“Ah,” said the queen mother, smiling. “So it has nearly happened, then.”
Ama was about to ask what the queen mother meant, but then she remembered something that Tillie’s aunt Allys had told her, the very first time they met.
“She was a beauty,” Allys had said. “Ink-black hair, and shiny, it was. Eyes of amber. A figure worth rescuing, no matter the risk. Bosoms, tremendous bosoms, a waist no bigger around than the king’s hands could hold. Small feet. Pretty hands.”
Eyes of amber. But the queen mother’s eyes were not amber now. They were dark, deep, almost black—as Ama’s were becoming.
“Your eyes,” Ama said. Her voice came out in a whisper.
“Yes,” the queen mother said. “And yours.”
Ama felt her knees weaken, and she sunk to the bed. At once, the ginger cat twisted out of the queen mother’s arms and stepped prettily into Ama’s lap.
“He favors you still, that one,” the queen mother said, nodding at the cat. “Perhaps today you will be ready to accept my gift of him, now that your lynx has gone away.”
“I set her free,” Ama said, not bothering to wonder how the queen mother knew. And though her hand stroked the cat, her gaze searched the queen mother’s eyes.
“It was a kindness,” the queen mother said. “And, for my son’s sake, I am glad to see that you are capable of such a selfless thing.”
“It was not selfless,” Ama said. “I could not stand to watch her die, as she would certainly have done, had I kept her here with me.”
“Everyone and everything will die,” the queen mother said ruthlessly. “Death is the one truth.” She narrowed her dark eyes. And then, quieter, she said, “In three days’ time, you shall wed the king. You shall become the queen. From this becoming, there shall be no unbecoming.”
“That is not entirely true,” Ama said boldly. “For you have been the queen, and now you are the queen mother. And I shall take your place, shan’t I? You shall unbecome the queen.”
“When I came to this castle,” the queen mother said, “there was no queen for me to replace. She had ended her own story, as I told you before. Do you remember?”
The queen swinging from the bedpost. Of course Ama remembered.
“Had she lived to see me come to the castle, her story would have ended in this bed, instead of hanging from it. By the time the king had planted his seed in me, the king’s mother would have died, most likely in her sleep.”
The cat in Ama’s lap stretched his claws, stretched and stretched, one paw and then the other, kneading himself a nest.
“This is how it has always been. We come; we are tilled and planted; we grow our crop; we wither; we die, whether by our own hand or the hand of time, it matters naught. I have been tilled. I have been planted. I have grown my crop of one good son. Now I wither; soon I die.”
Ama’s hand had grown still on the fur of the ginger cat.
“If you stay, I go,” said the queen mother. “If you go, I stay. You will be queen in this world, and there can only be but one.”
Ama’s Fragments
“If I stay,” Ama said. Her voice was slow.
“Of course you shall stay,” the queen mother said. “The damsel always does. I stayed, after all, did I not?”
“You did,” said Ama. “But what of you before the dragon? What of any of us? Could you not have left to find out?”
The queen mother shook her head. “There are but two paths from here,” she said. “And the road is not one of them.”
“I do not wish to die.”
“Nor do I. I am dying now, you know, and I am surprised by my resistance to this fact. I suppose I have found that living quite suits me. Perhaps I could have been a good ruler. A just ruler, even. I will never have the chance, of course—this is a world for men. My husband ruled the lands, and now my son shall, as it should be. So we will not know what I could perhaps have done with real power. You shall be queen, and helpmeet, and I shall be dead.”
Ama began to protest—why should the queen mother die, just because Ama would wed her son? It was unnecessary. And though the queen mother had held no special spot in Ama’s affections, the thought of her dead did not suit Ama either. Imagining the queen mother lifeless in her bed, eyes closed to the world, felt like a harbinger of Ama’s own inevitable death, perhaps in the very same bed, perhaps surrounded by the grown kittens of these very cats, not so many years away.
“Queen Mother,” Ama asked, “why did your eyes change from amber to coal? Why have mine?”
“Yours are not yet black,” the queen mother contradicted. “You have not yet had your wedding night.”
“But they will blacken,” Ama said, “as yours have done.”
“It is the way it has always been,” the queen mother answered. “Your heart, once fire-hot, is transforming. You feel it. I know you feel it.”
Ama nodded.
“And that is the way it has always been,” the queen mother said again. “And if something is the way it has always been, who are we to wish it otherwise? Who are we to want anything at all? Who are we to desire?”
Unbidden, in a flash, came the image of Fury bounding through snow under a bright-blue sky.
“I desire,” Ama said.
“Do you?” said the queen mother. “How interesting.”
The cat had settled now. It was a heap of ginger fur, one paw twitching in sleep. “That cat favors you,” the queen mother said again. “Would you like to take him now, for a pet?”
“I have no need of a pet,” Ama said, placing the cat, who mewled unhappily, on the coverlet, and then standing.
“If not now, then after the wedding,” the queen mother said. “They shall all be yours, all my cats, after that. Do care for them, won’t you? They have been such a comfort to me.”
Ama made no promises. She turned to go.
The queen mother called after her, in a tone Ama hadn’t heard from her before. “Remember, Ama.”
Ama stopped, stood still, waited for her to finish.
But that was all she said. “Remember.”
When Ama found her way back to the glassblower’s room, the heat breathed out at her in a welcome wave. She breathed it in, filled her lungs full of the fire-warmth, and felt herself melt a little.
“You return,” said the glassblower, who was not working. He sat as far from the fire’s mouth as he could get, sipping a drink that he held in both hands. His words were as wet as liquor.
“Indeed,” Ama answered. Then, “You look uncomfortable, Master Glassblower. I imagine a day or two away from the fire would do you good.”
“This is my place,” the glassblower said. “There is no other.”
Ama considered her position. She very much would like the glassblower to leave, but, as he said, this was his domain. She had no power to command him from it. What work she might do, she would have to do beneath his inescapable gaze. Like his Eyes surrounding the city and castle, here too he would watch her, and judge her, at his will. But, Ama decided, though she could not be rid of him, she could ignore him.
“Very well,” she conceded. “You shall stay. But do not trouble me.”
“Bah,” said the glassblower.
“Where are the fragments from before?” Ama asked. “The broken shards I set aside?”