Week 19

 November 10

Now that my husband and I have become lovers (and why does that sound weird?) at least, in the we practically stripped each other during our first real kiss as a married couple. And he knows all my secrets. I feel exposed and relieved at the same time, an odd combination of emotions to try to come to terms with. However, since I now have an ally, one who is married to me, and one who happens to be the king, I may be able to get some work done around here. I kind of wish we’d consummated our marriage in that cave, but the ghost of Danae is still hanging over it to some degree, and it would have been weird to have sex right after discovering that he knew all my secrets, he had all along, and that he’d been playing me from the beginning. Wow. I didn’t even get mad about that until just now.

Now I think back to all those stupid little smirks whenever I said anything gross or inappropriate to Summer culture. He’d seen me cry at that play where the star-crossed lovers had killed themselves accidentally, sort of. I’m still not certain what was happening there, but then “Farmer Bohn” assured me that it was a classic in Summer theatre, so I let it go. I did look it up when I went to visit Lush and it had been around for thousands of years, but it’s an odd and confusing play. Nothing like that would ever happen in Winter. First of all, two families would not be allowed to foster a grudge for hundreds of years. Either one family would kill off the other, down to the last baby-child, or the king would put a stop to it by separating the family members and having them be adopted into other, more humble families. The only dynasties in Winter are held by long lines of politicians -- women and men too smart to get caught up in sharing their political loyalties in uncertain times, let alone overtly attacking other families.

And no pair of lovers in Winter would be caught dead killing themselves over something as silly as True Love. True Love is a fable, a myth, a fairy tale, a bog of superstitious fiddlefaddle made up by Springians and Summerians to soften the harsh realities of life, only to make their lives harder by sticking to the one person who makes them the most miserable in all four worlds. Winterians are not brought up on romantic myths, which is one reason I never heard of Jomiet And Rulio or whatever their names were. (Leave it to the Ancient English to come up with such silly names.) Winterians are brought up to believe that marriage is a partnership, brought on by mutual necessity and maintained with respect and trust, and eventually, a long-lasting, earned love. None of that “at first sight” stuff for Winterians. 

When I was younger, I thought it would be easier to live in a society in which you know who your match is as soon as you clamp eyes on them, but I’ve grown to appreciate the kind of love that comes from actually knowing who you’re dealing with. If my husband ever comes to love me, it’ll be because despite my faults and weaknesses, I have shown a strength of character and a trustworthiness that demands his loyalty. If I come to love him, it won’t be because he tricked me and laughed at me about it, but because he’ll do anything for his country without compromising his intelligence. That he comes from a place in which everyone waits for their One True Love makes his common sense that much more valuable. He is willing to come to love me, just as I am willing to come to love him. It would have been just as easy for me to love Hon or Wanderlust or Samson, had a marriage between us been arranged. Of course, I would have had to have loved Wanderlust platonically because after he cheated on me, he would have lost his tool for straying. Nothing personal, of course -- just how it’s done in Winter. He’s fortunate that he married a Summerian -- though their methods of castration are done monetarily and by reputation whereas in Winter, a man may be a eunuch but that is a secret between himself, his wife, and his former mistress(es).

In any case, the time that has lapsed between myself and my husband’s kiss the other day, has made the idea of a repetition of the performance, really awkward. I can’t even bring it up because we never have a moment alone together, and he has not snuck into my bedroom since that morning. I wonder if he regrets the kiss -- but he said that he wanted to make a baby with me, so he can’t. Maybe he finds me repellant -- but then he wouldn’t have been able to make himself kiss me, and we wouldn’t have practically torn each other’s clothes off like that. Maybe he’s just busy -- oh, cringe. Why does that sound like the worst reason yet? Ugh. I’m thinking like a Summerian.

Think like a Winterian, Winter. He IS busy. I’m busy. I have court and Jhea’s wedding and Danae’s business and her daughter, and I have to suss out whatever Staejha’s plotting because there’s always something. I haven’t even had time to visit the cave. I wonder if he’s been there looking for me. I should go check it out -- but I can’t today. I have a meeting with Samson and then I have to take Zahina to the real-book store. We’ve finally finished it. It’s completely awesome. Bub has made some miniature faux real books for people to buy, with pages and everything. It’s a novelty, and one I think will take off. The electronic book devices that we have are so handy, but there’s something so personal in picking up a book and knowing that sixty million other people aren’t holding the same thing in their hands at this exact moment. Plus Bub has created an electro-paged journal so that you can write on each page, just once -- and you can make it secret too because it has fingerprint recognition. Any twelve-year-old knows how to get around that, but it’s a fun thing for kids. I bought one for Zahina. She loves it.

And I thought that Samson would burst. He brought Jhea to the opening. I was worried that she’d recognize me -- we’ve known each other since we were kids, after all -- but she didn’t react to seeing me, and she didn’t say anything although we were left alone, at one point.

“Are you glad to be getting back to what you love?” she asked, as a couple of people freaked out by Jhea’s looks, moved away.

“What?” I said, thinking she was referring to the trip to Winter, suggesting that I liked Summer better than Winter.

“Designing buildings,” she said, waving a hand to indicate the interior of the bookstore. Her gaze found Samson in the crowd, and she softened. “I thought he would burst, all those designs swimming around in him, with no outlet for them.” She looked at me. “It must have driven you crazy to hold all that in, the past couple of years.”

Samson must not have told her that I was taking credit for his designs. Or had he? I scrutinized her for a moment, trying to find a hint to what was going on in her mind. As usual, she was impassive. “Actually,” I replied, finally. “I was empty of creativity -- grief does that too you, leaves you bereft. I didn’t even want to come back to work, but it’s Zahina’s legacy and I thought it was worth preserving.” There. That was close enough to the truth that if Jhea knew Samson was covering for me, that would be an acceptable answer, and if she didn’t know, she wouldn’t guess by my conduct.

November 11

My cousin Jhea’s wedding is tomorrow. Her dress is gorgeous and she looks radiant. I never would have envisioned her being this happy to get married. She’s such a solitary soul. My husband seems to be avoiding me, and I haven’t seen Hon since I was in Winter. I wonder if we left him there. I hope we did. It’s funny, with the taboo of the hundreds of years since a Winterian had visited a Summer and vice versa, it never occurred to me that anyone would dress up in disguise and visit the opposite planet. Aside from the ship we took, which went directly from Winter and Summer, there are no direct ships, which means that anyone who wants to visit Summer has to go to at least Spring or Autumn first, change identities, and reboard as someone else in order to go to Winter. 

It never would have occurred to me to do that. I’d visited both Spring and Autumn as a kid, y’know, family vacation, but Summer was just out of reach, out of my sphere of comprehensible consciousness. I didn’t want to visit Summer – there were just so many horrible people there who would smile to your face just as they stabbed you in the back. My change in attitude toward Summerians astonishes me. If I could have foreseen the change, I would have thought it would only happen through brainwashing, but it actually happened through getting to know them. Each Summerian is an individual with strength and weaknesses, angers and joys, kindnesses and cruelties – only the different approach to appropriate personality is what makes a difference, but the differences are mostly superficial. Clothes, hair, tattoos, piercings, and frowns all make Winterians look fierce and unapproachable. Summerians wear light clothes both in fabric and in color, and they smile and look sweet and innocent. I have to admit that if I were not trying to overcome a lifetime of prejudice regarding them, I would be taken in by their appearance of simplicity. 

Winterians want to seem tough and Summerians want to see soft, and both cultures use their images to try and influence the other in how to feel. Summerians want to lull you into a false sense of security – they want you to underestimate them. Winterians want you to be so afraid, that you won’t even approach them in a threatening manner. If you think about it, it might seem that because Summerians are steel clothed in silk, that Winterians are silk clothed in steel, but Winterians promote their ideals of toughness, even amongst each other. We may project a much more fearsome image than we actually feel, but Winterians prize toughness and ferocity, a lack of visible emotion, and therefore are basically who they pretend to be. Summerians are the opposite in that they want to seem soft but are really hard, and the same thing happens to them. They cultivate weakness without meaning to. It’s sort of like in Winter when sociopaths take our cultural views to heart and resort to cannibalism. Some Summerians take their vapidity to heart and become stupid and vain and useless. In the end, I think Winter still has more overall strength than Summer because of their self-imposed gentility, but they are not as fearsome as I once imagined.

I thought that whereas Winterians have warm hearts beneath cold facades that Summerians had cold hearts beneath warm facades, but the truth is that folk from both places are just as human as each other and it astonishes me that I could have ever believed otherwise. What creates in us this willingness or ability to de-dimensionalize people that we disagree with? They no longer become human; they are at one both more and less than we. There is discrimination in Winter – men are considered weaker both of thought and physicality, and of course there is a class system which truly does leave people jobless and/or homeless and the general attitude is that if someone has no home and no hope to cultivate one, then their lack of toughness is their own problem and they will die because the elements are so harsh. I wrote a paper on this in college, praising the Darwinish system, but meaning exactly the opposite. The reason I had so many adoptive cousins as a child is because my mother could not stand to see anyone out on the street. “Everyone can serve a purpose,” she used to say. I always thought that was a cold way to refer to the people she was helping, like she saw them only as what she could use in them, but being here and having the dual purposes of reuniting our planets and taking over as Zahina’s mother figure and saving Danae’s business – I realize that I’m much happier with a purpose than I was without onc. When I had no reason other than some meaningless drone job to get up in the morning, I was miserable. I was tired all the time, and afraid of all the seemingly fierce people going about their productive lives and I was jealous of them and angry at myself for not doing something with my life. 

When I would “leak” new cures to the planet through Lush, I was so happy, but it wasn’t my work that made that happen, and I couldn’t help but feel selfish for keeping Lush to myself, though she specifically requested it. Just think of all the good LUSH could do if people knew about it. A hospital where you’re healed in an instant, where you can shop economically, where there is access to every book ever written (since and before LUSH was created), where you can go to school and learn from the best teachers throughout the ages. We have that, to some degree, but imagine if all of Winter’s homeless people had access to that kind of place. What if my little yellow room could help a family of three get back on their feet? I don’t know how I can consider keeping LUSH to myself. I will have to visit again soon, and seriously talk to her about it. 

I could keep her to myself when I was miserable and lonely and purposeless – having a secret like that made me feel powerful, but now I realize that it’s actually a crime to keep it to myself. With Danae, it was so fast that I doubt having LUSH would have helped, even if we could have gotten her there alive. But what if I had been able to use LUSH on my father? I didn’t get to see him before he died. He was sick for a while, they told me later. Poisoned by Summerians, they said, which I have to question now. But if I had known he was sick, or if LUSH hadn’t been a secret….

November 12

There’s something about not belonging anywhere which adds to a certain amount of loneliness. At home, I had LUSH to hid in, and here I had my little grassy cave -- but I’m not home, and my husband might be in the cave and now I have nowhere I can go and just be. Everywhere here I have to be someone I’m not. At court, I have to be tough and could and gruesomely descriptive. At work I take credit for someone else’s genius -- either Danae’s or Samson’s, it makes no difference. I go to Danae’s house because I pretend to live there and to the world, I am Zahina’s mother -- to everyone except for Zahina and Eliava. I’m a queen, a mother, an architect, and a wife by appearance only. I am not, in reality, any of those things.

Sure, I get to save a couple of planets and all of its inhabitants (fingers crossed) and Zahina will not be raised by distant relatives and her mother’s reputation will be strong because of me. And I’m happy about all that, but what about me? I spend every waking moment of every day pretending to be someone I’m not. When do I get to just breathe? When do I get to nurture my own strengths, interests, hopes and dreams. Never. And it looks like this never is going to last for the rest of my life. If I died, would my existence have made any difference at all? My husband would be able to find a new Winter wife, and solidify the truce bond. Zahina would be without a mother, but she is anyway, appearances aside. And how messed up must she be to have to deal with the reality of having lost her mother, but not being able to share that grief with anyone?

Jhea’s wedding was today. Zahina was invited. She became quite a favorite with Jhea during our trip to Winter. Danae was invited too, but she had to work. Eliava came as the parental figure, and she seemed to enjoy  herself. Jhea wore a dress which combined the palest ice blue color that Winterians use combined with Summer’s sheer, frothy layers and bright gold accents. Many Summer wedding dresses for royal brides is gowns of pure gold, but I liked the accents, and it suited Jhea not to be dragging all that gold down the aisle. It was actually quite colorful, with green vines clinging to the pillars and pews and neon orange and fuchsia flowers popping up here and there. It reminded me of one of my hiding spots on Winter, though I think it was supposed to symbolize spring, which is the season that bridges the gap between winter and summer.

Jhea isn’t showing her pregnancy yet, aside from that earthy glow you always here referred to with pregnant women. I always thought of it as a myth, but the glow spreads from her eyes, which is probably how the myth started in the first place. To find a suitable mate -- and after having gotten to know Samson Delilah, I do think he’s suitable -- and to be procreating with said mate is something that makes her pretty happy, which again, is so odd. I guess I always saw her growing old alone, surrounded by various animals. Perhaps her nurturing nature toward animals was a clue that she would take to wife-and-motherhood but she always did her tending alone, begrudging any assistance. She certainly hasn’t done any further confiding in me, so there’s no way to know the answer to that question.

She and Samson are going to be spending two weeks in Spring as their honeymoon. Winterians don’t have honeymoons, and Summerians take two or three months, usually, so it’s long by Winter standards and short by Summer but Samson has several projects in the works. I think that part of the reason he’s going is to kind of prove that Danae’s business isn’t reliant on him, which is odd, because it is. Fortunately, we are putting off meeting with potential clients until he comes back, the clients we have are all in stages that are manageable by our current staff -- barring unforeseen emergencies. The B&B is almost ready, as well as the family home for The Perfects, and we’re starting construction on the hidden hillside home as soon as Samson comes back. There isn’t that much history of people hiding their homes in the landscapes, at least not that we have access to or personal experience of here, though Springians do it a lot because they don’t like to mar the natural landscape. But there are so many things that might need minor adjustments, that we really need Samson here in order to do it. The real Danae wouldn’t need him, but I don’t have a dozen or so years of school and then practical experience with seeing my visions come to life, so it would be stupid to attempt to pull off the impersonation without my “consultant”.

Our court date is going to be the day that Jhea and Samson come back from their honeymoon, but we’ll be solvent by then. One thing I am able to do on my own is gather the financial statistics. Preparing a defense for letting my business pretty much go bust, is more difficult. I understand grief, but I can not understand weakness, and that is what Danae showed when she just let go of her business. If it had just been her, I wouldn’t have thought it odd at all. And of course, I blamed Carrot at first, for taking advantage of Danae’s grief, but it’s easy to see that that wasn’t the case. So I just can’t see what was the case.

When my father died, my mother did not stop working -- in fact, she worked more. Me too -- I was nearing my degree and I finished in six months what should have taken me eighteen. It wasn’t a matter of displaying Winter toughness, either, because without my father there, there was just one less person to impress. And it’s not as though I weren’t present for that time, like I was running on auto-pilot or something. The things that I learned in school during that time are what have stuck with me the most. It’s like they were imprinted on my brain more fiercely than anything else I ever tried to learn. And it’s not as though I didn’t want to just go and hide in LUSH and pretend I was dead and everyone around me was dead -- in fact, every part of my life that was no academic, felt like death to me. That’s why I don’t understand Danae. She could have done herself so much good to distract herself from that numbness rather than wallowing in it. Maybe it’s different to lose husband, than a father. Or maybe it’s a cultural thing. Or maybe it was just the difference in our personalities. But trying to defend it is difficult, because all of the reasons I can come up with for her complete neglect of her life, is so weak.

November 13

Samson is off on his honeymoon, so of course today was the perfect day for Murphy’s Law to go into effect. Murphy’s Law is this rule that this guy came up with thousands of years ago, which states simply, that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. Mr. Murphy was not a cheery guy, but he was, unfortunately, correct. This morning we were supposed to start on The Perfect’s house, but of course, no one knows where the plans for the building are. The contractor never got the final final final plans and without knowing what the miniscule changes were, we can’t move forward. Myself and Carrot tore the office apart looking for them, only to find them on Samson’s computer desktop, labelled “Here are the Plans You’ll Need While I’m Away on Vacation”. How we could have possibly missed that, I’ll never know, but we were able to send the plans to the contractor and get started. Mr. and Mrs. and the kids Perfect will have their finished home in less than a month.

I had to go out to the B&B to do the final walkthrough with the inspector. He knew me (Danae) from college and I had to use the grief card again because I had no earthly idea who he was, aside from his work bio, or how well I knew him. I pressed on, and this afternoon I got into a shouting match with Carrot. I get the hiccups when I shout, which is why I don’t, but I did today. If it was a match or a fight or any kind of competition, it was a draw. We both retreated to our corners to splash some water on our respective faces and get ready to go again. At the end of the day, I just looked at her and she just looked at me. “Stay,” I said.

She stared at me for a long time and took a deep sigh. “Fine,” she said. “But after Samson gets back from his honeymoon, I want a vacation. A long one. Months long.”

“Fine,” I agreed, grinning. “Whatever you want.”

“Maybe a year,” she said, gauging my reaction.

“As long as you come back, you can stay away as long as you want,” I said, a lead weight lifting off of that corner of my heart. It’s not so much that we can’t do without Carrot -- I’m sure we’d muddle through at first and then perhaps someday we’d soar through. But there just doesn’t seem to be a point to the business if none of the originals are there. Danae and her husband are dead, and Carrot came on later, but she was one of the main reasons the business was able to be as successful as it was. And besides, this business did so much damage to her, I want to be able to see that damage repaired, and to see her thrive in the environment that almost did her in. Maybe it’s morbid of me to want that for her, but I do.

I saw Hon today. He came to visit Danae. “I thought I saw you in Winter,” I said to him. “Did I?”

He blinked in surprise. “Yes. Where did you see me?” 

“At court.”

“But I was behind you all the time. Every time I stand before you, you recognize me.” He stared at me for a moment, as though trying to comprehend me. No one else does. Not even your husband, all the time.” He bobbed his chin in a gesture of challenge. “What makes you so special?”

I sighed. “Do you even realize how many identities I have at this point? If I didn’t have some skill at seeing through facades, I’d be pretty bad at maintaining them.”

He grinned. “Now that you know that I and your husband know that you’re married, we can’t date.”

It took me a minute to catch up to his logic. Then I laughed. “Right.”

“But he is my best friend --”

“Is he?” I interrupted, searching for an honest answer. He seemed taken aback, but he recovered swiftly and looked at me through clear, frank eyes.

“Yes.” He blinked and shook his head, a small smile creeping up the corners of his lips. “Anyway. I’m here to extend the same services to you.”

“Hah,’ I said. “What do those services entail?”

He bobbed his chin again, smile fading like the last colorful edges of a sunset. “Everything.”

The power of his statement was like a force that rocked my body. “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “You seem to be around a lot, so I’ll just keep an eye out for you.” He nodded and melted away into the crowd, though there wasn’t much of one to melt into.

I have a really weird life. No one is who they should be, myself in particular. That’s okay. Father would approve, I think. He was always secretive in his own weird way. He could look you right in the eye and give you that same I’d-never-lie-to-you look that Hon gave me earlier, and tell you that there was a giant snake coiling up on the wall behind you. And then when you dredged up enough courage to turn around and check, and then accuse him of lying, he’d just shrug. “It went around the corner, just as you turned around.”

Although I know my father would have done anything to protect us, I kind of learned not to trust anyone, from him. He could convince you of anything, even if it was the opposite of what you knew was true -- and you wouldn‘t even realize it until later, if at all. I can’t lie like him, but I can do this thing with my eyes that makes it feel like I could burn a hole through you if I really wanted to. It freaks people out. It probably doesn’t help that I could actually burn a hole through you with my eyes, if I so chose. Just one of those little freak genetic superpowers that we must keep secret. It makes me wonder if my father is telepathic. Was. My physical power is connected to my perceived power, so was his too? If it was, did he know about it? What about Mother? She has this ability to make you think that what you’ve done is wrong -- and mothers universally seem to have this power -- but isn’t that great camouflage?  To make someone think that you can do something that already suits your personality? I am not a hothead, but when I get angry, people get scared. And when I choose to, I can melt things. So could my father really convince you, or was he just a great con artist? What about Hon? Is he just a talented chameleon, or is there some sort of internal force which helps him blend in so thoroughly?

And Eliava for that matter. She has this homely vibe, that makes you smell and even taste apple cake, even though she doesn’t bake. Maybe it’s a perfume, maybe it’s a superpower. What about my husband. He is so charismatic that it’s all I can do to not tear both of our clothes off every time I see him, unless I am really, really distracted. Is he merely attractive, or is there something more to that intense attraction? Other people have noted it too, not that it would be that weird -- he is the ruler, and Summerians do suck up to their rulers.

What about Seraphine? She’s has that ability to change personality from smooth and eloquent to bouncy and giggly. I couldn’t do that. I have to cultivate my two major personalities (Winter and Danae) and then adjust them slightly for whoever I’m around. And I can‘t change mood or hold a persona for as long as Seraphine can without seeming effort. Then again, one can not see effort, and perhaps it is merely an intense cultivation which enables Seraphine to be so multi-personated.  Everyone seems to have something, from Adora’s thick skin to Bubs’ innate lovability, to Zahina’s focused energy, to Carrot’s cool efficiency. How much is natural, how much can be cultivated, and how much is supernatural? In other words, how much of a freak am I?

November 14

I braved visiting the cave today. It was empty. I wrote in you, in the diary that Zahina made for me, and then I decided that I had to burn you, get rid of the evidence. The cave was my only safe hiding place and now I have none, so I can’t keep you. I believe my husband when he says he didn’t read you, I mostly believe him, but there are just too many people who know about you now. I trusted you with Adora, and I’d even trust you with my husband, but I can’t trust you with anyone else who may find or even already know about the cave. 

Then I decided that I couldn’t kill you. For some reason, you’re like a person to me. It’s funny, when I was a kid, I felt like a diary to all of my foster siblings. I had to listen to all of their individual tales of woe, them being, of course, too young to have forged their facades into something that embraced adversity -- although, the older kids confided in me too, only as though they didn’t care about the hardships they’d endured. No one ever asked me about me, not beyond superficially. It made me feel inanimate, and I wondered bitterly that they didn’t just type all their feelings into their private blogs and leave me out of it.

So to feel so connected to you, just a sheaf of papers rudely stapled and glued together, with random childish doodles to write around -- It’s an odd connection. So rather than destroying you, I’m hiding you. I’ve painted you dirt brown and I’m hiding you in a crevasse in the wall of the cave where we’re keeping Danae’s body. It’s cold and damp here so it’s my comfort that you’ll probably be destroyed, but I’d rather it be naturally, like a human body naturally decomposes -- rather than to murder you. I know it’s weak and I’ll probably regret it, but I just can’t do it. I can’t feel like there’s no one who knows all my secrets, my hopes, my fears. So I’ll hide you, like I hide all of those other things. And maybe a thousand years from now, it’ll be safe for my true self to be exposed. The first Winterian Queen of Summer -- not as bad as people thought she was. It’d be nice if people knew that. Someday.

I smuggled something back from Winter that I shouldn’t have. It’s not as good as a diary, but it’s only about half as dangerous. It’s that real book I found when I was eleven years old, and first discovered LUSH. It has the same kids, up lit by the crystal ball they’re gathered around. The story is about these people who have basically all been reincarnated so that they’re not only who they are in this live -- which for most of them is in the process of being cut really short -- but also who they were previously, as well as the suggestion of who they mature into being, in their next life. It’s wonderfully metaphorical and at the same time, a piece of teen horror fluff. How does it get any better than that? It makes me wish I’d been around to meet the guy who wrote it.