The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge Read Free Book Online

the steep village street. Somewhere further on was their own cottage ... and
her outrigger lying on the beach, waiting to carry her away from all that she
had left in the world. “Gran?”
    Her
grandmother patted her hand firmly; she saw a determination to keep hope and
belief foremost fill the deep-set gray eyes. “Well, child, he’s gone. We can only
say a prayer that he finds his way home to us again. Now the Lady’s waiting for
you, too. The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll come back to me!”
    She took
Moon’s arm and started along the pier. “At least that mother lorn old
crackbrain won’t be around to see you off.” Moon glanced up, realizing with
some relief that Daft Naimy had gone his way. Gran remembered herself and made
the triad sign, “Poor soul that he is.”
    Moon’s
mouth twitched up briefly, made a firm line as she felt her strength come back.
Sparks
had gone
to Carbuncle to spite her ... damned if shed drift with the tide. She had her
own destiny lying across the water, one shed waited half a lifetime for; the
calling beauty of it filled her again. She began to walk faster, hurrying her
grandmother along.
     

4
    Sparks
stood on the deck, pressed against
the mast by the force of the frigid wind from behind him, listening to the
ship’s engines strain against the heavy seas. Gazing straight ahead, he saw
Carbuncle lying at the sea’s edge like the incredible fragment of a dream. They
had been approaching it for an eternity across the white-flecked sea, as they
had sailed north forever along the boundary of this endless island’s shores. He
had watched the city grow from the size of a fingertip into something beyond
the range of his comprehension. Now it seemed to spread like a stain across the
sky, filling his awareness until there was nothing else in the world.
    “Hey,
there, Summer.” The trader’s voice broke open his reverie; a gloved hand cuffed
his shoulder lightly. “Damned if I need another mast. If you can’t find
anything useful to do on deck, get inside before you freeze.”
Sparks
heard the high laughter of a deckhand;
turned to see the smile on the trader’s heavy face that took the smart out of
the words.
    He pulled
back from the mast, felt the crackle of resistance as his gloves broke away
from the ice film. “Sorry.” His breath rose up in a cloud, half blinding him.
He was bundled in heavy clothes until he could barely bend his arms, but still
the northern wind cut him to the bone. Carbuncle was protected from being
totally ice locked only by the presence of a warm sea current following this
western coastline. There was no feeling left in his face; he couldn’t tell
whether his own smile still worked or not. “But by’r Lady, it’s all one piece!
How could anyone even imagine a thing like that!”
    “Your Lady
had nothing to do with it, boy. And She’s had nothing to do with the people who
live there, ever since. Always keep that in mind while you’re there.” The trader
shook his head, looking at the city, and pressed his wind-chapped lips into a
line. “No ... nobody really knows how Carbuncle came to be. Or why. Not even
the off worlders I think—not that they’d tell us, even if they did.”
    “Why not?”
Sparks
glanced around.
    The trader
shrugged. “Why should they tell us their secrets? They come here to trade their
machines for what we have. We wouldn’t want them if we knew how to make our
own.”
    “I guess
not.”
Sparks
shrugged, flexing his fingers inside his mittens. The Winter trader and his
crew ate, talked, and slept trade, as they sailed from island to island; it had
worn thin very quickly. The only thing that had impressed him—until now—during
this interminable voyage was the fact that they dealt as freely with Summers as
with Winters, as though the differences between the two were unimportant.
“Where are all the starships?”
    “The what?”
Laughter shook the trader. “Don’t—don’t tell me you were expecting a skyful?