None of them know. She could read on the faces around her the spectrum of motives and gradations of desire that had brought the runners here: some of them hungry for the power (although the power of a Summer Queen had always been more ritual than secular), some for the honor, and some for the easy life of being worshiped as the Lady incarnate; some simply for the sheer joy of competing, a part of their celebration, with no cares at all about winning or losing. And none of them knows why it really matters, except me.
She kept her fists tight as tension wound its springs inside her, pushed forward again until she could just see the piece of weighted ribbon that marked the course’s start. The Goodventure elder was shouting for quiet and announcing the rules. She did not have to be the first in this race, she only had to be among the sacred first thirty three — and the course wasn’t long, it was meant to give some besides the strongest a chance. But there were a hundred women behind her, two hundred more… she couldn’t even see them all from where she stood.
The voice of the Goodventure elder called them all to the mark, and Moon felt her self-awareness slipping, caught in the swell of many moving forward as one. Through a gap between heads and arms she watched the fragile bunting that held back their tide — saw it fall at a signal. The mass of runners surged, sending her forward, helpless to resist if she had wanted to, and the race of the Summer Queen began.
She danced like a reef spotter through the first hundred yards, needing all her concentration just to keep on her feet in the crush before the knot of bodies began to loosen. As spaces opened she broke between, not always easily, feeling elbows bruise her sides in retribution. She couldn’t keep track of how many were ahead in the shifting field; she could only weave and spring and try to put as many of them behind her as her feet could overtake.
A mile was nothing, a mile was hardly enough to quicken her heartbeat when she and Sparks had raced along the endless gleaming beachs of Neith… But this mile ran uphill, on hard pavement, not yielding sand. Before she had reached halfway her breath rasped in her throat and her body protested with every jarring step. She tried to remember how long it had really been since she had run on that shining sand; couldn’t even remember how long it had been since shed had enough food or sleep to satisfy the body of a bird. Damn Carbuncle! There were only a dozen women ahead of her, but they were slowly gaming ground. New runners began to come up on her and pass her from behind. She saw with a kind of dread that one of them wore a brown ribbon, not green — the second group of runners was overtaking the first starters; and she stumbled as her mind left her straining legs unguided.
Two thirds of a mile, three quarters, and there were more passing her all the time, easily thirty ahead of her now, and a cramp in her side that took her breath away. They’re passing me… and they don’t know, they don’t even know what they’re reaching for! Reaching after it with the last of her strength, she saw the final distance hurtle past; suspended all other awareness until the white stone courtyard of the Winter palace was under her feet, and the next-to-last winter’s garland had fallen around her shoulders.
Laughing, gasping, dazed, she was swallowed by the ecstasy of the waiting crowd, joyously praised with handclasps, kisses, and tears. She made her way through them, took her place in the circle of winners that was forming at the very center of the courtyard. Looking back, she heard and then saw the group of musicians dressed in white, draped in garlands like her own, and wearing black chimney hats with Winter totem crests. Behind them came a small procession of Summers — more Goodventures, bearing a canopy of ornamental net woven with shells and sprays of greenery, held aloft on oars delicately carven with a fantasy of sea beasts.
And beneath the canopy came the mask of the Summer Queen. She heard the sighs and cries of admiration, like a wind through the crowd; felt her own wonder rise again at the sight of its beauty… and its power, the face of Change. Her gaze moved to the one who carried it, and she jerked with recognition: Fate Ravenglass. The circle parted to let Fate through alone; the rest of the procession circled outside, mingling its music with the crowd’s.
The Goodventure elder bowed before her, or before the strength of her artistry. “Winter crowns Summer, and the Change begins. May the Lady help you to choose wisely, Winter woman; for your sake as well as for ours.” She stood serene in her faith in the Lady’s judgment.
“I pray that I will.” Fate bowed in turn, her white gown all but hidden by the mask’s trailing sunbeams as it rested on her arms.
The Lady will choose… Why had Fate Ravenglass been picked as Her representative, if not to choose in turn the one face, the one heart and mind behind it that knew the secrets she knew about this world? But she’s almost blind. Could she even tell one face from all the rest? How would she know?
The Goodventure elder began to sway from foot to foot; the lacy drape of beaded network that covered her clothing clattered and chimed. She began to sing the ancient feast day invocation, and the ring of women began to circle slowly, stepping foot across foot, drawing Moon along. The words of the litany and response came to her easily, almost hypnotically, rooted as deeply in her memory, wrapped as profoundly around its most primitive images, as anything she still remembered. It had no true rhyme, like most of the holy songs, because the language it had once been shaped from had lost its own shape down the years; its tune fell strangely on her ears. She sang with the rest, but a part of her mind held separate, watching the pageantry that the rest of her flowed into unquestioningly: the part of her that was no longer certain Fate would choose her, bMndly, unaided. Does the sibyl mind really control what happens here? It twists me in its own directions — but can it reach beyond my hand, can it really move anything that it doesn’t hold on strings?
Moon watched Fate begin to drift out in a counter circle bearing the mask, her expression intent but formless. She won’t recognize me.
Moon bit her lip against panic, against more words, the urge to cry out, Here, here I am! Wanting to believe that it was predestination, but no longer certain that anything was predestined. She couldn’t leave it to chance — not after she had come this far, and seen so much. She has to choose me. But how—?
Moon’s memory leaped forward to the next verse, and the two levels of her consciousness fused: “Input!”
“Who knows the one that She will call,
Or what their fate will be?”
The refrain faded as she fell into Transfer, came back with a sudden intensity that deafened her. She felt herself lurch with the shock, tried to open her eyes. But her eyes were open, and still the world she saw was barely brighter than moonlight, its edges blurred and indistinct. Her other senses fed her perception all out of proportion . because she was blind! In another second she had passed through terror to the understanding that she was — Fate Ravenglass. And that somewhere in that dimly seen line of figures circling past her immobile body was one that must be caught at the other pole of this Transfer…