“He did! But the Lady — turned him away. All our lives we planned to do this together… and then She turned him away.”
“But you still came here.”
“I had to. I’ve waited half my life to be a sibyl. To matter in the world.” Moon shifted, hugging her knees, as a cloud abruptly darkened the sun. Below them the sea turned sullen gray in its shadow. “And he couldn’t understand that. He said stupid things, hateful things. He — went away, to Carbuncle! He went away angry. I don’t know if he’ll ever come back.” She looked up, meeting Clavally’s eyes, seeing the sympathy and understanding that she had hidden from for so long, and realizing that she had been wrong to hide — to carry the burden alone. “Why didn’t the Lady choose us both? We’ve always been together! Doesn’t She know that we’re the same?”
Clavally shook her head. “She knows that you’re not, Moon. That was why She chose only you. There was something inside Sparks that isn’t in you — or the other way around — so that when She struck your hearts there in the cave She heard a false note from his.”
“No!” Moon looked out across the water toward the Choosing Island . The sky was massing with clouds for another rain squall. “I mean — there’s nothing wrong with Sparks . Is it because his father wasn’t a Summer? Because he likes technology? Maybe the Lady thought he wasn’t a true believer. She doesn’t take Winters to be sibyls.” Moon fingered the lank grass, searching the tangled strands for an explanation.
“Yes, She does.”
“She does?”
“Danaquil Lu is a Winter.”
“He is?” Moon’s head came up. “But — how? Why? I always heard… everybody says that they don’t believe. And that they’re not… like us,” she finished lamely.
“The Lady works in strange ways. There is a kind of well at the heart of Carbuncle, that opens down to the sea from the Queen’s palace. On his first visit to court, Danaquil Lu crossed over the bridge that spans the well — and the Sea Mother called up to him, and told him that he must become a sibyl.”
Clavally smiled sorrowfully. “People are sweet and sour fruit together, wherever you find them. The Lady picks the ones that best suit Her tastes, and She doesn’t seem to care whether they worship Her, or anyone.” Her eyes turned distant; she glanced up at the rooms in the cliff face. “But few Winters even try to become sibyls, because they’re taught that it’s madness, or superstitious fakery. They rarely even see sibyls, sibyls are forbidden to enter Carbuncle.
The off worlders hate them for some reason; and whatever the off worlders hate, the Winters hate too. But they believe in the power of the Lady’s retribution.” Lines deepened in her face. “They have a pole, that ends in a collar of spikes, so that no one is ‘contaminated’ by a sibyl’s blood…”
Moon thought of Daft Nairy… and of Danaquil Lu. Her hand touched the trefoil tattoo at the base of her neck, beneath the ivory wool of her sweater. “Danaquil Lu—”
“—was punished, driven out of Carbuncle. He can never go back; at least while the Snow Queen rules. I met him during one of my circuits through the islands. I think, since we’ve been together, he’s been happy… or at least content. And I’ve learned many things from him.” She glanced down — suddenly, unexpectedly, looking like a girl. “I know it’s probably wrong of me, but I’m glad they sent him into exile.”
“Then you know how I feel.” Clavally nodded, smiling down. She pushed back her parka sleeve, exposing the long-healed scars on her wrist. “I don’t know why we were chosen… but we weren’t chosen because we’re perfect.”
“I know.” Moon’s mouth twitched. “But if it’s not because he’s interested in technology, how could Sparks be less perfect than I am—”
“—when you think there couldn’t be anything more perfect than the lover you remember?”
A sheepish nod.
“When I first saw you together, I had a feeling — after a while you do — that if you came here you would be chosen. You felt right to me. But Sparks… there was an unsettled ness
“I don’t understand.”
“You said that he left angry. You think he left as much for the wrong reasons as for the right ones — that he did it to hurt you? That he blamed you for your success, and his failure.”
“But I would have felt all those things too, if he’d been chosen instead—”
“Would you?” Clavally looked at her. “Maybe any of us would all the good will in the world can’t keep us from swallowing the fishhook baited with envy. But Sparks blamed you for what happened. You would only have blamed yourself.”
Moon blinked, frowned; remembered their childhood, and how rarely he had tried to disagree with her. But when they did argue, he would run away and leave her alone. He would hold his anger for hours, even days. And in the lonely space he left behind, she would turn her own anger in on herself. She would go to him every time, and apologize, even when she knew he was wrong. “I guess I would have. Even though it’s nobody’s fault. But that’s wrong, too.”
“Yes… except that it hurts no one but you. And I think that’s the difference.”
Two sudden drops of rain pelted Moon’s uncovered head; she looked up, confused and startled. She pulled up her hood as Clavally got to her feet and gestured toward shelter.
They ducked under a stand of young tree-ferns. The rain smothered all other sound for a space of minutes. They stood silently, blinded by a field of molten gray, until the rain squall moved off across the sea on the back of the wind. Moon stirred away from the fern’s dark, pithy trunk; watched the pattern of droplets stranded like pearls in the fragile lacework of its canopy, watched them fall. She put out a hand. “It’s stopped already.” Her anger at Sparks had passed as swiftly as the rain, and had as little effect on the greater pattern of her life. But when they met again, so much would be different between them… “I know people have to change. But I wonder if they know when to stop.”
Clavally shook her head; they began to walk back together along the path, sidestepping the sudden stream that it had become. “Not even the Lady can answer that. I hope you’ll find that Sparks has answered it for himself, when you see him again.”
Moon turned in the track, walking a few strides backwards as she looked out across the restless sea toward home.
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.”