“And my mother said no,” Ariele murmured.
“Obviously.” Kirard Set nodded. “And then Arienrhod ordered her thrown into the Pit.” Ariele gasped, in spite of herself. “That was when your mother performed her first ‘miracle.’ She stopped the winds in the Hall of Winds. I was there, I saw it myself … though to this day I still don’t know how she managed it. I don’t suppose she’s ever told you how…. But no, of course not … Anyway, then the renegade Blue came into the hall and rescued her from the mob…. And the rest, as they say, is history. Your mother won the mask of the Summer Queen. Arienrhod went into the sea as planned. Your parents were reunited, you were born … and you know all the rest.” He lifted his hands in a graceful shrug of denouement.
“What happened … what happened to the Blue?” Tammis asked uncertainly.
“The gods only know.” Kirard Set shook his head. “He left with the rest of the offworlders, I suppose. Jerusha PalaThion might be able to tell you; he must have been one of her officers…. I wouldn’t pay any mind to the rumors, though.”
“What rumors?” Tammis said.
“Oh, well. More complications…” Kirard Set waved a dismissing hand. “Almost no one repeats that scurrilous garbage anymore, anyway. But some people used to point out that … well, that Sparks had been taking the water of life at the time of your conception during the last Festival—and of course it does make the user temporarily sterile.”
They both looked at him, stricken, through a silence that seemed endless.
He laughed gently, at last. “Ye gods, it’s only idle gossip. After all, the water of life was getting hard to come by, by the end of Anenrhod’s reign. She’d begun cutting back on how much she allowed us to have—sometimes once a week, not once a day anymore, even for old friends like myself and Tirady. That’s how we were blessed with our only son, over there.” He gestured at Elco Teel. “He was a complete surprise, unexpected … not unwelcome, don’t misunderstand me … but still an accident. It’s quite reasonable to think that your father had become unexpectedly fertile again too.”
Ariele nodded dumbly. Kirard Set raised his eyebrows, and offered her the decanter once more. She shook her head this time, and got up from the couch. “I have to go now.”
“Us, too,” Tammis said, getting up from the floor, holding Merovy’s hand with painful tightness. Elco Teel rolled onto his back, his hands folded on his chest, gazing at them with a pale, inscrutable stare as they passed by him.
“Safe home, children,” Kirard Set called after them, and Ariele thought she heard laughter as she reached the front door. She frowned, in the darkened hallway ahead of Tammis and Merovy, where no one could see her.
The three of them went out together, gathering in the street as the door of the Wayaways townhouse closed with finality behind them.
“Why do you think he told us that?” Ariele said, her voice sounding thinner and more miserable than she wanted it to.
“Because you asked him to,” Tammis said, his own voice heavy with accusation.
“Well, he was the one who said I looked like Arienrhod!” Ariele snapped. “He said she was my real grandmother!”
“Mine too,” Tammis said irritably. “Like it or not.”
“My father …” Merovy broke in, her voice barely more than an insistent whisper, “says that Kirard Set would cut off his own ear, if he thought it would make someone else feel worse than he did.”
Ariele stared at her, looked away again. “Are you coming home? Are you going with me now?” she asked her brother, looking uphill toward the palace; trying not to make it a demand, trying not to acknowledge that suddenly she didn’t want to go back there, like this, alone.
But Tammis shook his head, his mahogany-colored curls moving against his neck. “I want to make sure Merovy gets home all right.” He glanced away, over his shoulder, as if Carbuncle’s still-busy Street, with its unchanging artificial day, was suddenly empty and shadow-haunted. He looked back at her. “You can come with us...”
She frowned, tossing her head. “No, thanks. Don’t let me get in your way—” she said sullenly, even though she had heard nothing but awkward concern in her brother’s voice. She turned her back on them, and started on up the street. She didn’t look back until she had reached the alabaster-white courtyard before the palace.
Safe home… Kirard Set’s farewell echoed in her memory like his mocking laughter She stopped, standing at the Street’s beginning—or was it the end?— looking toward the palace entrance that had let pass so much of her world’s history; that had opened on the Snow Queen’s domain, long before she was born.
She imagined her mother passing through those doors for the first time, in search of her father … imagined her father going through those doors for the first time, into the arms of the Snow Queen. Arienrhod’s home. Her mind tried to imagine her father in Anenrhod’s arms, in Arienrhod’s bed … the two of them doing things to each other she barely understood … doing things to each other she couldn’t even imagine. Why had her mother wanted to live here, after Arienrhod had died?
Suddenly she didn’t want to live here anymore. Suddenly she wished that she had somewhere else to go, that she didn’t have to go in through those doors, ever again. But if she went somewhere else there would be questions and explanations to face, and she couldn’t bear that, even the thought of it. She looked down at the shimmering red-golds and bluegreens of her soft overshirt and pants, that had once been Anenrhod’s own … her grandmother’s, her other/mother’s. “You have her spirit,” Kirard Set had said. She lifted her head, straightening her back.
She crossed the courtyard to the palace doors. The two constables who were always there on duty smiled at her and let her pass inside, her own face empty and unresponsive.
She went on into the Hall of the Winds; stopped midway across the bridge that spanned the deep, green-glowing access shaft. They tried to throw her into the Pit… and she stopped the winds. She looked over the edge, cautious but unafraid, into the green depths that smelled of the sea; looked up again at the curtains hanging high overhead. I don’t suppose she ever told you how—? Ariele looked back the way she had come. The renegade Blue came in and saved her… Who knows what there was between them—? She hurried on, her face pinched with doubt.
She made her way through the palace, oblivious to the servants’ greetings; climbed the wide, curving stairs to the upper levels, searched the echoing halls until she found her father, in his study. She stood a moment looking in at him as he worked, stretched out on the segmented couch, humming faintly—an old folk song, she realized—and making notes on a noteboard.
“Da—?” she said softly, at last, from the doorway.
Sparks looked up, startled, and sucked in his breath. He stared at her for a long moment with an expression on his face that she had never seen before.
“Da—?” she said again, uncertainly.
“Ariele,” he murmured, “what are you … doing here?” He shook his head slightly, as if he were shaking something loose, and sat up on the couch.
She shrugged, looking down, suddenly not knowing what to say.
“Are you all right?” He leaned forward, with concern on his face, putting aside the note board.
She shrugged again, and came into the room. She sat down beside him on the sofa with her hands twined between her knees.
“What is it?” he asked, touching her shoulder gently.
She felt tears start suddenly in her eyes; fought them back. “Da …” She looked up at him, finally. “Is Mama really Arienrhod … Arienrhod’s clone?”