“Yes,” she murmured, “you are the one who should go, Reede. This is what you were made for, by the higher power that binds us all.” Reede opened his mouth to speak, but she shook her head. “But by the same power, I cannot leave certain boundaries unwatched, or projects untended for so long. You will go alone this time.” Her eyes forbade any protest. He sat paralyzed, staring at her, while on around the table the others voted agreement, one by one.
TIAMAT: Ngenet Plantation
Moon stood up to her knees in the bright grass on the hill below the plantation house, looking out to sea. She tasted the fresh breath of spring, felt the breeze run cool fingers through her hair, lifting it like wings. For a moment she felt as ephemeral as if she were a cloud-child, about to be swept up to ride on the wind’s back, the way Tammis rode now on his father’s shoulders on the beach below. Delighted laughter and shrill shrieking reached her ears, as Ariele and Merovy danced around them, grabbing at Sparks’s hands and Tammis’s flailing feet, begging for rides of their own. She smiled, breathing deeply, imprinting their beauty on her eyes.
Beyond them the sea crashed onto the beach, wave upon wave, reaching northward and southward to the limits of her sight: heavy, silver gray, white-haired with spume, restless with the massive runoff from the melting snows. The sea here still seemed cold and relentless, its enormous breakers battering the steep, rugged foothills that marched down to the shore for miles along the northern coast. No longer snowglazed, catching and reflecting light like a mirror, their new silhouette was a jagged knife-edge against the colorless, fog-burnished sky. But today their massive permanence was suffused with fog until they were only a smoke stain in the lustrous air, a surreal, unreachable dream.…
She looked down again at the children and her husband laughing, running, whirling on the beach; all of them suddenly dancing with their shadows, shouting their delight as the suns broke through the haze into full day at last, haloed by sundogs of rainbow. She remembered her own days of laughing on the beach with Sparks, far away, long ago, with a sudden, bittersweet vividness. She stood motionless, caught in a tesseract, watching them, watching the sea brighten and take on color behind them. The turbid northern ocean never showed the limpid greens and blues that she had seen in Summer seas; although perhaps that was only because memory made all skies clearer, dazzled with rainbows, all waters purer, all colors more brilliant and sense-stunning in those perfect sunlit moments.… Even if there was no Lady whose spirit brightened the waters, every day the sea was warming here, every day the land was greening, becoming reborn; every day this world and her people took one more step toward a better life. She inhaled another deep breath of the free, restless air, held it, savoring the taste of salt and damp and new things growing.
“Moon,” a voice said softly, as if the speaker was reluctant to intrude on her solitude.
She turned, grateful for the thought behind that reticence, even as she was suddenly grateful to have Jerusha PalaThion standing beside her. She had grown as used to Jerusha’s presence as she had to her own shadow; to be without it was to be incomplete. “Look at them,” she said, pointing toward the beach, where Jerusha was already looking, watching the horseplay with smiling envy.
“I’m glad you came,” Jerusha said, glancing away up the hill toward the house, rubbing her arms as if she were cold, even on a day like this one.
“I’m glad you came with us.” Moon put her hand on Jerusha’s arm, touching her gently through the heavy layers of kleeskin and sweater. She studied Jerusha’s face as the other woman looked back at her, witnessing the changed woman that her Chief of Constables became—allowed herself to become—when they were away from the city; an easier, more peaceful woman. Jerusha looked as if she belonged to these lands, this world, in her rugged native clothing, with her dark hair falling unbound down her back or braided in a heavy plait like an islander; just as she herself ceased to be the Summer Queen and became only human, free for a time to breathe and think and move through patterns that had meaning only for her. “Being here heals me, somehow,” she said, looking back toward the beach, the sea.
Jerusha turned to watch with her. “Yes,” she said. “It always used to make me feel that way, when I was Commander of Police.” She sighed, glancing up the hill again. “I knew Miroe was involved with contraband goods. But the best moments of my life for over five years were always here, visiting him.” Moon heard sudden longing and disillusionment in the words.
“Not anymore—?” she asked softly.
Jerusha looked back at her; shook her head, looking away again. Moon had wondered why Jerusha did not spend more time here. Jerusha’s work in the city, her hours spent administering and consulting, were endlessly demanding; they kept her away from this place, and her husband, far too much of the time. Moon had often told her to take more time for herself. Jerusha had always refused.
She glanced again at Jerusha’s face, the deepening lines of its strong profile eased by her smile as she watched the children. Living on a world that was not her own, and living through four miscarriages, had taken their toll on her. Moon felt her heart squeezed, a coldness in her soul, as she watched her own children run and play, and imagined losing even one of them. She looked back at Jerusha, seeing the depths of sorrow below the surface of her smile; realizing suddenly, fully and frighteningly, the toll that Jerusha’s losses had taken on her relationship with her husband.
Neither Jerusha nor Miroe shared their emotions easily—not their pain, not even their joy. And the only way for two people to survive a lifetime together was by sharing those things—no matter how painful, how secret, how strange. The more things each one hid, the more a family became only solitary strangers leading parallel lives, blind to any needs but their own.…
She did not realize that she had moved, turning away from the sea and the sight of her husband and children, far down the beach now, until Jerusha touched her shoulder. She blinked, startled, found herself gazing inland toward the mountains … the remote, fanged peaks still covered with snow, wreathed in wisps of slowly drifting cloud. As she watched, the clouds seemed to take the form of a woman’s face and hands, of her blowing hair cloud-white against the blue ocean of sky—and through her hair, scattered by her hands, Moon saw, as she sometimes could on rare, perfectly clear days, a handful of stars, so bright that they were visible even in the daytime sky. She watched the vision of clouds scatter stars … remembering how she had watched other stars falling like a vision, above those distant snowfields on a distant night: the ships of the Hegemony arriving on Tiamat for the final visit of the Assembly, the final Festival of Winter. Remembering BZ Gundhalinu, there beside her …
“Moon—?” Jerusha’s voice pulled at her; she felt the other woman’s arms catch her, holding her steady as sudden vertigo overwhelmed her.
“Did you see it?” she whispered, her eyes still on the mountains, the sky. “The Lady…”
“What?” Jerusha squinted, following her gaze. But the cloudforms had flowed on, mutating, hiding the ragged scatter of stars, and she saw nothing.
“Nothing,” she murmured. “The clouds … the clouds were beautiful. It made me think of … other skies.” She shook her head, avoiding the look on Jerusha’s face as she began to turn away. But she turned back, suddenly. “Jerusha—I heard from BZ.”
“What?” Jerusha said again, more in disbelief than incomprehension. “Gundhalinu?” He had been one of her inspectors; she had seen him turn renegade out of love, defying her and breaking the Hegemony’s laws for Moon’s sake. But she had let him go, torn by his divided loyalties, and her own.… “That’s impossible,” she murmured, her eyes asking Moon to prove it was not. “How?” she said finally.
“In sibyl Transfer. He’s become a sibyl—” She explained, describing for Jerusha all that she could remember of what she had seen and heard.
“Why was he in World’s End?” Jerusha asked, shaking her head. “Was it a Police case? He was assigned to Four—”
“He
didn’t tell me.”
“When did this happen?”
“Months ago.” Moon looked away.
“And you didn’t tell anyone?”
“No.” She shook her head, brushing pale strands of hair back from her face. “I couldn’t.” She turned, looking toward the beach again, where Sparks and the children were slowly making their way back along the shore. “I couldn’t tell him.…”
“Oh,” Jerusha said softly.
Moon watched Sparks stop on the sand, waving up at her, his red hair catching fire in the sunlight. She felt the heavy pressure inside her chest as she raised her own hand. “I can’t stop thinking about it. I gave him all I could, Jerusha, all it would let me give him—” This time seeing not her husband’s face but a stranger’s, as she had on that night as he took her in his arms.… “But I don’t know if it was enough. I don’t even know if he was able to save himself. There isn’t a day since then that I haven’t thought about him.” She felt her face redden. And night after night the memory of his final words had haunted her, kept her from sleep, when she needed sleep so desperately.…
“Then you haven’t heard anything more?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how to reach him … I don’t even know how he found me. It isn’t supposed to be possible.”
“I know.” Jerusha glanced at her feet, half frowning. “Damn. I wish I had an answer.” She sighed. “But I’m glad you told me.” She met Moon’s eyes again, and smiled, ruefully. “If anyone will survive, he will. You gave him the gift of survival, before he ever left Tiamat.”
Moon looked away uncertainly.
“He was a good man, one of my best. But he was rigid. His pride made him brittle. What happened to him when the nomads had him would have killed him—it nearly did—if you hadn’t shown him something stronger in himself. I gave him back his career. But you gave him back his life. You made him human.” Her smile widened. “Gods, you should have heard how that man talked about you. I couldn’t believe my ears.”
Moon turned back, opening her mouth.
“Moon!” Sparks was beside her, suddenly, pulling her close against him as he kissed her. She felt his arms surround her, the warmth and chill of his skin, the tang of sun and sweat. She looked up into his eyes, as green as the new grass, his red hair moving like flame in the wind; his handsome, peaceful face, as familiar to her as her own. She pressed against him, into the solid reality of his embrace, seeing Jerusha’s expression turn thoughtfully noncommittal as she watched them together. Moon looked out at the wide water, letting it fill her eyes until it was all she could see; trying to imagine that they had never left the islands, that there had been no lost time, no separation, no bitter secrets between them.
“Mama! Mama!” The twins joined them, and little Merovy—not so little, she reminded herself, looking down at the girl’s fair, freckled face and windblown brown hair. None of them were so small anymore. The twins’ heads butted her chest as they wrestled for hugging space. She put her arms around them, anchored by their warmth and unquestioning love … shaking off the unknowable, the impossible, the past, that was no longer an option.
“Mama, look, I found a carbuncle—!” Tammis held up one of the shining, blood-red stones that washed up along Tiamat’s shores: the semiprecious gems that the Winters said had been named for the city, or the city for them. “And look at our shells—!”
“I have one like Da’s, he’s going to make me a flute!” Ariele waved a slender, pearly corkscrew shell in front of Moon’s face.
“No, that’s mine!” Tammis cried. “It’ll be my flute! I found it!”
“I promised Ariele—” Sparks protested, with faint exasperation. “You wait.”
“If he found it, it’s his,” Moon said, separating small, struggling hands. “You’ll find another, and that will be yours, Ariele. You’ll have to wait.”
“No!” Ariele shook her head fiercely. “I want mine now!”
“I’ll let you use mine,” Sparks murmured, lifting her chin. “You can use mine.”
She gazed up at him, her smile coming out like the sun, as Tammis’s smile fell away suddenly. Moon touched his shoulder, soothing and distracting him. “Show me what you found.”
“Here, for you—”
She laughed and made expected ohhs of wonder, holding hands and shells with sudden heartfelt pleasure; refusing to listen to the voice of the past still calling her name, somewhere inside the joyful clamor of the present.
“Well now, well now, what is all this—?”
Moon looked over her shoulder, hearing her grandmother’s voice reaching cheerfully ahead up the hillside from the bay. Gran and Borah Clearwater made their way slowly but resolutely toward the gathering on the slope; Miroe paced beside them as host and guide. She saw their small boat, its slack sail flapping, down at the dock, surprised that she had not noticed them coming in. Miroe clearly had, from the house farther up the hill. The children left her side in an abrupt flock and rushed to greet the new arrivals with more gleeful clamor.
Moon smiled, watching them, for a moment imagining that she watched herself, and Sparks. She saw the children’s pleasure reflected in her grandmother’s eyes; saw in Borah Clearwater, standing beside Gran, the grandfather she could not clearly remember now, who had died of a fever when she was only three. It still amazed her to see Gran beaming like a young girl, as far in spirit from the drawn, aged woman who had come to Carbuncle as the grandmother of Moon’s memory had been. Capella Goodventure had done them both a kindness they could never have imagined, on that day when her grandmother had arrived in the city—a fact which Moon silently hoped had caused the Goodventure elder disappointment equal to the pain she had inflicted on them.
It was hard for her to believe that it had taken a Winter to rekindle life’s fire in Gran. But over the years she had found that many of the outback Winters had more in common with Summers than they did with the inhabitants of Carbuncle.
“Well, damn it!” Borah Clearwater said, peering with good-natured impatience over the swarming heads of the children. “I see you’ve added even more of those ‘windflowers’ to this crackbrained plantation of yours, Miroe Ngenet.” He gestured at the windscrews at the top of the hill behind them. “Damn shame it is too, when it was a perfectly fine example before—”
“It ran on hard human labor—and one very expensive offworlder power unit—before, Clearwater, just like yours, and you know it,” Miroe grunted, his mouth curving upward under the thick bush of his mustache. “We get twice as much productivity at half the expense with windscrews and generators and fuel made in our distillery, and it frees up my workers to learn trades at the processing plant—”
“Hmph. Sounds like a steaming pile of—”
“Borah!” Gran said sharply. “Watch your tongue. There are children.”
“Yes, heart,” he murmured, deflating abruptly, without further objection. “But rot me if I want to hear more about processing plants and new trades, new towns, new noise and stink and that miserable pissant Kirard Set … Now he’s after me again, wanting me to sell him the plantation to develop. It was an unlucky tumble that tossed his genetic code. I can live with the right of way, as long as he pays me well—” He looked at Moon, and she smiled. “But don’t expect me to thank you for it. And believe it’ll be a hot day in hell before he touches another inch of my lands with ‘progress.’ Over my dead body! Right, love—?” Gran nodded, her face mirroring his resolution. He put his arm around her, chuckled as she slapped his hand for getting familiar.
“Act your age, you old bull-klee,” she said, smiling-eyed; somehow still managing to slide back into his grasp while pushing him away. She accepted more hugs and treasured shells from a half-dozen small hands.
“Ah, but I am, you know I am,” he breathed in her ear, and she giggled like a girl. “Where’s that nephew of mine, and your mother?” He looked down at Merovy swinging back and forth, pulling on his arm.
“They couldn’
t come,” she said, losing her own smile as she remembered.
“Why not?” He looked up, concerned. “Is his back plaguing him so much, then?”
Moon nodded, pressing her mouth together. Danaquil Lu’s back trouble had grown so bad that he could no longer walk upright. The voyage down the coast, even in a motorized craft, was too long and painful; and so they stayed in the city.
“But we’re getting close to where I can help him,” Miroe said. “The workmanship of our second-generation tool-making is getting finer all the time. Soon we’ll be able to produce the surgical equipment I have to have; when I have it, there’s a correctional procedure which is relatively simple—”
Borah snorted in disgust. “False hope! Why give him false hope? We can’t recreate something it took the offworlders centuries to produce in the first place, in only one century! Let things be, and accept it.” He waved his hand, turning away, dismissing them. Jerusha stiffened beside Moon; Moon remembered her childlessness, and how the new technology had not come in time to change that.
“My da will so get better!” Merovy cried indignantly. “Don’t say that.”
“Of course he will,” Miroe snapped, his good humor vanishing like smoke.
“If the Lady wills it,” Gran finished, patting Merovy’s head with stern resolution.
Moon looked away from them, rubbing her arms inside the loose sleeves of her sweater. Sparks rolled his eyes beside her, and pushed his fists into the pockets of his canvas trousers. “Goddess! He’s worse than the Summers,” he muttered, so softly that only she heard it.
“Mama, come with us to get more shells!” Ariele pulled at Moon’s hand, gazing up at her with bright eagerness.