Cards of Grief

by Jane Yolen

  Yes, sir. He took me first to his own rooms where he was fussed over endlessly by a group of trog servants. While they did his hair and nails, I examined the instrument collection he had hanging on his walls. They were all stringed and fretted. In fact, except for the funerary drums, some very minor reedlike pipes, and bells used to announce visitors to and from the Queen, the strings were the only musical instruments on the planet. It was an art form in a very early stage, though the music B’oremos could coax from those strings was impressive.

  He bade me choose an instrument to play that day and after almost an hour of trying them, I ended up with something called a harmonus. It was shaped more or less like an ancient Indian instrument, the sitar, with a wide hollow-sounding bowl carved from a gourd and a three-foot-long neck strung with seven strings. I liked the odd modalities of the thing and adopted it for my own.

  Once during that hour, when I was sitting with the harmonus in my lap—you had to play it sitting—the tune I picked out was so strange I laughed out loud.

  B’oremos looked over at me from the pillow where his servants were still working on his face. “That is a peculiar harsh sound you make.”

  I apologized. “I am not yet used to this last string,” I said, pointing to the wide drone string that ran only half the length of the harmonus.

  “I am talking of the grating noise you made with your mouth, like the sound of moons’ caps snapping closed.”

  I laughed again.

  “There,” he said, pointing at me. His servants bowed and elbowed one another. He dismissed them irritatedly with his hands.

  “It is a laugh,” I said. “Do your people not laugh at all?”

  He shrugged back with a wry, small smile. “We are men of tears. To grieve well is an art.”

  “We are men without tears,” I said. “We try not to grieve at all.”

  “Well, Man Without Tears,” he said, “then it is time to take you to the Hall of Grief. There we will find the tears in you as easily as you find the music in that.” He pointed languidly at the harmonus, which I shifted from my lap.

  He shouted, and a new servant entered on silent feet.

  “This is Mar-keshan,” said my host. “He is to servants what the Queen is to women.”

  Mar-keshan bowed, read his master’s fingers, and with quick flicks of his own fingers silently answered back. I liked Mar-keshan at once. He was brisk, almost to the point of brusqueness. His round face was a berry brown, his eyes the bleached-out blue of a sailor’s, the kind that gives a double impression—that of blindness but of far-seeing as well.

  “Dress him for the Hall,” said B’oremos. I had a feeling he was speaking aloud for my sake, his fingers having already given those same orders.

  Before I could stop him, Mar-keshan was gone, then came back again with a golden chiton of a flowing silklike material.

  “It is the color of your hair and skin, A’ron,” said B’oremos.

  I was certain that it was the discussion of that color that had occupied their hands before.

  The two stripped me down and slipped me into the outfit. It had a band of material that went over my right shoulder, covered my chest, and fit down at the waist with a drawstring tie. The skirt fell in soft folds to my thighs. Thank God I was slim or it would have been positively obscene.

  Mar-keshan marveled at my shorts, and my underpants made him gasp in admiration. They obviously had no experience with elasticized waistbands. They traded my underclothes for a silken loincloth that was uncomfortably tight. All the while they chattered silently with semaphoring fingers. I could not even guess at their comments.

  None of the prince’s sandals fit and I had to make do with a pair of Mar-keshan’s old leather slippers. Neither of them was happy with that makeshift, but they both agreed that my own boots were totally unsuitable.

  With that, I shouldered the harmonus and B’oremos took up his plecta, and we went off to the Hall.

  You must have looked a sight, son.

  What I looked was a bit Greek, I guess. But it’s something we train for, native costumes. And as such things go, it was really rather elegant, if a bit small and scanty. I knew some of the anthros who first opened up the moons of Chancery, and they had to wear a coating of dung and mud to help celebrate the birth days of the native chiefs. And one friend of mine trained on Landon’s X, where the intelligent species wore metal coats made of nails, points in, to indicate humility. A silk skirt however short is hardly a hardship in comparison, sir.

  Ha-ha. I like your attitude, Aaron. Now—tell me about the Hall.

  The building itself is of the same shell-encrusted gray-and-white stone as the palace, only where the palace is mammoth and overbalanced by a pair of mismatched towers, there is something elegant and fragile and lonely about the Hall. It has pillars in the front that are covered with carvings of such intricacy I could not decipher them; “metaphors of grief,” was all that B’oremos said when I asked. There is also a relief of some kind splayed out under a gabled roof. The whole thing is over two stories high, but it seems at once smaller and larger than that. There are thirteen stone steps leading to the doors.

  The doors are of some kind of heavy wood, also carved, and those carvings I did decipher, for they are mostly of weeping women and skeletons set on high-rising biers.

  We pushed through the heavy doors and went inside. I had expected it to be dark, but to my surprise the hall was quite bright. One side of the roof was open, though at night or in the case of bad weather it evidently could be shuttered. Open windows let in the fluttering sea breezes.

  Tables were everywhere. It was like a mad indoor marketplace, with sellers crying their wares, only their wares were all free, artifacts of grief. Mourners scurried up and down the jigsaw-puzzle aisles, choosing to listen to a singer here or a poet there, pausing to watch a magician make kerchiefs with the names of dead kin appear and disappear at will. If you stood still for a single moment, someone would be at your elbow trying to bring you immortality for a sister or brother or mother.

  Not for a father?

  That’s a problem, sir. These people have little concept of fatherhood—except in a general sense. It’s never really clear who has fathered what child, as they seem to make love indiscriminately because the men have such a short time of…of potency. Five years at most and then their reproductive organs shrivel and are reabsorbed into the body.

  Half a year of ship time. That’s a hell of a thought.

  B’oremos and I stood apart from the mob for a while, just watching. He seemed somewhat removed from the proceedings, as if he had trouble becoming really involved. And I—I just wanted to sort through my impressions. It seemed that though we were in the Hall of Grief, I was not hearing any grieving, which was what I had been led to expect. It was all form and formality; there seemed to be little of real substance. No tears, no breast beating, no—no real sadness. I was about to put that question to B’oremos when the entire Hall suddenly hushed as if on cue and all eyes looked toward a stage that ran halfway around the western wall.

  Linni walked out on the stage, moving with a pride of bearing that the greatest actresses would envy. “Here I am,” her body seemed to say. “I have much to tell you.”

  She came to the exact center of the stage, a plumb line for the emotions of the crowd, and waited an extra beat of silence. Then, as if gathering the mourners’ silence to her, to reinforce her own, she began to speak/sing/chant the opening of their great Song of the Seven Grievers, the prose poem about their Creation.

  What I had not known was that we had arrived at the eve of a new season, the season of Rarre-dennikon, sowing time. And except for the death of the Queen herself, at which time the Queen’s Own Griever would naturally be in deep mourning, the festival was a time of cessation of grief. The festival began with the recitation of this poem. Our landing at this particular time had been a fluke, but it could become significant if the civs chose to see it as some sort of sign.

  The poem
that Linni spoke was long. It took over an hour of straight recital. But not once did she falter or stop for water, or cough or clear her throat. That straight, dark-haired girl stood center stage and held us all with her presence and the power of the words. The only break came when she spoke the Selah, or “Amen,” or however we might translate it. In their language the word is Arrush. It means, basically, “so be it.” Then the Hall echoed her.

  “Arrush” came the wave of sound back, washing over her.

  She paused, gathered in the silence that followed the sound, and began again.

  I had heard the tapes of another Master Griever instructing the apprentices in the recitation of this same poem. In fact, I had learned great portions of it myself and I had puzzled out its meaning, both the literal translation and the cultural implications. But the tapes had not given a hint of the power the spoken story had. Or at least as it was spoken by Linni. She swept us away. I do not think that I moved, except to say the Arrush, until she was done. I didn’t feel the weight of the harmonus on my shoulder or the tightness of the loincloth or the too small slippers on my feet. I was, quite simply, mesmerized by both the teller and the tale.

  And when it was over, and she was greeted by the last great Arrush, she raised her hands to her eyes, the ritual sign of weeping. I had tears in my eyes as well, but I wiped them away at once, though B’oremos, who had been watching me rather than the stage saw me do it.

  “Now we can sing,” he said, taking me by the elbow and moving me toward the stage. He swiped some succulents from a table and pressed one into my mouth. “You remember how to eat this?”

  I nodded, letting the grapey fruit roll about between my lips and then, with the juice spurting backward into my mouth, I followed him onto the stage.

  We traded songs for about an hour, he singing a variety of songs about sowing that were surprisingly unbawdy given the amount of detail they conjured up. I gave them “Barbara Allen,” “The Twa Sisters,” and “The Great Selchie of Sule Skerry,” though the translations were stories I made up on the spot. Then because of the encouragement the crowd gave me, I sang “Little Musgrave,” “Mary Hamilton,” and “The Bonny Earl of Murray” as well.

  I’m not familiar with any of those songs, son.

  They’re all old English folk ballads, sir. My specialty.

  B’oremos introduced me as the Man Without Tears and that was what I was called from then on. A’ron, coincidentally, means A Man Without. Their entire name for me was A’Ron’lordur. Actually they called all of us Aer’Ron’lordurren, Men (People) Without Tears. And I teased B’oremos about that, saying that it read, in our language, more like Lords from the Air. He liked that. He and the other princes are very fond of word games. And later Linni, poet that she was, called me her Lord of Air and Sky. She had asked me what her name seemed like in our tongue and I told her it reminded me of the linnet, a little singing bird from my home world. She wrote a poem to me called “The Bird Sings to the Lord of Air and Sky.” It does not translate particularly well, but it goes something like this:

  The boughs are heavy with song.

  I would make each note

  An arrow to pierce your heart.

  Grieve for me, young lord,

  When I am earth and you are sky

  And only the syllables of song

  Dropping like rain, rising like dew

  between.

  Of course in their language both the first words and the last words of each line rhyme, and the word she chose for “between” is the middle syllable of both earth and sky. So the poem is infinitely more complex than the simple word-for-word translation shows. And she composed it on the spot.

  After the hour, B’oremos and I left the stage, though it was afterward filled constantly with changing acts: dancers, singers, mimes, costumers posing in elaborate tableaux, magicians, jugglers. All the performances were dedicated to the ushering-in of the season of sowing. And though the mood seemed elevated, without laughter it did not seem particularly happy, but that, of course, is an alien and subjective point of view.

  B’oremos took me by the hand and led me up and down aisles. We sampled many different kinds of food and drink. Their wines are much sweeter than ours, being honey-based, and it takes a good deal more drinking to get drunk. Perhaps their berries don’t ferment as readily as ours. But the fruits and I breads were wonderful after so many years on board ship, and the meats were served in tiny bite-sized portions, coated with piquant sauces. I was forever licking my fingers and nodding to those who offered food to me. B’oremos told me that if I were especially pleased, I should offer caresses—“touches”—in exchange. I gave a few tentative hugs to some of the younger trog girls and afterward they were swamped with customers, so I guess public recognition was a viable form of payment. After that I was a great deal freer with my hands.

  Finally I turned to B’oremos. “But when do they grieve?”

  “When there is someone to grieve for,” he said, his face speaking elaborately of my innocence.

  Later back in the Queen’s hall, I was asked what I thought of my tour of the Hall of Grief and I made a crucial mistake. Perhaps the wine had affected me more than I knew or perhaps I was just not sufficiently careful with the knowledge I had. I said, “I was very impressed with the singing and dancing within the Hall, and especially with your Master Griever. But since I had been told it was the Queen’s Own Hall of Grief, I expected grieving and there was little to be seen.”

  The Queen smiled slowly.

  “B’oremos tells me,” I went on, encouraged by her smile, “that you grieve only when there is someone for whom to grieve. Is that so?”

  “Man Without Tears,” said the Queen in a low voice, “do you really wish to hear us grieve?”

  “I do,” I said.

  Linni, sitting at the Queen’s feet gasped and put her hand to her mouth.

  “Then we shall grieve for you and yours. Tomorrow.” The Queen dismissed us as far as the bottom steps.

  Our entire party stood waiting almost at attention while the Queen conferred with B’oremos, whispering into his ear and fingering his hands with quick little taps. Then she drew back from him and pulled a small silken bag from deep within the bosom of her dress. With great ceremony, she handed it to him and dismissed him. He crawled backward down the stairs, standing gracefully when he reached the bottom.

  “A’ron,” said the Queen in a cozening manner, “will you stay this evening with me?”

  “He has work to do back at the ship,” said Dr. Z, though she used the word for tower instead of ship. “Silver Tower” and “Sky Tower” were their names for our skimmer.

  “Let him speak for himself,” said the Queen.

  I looked from Dr. Z to the Queen and back again, then glanced at Linni, whose hand still rested on her lips. When I turned back to the Queen, her mouth was slightly open and her eyes seemed preternaturally bright. The lines from “Tam Lin” suddenly ran through my mind: “Out then spak the Queen of Fairies/And an angry woman was she…”

  I bowed my head. “I fear that I have too much to do, though it would be an honor to spend such time with the Queen and to learn of L’Lal’dor from her own lips.”

  “Then give them the purse,” the Queen said coldly.

  B’oremos bowed and handed the silken pocket to Dr. Z.

  “There are three Lumin nuts in here,” he explained, “from the Queen’s own personal trees. Dissolved in wine, the nuts provoke dreams of such loving, as you say, that you shall never know the like. Her Majesty gives these to you with the thoughts and wishes of her people.”

  Dr. Z bowed back and took up the little silken purse, weighing it in her hand. “We thank you for your generosity but wonder how and in what manner we might repay it.”

  “You will know in the morning,” said the Queen. “B’oremos will prepare the Cup when you invite him in.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Hopfner the moment we had closed the door of the ship, carefully locking the ar
chers outside.

  “Of course you don’t,” said Dr. Z. She turned in a fury on me. “And you, young man, you positively invited it. You know they believe in ritual euthanasia. And you know the significance of the Lumin nuts. If I do not drink them, the Queen will withdraw from us and that means five years of research thrown away, not to mention massive cultural contamination if their commoners see that one can reject the Queen’s expressed offer of the Lumin.”

  “She didn’t specify who should drink,” I said. “Let me do it. I deserve it. It was my fault. I accept the consequences.” I held out my hand for the silk bag.

  “Oh, don’t be stupid!” said Dr. Z. “I’m angry and I’d like to throttle you with my bare hands. But with me, saying that is as far as I go. The L’Lal’lorian Queen, however, has a much bolder power of expression and a millennium of cultural imperative behind it. Don’t go making similar offers to her. Aaron.”

  “I advise we simply lift off.” Hopfner rolled the edges of his beard between his fingers.

  “And I advise you to remember that I outrank you, Lieutenant.” Dr. Z’s voice was cool. “And as Chief Anthro, I have to outthink you on these matters.” Then she chuckled. “I outweigh you, too.” She upended the purse and dumped the kernels onto the table. They looked like wrinkled, hard peppercorns. “Not very lethal looking, are they? I’m tempted to have them ground up over my salad.”

  “I wouldn’t advise that without a test,” put in N’Jymnbo. As medical officer he was efficient, though he lacked any sense of the outrageous, which, according to Dr. Z, was why he had never advanced very far in our Guild.

  Strike that last, Lieutenant.

  It’s out, sir.

  Thank you, sir. I’m not sure why I let that slip.

  Dr. Z continued to push the nuts around on the table as she mused. “I’m willing to bet that three nuts, while lethal to someone the size of their Queen, would hardly touch me, as I have about one hundred seventy or so pounds on her. It would probably mean a bad night—and nothing more.”

  “In fact, you don’t know how your metabolism would handle that,” cautioned N’Jymnbo.