Page 12 of The Summer War
As the feasting ended, the lower tables cleared themselves away.
They too were made of living vines and branches that simply unwound from one another and rolled back into the forest dark, leaving the courtyard half empty before the high table.
The summerlings had been drinking only cool sweet water until then, out of cups made of wood and leaves, which never ran dry.
But now servants came around with golden flagons, filling glass drinking horns with a gush of a sweet-smelling drink whose color changed like a sunrise, swirling pink and golden and pale blue, with a pale golden froth at the top, and then a second row of servants came around with smaller silver flagons, and poured a stream of strong rich midnight-blue liquor into each horn for as long as it was held out to them, and many of the summerlings laughing held theirs out for a pour that made the whole drink darken into sunset colors instead.
After everyone had been served and all the horns filled a second time, two great drums were rolled out of the woods into the courtyard, made of huge hollow tree trunks wider across than a man’s height.
Braces were brought out to hold them balanced on their sides, with two players climbing up onto low stands on either side to play each one, and musicians with strange two-stringed lutes played thin high melodies while the other summerlings began to clap and shout along.
Some summerlings began to come forward to take a turn dancing facing the high table, sometimes just one, or in pairs or threes moving in perfect time with one another, with long silken sleeves and skirts rippling through the air like ribbons, and their fingers leaving sparkling traces of glowing phosphorescence like gleambugs themselves, making pictures out of the trails that lingered in the air behind them.
Each new dancer picked up the pattern as they moved up to the front, keeping the trails unbroken, sometimes bringing two trails together to mingle them, or using their hands like a knife to cut apart one of the light-trails into two separate curving paths instead.
Celia forgot to be afraid for a little while, caught up in the beauty and grace, the drums echoing through the ground and into her body like heavy thunderstorms in the mountains.
A new dancer came forward to the front: a beautiful summerling man with dark hair and pale grey skin, wearing red silk and silver.
He followed a trio, and he moved with such speed and grace that he managed to keep all six of the light-trails they left behind them going smoothly, and suddenly Elithyon got up and left her at the table to go into the courtyard with him.
There was a faint murmuring all around, and Celia suddenly felt eyes on her again.
For a while the summerlings had forgotten to glare at her, lost in their own merrymaking, but now they all looked at her with pleased little smirks of satisfaction while Elithyon joined the other summerling in his dance, as if she was being insulted.
She wasn’t sure what was the safest feeling to show them.
Did they want her to be unhappy, or angry, or offended?
She just went on watching, trying to keep her face as neutral as she could, so they could read whatever they wanted to into her expression.
Elithyon and the other summerling man were reaching new heights of grace, the two of them sending a dozen light-trails flying, throwing them out into wide shimmering loops around the whole courtyard, other summerlings reaching up to dip their own fingers into the trails, adding more colors to go along, and then many of them began to come into the courtyard to join the dance—a dance that now turned into a circle around Elithyon and his partner, with Celia left alone and outside the gathering at the deserted high table.
But she didn’t mind; no one was looking at her anymore, and the dance was so dazzling, every movement so perfectly right, that Celia fell back into that dreamlike fascination.
She didn’t even realize for a little while that she was still watching while Elithyon was kissing the other man, and even as it slowly dawned on her, she noticed that many of the summerlings were openly embracing within the dance, coming together to move in slow lush sinuous movements against one another, hands moving into their silken garments to trail sparkling light over naked skin.
She had only ever taken a few furtive peeks into those summer books, in the back corner of the market where the merchants kept them in chests under their tables.
She’d never quite been able to bring herself to buy them and bring them into the castle, even after Father had sunk into his torpor: less afraid of punishment than pure embarrassment.
The occasional sneaked passage hadn’t been nearly enough preparation.
Celia couldn’t find a safe place to look; she ended up staring down at the table, but she couldn’t remember to keep doing it.
The music would rise to a sudden heated speed, and she’d look up, and then she’d watch for a little while, just caught by the beauty of it again, and then suddenly realize what she was watching and jerk her eyes back down.
She understood now why all the summerlings had thought she ought to feel insulted, to have her husband dancing with someone else at her wedding feast, but she was only desperately relieved.
She hoped Elithyon made love with a dozen summerlings to insult her some more, and then slept for a week afterwards.
No one was paying any attention to her, the rest of them also dancing and making love together as if the two were nearly the same thing, changing partners now and again.
She took the chance and tried surreptitiously to take the ring off her finger with both hands underneath the table, but it wouldn’t so much as turn, even when she gripped it with a corner of the tablecloth.
She thought of trying to slip away, but she was too afraid of being noticed while they were all drunk and ever more wild-spirited.
There were tales of summerlings hunting mortals who’d offended them and tearing apart their prey, and she was still sewn into her heavy silken wedding-gown, which had taken two dressers to put on her, with nothing but thin slippers on her feet.
So she just tried to stay small and quiet while the wanton revelry kept going, hoping they would all fall asleep, until suddenly Elithyon was coming back to his throne, breathing hard, his skin glowing with a sheen of sweat, smiling and his eyes brilliant.
He dropped into his seat and held his horn out to be refilled with sunset by two summerling servants who appeared at once with the flagons of gold and silver as if it had been a rehearsed moment.
He drank and then looked over at her with a puzzled and open expression, curious and easy to read: Who was she, and what was she doing there next to him?
Celia stared back at him and could see the memory come rolling back over him.
His hand clenched on the horn unmoving, and a blank, stricken look came into his face, as if he’d just been told something dreadful, and then he hardened back into that terrible rage and glared at her as furiously as if the brief moment of delight had never happened.
“Now you know the fate that lies before you,” he said, murderously.
“Think not that I will forget. Though we do not cling to the faint shades of the past as you scrabbling mortals do, I swear to you that even should a thousand of your mortal years pass, still I will remember Eislaing and seek vengeance for her pain. I will never love you. You will wear a crown as hollow as the one your king gave her, and be queen in nothing but name. I will never come to your bed or look at you with desire, or show you the least honor. Others shall have my love, and you shall sit beside me in silence and humiliation, and know that nothing will ever win you my heart. I swear it to you by silver and by gold.”
He finished in a savage, triumphant rush, and suddenly the feasting was ending, all the music and crowd ebbing away from the courtyard and vanishing away into the palace like an unstoppered bottle pouring out, and Elithyon had her hand again.
Celia had to stand up or be pulled, and with a single step she was suddenly with him at the side of the courtyard and being drawn into a tower made of pale white stone that didn’t fit into the rest of the palace at all.
It looked just like the winter tower of a mortal castle, eight-sided with the hinge sockets waiting for autumn walls to be put in, and when he pulled her inside, the floor of the tower was even tiled, with the ventilation holes in the back corner to let the smoke out of the oven that would warm them from beneath during winter—awinter that would never come into these lands.
There wasn’t even anything inside the tower; it was like a hollow shell with a winding stair that ran up around the inside.
Celia’s heart was pounding in fear as Elithyon dragged her up behind him, no matter what he’d said.
What if he forgot by the time they got upstairs?
She’d tried to be ready in her mind for her wedding night, but she’d hoped anyway that maybe Gorthan would let her have a few weeks at least, if she asked, to know him a little, and she’d thought she would have sorcery to protect her against anything really dreadful. But she couldn’t be ready for this.