She realized then that word of her arrival would travel; that Capella Goodventure might even find her first. She slowed her random motion, forcing herself to be patient, letting herself become accessible, as a sibyl should be. Ariele and Tammis stayed close beside her as she moved out into the open meadow beyond the village, and she realized with fleeting sorrow that they felt far more alien here among their own people than they did among the Winters of the city, with whom they spent nearly all their time. And she realized that, after so long, she did too.
A small voice that was never entirely still inside her reminded her that she was Winter by blood: Arienrhod’s clone. But they were all the same people, the Winters and Summers. They belonged to the same world, and its heritage belonged to all of them. The name she bore, Dawntreader, and the name Goodventure were two of the original shipnames, passed down over the centuries from their refugee ancestors. She and Capella Goodventure were alike, at least in their love for this world. If they could only both remember that …
Tammis passed her a warm fish pie, as Ariele was drawn away, semi rcluctantly, by a handsome blond boy. Ariele disappeared into a group of young Summers who were practicing a triad dance under the guidance of an older woman. Moon’s feet remembered the steps of that dance as she heard its music, and her body began to sway to its rhythm. Her flesh might be Winter’s, but Summer was in her blood…. She smiled at Tammis, who stood beside her watching the dancers. “Do you want to try it?” she asked.
He shook his head, looking down. “No. I’d rather just listen. You need someone with you—” He looked up at her again. She saw both his concern and his instinctive reticence; knew that he was right, and that he would be happier where he was. “I used to dance like that,” she said.
“Do you want to join them?” he asked, curious and surprised, as if it had not really occurred to him that she had ever known any reality besides the one they had always shared in the city.
“No,” she said softly. “It’s a dance for the young. A lovers’ dance.” She watched Ariele step into the circle, swirling with unselfconscious grace among the other dancers, and felt an odd sense of déjà vu.
“Lady,” a voice said behind her, its familiarity startling her. Capella Goodventure stood waiting, her expression guarded and suspicious. She nodded in grudging deference. “I was not expecting you to come.”
“There was a place for my boat at the dockside,” Moon said.
“There is always a mooring-place left empty for the Lady, in hope that she will come. It is tradition. But I did not expect you to come.” A slight emphasis on you.
“But I have … and I thank you for remembering me, even in my absence, Capella Goodventure.”
The Goodventure elder looked at her a little oddly, as if she wondered whether Moon meant the words or was mocking her. “And you brought your children to witness their heritage—for the first time,” she said, in the same tone. “But not your pledged.” She raised her eyebrows.
“He had too much to do … in the city.” It sounded evasive, and was. Moon wondered whether Capella Goodventure believed that he had not come because he had become too corrupt, too much of a Winter—or whether Capella knew more about his past than she thought. The words did not sit well, either way.
“I came because I wanted to feel what it was like to be in Summer again. I have spent much too long in the city myself, as you have rightly pointed out.” Moon felt her speech falling back into the outland cadences of the voices around her. And this time the words were true, she realized suddenly. She had fallen so easily into the pursuit of technology to the exclusion of everything else, telling herself that it was the will of the sibyl mind, the only way to save her world. But the revelation of the Hegemony’s unexpected return had shown her suddenly and profoundly that she had been wrong, all along. She had been thinking like Arienrhod; repeating Anenrhod’s mistakes. It had to be for the ways in which she was different from Arienrhod that the sibyl mind had chosen her. She was the sibyl, not Arienrhod; she was a Summer, and she must forget now that she was anything else….
Capella Goodventure continued to look at her skeptically, without comment. “And I came…” Moon pushed the words out before they could wither on her tongue, “to make my peace with you, if that’s still possible.”
Capella Goodventure stiffened, as if she was sure now that this was some son of trap. “What do you mean?”
“I know that we have never seen eye to eye, all these years,” she said, carefully, “not simply in matters of tradition, but also on the most basic questions about what kind of future this world should have. But in spite of our—differences, I believe that you are a good woman, and that you have only been trying to do the Lady’s will as you see it. And although you find it hard to believe, the same is true of me. Both of us have been trying to preserve the Tlamat we love, and protect both its peoples, the humans and the mers.”
Capella Goodventure half frowned, and twitched her shoulders in an impatient gesture that Moon couldn’t read. “I suppose that’s true enough. I’ll grant you that. But I don’t see anything we have in common beyond that, Moon Dawntreader. Your ways will never be Summer’s any more than your face will be anything but that of the Snow Queen.”
Moon felt her face flush with sudden heat. She swallowed the angry response that filled her throat; aware of Tammis watching her, and Capella Goodventure glancing at him with sharp suspicion. Moon put a hand on Tammis’s arm, urging him with a look to let them have privacy. He left her side reluctantly, frowning as he looked back at them. “I won the mask of the Summer Queen fairly, by the Lady’s will. Do you question Her will—?” She felt every muscle in her body knot in anticipation of Capella Goodventure’s response; afraid that the sudden emptiness inside the words would betray her.
But the other woman only looked down, with her lips pressed together. “The Lady works in strange ways,” she murmured. “Even people of my own clan seem disposed to accept the changes you have forced on us in Her name. But I don’t understand this, and I never will.” She began to turn away.
“Wait,” Moon said, hearing the unthinking edge of command come into her voice, watching with surprise as Capella Goodventure obeyed her automatically. “There is much more at stake here than you know—more than my pride, or yours. I have something to show you. And something to tell you.”
Capella Goodventure hesitated, looked back at her, waiting again.
“Will you walk with me to the steps?” Moon asked.
Capella Goodventure nodded slowly, and followed her. “What is this about?”
“It’s about the one thing that we both believe in with our whole hearts—the protection of the mere.”