you, but you no more need to feel ashamed of that than you would of seeing your own reflection.”

  Moon turned furiously. “We aren’t the same!”

  “We are. And how often does a woman have the chance to watch herself make love ... ?” Arienrhod held out her hands again, with a kind of longing. “Didn’t he tell you, Moon? Couldn’t he?” Moon stared, uncomprehending, saw Arienrhod begin to smile. “Well, it’s better this way; if I explain to you myself ... You’re mine, Moon. You’re of me. I’ve known about you since the day of your conception, watched over you all your life. I wanted to bring you here to me years ago; that’s why I sent you that message about Sparks. Then you disappeared, and I thought I’d lost you forever. But you’ve come at last.”

  Moon stepped back from Arienrhod’s intensity, felt the wind warn her. Lady, is she insane? She tugged the cloth of her cloak. “How do you know so much about me? Why would you even care? I’m no one.”

  “Moon Dawntreader is no one,” Arienrhod said softly. “But you are the most important woman on this planet. Do you know what a clone is, Moon?”

  Trying to remember, Moon shook her head. “A ... a twin.” She felt a peculiar prickling begin just under the surface of her skin. But you’ve been the Queen forever.

  “More than a twin, closer than a twin. An ovum, a set of genes, taken from my body and stimulated to reproduce an identical person.”

  “From your body,” Moon whispered, touching her own, looking down at it as though it had suddenly become a stranger’s. “No!” raising her head again. “I have a mother ... my grandmother saw me born! I’m a Summer!”

  “Of course.” Arienrhod said. “You are a Summer ... I wanted you to be raised as one. I had you implanted in your mother’s womb at the last Festival, along with other clones in other hosts. But you irik were the only one who survived, and was perfect. Come away from the edge ...” She moved forward to take Moon’s arm and draw her away from the brink of the Pit.

  Moon tried to pull free, but her body belonged to the Queen ... and she felt it obey, stiffly, liquidly; a thing made of technology and magic. We’re so alike ... everyone sees it, everyone. “Why—why did you want so many—copies; Summers, not Winters?” Refusing to include herself.

  “I only needed one. It was my dream, then, to replace myself with you, when I died at the Change. With myself—but raised to under, stand the Summer mentality, and how to manipulate it. I would have i brought you here, explained it all to you years ago—so that you would have had time to adjust to your true heritage. But then I thought you were lost to me ... and I found Sparks, instead.” Moon grew rigid; but Arienrhod was looking inward. “And I decided that I didn’t have to die—that I could live on, myself, and let I Winter live on with me. I made another plan, to let me do that; I didn’t need you any more. But I still want you—I’ve always wanted you here by me: my own fair child; and no one else’s.” She lifted Moon’s face, with fingers under her chin.

  No one else’s ... Moon felt her eyes lock with Arienrhod’s, her mind shifting heights—the voice that spoke to her like a mother, the face of a girl, the face in the mirror; the eyes that call her down the endless spiral of time ... Who am I? Who am I? “I’m a Summer! And you’re trying to kill my people.”

  Arienrhod recoiled, the moment shattered. “He told you that ... he’s a fool. He can’t see that they’re not his people, or yours. Moon, Myself, you are a Winter in your heart, just as Sparks is an off worlder She gestured at the stars. “You’ve been off world you know how the Hegemony oppresses us—you’ve seen what they keep from us, and keep for themselves while they exploit us. Haven’t you?” demanding an answer.

  Moon stood looking up. “Yes, I know it. And I hate it.” She saw the death of countless mers among the countless stars. “The Change has to be changed.”

  “Then you understand how the absurd, tech-hating superstition of the Summers keeps us in chains while the off worlders are gone. We’ll never break free from their control unless we have the time to start developing a technological base of our own. How else can we keep even what little the off worlders leave to us, unless we destroy the Change pattern?”

  “Not by destroying our people!” My people; they are my people! Blotting out Arienrhod’s mirror image with the memories of her family, her childhood, her island world.

  “Then how?” Arienrhod’s voice lost its patience. “How else will you ever convince them, or convert them?” But she stood as though she were actually listening, expecting a
genuine alternative.

  “I’m a sibyl.” Her heart lurched as she confessed it to the Queen of Winter, but she knew that Arienrhod must already know it, too. “When I tell them the truth about what I am, when I prove it, they’ll listen.”

  Arienrhod frowned her disappointment. “I thought you’d have lost your obsession with that religious mummery, after what you’ve seen off world There’s no Sea Mother filling your mouth with holy drivel; any more than the other ten thousand gods of the Hegemony exist in any way except as straw men for the off worlders to curse at.” A gust of wind poured out of the Pit, smelling of seaweed; Moon shivered inside her cloak, in spite of herself. But Arienrhod, wrapped in fog layers of filmy cloth, laughed at her mirror’s reflection of fear.

  “Sibyls aren’t a—” But Moon broke off again. She doesn’t know the truth. She can’t know ... suddenly aware that she held a hidden weapon, and that she had almost given it away. She felt her broken confidence begin to mend itself; tried to keep the knowledge from showing in her eyes, afraid that in some way Arienrhod would be able to read her every secret.

  But Arienrhod was caught in the machinery of her own design. “I know why you wanted to be a sibyl ... because you couldn’t be a queen. But you can be, now—” A light behind the agate translucency of her eyes.

  “Forget Summer! You can share a whole world with me, a Winter world forever. Throw away your trefoil and wear a crown. Cut the strings that tie you to those narrow-minded bigots, and be free to think freely, and dream.” She cast an invisible sign into the abyss. Moon felt the wind’s blade at her back. “They’ll never accept you as one of them, or trust what you are now. It’s too late to save them, anyway. The wheels have been set in motion. You can’t stop their fate, you can’t change it .... Accept it. Rule with me, as you would have ruled after me. We’ll build our dream of a new world together. We can do it together, we’ll share it all—” She held out her hands, shining with passion. Moon lifted her own hands, spellbound by the nearness, the undeniable reality of her own self, her original self ... formed in the image of her creator ...