The Snow Queen

by Joan D. Vinge

  Ahead, below, she saw stands draped in red clustered at the far end of the pier, tiers filled with off worlder dignitaries and influential elders of Summer families. On the best-placed viewing stands she saw the Prime Minister and the Assembly members—already unmasked, as if it were beneath their dignity to participate in this pagan ritual—gaping without seeming to at her approach. Shimmering deja vu overtook her at the sight of them. She had seen this tableau before, half a dozen times or more, but only once that was like this time: the first time, when she had been the new Queen who stood below on the pier and watched the last of the Summer Queens pass this way—and sent her predecessor triumphantly into the icy water.

  All the rest, all the other Festival pageants, had been only dress rehearsals for the next Change, this Change. They had chosen the Queen for a Day by the same ancient ritual rules, to reign over the Mask Night and make this journey at dawn. But only a pair of effigies had been given to the sea at her command, and not human lives.

  And only she and the Assembly members had remained unchanged, like the ritual itself, through all of those Festivals, all the long years. But this final time would see the end of her and all her efforts to break free of them, while they went on and the system they symbolized went on forever. Her hands clenched on the soft cloth of her gown. If I could only take them all with me! But it was too late, too late for anything at all.

  She saw the Summer Queen at last; standing on the pier in the open space between the red-robed stands, with the bitter-colored water lapping below her. Her mask was a thing of beauty that stirred unwilling admiration in Arienrhod’s heart. But it was made by a Winter. And who knew what homely, undeserving islander’s face was hidden beneath it; what sturdy peasant body and dull-witted mind were wrapped in the glistening fish-net cocoon of silky green mesh. The prospect of that face, that mind, taking the place of her own made her stomach twist.

  Herne was silent beside her, as silent as she was. She wondered what his own thoughts were as he looked on the waiting elite of his homeworld, and the waiting sea. She could tell nothing about the expression beneath his mask. Damn him. She prayed that he was regretting his suicidal impulse now; that he felt even a fraction of the despair and regret that she knew, standing here in the ruins of her life’s ambition. Let death be oblivion, then! If I have to spend it with this symbol of all my failures, knowing that I did would be worse than all the hells of the god-damning off worlders combined!

  The cart had gone forward as far as it could into the open space along the pier’s edge. The escort of her nobles slowed, stopped, let the traces settle. They circled slowly three times around her, casting their off world offerings into the back of the cart, as they sang their final song of farewell to Winter. They bowed to her at last, and she could hear their individual weeping and lamentation above the crowd’s cries as they began to file away from the cart. Some touched the hem of her cloak to their lips as they passed her for the last time. Some even dared to touch her hand—some of the oldest, the faithful followers of a century and a half—and their grief touched her suddenly, unexpectedly, deeply.

  Their place was taken by a circle of Summers, also masked, also singing, a paean to the coming golden days. She closed her mind and did not listen to it. They, too, circled her three tunes around, throwing their own offerings into the cart—clattering primitive necklaces of shell and stone, colored fishing floats, sprigs of wilted greenery.

  When they had finished their own song, a greater silence fell over the waiting crowd; until she could hear clearly the creakings and groans of shifting moorings, made aware of the greater alien crowd of ships that covered the water surface; a near-solid skin of wood and cloth and clanging metal. Carbuncle loomed above them like a gathering storm, but here at this edge of the city’s under structure she could see beyond its shadow, out across the gray-green open sea. Endless ... eternal ... is it any wonder that we worship you? Remembering that once, in a faraway time, even she had believed in the Sea.

  The mask of the Summer Queen came between her and her view of the sea, as the woman came up between the cart’s traces to stand before her. “Your Majesty.” The Summer Queen bowed to her, and Arienrhod remembered that she was still the Queen, until death. “You have come.” The voice was strangely uncertain, and strangely familiar.

  She nodded, regal and aloof, in control again of the one thing that was still within her power. “Yes,” recalling the ritual response, “I have come to be changed. I am the Sea incarnate; as the tide turns and the world has its seasons, so must I follow to lead. Winter has had its season ... the snow dissolves on the face of the Sea, and from it soft rains are reborn.” Her voice rang eerily through the underworld. The ritual was being recorded by hidden cameras, broadcast sight and sound over screens set up throughout the city.

  “Summer follows Winter as night follows day. The sea joins the land. Together the halves become whole; who can separate them? Who can deny them their place, or their time, when their time has come? They are born of a power greater than any here. Their truth is universal!” The Summer Queen lifted her arms to the crowd.

  Arienrhod started slightly. She had never said that last line, never heard it before. The crowds murmured; a prickling unease crept in her.

  “Who comes with you to be changed?”

  “My beloved,” keeping her voice even, “whose body is like the earth, coupled with the Sea. Together beneath the sky, we can never be separated.” The cold wind burned her eyes. Herne said nothing, did nothing, waiting with appropriate stoicism.

  “Then so be it.” The woman’s voice actually broke. She held out her hands, and two of the attendant Summers placed a small bowl of dark liquid in each. The Summer Queen offered a bowl to Herne; he took it willingly. She offered the other to Arienrhod. “Will you drink to the Lady’s mercy?”

  Arienrhod felt her mouth stiffen against the reply; said, finally, “Yes.” The bowl held a strong drug which would dull her fear and awareness of what was coming. Beside her Herne lifted his black mask and raised the bowl to his lips, grimaced. Arienrhod raised her own. She had always intended to refuse it; rejecting the idea of dimming her awareness of the moment when her triumph would have been clear. But now she wanted oblivion. “To the Lady.” She sniffed the pungent fragrance of the herbs, felt their numbing gall burn inside her mouth. She swallowed the liquid, deadening her throat; the second swallow, and the third were as tasteless as water.

  As she finished it and returned the bowl she saw Summers approaching, carrying the ropes that would bind them to the cart, and to each other, inescapably. Terror congealed in her chest, panic darkened her sight. Deaden me, for gods’ sakes! trying to feel the numbness spread. Herne almost resisted as the Summers laid hands on him; she saw his muscles twist and harden, and his weakness gave her strength. She sat perfectly still and pliant as the Summers bound her hands, her feet, bound her body tightly against Herne’s and fastened the ropes to the cart itself. Even though the cart had the form of a blunt-nosed boat, she knew that its bed gaped with holes beneath the heaps of furs and offerings, and that it would sink almost immediately. She couldn’t keep her hands from straining at their bonds, or her body from trying to pull away from Herne’s. His masked face turned toward her, but she would not look at him.

  The Summer Queen was back in place before them, but turning to face the water as she recited the final Invocation to the Sea. As she finished, the silence that had fallen over the crowd continued, the silence of anticipation now. Now, at any moment, she would give the sign. Arienrhod felt a dreamlike lethargy creep along her limbs, along her spine; but her mind was still far too clear. Is it meant to work that way? At least now her body was becoming too leaden to betray her, granting her dignity in death whether she wanted it or not.

  But instead of moving aside, the Summer Queen turned back to face her again. “Your Majesty.” The urgency of the muffled voice caught at her. “Would you—look on the face of Summer’s Queen before you die?”

  Ari
enrhod stared uncomprehendingly, felt Herne stare, too. Tradition said that the new Queen did not unmask, casting off her sins, until the old one had gone into the sea; giving the sign for the crowd to follow. But this woman had stumbled off the ritual path once already. Is she so stupid? Or was it something else? “I would see your face, yes,” forcing the words out between numb lips.

  The Summer Queen moved closer to the cart, where the crowd could not see her clearly. Slowly she put her hands to the mask, and lifted it off her head.

  A cascade of silvery hair tumbled out and down. Arienrhod gaped at the face that the mask revealed. The ring of Summers surrounding the cart gaped, too. She heard their voices murmur as the wonder spread, as they all saw what she saw ... face to face with her own face.

  “Moon—” barely even a whisper to betray her. Her body sat perfectly still, as though it saw nothing unusual, nothing remarkable, incredible, impossible. Not in vain. It was not in vain!

  “Gods,” Herne mumbled thickly. “How? How’d you do it, Arienrhod?”

  She only smiled.

  Moon shook out her hair, meeting the smile with forgiveness, and defiance, and compassion. “Change has come ... because of you, in spite of you, Your Majesty.” She lowered the mask over her head again.

  The Summers around the cart drew away, looking from face to face, their own expressions caught between amazement and fear. “The Queen! They’re both the Queen—” an augury, an omen. The sibyl tattoo was clearly visible on Moon’s throat; they pointed at it and murmured again.

  Herne chuckled with difficulty. “The secret’s out ... it’s out at last. She’s been offworld, she knows what she is.”

  “What? What, Herne?” trying to turn her head.

  “Sibyls are everywhere! You never knew, did you; you never even suspected. And those stuffed dummies—” glancing toward the off worlders in the stands, “they don’t suspect a thing.” His mangled laughter left him gasping.

  Sibyls are everywhere? ... Can they be real? No, it isn’t fair, there’s so much left to learn! Closing her eyes, unable to focus her inner sight. But it wasn’t in vain.

  The chorus of wailing and execration began to press again, inexorable like the process of change, impatient for the sacrifice. All of the crowd’s overflowing grief, all of its blame, all of its hostility and resentment and fear poured into this fragile boat, onto the helpless beings of herself and Herne, to be taken down with them at the ritual’s culmination. She no longer strained against the contact between her body and Herne’s, grateful at last for someone to share the trial, and this last moment, with her ... the passing through into another plane. She had seen too many visions of heaven, too many hells, to choose among them. I hope we make our own.

  She turned her gaze outward a last time, to see Moon standing aside from the cart’s path: Her body was taut with strain, as though she were about to speak an unforgivable curse, one that she could never take back. Why should it hurt her? I would rejoice—Not able to remember why she would rejoice, or even whether it was true. She rallied her mind one last time, before Moon could speak the fateful words, to speak her own last words. “My people—” half obliterated by their cries. “Winter is gone! Obey the new Queen ... as you would your own. For she is your own now.” She dropped her head, catching only Moon’s eyes. “Where ... is he?”

  Moon moved her head slightly, a twinge of jealousy in it, but granting her clone-mother’s last request. Arienrhod followed her glance to find Sparks standing among the honored Summers, by the empty place that was the Summer Queen’s own in the stands. But he stood with his eyes closed against the parting moment; or against the chance that she might look up and see him one last time .... He cares ... he does care. She looked back again at Moon. They both do. In that moment infinitely surprised, eternally confounded, by life’s imperviousness to reason or justice.

  Herne’s smoldering stare lay waiting for her when she turned her head back again—knowing whom her thoughts belonged to in this final moment.

  “Forever ... Herne.”

  He shook his head once. “We’re forever. This is. Death is. Life’s what doesn’t last.”

  “We live while someone remembers us. And they’ll never forget me now—” Because her reincarnation already stood in her place. She had no will left to let her look back at Moon once more, or at Sparks. Never look back.

  Moon raised her hands to the Sea, crying like a gull into the storm of the crowd’s anticipation. “Lady Sea, Mother of us all, accept our gifts and return them ninefold, accept our sins and bring us renewal, accept the soul of Winter and let it be—reborn.” She faltered imperceptibly. “Let spring come to Summer!”

  Arienrhod felt the cart lurch as the Summers pushed it forward, watched the oily water surface draw near. The tide was at full, and it lay below the pier’s edge like a distorted mirror. Let it happen. It was not in vain. The howls and moans of the crowd were a hymn to the future, praising her memory. The cart began to tilt under her; she leaned forward, looking for her reflection as it slipped ...

  - 55 -

  Moon saw the cart strike the water, plunge and reemerge; heard it, felt its impact vibrate in her bones. The crowd’s roaring went on and on, hideously. The boat form drifted away from the dock, lowering in the water, swinging slowly until she could see Starbuck’s hidden face and the face of the Snow Queen, Arienrhod ... herself: serene with drug stupor, bound to her impotent lover in a grotesque parody of an embrace. The boat began to spiral more rapidly as it filled with water. Moon tried to shut her eyes, but they would not close against the hypnotic final movement of the death dance on the water. She remembered her own ordeal by sea, remembered all that had brought her to this place, again, sacrifice upon sacrifice. And still she could not look away The boat lurched suddenly, as the faces revolved again toward the crowd, and in the blink of an eye it was gone. Moon blinked again and again, but it did not reappear. The sea surface lay in unperturbed undulation, with only a telltale litter of boughs to mark Her acceptance of Her peoples’ offering. The crowd’s roaring was like a storm, and the underworld trembled. Moon watched the lazy motion of the swells, standing as fluid and unresponsive as the Sea Herself.

  One of the Summers came forward at last, touched her arm hesitantly. Moon shuddered under the touch, and breathed again. “Lady?” He bowed as Moon turned at last. The Summers acknowledged their Queen’s role as the Sea Mother incarnate, and did not use the artificial off world form of royal address. “The unmasking—”

  “I know.” She nodded, looking back over her shoulder at the sea even as she spoke. Fair voyage, safe haven. She moved away from the edge of the dock, into the crowd’s eye once more. “Lady” ... I am the Queen.

  “The Queen ... the Queen ... the Queen is dead. Long live the Queen!” The shouts of the Summers echoed inside her, a mockery.

  She placed her hands on her mask, hands that felt damp and chill like the wind through the underworld. “My people—” She felt her body resist the motion of exposing her face again; suddenly, disconcertingly aware of the danger she had only glimpsed in the eyes of the Summers who stood here on the pier around her. Now her resemblance to Arienrhod would be obvious to everyone—and especially to the off worlders. If they even suspected the truth ... She shook her head, shaking the rest of the words loose that she must say to the waiting crowd: “Winter is past, Summer has come at last. The Lady has taken our offering, and will return it ninefold. The life that was is dead—let it be cast away, like a battered mask, an outgrown shell. Rejoice now, and make a new beginning!” She lifted the mask from her head.

  All of the crowd together—Winters, Summers, even off worlders-became one in this one moment. Their shouts of joy and the rustle of countless masks being torn from countless heads crescendoed, baring faces freed for that moment from all past sorrows, sins, and fears. Their celebration and adulation lifted her up onto its shoulders, swept into her heart. This world will be free!

  But as she spoke the words, holding her mask hi
gh, the crowd’s voice changed; the cavernous underworld reverberated with the cries of a people who saw a thing beyond their understanding, and could not deny it .... “Arienrhod—Arienrhod!” Moon felt the Summers’ superstition curdle, felt the disbelief spreading like paranoia through the crowd, imagined it echoing through the entire city. Knowing that she must stop it now—stop it before she lost everything without ever having had it. How ... how do I stop them? like a prayer, pressing her hand to the sign at her throat. The sibyl sign ...

  “People of Tiamat, children of the Sea!” She reached up, pulling at the neck of her clothing, to bare the trefoil tattoo. “I am a sibyl! See my sign—I serve the Lady faithfully and truthfully. My name is Moon Dawntreader Summer, and I will do the same as your Queen. The keeper of all wisdom speaks through me, but only to you. Ask and I shall answer, and I will never speak falsely.”

  A hush fell, went on falling as the echoes died; all eyes throughout the city were on her throat, or on its image on some screen. The Winters were speechless with uncertainty, the Summers were speechless with reverence, at the undeniable proof of their Queen’s transmutation, the symbol of her rebirth and holy status. And from the corner of her eye Moon saw the strange look that passed over the faces of the off worlder officials in the viewing stands, to see that sign, below that face ...

  As she went on watching, her breath aching in her chest, she saw the look separating again into a natural spectrum of expressions: horrified amusement, fascination, disgust at the spectacle they had all just witnessed ... but still a lingering unease and uncertainty. Nowhere among them did she see any guilt, any respect, any real understanding of what they had seen. Next time—next time whoever stands here will see those things.