The palace doors swung open before them; Moon’s footsteps quickened, forcing Jerusha to lengthen her stride to keep up. Moon began to smile, suddenly filled with eagerness, as two small bright forms came hurtling toward her. She kneeled on the hard pavement, catching the twins, hugging them close; astonished again, as she was every day, by the power of the emotions that filled her … still astonished, after all this time, to find herself the mother of two children. She kissed their faces, holding tight to their squirming warmth, absorbing the sweet smell of their hair, the excited clamor of their voices.
“Mama, Mama, Gran is here!”
“—Gran is here!”
Their voices sang together as they echoed the words, each of them trying to be the first to tell her the news. “—Really!”
“Wait, wait.” she murmured. “You mean that my mother is here—?” She had not seen her family in all the years since she had left the Windwards for Carbuncle.
Now, holding her children in her arms, her need to see her own mother was as sudden and hot as the sun.
“No, Gran—” Anele insisted, her cloud of fair hair moving across her face as she shook her head. She pushed it back impatiently.
“Gran—” Tammis echoed, pulling on his mother’s sleeve.
“Your grandmother, Moon,” someone said.
Moon looked up, to see Clavally Bluestone’s short, solid figure framed in the high arch of the double doors, the sibyl sign gleaming against her shirtfront, her own daughter Merovy clinging to her side while she watched the twins greet their mother. Clavally and Danaquil Lu had begun to spend less time at the Sibyl College after their child was born, and they had taken on the task of watching Tammis and Anele as well.
“Not my mother?” Moon repeated, her own voice suddenly thin with disappointment. She wondered why—how—her grandmother had come alone to Carbuncle.
“We’ll show you!” Ariele cried, bounding impatiently back toward the palace entrance. “Come on, Mama!”
Tammis stayed by his mother’s side, always the quiet one, his brown eyes gazing up at her somberly as he hung on her arm.
“Tammis, I’m too tired—” she murmured, trying to take his hand instead. She broke off, as Jerusha swept Tammis off his feet and up into her arms. “I’ll take him,” Jerusha said, tickling him until he forgot the protesting squawk he had been about to make.
Moon bit off the protest that came half-formed to her lips, drew back her hands, which had instinctively reached for him. She watched, resigned, as Jerusha strode on ahead, carrying Tammis on her hip, grinning back at him with tender whimsy.
Clavally passed them, leading Merovy by the hand, nodding her head in a formal gesture of respect and farewell as she reached Moon’s side. Moon saw unspoken concern in Clavally’s glance, and wondered what she knew that she could not bring herself to say. “Danaquil Lu sent word that there is a party being given tonight by his cousin Kirard Set.” Clavally’s round face pinched slightly. “Dana asked if we would come, to help him get through it. But if you would like me to stay …”
Moon smiled, her smile quirking slightly. She could guess, after this afternoon’s negotiations among the nobles, what Kirard Set was celebrating. “Go and keep him company. He’s like a man who’s been in a swarm of bloodflies after he’s been with his relatives. He does need you.”
Clavally smiled wryly, and nodded.
“Enjoy it,” Moon said. “It’s in a good cause.” She looked down at Merovy, at the little girl’s shy, wide-eyed gaze fixed on Tammis. “You have fun too,” she added gently.
Merovy nodded soberly as her mother led her on past. She looked back over her shoulder, still watching Tammis. “Bye, Tammis,” she called.
He waved, his own expression equally somber, from where he sat perched on Jerusha’s hip.
Moon entered the palace, looking up at the frescoed walls as she walked the echoing hallway that led into its heart. The first time she had come into this place, the walls had been haunted by stark scenes of winter. Those murals had long sincebeen painted over at her order with scenes of bright sunlight, green fields, the blues of sea and sky. But still the images of Winter seeped through into her memory, imprinted indelibly on her mind’s eye, making her remember all that had happened here at Winter’s end … making her remember Arienrhod, who haunted the very air here, who haunted every mirror. She forced herself to look down, fixing her vision on her children and the way ahead.
“Mama!” Ariele cried impatiently.
Moon saw her daughter dancing from foot to foot at the edge of the Pit, and her breath caught. “Ariele!” she called sharply, quickening her steps, as Ariele knew she would.
“Hurry up,” Ariele shouted, and darted out onto the railingless ribbon of bridge that arced across the shaft. Anele laughed, fearless, shaking her tumbled, milk-white hair at their dismay.
Moon stepped onto the bridge, her feet soundless in their soft city shoes, and caught her daughter up in her arms. “How many times—” she began, angrily.
“You’re too slow! I want to see Gran!” Ariele insisted. She wrapped long, slender legs around her mother’s waist, drumming her feet. “You smell like fish—euw… Come on, Mama.”
Moon sighed and carried her across the bridge, leaving Jerusha to make her way as slowly as she chose with Tammis. The bridge was wide enough that, even railingless, it allowed people to walk its span with no more than a quickened heartbeat, ever since she had stopped the wind. Moon glanced up, resolutely not looking down, letting her eyes find the pale curtains that hung like fog in the vaulting space overhead. A glowing mass of stars was beginning to show through the fading light of day in the tall, starkly silhouetted windows.
Moon stepped off the far end of the bridge and let her squirming daughter down to run on ahead. She stayed where she was, turning back to wait for Jerusha; to stand for a long moment gazing into the Pit, letting the sharp smell of the sea clear the stink offish from her nostrils. The currents of past and present collided inside her like a riptide, their undertow sucking at her. She swayed a moment, closing her eyes, before she turned and started on again into the palace, her clothes still reeking.
She had defied both Summers and Winters, by crossing that bridge and taking up residence here. The past was no longer an option, not for her, or for anyone. It was unreachable in time, like the sea at the bottom of the Pit. She could only go on, into Summer, changing with the world.
And Gran had come. She tried to recapture the happiness and excitement the news had filled her with.
Tammis slithered out of Jerusha’s arms as they caught up, and came to take her hand. She looked down at his hand, so small inside her own, its golden-brownness in such stark contrast to her paleness. She squeezed his hand gently, smiling down at him.
“Where’s Da?” he asked. He asked it every day.
“He can’t come home yet,” Moon said. She gave him almost the same answer, every day.
“Why not?”
“Because there’s so much to do,” she murmured, as she always did.
“Well, why can’t he do it here?”
“Tammis—”
“Doesn’t he love us? Doesn’t he want to be here?”
“Of course he does.” She looked away, seeing the palace walls that Sparks had known for far longer than she had, and which he hated now so much that he spent as little time as possible inside them. She made herself look back at Tammis, and smile. “He loves you very much. He loves us all. He’ll be home to play songs for you at bedtime… . Someday you’ll understand why it’s so important for us to finish our work.” Which will never be finished; not in our lifetime. “Someday I hope you’ll help us finish it.”