The Summer Queen

TIAMAT: Carbuncle

BZ Gundhalinu took his place on the ribbon-draped platform between Vhanu and the Prime Minister, aware that all eyes were on him now—the last one sliding into place, like a guilty schoolboy, when he should have been the first one here. Below the hastily erected viewing stands the sea waited, covered by floating docks; the docks were now so crowded with the ships of Festival-time that the water itself was barely visible.

But where the pier ended below him a space of water had been deliberately left open, for the ritual to come. He watched its dark, glimmering motion, feeling its relentness rhythms begin to hypnotize him. His mind sank like a stone, drawn down into the depths by the weight of his new knowledge, the unspeakable burden of the secret that lay hidden below….

He forced his eyes away, clutching the rail in front of him harder than necessary as he searched the clear space that separated the stands filled with influential offworlders from the stands which held the most influential Tiamatans—segregated, as they had always been. All the faces that he could see across the way were still hidden behind their Mask Night disguises, unlike his own people; the Tiamatans would not unmask until the ritual was completed. Two real human faces stood out against the sea of alien forms—Sparks Dawntreader and the Queen, standing side by side. They were not touching, and their own faces were as fixed and rigid as masks.

He willed Moon to lift her gaze from the sea to look at him; until at last she met his eyes. He saw her translucently pale skin blush; saw the telltale redness of her mouth, the dizzying depths of passion and hidden knowledge in her eyes. His hand rose unthinkingly to his own lips, his own unmasked face; fell away again. His whole body still moved as if he were sleepwalking, stupefied by revelations at every level of awareness, revelations that still went on and on.…

“BZ—” Vhanu’s hand was on his arm, giving him a subtle shake; he realized that Vhanu had been trying to get his attention, and failing. “Thou must have had quite a night of it,” Vhanu whispered, with amusement in his eyes. “I’ve never seen thou like this before.”

“Yes,” he murmured, understating

“I had a most entertaining night myself,” Vhanu said, his smile turning private with the memory. “Really quite an interesting custom.”

“Yes, indeed,” Sandrine muttered, behind them. “But barbaric that they make us get up at dawn the morning after, to stand here in this wind and watch them throw straw dummies into the sea.” The others around him had already taken off their masks, as if it was beneath their dignity to be seen wearing one in their official capacity, in the light of day. He had left his own mask behind at the palace, forgotten in the bedazzlement of his waking, their leavetaking, his frantic dash back to his townhouse to change into his uniform in time for the Change ceremony.

He looked back across the open space at Moon and Sparks, away again, as a murmur of anticipation began far above them in the Police-cordoned crowds lining the ramp that led down from the city. The sound swept toward him, infecting the people in the stands, who began to murmur and point as they caught their first glimpse of the sight they had been waiting here to see.

A ship-form cart was progressing slowly down the ramp, surrounded by Summers dressed in traditional clothing, dyed in shades of green and decorated with embroidery and designs worked in polished shell. They wore wreaths and garlands of flowers, and they chanted a Tiamatan lament that fell strangely on his ears.

The cart itself carried two passengers sitting stiffly upright, wearing masks. One of the masks was the one that Moon had worn, as Summer Queen, last night. The other was a mass of fiery brilliance, like the sun—Sparks’s mask, he realized suddenly. As the cart drew slowly nearer, he saw the ropes that bound the two figures to the seat.

His glance went again to the two faces in the stands across the way, proving to himself that the couple in the cart were only effigies, not human beings. Moon’s gaze held his for a long moment, before she looked away again, at the cart and its masked figures. Her hands hugged her arms as if she were reassuring herself of her safety, her reality.

The cart came to a halt in the open space, just before it reached the sea. Moon left her place and made her way down to the pier, and the crowd’s murmurous voice fell silent at last. Throughout the city other crowds were watching this climax of the Festival’s celebration on monitor screens. Gundhalinu wondered how many of them were fantasizing that this was the real thing—that the ceremonial ship-form that had made the journey down here from the palace gates was actually about to send two living beings into the sea to drown. He wondered how many of those watching had seen the real thing, the last time.

The last time it had happened he had been in the hospital, recovering from pneumonia, the result of his ordeal among the nomads. Suddenly, staring at the effigies, he was glad that he had not been here to watch Moon give the command that had sent the Snow Queen into the sea. He wondered what she must have felt then, watching her mother, her rival, her mirror image, drown before her eyes. He wondered what she must be feeling now, what she must remember, as she presided over this harmless imitation of the real sacrifice—which would have been a real sacrifice, if he had not stopped it. She stood staring at the masked effigies before her, her own face frozen.

He felt giddy with the rush of empathy that filled him as he looked at her. He wanted to make his way down to the pier where she stood, to take her in his arms, to take her pain inside him, to hold and support her…. He did nothing, standing motionless at the ribbon-draped rail, the picture of official propriety and indifference

Moon tore her eyes from the effigies, looking past them, past the waiting honor guard of Summers at the contents of the cart, which was fully laden with offerings to the Sea Mother. Her expression changed again, suddenly. He followed her gaze, seeing heaps of greenery and odd artifacts donated or tossed into the cart as it passed through the crowd. His eyes found the thing that her eyes had discovered: a Festival mask, with a mirrored face framed in midnight black—his mask, that he had left behind at the palace. Its face was shattered, the mirror a net of a thousand fractures, as if someone had deliberately smashed it in before consigning it to oblivion in the depths of the sea… .

Moon glanced up suddenly, looking at him, before she turned to look back at the stands behind her, at her husband, silently witnessing. She bowed her head again; gathering strength, looking at neither one of them now, turning inward. She lifted her arms to the crowd, to the Sea Mother, lifted her voice and began to play her part in the ritual prayer and process.

BZ took a deep breath, easing the constriction in his chest as he listened to her song. He looked up at the masked faces—the one unmasked, among them—as the pure, clear beauty of her voice repeating the archaic recitation washed over him like the waters of the sea, washing away the past, telling him that from this moment on everything in his life was changed….

“I hate this,” Ariele murmured, shifting her weight from foot to foot as her body grew impatient with standing. “This is humiliating.” She lifted her hands to the mask, all rainbows and colors of the sea, that Fate had made for her. It was beautiful; even Reede had said so, as close to wondering as she had ever seen him get about anything but the mers. She had felt beautiful wearing it, shining through the countless parties, falling through the pleasures of the night with her chosen lover… . Until he had abandoned her at dawn, forcing her to come here alone, to endure this ceremony without him.

Already stung by Reede’s refusal to stay with her, she had watched the offworlders standing in judgment on the platform across the way, every one of them unmasked, their alien faces staring back at her in curiosity and bemusement. They were watching her mother perform the traditional Change ritual as if she and all her people were some sort of animals quaintly dressed in clothing and imitating human behavior.

Now, standing here under their eyes, she felt the beauty of the mask she wore wither and die, as if their gaze was frost. Her hands tightened over the fragile form as something inside her tried to force her to take it off. But then her own face, her emotions, would be left naked to their stares. She lowered her hands again to her sides, as the Chief Justice suddenly looked directly at her.

She turned her face away so that she did not have to look at the man who claimed to be her father. She listened to the strange yet familiar patterns of her mother’s recitation rise and fall, filling the air; thought about the last time her mother had performed this ritual, in earnest, drowning her true grandmother on the day her own life was begun.

She looked at her true father, his hair as bright as the sunrise, standing alone like she was here in the stands, but just beyond her reach. He was not looking at her, or her mother, or even the offworlders; he was staring out at the sea. She called to him, as loudly as she dared, but he did not respond, did not acknowledge her in any way.

She felt her eyes burn suddenly, and turned away, looking behind her at Merovy, who was also alone, because Tammis had not even had the nerve to show up here. Merovy hid her sorrows behind another of Fate’s masks, this one the color of fog, the color of birds’ wings. Its forms were so subtle that at a glance someone might mistake them for simple, or plain.

Ariele wondered where Tammis was. For once, in her own isolation, she felt compassion for her brother and his silent wife. She reached back, touching Merovy’s hand, seeing her start in surprise. She felt Merovy’s fingers close over hers, briefly and warmly.

“What is it you find humiliating about being here, Ariele?” someone asked behind her, curious and without censure.

She glanced back over her other shoulder, recognizing the voice of Clavally, tying it to another masked face; realizing that Merovy had come with her parents.

“The offworlders,” she murmured. “The way they watch us. They make everything we do seem meaningless and stupid. They don’t believe in anything.”

“They believe in everything,” Danaquil Lu said wryly. “Which is just as bad.”

She shook her head irritably, and felt Clavally’s light touch fall on her shoulder. “Do you believe in the Sea Mother? In the rituals?” Clavally asked.

She looked up and back, suddenly glad that her mask covered her face. She listened to her mother’s voice calling on the Sea. “I don’t believe the sea is some kind of god,” she whispered, finally. “But neither does my mother, even though she’s supposed to.”

“But our beliefs and traditions are just as old as the Kharemoughis’; maybe even older,” Clavally said. “And what our rituals teach us is just as true to how we’ve always lived as the Kharemoughis’ are, or anyone else’s are. They’re all only variations on a theme—as your father would say—” Ariele glanced back at her again, in surprise, “each variation beautiful in its own way, even if they don’t always harmonize. If there was only one song to sing, in all existence, our lives would be maddeningly dull.”

“But so much more peaceful,” Danaquil Lu said, putting his arm around his wife.

“Everything has its price,” Clavally murmured. “That’s what the Change is about.”

Ariele looked away again, thinking suddenly of the mers, and the mystery of their songs … thinking of Reede. He was an offworlder, but his fascination with her world was passionate and real; he had made her see her people’s customs, and her own life, in ways she had never seen them before. If only he would have stayed with her, to celebrate the changes he had brought into her life … to acknowledge that I/ in some way she had changed his own. They were together night after night; he had even, finally, shared his body with her. But he still would not let her into his heart. He never allowed any real intimacy between them, even when they lay in each other’s arms.

Sometimes, when they made love, the pleasure and the sweetness filled her until she thought she would die of it; sometimes when they made love he wept. But always he left her before dawn, as he had left her this morning, slipping away like a succubus, a shadow, before the new day’s light showed at the alley’s end… leaving her to come here alone, stand here alone, listen to the ancient Song of Change alone. And all around her there was loneliness and regret, telling her things she did not want to hear about her desperate passion for a man as secret and unknowable as the depths of the sea.

Someone stepped into the empty space just behind her, amid a rustle and murmur of bodies. She turned, with sudden eagerness; found her brother standing behind her, in his rightful spot beside Merovy. She stared at him for a long moment, trying to make his masked figure into someone else’s. She could not, and so she looked away again, out at the unchanging sea.

“Merovy …” Tammis whispered, “I need to talk to you. About us,”

She looked up at him; he could see nothing of her face but her eyes. Her eyes told him everything that her face could not, hope/doubt/anguish/love—

He reached for her hand, and she did not pull away. “It’s you I love,” he said, oblivious to the masked faces turning toward him, turning away; to his mother’s voice consigning the images of herself and her consort to the sea. “Everything you are, your body, your mind. I want to live with you, and have children, and raise them together—”

Her hand tightened convulsively over his. “It’s the time of Change,” she whispered, barely audible as she looked toward the ritual down below; echoing it, as the people around them were suddenly turning away, pointing, straining to see.

Tammis turned too, as Merovy drew him with her. He looked down at the place where his mother stood. She stepped aside as they watched, and the Summers thrust the cart forward, sending it into the cold, dark water. The crowd’s voice roared, everyone around them cheering now, as they watched the boat-form circling, circling, riding lower and lower in the water as the holes hidden in its bed let in the sea. Tammis stared, squeezing Merovy’s hand painfully, as the effigies that symbolized the two actual human beings who were his parents disappeared into the Sea Mother’s embrace.

He let out his breath in a sigh as the offering-boat sank out of sight, putting his arm around Merovy almost unthinkingly. She pressed against him, her body seeking his, her mind seeking comfort from the symbolic death of the past that they had just witnessed.

“All things change …” his mother’s voice was saying, “except the Sea. 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—” Having no mask of her own to take off, she raised her hands, a sign to the waiting crowd.

Tammis reached up to lift off his mask, feeling the sea wind finger his hair and cool his suddenly flushed face. Merovy removed her mask. He looked at the two strange, suddenly sightless fantasy faces gazing up at him: traditional totem figures, half bird, half fish—unreal and yet somehow full of secret meaning. The masks fell together, as his hand and hers released them, and he looked up at her face. She smiled at him, and he felt the warmth spread through his entire body.

Al1 around them other masks were dropping away, revealing Clavally and Danaquil Lu, Fate, Tor—letting him see the release that lit the faces of the people he knew and loved and suddenly felt at one with again. And he understood, as he never had before, why the Change was necessary; how even this imitation of the true ritual could affect so many people so profoundly.

His sister turned where she stood, alone, dropping her mask as she looked up at him standing beside Merovy. Her face was quizzical for a moment, and then, as suddenly as sunlight, she smiled at them. Tammis smiled back, uncertainly. Ariele looked away again without speaking, looking toward their father’s place in the stands.

Tammis followed her glance, and to his surprise saw that his father’s space was empty. He looked down at the pier, where his mother stood. His father was not there, either. His mother stood facing away from her own people, gazing up into the rapt face of the Kharemoughi Chief Justice, while the mindless ululation of the crowd went on and on.