by Niabh » Thu Feb 15, 2018 8:35 am
“That’s twice you’ve done that,” the raven replied, exasperated. “I ask what you’re doin’ and you answer by tryin’ to guess what she’s doing. Which is a wee bit unnerving because I ask her what she’s doing and she ends up tellin’ me what she thinks you’re doing. It’s like I’m always on the wrong side of the conversation I’m tryin’ to have. I have never known more about what someone else isn’t doing.”
When Glenn put his head down, the raven strutted, with dignified calm, toward him, then stooped low to peer into his face. A raven’s beak so near to a human eyeball is an alarming thing, even under the most benign circumstances—doubly so when it seemed to be sizing up whether or not you were dead. “This is the second time you’ve done this, too. Not lyin’ on letters. Writing something and then gettin’ rid of it. If you’re going to say something, say it.”
In what (for him) was a daring feat of indiscretion, he actually glanced down on the page Glenn had rejected. It was unreadable, in part because he was looking at it upside down, in part because Glenn’s face obscured most of it, and in significantly larger part because he could not read.
Almost at once he hopped out of temptation’s reach, with a quick defiant flit of his wingtips to prove he’d gotten away with it. “Whos and whats don’t matter don’t matter with them. Strip aside all the glams and she’s only ever one thing: queen. You’ll get whatever or whoever she gives you. You can trick it out of her and she’ll hate you, or you can ask her for it and end up owing her your right ball, or you can let her give you whatever she feels like givin’ and you’ll usually get a bit more than you bargained for and come out free and clear at the end of it. That’s the best anyone can ever hope for outta ’em. It’s not that hard. It’s just not that easy, either.”
Dear Glenn Burnie,
I beg pardon for still another digression, but my bard has at last sent word. I warned you that bards often have the talent for second sight, and it appears she has predicted you, though I swear I told her nothing of you at the time.
I suppose I cannot introduce the fact that you were mentioned without telling you what she has said, but in truth there is not much. It appears she knows all about what happened during our meeting, likely because of my name, and has taken it upon herself to accuse me of bad manners. That is as near as the term will translate, though it is a much more serious charge as she means it. Bad manners means that I gave you a punishment that neither corrected you nor prevented you from offending again. This is considered common cruelty, and impolite. (This is a difference I have noticed between your folk and mine: you seem to regard wickedness the same way we regard manners.) By rights, I should have handled the matter one of two ways: either let the matter go entirely and reach an understanding, or do you such grave injury that you would unable to broach the matter again. that is a terrible, stupid, milk-livered sentence. She wants to know why I did not gut you in the street over it.
In short, I stand accused of going native—an insult so dread that none but a bard would dare raise it—and of favoring sentiment over good sense. This last is near enough to the truth to have a sting, in part because I knew it well before she levelled the charge.
Glenn Burnie, I do not think I impressed upon you just what a serious thing you did in asking for my name. In her eyes, I let you walk away from treason, and she is treating it as such. To let you go unpunished is such a grave breach of protocol that she is concerned for me, lest I have made such a habit of half-measures that I put myself in danger.
You, she treats mostly as an afterthought. She calls you bad counsel, but harmless. This is probably an insult for anyone who likes to think of himself as dangerous and subversive, but please do not go making yourself less harmless for her sake. I would not dare tell you how to take being branded bad counsel, though it amuses me to think that you are both prideful enough to protest and cynical enough to agree. She is more interested how that could have been our first meeting when we had plainly met before, though I think that must be because of the letters—either she only sees what happens to me or else letters are somehow beyond the reach of her sight. If this is last is true, I am not above using it to keep my business private.
Suffice to say, I have had quite the long-distance scolding over you, which in its own strange way is comforting. It has been a good five-and-twenty years since she gave me one of those.
I did not think I would find myself explaining this to you, and I wish I did not have to. I do not think she means for me to excuse myself to her—that is neither her place nor mine—but I find myself wanting to explain. She does not understand how things are different here. There must be compromises. If I must compromise at all, I would rather compromise on the side of kindness. But of late there have been too many times when I do not know if my hand stays for kindness or for cowardice. But then it becomes like that poor little boy, the one who was beaten to death. If I cannot be queen for such as that, if I cannot be queen to save myself, what use to be queen at all?
The truth of the matter is that it was kindness for you. I could not bring myself to hurt you. That must mean something. If I could figure out just what, it would make these letters much less awkward.
Apart from that, I am greatly relieved and in good spirits. Most of her letter she spends answering some questions I had sent her earlier, and the rest is about what has happened since I left. I would inform you of developments, if that would interest you, but as my gentleman can attest, the only drawback to anyone asking me about home is that I will tell them—in far too much detail and for as long as I can persuade them to stand still for it. In this case, though, there is little enough to say. She has written of my mother and her children, all of whom are well and safe, and of those few of my friends who are near enough to be accounted for, and of some of our best allies. My father is still alive, having made for himself a career of being too indispensable to be assassinated. Things have improved far beyond their prospects last spring. The course we predicted in my leaving has played out nearly to the letter, which should make me glad, and of course it does make me glad, only I am a little bitter that all that was needed to solve the dilemma was to be rid of me.
That is uncharitable and self-pitying, I know, but I cannot help it. I miss them so badly I near to wish that she had not written at all, so that I could stay wrapped in my own concerns and spare none of them a thought. They have each other to rely upon and I have only myself.
Now I have your last letter at my right and the one from my bard at my left. There is such a difference between them. Part of it may be that we do not use writing as your people seem to. Most of our writing is for histories. No one with sense would write down things where anyone at all could see them. Her own letter is more like a long list, which amuses me; she has even included a census of our stock, as if there is something I am meant to do about it from here. Yours is more like conversing. I am not sure why I am telling you all this, save that it is pleasant to have some good news to share and someone to share it with.
I have been doing some earnest thinking about these letters of ours. Betimes they are so abstract that I bury myself in them to distract myself from other matters. Between us we wage such bloodless, hopeful wars to no end but a time when things will be better, with all the battles aimed at what may be done to reach that place. They are hopeful, no matter what you might think, and for all we quibble about the means. But they are not abstract to you. I forget this sometimes. I will try not to forget in the future.
Another thing I forget is that in these letters I am beholden to nothing but honesty. It is possible here to try on different ideas as your women try on gowns, to see which one fits best without committing to any particular one. I do not have to reject things on principle. Even knowing this, there are concepts I reject out of hand, in spite of myself. Some are those I know right away would never work, and some are ones that frighten some are not so much frightening as much as they made me uneasy uncomfo nerv I know what it would be called in our language but I am having trouble to find it in yours.
Your talk of the oppression of nature is one, for it is a concept I finding wearisome and typical of your people. Any fool would understand that nature is not to be overcome; to attempt it is like cutting off the branch on which one sits. Nature, by the very fact that you call it nature rather than habit or circumstance, is immutable, but once it is known and understood one may live and even thrive within it.
Yet at the same time I write this, I cannot but think how it has failed us. It makes no sense to be bound into one’s nature and unable to turn aside from it were it not the path we were meant for. Yet every new generation grows smaller and shorter.
(Blasphemy is the word I could not find before. Is that what it is? The feeling of dread, as if one might offend the gods? I think that is the word.)
You wrote before that death is a very unimaginative way of defining defeat. I doubt you would make such grand statements if it was your own people in fear of extinction. I ask you this: if you the choice was between all those things you so value in your people and death, would that still be unimaginative? If the choice was subjection or destruction, which would you choose? Would you say that loss of autonomy would change them so greatly that it would be no different than if they ceased to be at all? I will make it even simpler: if the only way to free them from your lady’s thrall was that they die, would you allow it? Would that have been kinder than what she made of them?
That is the question I hear when you ask me what it would look like. That is why I dismissed it. I believe it would all come to death in the end, or something so like death as to make no difference—that we would not be anymore. I dismiss it because it has been tried before. There has been time and still more time for all the stories to play out again and again, and all because someone always believes that this time, it will not happen. I dismiss it because I do not wish to be the one to believe it this time around, not when there are too few of us left to survive another failure. I dismiss it because I believe that your people would never trust any force greater than itself that it did not wholly control, as much as my people would die out entirely as they are rather than submit. This last, at least, should be a sentiment you can comprehend.
I am trying to make light of it, Glenn Burnie, but underneath it all, it troubles me. The ideal, as you would say, is lovely. It would solve innumerable problems. But in practice, it would mean such compromise as neither your people nor mine would accept for even a moment. You may call that nostalgia if you like; I call it pragmatism. I know them better than you do. I want to believe that if there is still life, one may yet salvage hope. But I am like you in that I cannot be certain, and until I am certain, I cannot take that risk. It hurts I am going to write it anyway. It hurts to think that it might come to that. What it comes to, I fear, is that your people can change in ways mine cannot—that they always could.
We always seem to be at opposed ends of the same fix, you and I. You will never live to see your people realized and there is a good chance that I might live long enough to see my own disappear.
That is a grim note on which to end, but the raven is impatient to be off ere the snow starts again. A poor queen am I, at the beck and call of every ragtag beggar and raven.
Finn
(“Something else,” indeed. You do know how to keep a lady in anticipation. If you would but go and ply that skill upon some eager wench, perhaps you would siphon off some of the unspent vigor that goes into writing these endless letters. It might do you some good, even if I would be left all the poorer for it. Now that I think on it, this might be less anticipation than dread, so perhaps not.)
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.