Tales of Wonder

  “May your lines of grieving be long,” she said.

  I turned and left. She knew that I had left out the last line of the ritual. I would not give her the satisfaction of my words. She would not hear “May your time of dying be short.” I did not care if hers was short or long. The only one I cared about had already had too long a time of dying, too short a time of living.

  I went to the rooms we had shared and wept again. Then I dried my tears with one of the many towels the Wanderer had collected in her years of grieving in Halls. I pinched my cheeks for color and sat down with a harp to compose a small dirge, a threnody, a lament. But nothing would come. Even the Gray Wanderer’s own words could not contain my feelings.

  I stared at my reflection in the glass. Real tears marked a passage down my cheeks. I could paint over them with tear lines in any color I wanted. But I could not just paint my face and let her go.

  I spoke to her under my breath. Forgive me, Gray, I said. Forgive my excess of sorrow. She would have shuddered at the ocean of my tears. But though I was no girl of her lines, I was her true apprentice. She was dearer to me than a line mother, and I had to do more to honor her. She would have long, long lines of mourners to remember her. I would give her immortality for sure.

  So all that night in the royal Hall of Grief, with mourners passing in and out, speaking their ritual parts with as much sincerity as they could manage, I began to devise the cards of grief.

  I was silent while I worked, and it may be that it was my silence that first called the mourners in, for if I had any reputation at all as a young griever, it was not for silence. But if it was the silence that drew them in, it was the cards of grief that brought them back.

  It took a week of days and sleepless nights before I was done with the painting of them. And then I slept for another week, hardly knowing who I was or what I was or where it was I was sleeping. My hands were so stained with paint that it was months before they were clean again. The clothes I had worn for that week I burned. I do not think I ever truly recovered my health. But I brought her a line of grievers as had never been seen before, long solemn rows of mourners; young and old, men as well as women. Even the starfarers came, borne in by curiosity I am sure, but staying to weep with the rest. And each time the cards are seen, another griever is added to her line. Oh, the Gray Wanderer is an immortal for sure.

  The cards? I have not forgotten. Here, put the paints away. The painting? It is nothing, a quick sketch. Certainly you may keep it. And each time you see it, you will remember the Gray Wanderer.

  You would have liked her? I see you know our rituals. So I will answer you in kind. She would have grown by your friendship. And that is quite true. Though she eschewed the ways of your people, she did not forget to grow in her art by understanding.

  And now the cards. You see, I have not forgotten. Now is the time to show you.

  That first pack was an eleven, not the more ornate thirteen plus thirteen that gamesters now use. I drew the cards on a heavy paper that I made of pressed reeds. I drew lightly so that only I could see the outline. Then I colored them in with the paints and chalks I should have used for my grief mask. That is why the colors are so basic: not the wider palette of art but the monochromatic range of the body’s grief paints. The red? That color has been so remarked upon. Here is the truth of it. It was not paint at all. It was my own blood. I drew it from the soft inside of my left elbow, the turning closest to the heart. You can still see the scar. It is no more than a raised pinprick now.

  To this day, the original thirteen is called the Prime Pack. Does that confuse you? You are counting on your fingers. There were eleven done at the Hall of Grief. And then, after my week of sleep, I rose and painted two more. The Prime Pack is kept on velvet in the Queen’s Museum, under glass. They are arranged at each month’s turning in a new order. As if the order mattered now.

  That first pack spoke directly to my need. There was no arcane symbology. The Seven Grievers were one for each of the great families. The Cave That Is Fed By No Light—the darkest card—is of course the death card. For as we come from the womb cave, so we go to that other cave in the end. And, of course, my beloved Wanderer came to her end in a real cave. The picture on the card is an exact rendering of her last resting.

  The Queen of Shadows is the major card, for the Wanderer was always loyal to the queen on the throne. And the Singer of Dirges is the minor card. The moving card, the card that goes with ease from high place to low, was the card I called after my master, the Gray Wanderer. Its face is her face, and the dark hair under the cloak of gray is twined with flowers. But it is the Wanderer as she was when she was young, not crabbed with age and in pain, but when her face was unlined and she had a prince for a lover.

  Seven Grievers. The Cave. The Queen. The Singer. And the Gray Wanderer. Eleven cards in all. And after my sleep I added two: the Man Without Tears and the Cup.

  I sometimes think it was only a sentimental gesture. Gray often told me I must not confuse true sentiment with sentimentality. I wonder what she would have thought of it. But I meant it for her, I meant it as all true grievers mean the poems and scriptings and songs they make. Those are the old, slow ways, but for all that they were old and slow, they were about life and death and the small passage between.

  I did not have to explain the cards to the many lines of mourners who came to honor my master. Not the way I have to explain them today. Over and over, to those like you who have come from the far stars with voice boxes and light boxes and faulty memories, who say “I see” even when you see nothing at all. And over and over to those of my own people who now ape grief with comic songs and dances and who turn even the cards of grief into a game.

  But I will do it once more. One final time. I will tell the Prime Pack. Forgive me if the telling is one whose parts you have heard before. And this time I will tell it with infinite care, for there have been times that I, even I, have told them as a rota, a list, without meaning. This time I will unwind the thread of honest grief. For the Gray Wanderer. And for myself. For the story must be told.

  I lay out the cards, one by one. Listen well. Do not rely on your boxes. Use your eyes. Use your ears. Memory is the daughter of the eye and ear.

  Here are the Seven Grievers.

  The figure on each card is dressed as one of the great families. There is not a person in our world who cannot trace connection to them. I am myself of Lands. And all who work the soil—farmers and stockmen, harrowers and pigkeepers—are here. So it is the Number One card because it is mine. We Lands were first before all the rest, and will remain when all the rest lie forgotten. In the Prime Pack, Lands wears the brown tunic and trews of our family and rides astride a white sow because that is, in a sense, how I was found.

  The Number Two card is Moon, those who know the seasons’ turning and can reckon the changes—the seers and priestesses, dressed in white. Three, Arcs and Bows: the warrior–hunters. Four, Waters and all who plow there. Five, Rocks who wrest gemstones from the mountain face and craft them. Six, Stars, who carry our world’s knowledge and script that knowledge into books. And Seven, the queen’s own, the Royals, the smallest family of all.

  Seven Grievers, seven families, all who were touched by and who touched my master.

  Then the Cave card. The Queen of Shadows. The Gray Wanderer. The Singer of Dirges. I have spoken of them already. The Cup of Sleep and the Man Without Tears.

  The first thirteen were known as the Cards of Dark, for all the faces on the original pack were dark since I drew them in in my grief. The thirteen cards added later by the gamesters are called the Cards of Light, and all the figures grin, their whitened faces set in a rictus, a parody of all we hold sacred.

  Here, you can see the difference even in this pack. In my drawing of the Man Without Tears, he wears a landing suit and holds his hands outstretched by his sides, the light streaming through a teardrop in each palm. But his face cannot be seen, obscured as it is by the blackened bubble of his headgear. Y
et in the gamesters’ thirteen, he wears a different uniform, one with stars and bars on the shoulders. And though his hands are still outstretched, with the light reflecting through the palms, his face is drawn as plain as any griever’s, and he smiles a painful, sad grimace.

  You can see the difference also in the Queen of Shadows card. In my pack, she is dressed in red and black, and her picture was a dark portrait of the queen then on the throne. But the packs today are no-faced and every-faced, the features as bland as the mash one feeds a child. There is no meaning there. My queen wore a real face, but the card looked back to an even older tale. You know it, of course? The queen mourning for her dead consort who went into the cave at the center of the world. She wore a red dress and a black cloak and carried a bag of her most precious jewels to purchase his release from Death. In those days Death was thought to live in a great stone palace in the world’s center surrounded by circles of unmourned folk who had to grieve for themselves.

  The queen followed the twisting, winding cave for miles, learning to see in the dark land with a night sight as keen as that she had used to see with in the day. Many long night-days passed, and at last she stopped by a pool and knelt down to drink. She saw, first, the dartings of phosphorescent fish, as numerous as stars. Then she saw, staring up from the pool, her own reflection, with shining night-eyes, big and luminous. She did not recognize herself, so changed was she from her journey. But she fell in love with the image, a queen from the dark sky, she thought. And she stayed by the poolside, weeping her diamonds and pearls into it, begging the jewel-eyed star woman to come up to her.

  After thirteen days of weeping, her grief for her consort was forgotten and her precious gems were all gone. She returned home empty-handed. But her eyes remained wide and dark-seeing; she had become a visionary and seeress who spoke in riddles and read signs in the stars and was never again quite sane. She was called Queen of Shadows.

  You do not understand the other cards in my deck? The Singer of Dirges? It is named after the simple singer who first brought my master into her fame. He was of no great importance otherwise—a helper, a pointer of ways. And so the Singer card within the deck simply helps the other cards along, leading them from place to place within the pattern, being nothing in itself, only indicating the path to take.

  And the Cup of Sleep? It is the changer. If it precedes a card, it changes the card and the pattern. If it follows a card, it does no harm. And the only card it cannot change is the Cave.

  There, now you know the deck as well as I. Are you a player with the cards? Do you use them to tell you what will be, waiting on the message before you make a choice? Neither? Good. Only a fool uses them thus. They are grief cards, to help you understand your own grieving, as they helped me with mine.

  We are each a card, you know. I am like the Singer card, a pointer of ways. I point back to the old ways of the Wanderer, and forward to what will come.

  And you, starfarer, bring change. You and your people are like cups of sleep. Without changing yourselves, you deal out death to our ways. The Wanderer knew this, but she could do nothing to stop it. And neither can I. I can but tell you what you do, force you to look backward and forward. That was the real reason I said that you could come and capture me in your boxes. But you, yourself, starfarer, who are a woman and might have been a griever or a queen, listen to me well. Forget your boxes, and hear my words in your heart and bones. Do you mean to be a death card? Do you know what it is you do?

  So much telling. My mouth is dry. Hand me that cup, the one on the table. Yes, it is a lovely thing. The engravings are quite old. From the third kingdom, I believe. I need to moisten my tongue. That is good.

  What do the writings mean? I will read them to you. “Here is the Cup. Take it willingly. May your time of dying be short.”

  Do not look so startled. I know what I do. And now you know, too. Remember, there is no penalty in our world for giving a peaceful death. Tell your people that. Mine already know.

  But you can do something for me. Grieve for me. Grieve for all of us in this quiet, dying land. You owe us that immortality at least.

  Now go, for I feel sleep coming on me. The time of dying will, indeed, be short. I hope my lines of mourning will be very, very long, for I want to see my beloved Gray Wanderer again in the cave beyond all stars.

  Old Herald

  Old Herald closed his eyes and reveled in the dancing stars. The last few days had become darker and darker. He did not begrudge his dying, only the loss of light. He wanted to see the world brightly as he went out of it. He wanted to glimpse again the riot of color that he had captured so lovingly and well during his life. His hands could barely hold the color sticks; his veins were all but dried up of paint. But his eyes could still praise color and light. He did not want to fail now. Not now. Surely, he thought, the greatest of all the Life Painters—those who quite literally bled onto the canvas—should not end in darkness but in a great rainbow burst of eternal light.

  “Critics!” he cried out, refusing to disguise the agony in his voice. His crabbed hands scuttled into the air.

  The two hurried to his side. Prime, a short, stocky woman with a noticeable mustache and a brilliant smile, put her arm around him and whispered into his ear, “I am here. I am always here.”

  Secondary, a gray-haired boy-man with faded good looks, hovered by Old Herald’s feet. His hands fluttered nervously, crossing and recrossing as if they were pale butterflies seeking a place to land.

  “Bring me the sticks,” Old Herald ordered. “I feel a painting. I want to paint one last canvas before I die.”

  “But … but you can’t … can’t …” Secondary began in his hesitant way. It was that stuttering, an affliction of judgment rather than tongue, that made him a Secondary. He would never rise to Prime in the pantheon of artists. It was only because he had been around for so long, serving his apprenticeship under boy-loving Life Painters, that he had ever risen so high.

  “Of course, Visionary,” said Prime. She plumped the pillows around the old man’s head and pushed him gently but sternly back against them. “And the colors?”

  Old Herald had drifted off to sleep, but awoke with a start at her questions. “Reds. Bloods. Crimsons. The Phoenix rises.”

  “I serve,” said Prime, placing her hand over her heart.

  The old artist did not seem to hear, falling back into the half-sleep of age.

  Prime nodded to her companion critic and went out of the room. His hands touching one another helplessly, Secondary followed. When they were out of the old man’s hearing, he pulled on Prime’s sleeve.

  “He can’t see,” Secondary said. “We both know that.”

  Prime turned on him, her eyes severe behind the thick glasses. “Our duty is to serve him and criticize his work. If he wants to paint a final picture, then we get him the paint. And the canvas. We serve art. We do not dictate to it.”

  She turned from him and her white robe billowed around her, making her look even broader than she was. Her feet, surprisingly small and well shaped, tapped out a steady rhythm on the mosaic floor. Secondary followed.

  He caught up with her in the Color Room. While she rinsed the paint sticks first in water, then in the antiseptic solution, he tried to argue with her.

  “How can he paint if he cannot see?” Secondary began.

  “We are not artists,” she answered. “We are critics. How can we know what he sees or does not see until it is on the canvas?” She took the paint sticks and set them in the autoclave, untangling the tubing and making sure that there were no weak, spongy sections where paint or blood might leak out. Her knowing fingers found no soft spots.

  Secondary tried again. “But … but it is our … our duty to know.”

  “That has always been your mistake,” Prime said, closing the top of the autoclave and setting the dial at maximum heat. With the older artists it was especially important that germ-free tools be used. After a lifetime of painting, they were easy prey to infection.
“You equate knowing with understanding: you think that knowing how to mix colors and insert the color tubes with the minimum of pain gives you an insight into the artist’s mind. But all you have is access to his veins.”

  The autoclave hummed its single note at them, and Prime nodded back at it, satisfied. She went to the palette, a large, many-drawered counter rimmed with tubes of paint in plastic holders. Taking out a spray can from one of the drawers, she sprayed antiseptic on the marble countertop. Then she took the array of reds from their side of the palette and squeezed them with practiced care onto the marble, creating a rainbow of reds. With a palette knife from a second autoclave she spread the colors, mixed them, swirling one red into another, pulling ribands of lighter shades through the darker, twining tints into a loose braid. Finally she blended several of the darker crimsons to create the mix Old Herald had dubbed “the Phoenix” and which he was famous for. Her memory for color was as good as his. She was, in her own way, an artist, though she would have denied it. She knew she was the best Prime Critic in the world, just as Old Herald was the best Life Painter. They had worked together for over fifty years. Prime had sometimes wondered, heretically, if Herald could have been as good an artist without her. The Trinity of Artist and Critics was an article of faith to her. But the artist was first. Still … what if Herald had only had this Secondary, who was good with the tubings but whose eye for color was, at best, only a Landseer to her Turner. She called silently on the old gods and crossed her hands briefly in front of her, wrists up—the old ritual—to ward off the full brunt of the gods’ anger.

  The autoclave signaled the end of its work with a loud bell. Secondary went over and claimed the instruments, his hands encased in the formfitting plastigloves.

  Prime nodded and put on a pair of gloves herself. Then she took the paint sticks from him and carefully scraped the color mix into the tubes. In the artificial light of the Color Room, the red paint in the coils of tubing looked like human veins. She held the color sticks straight up. It would not do for them to receive any paint before Old Herald was ready. Not that they could, with the color clamp on so tight at the end. She tested the clamps. They were secure.