by Speer, Flora
It came out of nowhere, an enormous golden-orange sphere with a metallic sheen to its surface. Carol heard no sound from it, and while she had admittedly been watching the sunrise and the priest, still she was sure the Orb had not come gradually. It simply materialized in the air above the square as if by magic and hung there, motionless. The people standing beneath the Orb gaped at it, murmuring their wonderment in hushed, reverent voices.
Very clever, Carol thought, appreciating the effect the Orb was having upon the crowd, though she could not participate in the emotions it was evoking in most of the onlookers. Does it have an engine inside it and perhaps a pilot, or is it moved by remote control, like one of those toy airplanes that people fly in the park on Sundays? Since Carol could discern no break in the smooth surface of the Orb to indicate a door by which a pilot might enter, she decided the object must be moved by remote control. And a very precise control, too, to judge by its subsequent motions.
After a few minutes the hovering Orb began to move. Slowly it descended, sinking toward the square with remarkable timing. Exactly as the disk of the sun stood full upon the southeastern horizon, the Orb settled into the waiting arms of the World Tree. The metal fingers curved around it, holding it securely in place.
A cheer went up from the crowd. Some laughed, others openly wept for joy, still others did both. Carol noted with some cynicism that the Leader and his guards were among the few who stood unmoved by the spectacle.
“And now,” intoned the gold-clad priest, speaking above the soft, continuing chanting of the women in blue, “now the Solstice is upon us. Cold winter’s end can be foreseen. From this moment onward, the days will grow longer. Now we can be certain that spring will in truth come, and with the returning warmth all life will be renewed.” Again he raised his arms toward the Tree.
“Now we see with great thanksgiving the Blessed Orb held within the Sacred Embrace of the World Tree, which will keep it secure for us and not let its warmth and light flee from us.”
He went on in this way for some time, but Carol soon grew tired of listening to his repetitious invocations. She tugged at Nik’s arm, and when he bent his head to her, she whispered her question in his ear.
“Do people actually believe the sun is held fast like that, in the branches of a tree?”
“I am sure some do believe it,” he replied. “It makes a pretty picture. Once in late afternoon I saw the branches of a dead tree against the setting sun, and what I beheld looked much like the Orb resting in the World Tree. Were this ceremony presented to us as a symbol only, I could accept it, for it’s true enough that the days will now begin to grow longer. But this worship of Tree and Orb is a state religion and no other beliefs are allowed. Men and women have died for saying it ought to be otherwise.”
“So this Government practices religious as well as political oppression.”
“Do not say so here,” Nik cautioned, and Carol obediently fell silent.
Once the ceremony was over and the officials marched away in another solemn procession, the atmosphere in the square changed. A young man pulled a homemade flute from beneath his jacket and began to play a cheerful tune. Someone else had brought along a small drum, and began to keep time on it with his hands. A third fellow produced a stringed instrument on which he plucked out a soft harmony to the flutist’s song.
A woman began to sing. She was joined by a second and then by a third voice. This was nothing like the formal chanting during the ceremony. This was folk music, cheerful and boisterous, requiring the clapping of many hands. The musicians played louder, providing backup for the song the women were singing.
Then the dancing started. Luc appeared, to clasp hands with Pen and Carol. Al grabbed Pen’s free hand and Nik was on Carol’s other side. A woman Carol did not know moved next to Nik, a man joined the woman, and so it went, hands linked into a circle for a community dance. Around and around the square they went, first in a circle and then in a long, spiral line, always with the World Tree and Orb at their center. Knowledge of the exact steps was unimportant. It was only necessary to keep up with the other dancers.
They generated their own heat. A cloud of exhaled breath hung over the square. Above the heads of the dancers the Orb glowed orange-gold where the low rays of the midwinter sun struck it, and seemed to shed both warmth and light on those gathered to celebrate the beginning of its slow return from southern regions.
There followed a period of perhaps an hour when Carol felt at one with the emotions of the people around her who were dancing and singing so joyfully. This future world was so gray and bleak, and so restrictive, that the cold and rain and snow of winter represented a real additional hardship in most lives. The turning of the year brought with it fresh hope. No doubt summer held other miseries—excessive heat, vermin, diseases—but from the depths of winter that other, warmer, season appeared to be one of bright promise, fresh food, and an end to numbing cold and dampness. If they could not drink down the darkness as the ancient Vikings had once tried to do, these people would sing and dance away the year’s shortest day and longest night.
Shortly after midday the weather brought an end to outdoor celebrating. For all its golden brightness, the sun was too low in the sky to be able to shed much genuine warmth upon the northern half of the world. After hours in the cold, noses were red and dripping, and lips had become too stiff and blue for more singing. The crowd broke into smaller groups, families or clusters of friends heading homeward for their holiday meal. As if to signal the official end of the morning’s celebration, a troop of civil guards marched through the square in tight formation, ignoring the people, staring straight ahead, scattering merrymakers to the left and right.
While adults and teenagers had been dancing, the children too small to join in were left to play at one side of the square under the care of elderly men and women. Now parents hastened to collect their children, and a few of the young ones, seeing mothers and fathers coming toward them, ran to meet their parents.
The civil guards continued their march, knocking down a couple of little boys along the way. A murmur of irritation erupted from the grown-ups. The guards did not stop or change direction, but marched straight on toward the other side of the square. Directly in their path stood a child perhaps three or four years old, so heavily bundled in jackets and sweaters and scarves that it was impossible to tell if it was a boy or a girl. The child appeared to be frozen in place, staring at the oncoming guards out of huge, round eyes.
“No!” Carol saw what was happening and knew the guards would not stop. They had already knocked down a few children; one more would be nothing to them. They did not care about the civilians in the square. Ordinary folk were unimportant to them. And for some reason—were they too cowed by the guards and thus afraid to react?—Carol knew no one was going to stop the inevitable collision. Nik was talking to someone, his back turned to the scene. Carol could not see anyone else who might help, and time was running out.
She moved forward, running toward the child on cold-numbed feet, pushing aside the few people who stood between her and the innocent who would be knocked to the ground and perhaps trampled.
“Stop, damn you! You bloody lunatic!” She saw the total lack of concern in the eyes of the guards’ commander and knew her cry was wasted. The guards would not stop. Throwing out her arms she scooped up the child and kept on running. The guards marched on out of the square.
The whole incident had lasted for only a few moments, and during that time Carol’s eyes had connected with those of the guards’ commander for but a second, yet she was more chilled by the encounter than she was from hours spent outside in the cold of winter. Something about the commander’s indifferent expression and his blank eyes that saw nothing except his path directly across the square tugged at Carol’s mind. She did not know the man—had never seen him before—yet in a vague, illogical way she recognized him. And feared him as if he had laid a curse on her.
“Car!” Nik was beside her, and wi
th him was the woman who had taken his hand when the dancing started, who seemed to know him.
“Sue!” The woman seized the now-weeping child from Carol’s arms. “I didn’t see what was happening. I thought she was still with the elders.”
“Are you all right?” Nik asked Carol. She nodded, unable to speak for a moment because she was shaking in reaction to what had just happened.
“How can I thank you?” The woman put out a hand to Carol. “Sue is everything to me. She’s all I have since my husband died.”
Leaving it to Nik to answer the woman, Carol tried to get her emotions back under control. She could not go to pieces here in public.
“I don’t think she’s hurt.” Nik turned his attention from Carol to the child. “She is well padded with clothing and, thanks to Car, the guards didn’t touch her. Car, this is Lin, who is—a very good friend.”
The emphasis he put on the last phrase of his introduction told Carol that Lin was a member of one of the other dissident groups. Lin would probably be involved in the coming uprising.
“I understand,” Carol said, meeting Lin’s eyes. “You do not want any harm to come to your child. You want her to be safe, and happy.”
Lin nodded, hugging little Sue close to her bosom.
“Take her home and see that she’s warm,” Nik said. “Do you have a holiday sweet for her?”
“Oh, no.” Lin looked a bit embarrassed. “I could not afford any sweets. There was barely enough money for food.”
“Wait here.” Nik sprinted toward Marlowe House, disappearing behind a mound of broken bricks and stone when he ran down the servants’ steps. He soon returned, bringing one of the miniature sugar trees from the selection Pen had bought at the market.
“Every child should have a sweet at Solstice,” Nik said, giving the sugar tree to Sue. He had taken off his heavy gloves, and now he stroked one finger across the little girl’s soft cheek. The gentle tenderness of the action caught at Carol’s heart. Sue stuffed the bottom of the tree into her mouth, and Nik chuckled at her obvious pleasure in the taste of it.
“Thank you, Nik,” Lin began. He cut off her words.
“Just be certain she’s safe,” he said, and both women heard the double meaning in his caution. If Lin was going to be a participant in the uprising, her child would have to be placed with people who would be willing to hide her identity in case her mother was killed or captured.
“She goes to a friend tomorrow night,” Lin said. Watching her walk away, Nik put an arm around Carol’s shoulders.
“Those terrible civil guards,” Carol said. “Nik, their commander stared right at me and the look in his eyes terrified me. I could almost hear the wheels turning in his brain. He knew he didn’t recognize me and knew I did not belong here. Is there a chance that my presence could cause trouble for you?”
“I don’t think it will matter,” Nik said. “People from outside the city come here for the Solstice celebrations. There are always strangers in the square during holidays. One more will make no difference.”
“I yelled at him. I cursed him,” she persisted. “He will know me if he sees me again.” And I will know him. Why does the thought fill me with dread?
“There is nothing to worry about. You are cold and tired and upset by seeing a child almost hurt.” Nik headed toward Marlowe House, taking Carol along with him, an arm still across her shoulders. “Come inside now. Jo is piling wood on the fire as if we had a room full of logs to spare, instead of just the remains of broken furniture. You will soon be warm, and a glass of wine and a good meal will lift your spirits.”
Carol went with him willingly, giving her hearty agreement to the prospect of once more being warm. In the kitchen they discovered the food Bas had put into the oven early in the morning was nearly ready to eat. While the women prepared a salad from the greens Pen had selected on the previous day and Luc and another man set the table, Nik took Carol down to the lower levels of the house.
“There used to be a locked wine cellar down here,” Carol told him. “Crampton the butler held the keys to it, and he guarded the wine as if it were gold. I have never been into these rooms before.”
“I think they must have been useful as shelters during the wars. The wine is of more recent vintage than your time. Most of it is less than one hundred years old.” Nik paused, holding high the oil lamp he had brought with him. Having found the section he wanted, he gave the lamp to Carol while he slid between the dusty racks to retrieve two bottles.
When he came out again he put up his hands, holding a bottle in each. With a wicked laugh and a comical leer he backed Carol against the stone retaining wall that formed the deepest foundation of Marlowe House. There he kissed her.
“You do have a tendency to play with fire,” she noted, lifting the oil lamp until its flame was a fraction of an inch away from his chin. “First candles, now this.”
“Hold it to one side,” he suggested, “and I’ll kiss you again more thoroughly.”
“If the oil spills, the light will go out and we may be stuck down here for hours.”
“Never so long.” He was laughing at her. “The others are too hungry to wait for more than a few minutes for the wine to go with their dinner.”
“Then we ought to go back upstairs at once.”
“Not yet, Car. I have waited all day for this.” An instant later his mouth was on hers a second time, and she lost herself in his lips and his tongue and the passionate heat of him. Carol’s only regret was that, since he was still holding the wine bottles, he was not free to put his arms around her.
“Nik,” said Pen’s voice from above. “We are starving. The celebrations aren’t over yet but we need our food and some wine if we are to continue.” She was interrupted by Jo, who shouted down the stairs over Pen’s gentler tones.
“Bas says to tell you he is serving the chicken and if you want any, you are to come at once. Delay and it will all be eaten.”
“She’s telling the truth,” Carol said, laughing now herself. “It is not a very big chicken.”
“You are asking me to make the supreme sacrifice,” he said, leaning into her, letting her feel his hardness until she moaned softly. “Do not expect me to wait much longer to hold you.” He kissed her again quite thoroughly before he released her and motioned for her to light their way out of the cellar and up the stairs.
Chapter 13
Never before had Carol belonged to a group of people who, except for two or three of them, were within a few years of her own age, who joked among themselves and teased each other, and who showed open affection toward one another. The friendly, teasing remarks she and Nik received when they finally reappeared in the kitchen made her blush at first, and then made her happy to be where she was. She entered wholeheartedly into the spirit of the holiday meal.
To her surprise there was enough food. Each of the twelve people at the table received a small piece of chicken, and with the addition of plenty of vegetables and the fresh bread Jo had baked before sunrise, no one went hungry. The wine added to the party atmosphere. No one mentioned what was planned for the day after the holiday. The talk was mostly about social arrangements for the evening.
“There will be more celebrating in the square,” Pen told Carol, “and some of us visit friends from house to house. You are welcome to come with us. We won’t be home until very late.”
“Some of us,” said Luc, downing his second glass of wine, “won’t return until tomorrow. Some of us have ladies to visit.” Two of the other unattached men laughed with him.
“Before you go,” said Pen, seemingly unperturbed by this declaration, “we have sweets to finish the meal.” She produced a tray on which she had arranged a small forest of the sugar trees, each tree complete with an orange orb entangled in its branches. Pen placed the tray on the table in front of her brother and, with a grand flourish, pulled off the cloth covering it.
“0h,” Pen cried in dismay, “someone has taken a tree. Who would do such a thi
ng?”
“I did,” Nik said at once. “Lin had no sweet for Sue. I gave her mine.”
“Nik, you would give away your winter coat if someone needed it,” Pen declared. “Here, take mine, then. I don’t really want it.”
“Actually,” said Carol, “I don’t mean to insult your taste in desserts, Pen, but those candies look absolutely disgusting to me and have since the first moment I saw them at the market. There is no way that I am going to eat one of them. So there will be enough, after all, and you won’t have to do without.”
“But you are a guest,” Pen protested, openly upset by this idea. “We owe you the best we can give.”
“You—all of you—have already given me more than you will ever know,” Carol told her. “Don’t spoil my holiday now by forcing me to eat something I don’t want and expecting me to be polite about it.”
“Are you sure?” Pen sounded as if she could not believe this excuse, but she did cast a longing gaze upon the little trees left on the tray.
“Pen,” said Nik, repressing a smile, “I have the strangest feeling that Car does not want a sweet.”
“Really?”
Carol could almost see Pen’s mouth watering. She pushed the tray across the table
“Eat it,” Carol said, “and stop arguing.”
Watching Pen nibble at the edges of the sugar tree, tasting it slowly, savoring every bite, Carol was reminded of an earlier version of the young woman. Pen’s character was similar to that of Lady Penelope Hyde, and Carol discovered that she felt the same protective affection toward Pen that she had felt for Penelope.
Nik and Carol were given kitchen cleanup duty with Bas that evening, which meant that Jo also remained behind when the others left the house to rejoin the Winter Solstice celebrations. Carol found there was something remarkably pleasant—and oddly romantic— about standing with her hands in a basin of water, washing dishes, and handing them to Nik to rinse in another basin and dry them. Meanwhile, Bas consigned the remains of the chicken to a large pot and began making soup for the next day’s meal, and Jo moved about, putting dishes and leftover bread away and sweeping the floor.