Marianne, the Matchbox, and the Malachite Mouse

MARIANNE, THE MATCHBOX, AND THE MALACHITE MOUSE

Sheri S. Tepper

www.sf-gateway.com

Marianne, well ensconced in the Prime Minister’s Residence in Alphenlicht, half a world away from the state of Virginia, had no idea that her Great-aunt Dagma was dying until she received a letter from her saying so. ‘Not long to go,’ it said. ‘Possibly two or three months, and don’t upset yourself about it, my dear, because I’m not in any pain at all …’

Marianne’s first reaction was not to believe it. Aunt Dagma was immortal! She had been living with Marianne’s parents for as long as Marianne could remember, as long as her father could remember – small, slender, dark-haired, with eyes that snapped. In recent years the hair had not been as black as formerly, true. And the eyes were possibly, though only slightly, less hawklike. But Dagma dying? Surely not!

‘I need your help, my dear,’ Dagma’s letter went on. ‘A little matter that I think should be taken care of and one that neither of your dear parents would have adequate skills to cope with. It is a matter requiring someone with your rather – shall we say –
individual
abilities.’

Which was as close as Aunt Dagma would care to come to guessing at Marianne’s abilities, though there were other words which might have described them better. Peculiar? Odd? Weird? Supernatural? Uncanny? Eldtrich? Or perhaps merely bizarre?

‘Makr Avehl,’ Marianne said to her husband, the Prime Minister of Alphenlicht, ‘I’ve had this sad, strange letter from Great-aunt Dagma.’

Makr Avehl, who was trying to eat his breakfast egg while going through a pile of documents, merely grunted at her.

‘Prime Minister,’ Marianne tried again. ‘I have this matter of state …’

He looked up at her, focusing vaguely. ‘Ah. Sorry, love. What was it you said?’

She handed him the letter and watched him read it while the egg was eaten, while the coffee was drained, while the last bite of toast was munched. Though Makr Avehl was Alphenlichtian to his fingernails, he did prefer an American-style breakfast to broiled lamb, flat bread, and yoghurt of the peculiarly sour variety which suited most Alphenlichtians. ‘I’m fond of Dagma,’ he said at last. ‘There are other people I would be less sorry to hear this news from.’

Marianne got up and went around the table to give him a hug, a difficult matter to manage as her melon-shaped self kept getting in the way. ‘I’ll be very glad when this child is born,’ she said. ‘She keeps coming between us. What do you think, Makr Avehl? Should I go?’

‘I don’t see why not. If you want to. The daughter and heir isn’t due for almost two months. Virginia is lovely this time of year. It would give you a chance to visit with your parents.’

‘But … what if the baby decides to be born while I’m in the States? Would that upset you?’

He shook her gently. ‘You were born there, Marianne. If our first girlchild gets born there, too, I’m sure all Alphenlicht will be able to accept that fact.’

Marianne, who had spent the last year getting to know the country and people of Alphenlicht, wasn’t that sure. She walked to the wall of French doors which opened from the small breakfast room onto the area of the Residence known as the ‘summer terrace.’ The other, larger, breakfast room opened onto the knot garden; the various dining rooms, of assorted sizes and degrees of formality, opened onto the rose garden, the water garden, and the sculpture terrace. This, the summer terrace, was much the nicest of the lot, she thought, with its own small fountain and reflecting pool, surrounded by shade-loving flowers and sheltered from the summer sun by the branches of an enormous oak.

A low balustrade separated the terrace from the sloping grounds of the Residence. The orchard bloomed at the bottom of the slope, where the road ran off through fields and woods to what passed, in Alphenlicht, for a city. It was there that the House of Delegates met, there that Makr Avehl served as Hereditary Prime Minister for the Council of Kavi, made up of largely hereditary religious dignitaries. Makr Avehl called the form of government a democratic parliamentary theocracy. Or a theocratic parliamentary democracy, or, sometimes, ‘that stubborn bunch of reactionaries,’ depending upon how he was feeling about it at the time.

‘I’m not sure I want to leave right now,’ Marianne said.

He came up behind her and put his arms around her. ‘You’ll get no argument from me, love. The only real question is whether you want to write to your great-aunt and tell her that.’

‘No,’ she sighed. ‘I really can’t do that.’

‘I didn’t think you could.’

‘She wants me to do something weird, you know. Otherwise she’d ask Father.’

‘I rather guessed that from the letter.’

‘Perhaps it will be something I’d rather not do while I’m pregnant.’

‘Then you’ll do it later, when you’re not pregnant. The point is that Great-aunt Dagma won’t be around later to tell you whatever it is she wants done. She has to do that now, while she has time.’

‘You’re so sensible,’ she told him, burrowing into his chest. ‘Such a sensible, practical man.’

He, remembering certain wildly impractical and totally unsensible things from their separate and collective pasts, chose to say nothing at all about that. ‘Remember,’ he whispered. ‘If there’s anything troublesome, you’re to let me know at once. And there’s always the Cave of Light.’

There was indeed the Cave of Light, the heartstone of the Alphenlicht theocratic system, a kind of national soothsaying machine, a natural source of augury. ‘Do you think I should go there before I make the trip?’ she asked. ‘Would it be a good idea?’

‘It’s always a good idea. Call up whats-her-name …’

‘You know perfectly well what her name is. Her name is Therat. Why don’t you ever call her by her name, Makr Avehl?’

‘The name doesn’t suit her.’

‘It’s a little wildflower, isn’t it? A therat?’

‘There’s nothing flowery about her. The woman galls me. She’s never surprised at anything. Just once I’d like to take her totally unaware.’

‘You should be glad she foresees things.’

‘I suppose I should. Well, call Therat. Ask her to arrange a reading for you.’

‘I’ll do that if someone in your office will make plane reservations for me. Through Turkey, I suppose.’ Alphenlicht lay in a hidden twist of mountains at a place where the border of Turkey, Iran, and the USSR approached one another to the point of virtual overlap.

‘Not through Iran,’ he said. ‘It’s regimes like that that give theocracy a bad name.’ He rose, stretching, putting his papers together. It was difficult at the best of times for a small country – no, a
tiny
country – to maintain its neutrality or even its existence when surrounded by larger and far less sensible nations. However, Alphenlicht had been doing it for something over 1700 years, and Makr Avehl swore that with the help of the Cave, they would do it for 1700 more. Luckily, the mountainous little nation did not lie on any direct invasion route from any one of its neighbors to any other one. Isolated and serene – more or less – it continued in its own timeless fashion while turmoil boiled around it.

‘I’ll have one of the choppers readied. You’ll want Aghrehond as pilot, won’t you?’

‘Amazing,’ she murmured. ‘I didn’t think he’d really ever learn to fly those things.’

‘Took to it like a bird,’ he murmured. ‘He can fly you down to the airport at Van whenever you’re ready. And I want him to go with you, Marianne. No! Not a word. I can’t go just now, as you well know, but I’d rather you weren’t alone. Aghrehond will go, and that’s that. Besides, he’d be hurt if you didn’t ask him.

‘Now! I really must get myself to work …’

‘What are you working on?’

‘Well, the thing this morning is a meeting concerning disappearances!’

‘Disappearances? Who?’