Cards of Grief (21 page)

Their own. Perhaps that is because we are each a Card in the Cards of Grief. We feel your Cards, even when we know it not, here, here in the heart. You are yourself like the Singer, helping others move within the pattern, pointing the way.

Then you and yours, sky woman, are what? Like Cups of Sleep you have dealt death to our old ways. You observe us, change us, go away. Gray knew this but was powerless to stop it. So am I. So I point the way for Linnet and the children with her on the Council; I point and they lead the way? Is that what you mean?

Then I will tell you a secret, Dot’der’tsee, a secret I have shared with no one, not even my A’ron. Would you know it?

I would if you would tell it to me.

I tell it to you because A’ron, before he died, confessed to me that his people would come down one more time and, when they saw what was happening, would go away and never return. That is why I show it to you now.

The bottom of the box that A’ron carved is a false bottom. And if you slide it, thus, there are two last Cards I have never shown, for they are not Cards of Grief at all. I made them the year after Gray’s death. One Card is called the Laughing Man, the other the Child of Earth and Sky.

They are
—
quite beautiful. And I would know them both, anywhere. The man, with the child in each arm, the blond hair and that lopsided grin. It is Aaron.

Those are our children, a boy and a girl, a wonder rarely seen in our world.
Twins.
Is it any wonder that A’ron is laughing?

No wonder.

And the Child of Earth and Sky—

You do not have to tell me. A year older, but still the same. She is little Linnet, my godchild.

She rules now, with a Council of children, though they are no longer young, with B’oremos to advise them. So many changes. Gray warned us of them. And the prophesies, too, warned that if we forsake grief, our world will die. But A’ron promised me it did not have to be so. I believed him. He was a man who did not lie.

No, he did not lie.

Your eyes fill up again, Dot’der’tsee. Perhaps you are trying to grieve for A’ron. I would help you if I could, but my tears dried up with his death. And my laughter. There is only a hard bitter core, like a Lumin kernel, inside. A’ron did not lie, ever. But he did not tell me the truth about loving, either. Never did he say that to love makes dying difficult.

Perhaps he wanted to learn your way, not teach his own. He had long carried a piece of angry wisdom within him. It said, “It is a fearful thing to love
w
hat death can touch.” When he came here, when he loved you, I think he believed that he had found a place that death could not really touch. He loved you for it.

But I do not understand. We die.

You die. You grieve. But you are not really touched by death. At least that is what Aaron wanted to believe. He was always such a romantic boy.

He loved you, Dot’der’tsee. We called our girl Mairi for you.

I know. We have
—
ways of knowing.

Then you knew of A’ron’s dying?

Yes.

But you did not come down to grieve?

It was not the time.

He knew that, though I think he hoped….

He was old. And I—I would not have been changed by time. It would not have been
—
right
—
for me to come then. It would have been against our vows.

He knew that. He left you a message.

May I see it?

You must listen. He did not write it down. The message is this: Linnet is the bridge, the child of earth and sky. She speaks two languages, she knows two times, she sings all songs. Trust her. She remembers you, Dot’der’tsee; she does not forget.

So Linnet is the final Card, hidden until now? A Card of Joy. Even though he knew it not, she is the Card up Aaron’s sleeve. No wonder he laughs in your picture. Oh, Aaron Spenser, you died young, as I remember you. I am far older than you would believe.

I am glad that I showed the Cards to you.

Not so glad as I. I would embrace you, Grenna.

I would be embraced.

So much telling. My mouth is dry. Hand me that Cup, the one on the table.

The black one? It is a lovely thing.

Yes, isn’t it. The engravings are quite old. It belonged to Gray’s family. B’oremos knew of it, don’t ask me how, and gave it to me when the twins were born. We named the boy after him and he was so pleased he almost laughed. I need to moisten my tongue. There, that is good.

What does the writing mean? It is in a script I do not know.

It means “Here is the Cup. Take it willingly. May your time of dying be short.”

Do not look so startled. I know what I do. And now you know, too. But Dot’der’tsee, you have studied our culture so many years. Have you not learned it well? There is no penalty here for giving a peaceful death. I am ready and I have confessed. My words are in your box. Oh, I know you turned it off, but I know also that there is a box here in this cave. A’ron told me, which is why I chose to die here. I would have spoken all this to the walls if you had not arrived.

My children know what it is I do and they are satisfied that I die in peace. Who do you think got the Lumin for me? My dying will be short.

But you can do something for me, something that will not violate your vows. When you grieve for A’ron, grieve for me as well. Grieve for all of us in this quiet, changing land. You owe us that immortality at least.

Good, I see tears again in your eyes. And these are spilling down, a refreshing rain of them.

Will you stay with me and hold my hand and wipe the tears for A’ron that are pooling in my eyes? I thank you for them, Dot’der’tsee. I understand now that I needed to grieve with someone; I could not grieve for him alone. He belonged to both of us—you and me, your world and mine.

Now I feel the long sleep coming on me. The time of my dying will be short. I hope that my lines of mourning will be very long, for I would stay with my beloved Gray Wanderer and the Laughing Man in the Cave that is beyond all of your stars.

Cards of Grief
was my first novel for adults, and my only science fiction novel, although it feels a lot like fantasy. I have often thought about writing more stories featuring the Anthropologist’s Guild and Dr. Z (who is based on a friend of mine named Mary Frances Zambreno, who was writing her doctorate at the time I was writing
Cards of Grief
, and who is now officially Dr. Z, a college professor in Chicago), but have never found the right story.

    Why a story about grief? My father, Will Yolen, was living with us at the time—“us” being me, my husband, and our three teenagers. Dad had advanced Parkinson’s disease and round-the-clock nurses; he was dying by inches. The book was written at the end of his long illness, so grief—mine and my children’s—was a lot on my mind, along with other, conflicting emotions as my father, charming and narcissistic, was not an easy man to live with.

    Like many of my novels, this one began as a short story. Well, two short stories, actually. And then … it evolved.

Jane Yolen

I was born in New York City on February 11, 1939. Because February 11 is also Thomas Edison’s birthday, my parents used to say I brought light into their world. But my parents were both writers and prone to exaggeration. My father was a journalist; my mother wrote short stories and created crossword puzzles and double acrostics. My younger brother, Steve, eventually became a newspaperman. We were a family of an awful lot of words!

We lived in the city for most of my childhood, with two brief moves: to California for a year while my father worked as a publicity agent for Warner Bros. films, and then to Newport News, Virginia, during the World War II years, when my mother moved my baby brother and me in with her parents while my father was stationed in London running the Army’s secret radio.

When I was thirteen, we moved to Connecticut. After college I worked in book publishing in New York for five years, married, and after a year traveling around Europe and the Middle East with my husband in a Volkswagen camper, returned to the States. We bought a house in Massachusetts, where we lived almost happily ever after, raising three wonderful children.

I say “almost,” because in 2006, my wonderful husband of forty-four years—Professor David Stemple, the original Pa in my Caldecott Award–winning picture book,
Owl Moon
—died. I still live in the same house in Massachusetts.

And I am still writing.

I have often been called the “Hans Christian Andersen of America,” something first noted in
Newsweek
close to forty years ago because I was writing a lot of my own fairy tales at the time.

The sum of my books—including some eighty-five fairy tales in a variety of collections and anthologies—is now well over 335. Probably the most famous are
Owl Moon
,
The Devil’s Arithmetic
, and
How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?
My work ranges from rhymed picture books and baby board books, through middle grade fiction, poetry collections, and nonfiction, to novels and story collections for young adults and adults. I’ve also written lyrics for folk and rock groups, scripted several animated shorts, and done voiceover work for animated short movies. And I do a monthly radio show called
Once Upon a Time
.

These days, my work includes writing books with each of my three children, now grown up and with families of their own. With Heidi, I have written mostly picture books, including
Not All Princesses Dress in Pink
and the nonfiction series Unsolved Mysteries from History. With my son Adam, I have written a series of Rock and Roll Fairy Tales for middle grades, among other fantasy novels. With my son Jason, who is an award-winning nature photographer, I have written poems to accompany his photographs for books like
Wild Wings
and
Color Me a Rhyme.

And I am still writing.

Oh—along the way, I have won a lot of awards: two Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award, a Caldecott Medal, the Golden Kite Award, three Mythopoeic Awards, two Christopher Awards, the Jewish Book Award, and a nomination for the National Book Award, among many accolades. I have also won (for my full body of work) the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Grand Master Award, the Catholic Library Association’s Regina Medal, the University of Minnesota’s Kerlan Award, the University of Southern Mississippi and de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection’s Southern Miss Medallion, and the Smith College Medal. Six colleges and universities have given me honorary doctorate degrees. One of my awards, the Skylark, given by the New England Science Fiction Association, set my good coat on fire when the top part of it (a large magnifying glass) caught the sunlight. So I always give this warning: Be careful with awards and put them where the sun don’t shine!

Also of note—in case you find yourself in a children’s book trivia contest—I lost my fencing foil in Grand Central Station during a date, fell overboard while whitewater rafting in the Colorado River, and rode in a dog sled in Alaska one March day.

And yes—I am still writing.

At a Yolen cousins reunion as a child, holding up a photograph of myself. In the photo, I am about one year old, maybe two.