The Snow Queen

8

“…And then a part of the wealth from the last Festival was put into a new fund for me, so that I could begin work without interruption on the masks for this one… almost nineteen years ago.

How time slips past, masked in the rhythm of the days! That’s the rhythm of creation for you — individual creation, universal creation. Red-orange feathers, please.” The mask maker held out her hand.

Sparks leaned forward on the stoop, reached into one of the trays scattered in the doorway between them and passed her a handful. Malkin, her long-limbed gray cat, poked a surreptitious paw among the feathers still in the holder. Sparks pushed him away, went back to separating strands of beads, dropping them into their appropriate cups. He looked up and down until it made him dizzy, trying to watch her work while he worked himself. “I don’t know how you do it. How can you create so many masks, and every one different? When you can hardly—” He stopped, still unsure of his words in spite of her reassurances.

“—tell a red feather from a green one?” She smiled, lifting her head to look at him with the dark windows of her eyes, and the light sensor on the band across her forehead. “Well, you know, it wasn’t easy in the beginning. But I had a desire to learn — a need to create something beautiful myself. I couldn’t paint or draw, but this is more like sculpture, really, a creation of touch and texture. And the craft is hereditary in the Ravenglass family, you know; like blindness. Being born blind, and then being given half-sight — sometimes I think that combination creates a heightening of imagination. All forms are vague and wonderful… you see in them what you want to see. I have two sisters who are both blind too, and who have their own shops here in the city. And many other relatives as well, all doing the same, though not all blind. It takes a lot of creative energy to make certain that there’s a mask for every reveller who will be dancing in these streets at the next Festival time. And you know something?” She smiled, the pride shining through it. “Mine are the best of all. I, Fate Ravenglass Winter, will make the mask of the Summer Queen… A piece of red velvet, please.”

Sparks passed her the piece of cloth, letting it slither sensuously between his fingers. “But all this work — half a life’s work — it’s only for one night! And then it’s gone. How can you bear that?”

“Because it’s so important to Tiamat’s identity as a separate world — our heritage. The rituals of the Change are a tradition that reaches back into the clouded times before the Hegemony and its rulers ever set foot on our world… some of it into the time when we were off worlders here ourselves—”

“How do you know?” interrupting. “How do you know what anybody did before the first ships sailed down out of the Great Storm?” He slipped absentmindedly into the language of myth.

“All I know is what I hear on the threedy She smiled. “The off worlders have archaeologists who study the Old Empire’s records and ruins. They claim we came here as refugees from a world called Trista, after some interstellar war near the end of the Old Empire. These fantasy faces I make began as real creatures; once they were on the standards of the first ship families that ancestored Summer and Winter. You probably recognize some of them — in Summer they still have meaning. Your ship name Dawntreader, is one of the original dozen names — did you know that?” Sparks shook his head. “But when the Hegemony came, they made us ashamed of our ‘primitive’ traditions; so now we only bring them out at the Festival, not really celebrating the Prime Minister’s visit, but our own heritage.”

“Oh.” He was still confused and disturbed by the Winters’ Ladyless view of history, although he would never admit it.

“Anyway, some things are more beautiful simply because they are ephemeral. Think of a flower opening, or a song as you play it, or a rainbow… think of making love.”

“What if there were no more rainbows…” Sparks thought of those things, and bit his lip. “I guess it’s stupid to look back and be sorry they’re gone, then.”

“It’s human.” She tilted her head quizzically, as though she were listening to his thoughts. “But for the artist the real joy is in the creation of the thing. When you feel something growing under your hands, you grow with it. You’re alive, the energy flows. When it’s finished, you stop growing. You stop living. You only live for the next act of creation. Don’t you feel that, when you play your music?”

“Yes.” He picked up his flute, running his fingers along the hair fine seams left like scars on the wounded shell, where she had put it back together for him. She had done her work so well that even its sound had scarcely been altered. “I guess so. I never thought about it. But I guess I do.”

“The blue-violet beetle’s wing, please… thank you. I don’t know how I got along before you came.” Malkin sidled along Fate’s hip and crept up into her lap, kneading the cloth of her loose skirt.

Sparks laughed; a pinched, self-deprecating sound that told her truth was flowing upstream. In spite of her prediction to him the first time they met, the competition of the Maze’s numberless delights was too much for his fragile island music; he barely earned enough with his street-corner songs to put food in his mouth. He inhaled, breathing in the confusion of exotic smells from the Newhavenese botanery next door and the Samathan restaurant across the alley. If she hadn’t given him the shelter of her back room, instead of sleeping under the watchful gaze of a thousand spirit face masks he would be sleeping in the gutter… or worse.

He looked back at her, grateful at last that she had forced him to go to the off worlder police to make his accusation against the slavers. He remembered the surprise on the face of the Blue who had saved his life when she saw him again, and the guilt that had reflected on his own. He sighed. “Are the off worlders really all going to just pack up and leave Tiamat after the next Festival? Abandon everything they have here? It’s hard to believe.”

“Yes, almost all of them will go.” She twisted a tassel from golden cord. “Their preparations have already begun, just as ours have. You could sense the changes if you’d grown up here. Will that make you sad?”

He looked up, because it wasn’t the question he had expected. “I — don’t know. Everybody in Summer always said it was a day to look forward to, the Change; that we’d come into our own. And I hate how the off worlders blind Winter with a lot of glory while they take what they want, and then think they can just forget about us.” His hand closed over his medal; he twisted his fingers through the openings. “But—”

“But you’ve been blinded by the glory, just like all of us Winters.” She broke off her knot tying to stroke Malkin’s silvery, sleeping back.

“I…”

She smiled, watching him with her third eye. “What’s wrong with that? Nothing. You asked me once whether I resented not being able to leave our world, when I might have my blindness cured somewhere else. You were thinking that I must resent being given these sensors instead — having to settle for half-sight instead of full vision. If I looked at it with perfect eyes, that’s what I might have seen, too. But I looked with blind eyes… and to me they look wonderful,”

“Wonder-full.” Sparks leaned back against the wall of the shop, looking away down the alley. “And after the Festival it all ends.”

“Yes. The last Festival. Then the off worlders will abandon us, and the Summers will have to move north again, and life as I’ve always lived it will cease. This time the choosing of the Queen for a Day will be in earnest… the Summer Queen’s mask will be my last and best creation.”

“What will you do after the Festival is over?” He realized suddenly that the question was more than rhetorical.

“Begin a new life.” She tightened a final knot. “Just like everyone else in Carbuncle. That’s why it’s called the Change, you know.” She held the finished mask up like an offering to the people passing in the alleyway. He saw some of them stare and smile.

“Why did they call you Fate? Your parents, I mean.”

“My mother. Haven’t you guessed? For the same reason you were called Sparks . Merrybegots have special names.”

“You mean, two Festivals ago—?”

She nodded. “And it’s been a heavy load, to carry a name like that around for a lifetime. Be glad you don’t have to.”

He laughed. “It’s hard enough to carry “Summer’ around, in Carbuncle. It’s like an anchor, it keeps me from getting anywhere.” He picked up his flute again and put it to his lips; put it down, looking toward the alley entrance as a murmur of surprise traveled from person to person toward them.

“What is it?” Fate put the mask aside, her forehead wrinkling in an unconscious squint.

“Somebody’s coming up the alley. Somebody rich.” He could see the fineness of the clothing before he could make out the faces as the strangers came up the narrow way. There were half a dozen women and men, but his gaze caught on the one who clearly led the rest. The richness of her exotic clothing suddenly meant nothing, as he saw her face clearly’ Sparks Fate’s hand found his arm and tightened around it.

He didn’t answer. He stood up slowly, feeling the world draw back until he was left alone in a private space with only… “Moon!”

She stopped, smiling recognition at him, and waited while he crossed the space to her.

“Moon, what are you—?”

Her attendants closed around him, catching his arms, holding him back from her. “What’s the matter with you, boy? You dare to approach the Queen?”

But she lifted her hand, signaling them to let him go. “It’s all right. I remind him of someone else, that’s all… Isn’t that right, Sparks Dawntreader Summer?”

They all looked at her, but none of them could match his own disbelief. She was Moon, she was Moon… but not Moon, too. He shook his head. Not Moon. The Queen… Then this was the Snow Queen, the Queen of Winter, who stood before him. Embarrassed, half-frightened, he dropped to his knees before her.

She reached down, took his hand, and drew him to his feet. “That isn’t necessary.” He raised his head, found her studying his face with an intensity that made him blush and look away. “How rare to find a Summer with any respect. Who is it that I reminded you of so much that you saw her instead?” Even the voice was the same; and yet something in it mocked him.

“My — cousin, Your Majesty. My cousin Moon.” He swallowed. “H-how did you know who I am?” She laughed. “If you were a Winter, you wouldn’t ask that. Nothing in this city escapes my attention. For instance, I’ve heard about your unusual talent as a musician. In fact, I’ve come here today just to meet you. To ask you to come to the palace and play for me.”

“Me?” Sparks rubbed his eyes, suddenly not sure whether he was awake. “But, nobody even listens to my music—” He felt the day’s few coins rattle in his half-empty pocket.

“The right people listen.” Fate’s voice reached him from behind. “Didn’t I tell you they would?”

The Queen’s gaze followed as he glanced back. “Well, mask maker. How is your work proceeding? Have you begun the Summer Queen’s mask yet?”

“Your Majesty.” Fate bowed her head solemnly. “My work has been going better than usual, thanks to Sparks . But it isn’t time yet for the Summer Queen.” She smiled. “Winter still reigns. Take care of my musician. I’m going to miss him.”

“The best care imaginable,” the Queen said softly.

Sparks moved to the stoop, picked up his flute and slipped it into the pouch at his belt. Then, impulsively, he took Fate’s hands in his own, leaned across the trays to kiss her cheek. “I’ll come and see you.”

“I know you will.” She nodded. “Now, don’t keep your future waiting.”

He stood up, turned back toward the Queen, blinking as reality and illusion blurred his vision. Her attendants closed around him like the petals of an alien flower, and she took him away.