"All things have their season, and in their times, all things pass under heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted. A time to kill, and a time to heal. A time to destroy, and a time to build. A time to weep, and a time to laugh. A time to mourn, and a time to dance."—Ecclesiastes 3:1-4, Douay-Rheims Bible.
Under Heaven
Nealan of Queenscove stared out his window at the pewter gray clouds and sullied snow banks that besieged his family's castle. He knew without having to think—much as he knew that Corus was Tortall's capitol—that the castle was many centuries old and had stood firm through hundreds of blizzards and windstorms, but that didn't stop him from imagining that the present gales whistling through the mortar between the stones and hammering against the glass panes in the windows would bring the entire structure collapsing around their ears. Not that he cared much if the castle's foundations crumbled in upon themselves, because his life had already fallen to pieces, so that he felt there wasn't even a single shard of him left to repair.
He exhaled gustily, and watched the sigh join the mist of the million other sighs he had emitted in the past hour that fogged up his bedchamber window, making it even more difficult for him to gaze out at the lifeless, wintry environs.
Happy Midwinter to me, he thought dourly, idly trailing his finger through the mist clotting his window. He felt like a traitor to his brothers' memories even thinking, however ironically and bitterly, about the word "happy" in relation to himself. He should never imagine smiling when death had frozen his brothers' lips together. He should never laugh when they had been swallowed by the silence of the grave. He should never even cry, because corpses like Graeme and Conan never shed any tears. The dead were always cold and stoic even as rot and insects devoured their bodies. Even cowards were brave in death, but Graeme and Conan had never been cowards, and that was why they were dead.
Both of them had been slain in the string of battles now being referred to as the Immortals War. If only Graeme and Conan had been as immortal as the hurrocks they had fought so valiantly to push away from the Royal Palace.
Neal knew exactly where he was when his brothers had died. He had been in the chapel at the Royal University, huddled around the altar and in the pews with his fellow students, his instructors, servants at the university, and sundry citizens who had sought the sanctuary of the chapel.
He must have been inhaling the sickening scent of sweat and unwashed flesh while Graeme and Conan choked out their last breaths through suffocating mouthfuls of their own blood. He must have been trying to ignore the screechy songs and harried prayers (accompanied with clanking prayer beads) that came from some of the more anxious teachers, servants, and civilians, while his brothers had nobody to hear their last words (if they had even been able to say anything at all through their terrible agony). He must have been glaring at the stained glass windows with their glittering depictions of handsome gods and beautiful goddesses, thinking that those windows, far from being a source of comfort and inspiration for the suffering, were a mockery to those in pain, when his brothers, the life ebbing from their bodies, must have stared blankly up at the sky and wished for just one more minute to see everything.
After that, he never wanted to set foot in any chapel, but that hope, like Graeme and Conan, had died young. Once his father had appeared at the university and explained while trying not to surrender completely to tears that Graeme and Conan were among the dead of the Immortals War, Neal returned to Queenscove Castle, where he attended their memorial service and burial.
He had sat, stood, and knelt at all the right places in the ceremony. He had remembered to look at the priest of the Black God even when he was bored, instead of gazing, glassy-eyed, at the statues in the shadowy alcoves. He had pretended to sing along during the dirges, and mumbled the appropriate replies to the priest's words throughout the rite along with the rest of the congregation. All the time, he had felt like he was somewhere else, and, even when he placed two lilies on his brothers' caskets, and threw two shovelfuls of dirt over their lowered coffins, he still felt as if the bodies of two strangers had been buried in graves that bore their names.
It was so hard to understand that Conan would never tease Neal about his bookish tendencies again, and that Graeme would never ride with him through the fields and forests around their family's castle. It was impossible to accept that Conan would never smile slyly again, and that Graeme would never offer his hearty, booming guffaw. Neal had always hated it when Conan or Graeme nudged his shoulders or clapped him upside the head in the fashion of annoying elder brothers everywhere, but now he wished that they would leap out of a corner and attack him. Then there would be wrestling, laughter, running, and riding. Then there would be only happy tears. Then there would be hearts broken with joy, not grief.
Neal's door burst open, and, for a second, he dared to hope that Graeme or Conan would come sauntering in to give him some merry misery. He was all the more disappointed for his instant of hope when he realized that the intruder was his younger sister, Jessamine.
She was wearing a billowing, velvet gown in a deep scarlet that emphasized her pale skin and the red streaks in her auburn hair. At the waist, her dress was adorned with a golden ribbon, and matching ribbons were braided into her long hair, which fell straight down her back with a shine that indicated recent washing and brushing. Right now, she looked too much like an ambassador from the world that Neal wanted to forget existed to deserve a warm welcome.
"I should have detected your stench from a league away, Jessa," he muttered, as Jessamine, the rich aroma of rosewater wafting off her with every step, glided across the room toward him.
"You have a lot of nerve accusing me of smelling bad, Meathead, when you haven't washed today and have been wearing the same nightclothes all day for the past week," she retorted, hitting way below the belt with a puerile nickname devised by their most insufferable cousin, Domitian. "A blind beggar dresses with more flare than you have recently."
"There's no need for me to waste my valuable time making myself look presentable when I'm not going to be presenting myself anywhere," grumbled Neal, as Jessamine sat on the ledge beside him, drawing her knees up to her chest in a way that would have, Neal was sure, made her governess chide her for showing her legs like a common barmaid.
"Your valuable time which you spend moping in bed or pining by your window," Jessamine scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Oh, you certainly will be attending the family banquet to celebrate the first night of Midwinter, even if I have to drag you there in your nightshirt, so you can be shamed into acting like a proper young man again."
"It's proper to mourn lost family members." Neal's voice was colder than the draft that swept through the windows and walls, as he scowled at his younger sister.
"Neal, Graeme and Conan have been buried for months." Jessamine's tone was so quiet that it was difficult to hear her words over the howling wind. "You have to go on living somewhere outside your bedchamber. You can't stay in bed like a hermit forever."
"Do you want me to do a jolly little minuet over their graves, Jessa?" His face granite, Neal arched an eyebrow at her. "Do you suppose it isn't an insult to party as if they weren't lying cold in their coffins, waiting for rot and insects to consume them?"
"Oh, as if it isn't an insult to their memories to mope about like this for months," Jessamine exclaimed, shaking her head impatiently, so that soft strands smacked into Neal's cheeks. "You know that they died so we, and those like us, might live in peace. Do you want to make their death and sacrifice meaningless by refusing to live at all?"
"Their death and sacrifice were meaningless, just as life itself is." With the slightest flick of his wrist, Neal gestured out his window at the icy garden below. "Everything is cold, gray, and dead, much as we will be in a few short years."
"You see in the world a reflection of what you bear in your heart, Neal." Clucking her tongue, Jessamine tapped him in the chest. "You don't see the evergreen boughs on the windows, the holly bushes in bloom, the mistletoe hung on doorways to create mischief, or the snowmen with bright scarves and berry noses that the servant children made yesterday, because you don't want to see anything that might lessen your depressing view of everything. Well, let me tell you something, a lunatic can't put out the sun by scribbling 'darkness' all over the walls of his cell, so you can stop trying to do that now."
"The evergreen boughs, the holly, and the mistletoes will all wither, Jessa." Irritated that, as usual, his sister was missing his entire point, Neal rolled his eyes. "The snowmen will melt or get knocked over. Everything gets destroyed or dies in the end."
"The remains of dead plants fertilize new ones," Jessamine said, leaning her head against his shoulder. "Snow men are destroyed so that new creations can be built in their place, and snow melts so that spring flowers can grow. Death isn't the end of everything. It's a new beginning."
Before Neal could answer, she removed her head from his shoulder and waltzed over to his wardrobe. As she rummaged through it in search of suitable attire, she declared, "You're going to the feast tonight, but I must find you something to wear if we don't want our guests to laugh themselves into tears or into apoplexy."
After much under the breath commentary about the ugly hues and cuts of his shirts and breeches, Jessamine tossed a jade green shirt and matching breeches with silver buttons onto his lap, ordering, "Get dressed in this, wash your face, and do your hair, so you don't look like some beggar off the street. Green is your color, you know, because it brings out your eyes, and anyway, it's time you wore a color of renewal, not of mourning."
"I don't want to go to a big party looking like a gigantic piece of grass," Neal mumbled, eyeing the clothes his sister had picked out for him with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
"It won't be a big party," Jessamine responded crisply. "Only family and close friends will be there, but if you don't come, be warned that I've already spoken with Great-Uncle Haryse (who arrived here yesterday, in case you didn't notice in the midst of your endless moping) and he'll drag you down in your bedclothes if you don't show up at the party of your own accord. He says that he has already had enough of your melancholy behavior."
"Oh, I would sooner die than see the day when that old stick-in-the-swamp would accuse me of being too dour." Dramatically, Neal threw his hands in the air. "Alas, I am overthrown by a mere sprout of a girl and a cranky coot. I'll go to the blasted banquet if it will keep the two of you out of my hair and off my back."
"Great-Uncle will be delighted." Jessamine's lips quirked into a smile.
"Liar." Neal snorted. "Jessa, Great-Uncle hasn't been happy since he drew his first breath. He wouldn't know happiness if it swatted him in the rump with the flat of his own overused sword."
"That's not true." Jessamine giggled, as she walked toward the door to leave him alone to change and prepare for the feast. "He's quite the cheerful pessimist. He always says things like that in a campaign plagued by bad weather that soldiers, what with enemy attacks, short supplies, and sore feet, are very unlikely to notice the rain and hail, or that, if we should break our necks climbing down a mountain, we shan't have to worry about drowning in the lake at the bottom of it."
"Ah, yes, he's a right little ray of sunshine, although he would probably say that every ray of sunshine is likely to be covered by clouds in an hour." Neal laughed, or tried to, anyway. As he hadn't laughed since the day his brothers died, the sound stuck oddly to the sides of his throat, coming out in jerky wheezes that somehow managed to express all the insane pain and pleasure that he felt at still being alive. Right now, every breath felt like both a miracle and a dagger thrust into the chest. As his sister moved to shut the door behind her, he burst out, "Tell me your secret, Jessa. How can you keep your passion even when our brothers are dead? How can you still feel good when they're gone from us forever?"
"Because I remembered what Graeme and Conan taught me about passion," she said, shooting him a subdued grin over her shoulder. "How they lived and the way they died showed me that passion isn't about feeling inspired or like you're getting something, it's about being inspiring and giving something, so, needless to say, I expect you to be inspiring at our party tonight, because the thought of having a dull brother bores me to tears. While I'm too young for romancing, I need to get my passion from you."
"You don't know what you're saying." Neal glanced at her sharply. "Or at least I hope you don't, or else you might be the most forward virgin in Tortall."
"I choose to take that as a compliment." With a final smirk, Jessamine closed the door, and, not knowing whether to be amused or annoyed, Neal began to get dressed for the Midwinter feast.