OpAr Epilogue: Summit
by Durandir


It was a short, but pleasant, drive from Mendel City. The highways Ñ well, 
the main roads, anyway Ñ of Mendellia were singularly uncrowded.

"Perhaps the better word would be `abandoned'," Becki amended cheerfully. 
"I mean, we've only seen two other cars since we left the city."

"Few save the woodsmen have cause to drive to the mountain," Thayer said. 
"Though you would not find the other roads much busier. Automobiles are not 
terribly common in Mendellia. They have to be imported, naturally; few can 
afford them, and in general only the nobility even want them. Even so, 
they're not much used; it's a small island, after all. Most people walk 
most places. Or they use public transport; we have buses, and a train that 
goes round the perimeter between Mendel City and Darwinia and Beagle. 
Bicycles, even, are far more common than cars."

Becki recalled all the two- and three-wheeled bikes she had seen zipping 
through the streets of Mendel City and slowly nodded, assimilating yet 
another unexpected detail about the country she was choosing to call home. 
There was always something new to adapt to. At present she still found all 
these details of life in Mendellia fascinating, but she could sense, at the 
back of her mind, that moment creeping up on her when she would risk being 
overwhelmed.

Today, however, the beauty of the vivid landscape through which they were 
driving helped to offset the weight of newness. She constantly asked Thayer 
the name of a stream or forest or village or even the tiniest stand of 
trees off in the distance. He knew them all, and could tell her the stories 
of most of them besides.

Soon the road began to climb, and before she knew it they were driving up 
the base of Mount Atner, the extinct volcano at the center of the island. 
Becki leaned her head out the window to watch with delight as Thayer 
maneuvered the car around tight switchbacks in the road. She recalled once 
making a similar drive up into the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, but that had 
been in a huge van and the view then wasn't nearly so good. She found the 
Mendellian view exhilarating.

Thayer brought the car to a stop at a little building beside one 
particularly steep stretch of road. The pavement for driving only went so 
far up the mountain, he had explained when they set out; they would have to 
walk the rest of the way to the top. Becki followed him to the building, 
taking care to keep her balance; exhilarating inside the car was one thing, 
but on one's own two feet was a matter of greater complexity. Just ahead of 
the building, a gate had been set across the narrow road. Two men in 
Mendellian uniforms, on guard duty here at the beginning of the climb, 
stood to attention Ñ with some difficulty inside the cramped space of their 
shelter Ñ when they saw their Dictator approaching. Thayer made 
introductions.

"You'll be going ahead on the foot road, sire?" asked Irpac, the younger of 
the two guards.

"To the top," Thayer confirmed. "My lady has not yet seen the Caldera or 
the cottage."

"You're in for a treat, m'lady," the elder, Suivusev, grinned knowingly.

Irpac eagerly confirmed this. "Nothing like it in all the world, I always 
say."

"Well, nothing else like it in Mendellia, at least," said his more 
phlegmatic elder. "I'm sure there's other grand mountains in the world. But 
Mount Atner, well, it's home. Isn't that right, sire?"

Agreeing that it was so, Thayer asked of them walking sticks Ñ providing a 
supply of these was, apparently, one of the chief functions of this 
waystation Ñ and then the gate was unbarred and the royal couple set out on 
the last stage of their journey.

It was a long way to the top, or seemed so. Climbing was an effort, and the 
road only grew steeper the further they went. Becki had to call a halt 
several times when Thayer by himself might well have gone on much further 
before *he* ran out of breath, but he graciously waited while she regained 
hers each time. It was worth the pauses, he said. As the path ran around 
and around the narrowing mountaintop, one could look out over the island in 
every direction.

Doing so almost took one's breath away all over again Ñ though perhaps not 
in quite the same sense. It was beautiful. Becki spent most of these 
pauses, to Thayer's amusement, playing _mot juste_ in an attempt to find 
words suitable for what she was seeing for the first time, while to him it 
was like seeing the old familiar landscapes all made new again, through her 
eyes. She ran out of English words and started filling in the gaps with 
French and Latin long before they reached the top.

If the panorama of Mendellia far below them had been _magnifique_, the top 
of the mountain itself was simply _candidum_, she declared when she saw it. 
The Latin word, one of several for "beautiful," more properly meant 
"shining, dazzling-white," and so it was, as the sun glittered off the 
still surface of the Caldera lake on the mountain's top. The caldera had 
been formed ages past from the collapsed cone of the volcano, and in time a 
lake had filled this crater. As the travellers reached the top of their 
footpath, suddenly there it was before them, set down into a shallow valley 
gleaming like a mirror of gods.

Once she had got over her first awestruck impression of the Caldera, Becki 
took in further details. A little boat Ñ a fishing boat, she thought Ñ was 
tied to a little dock at the near end of the lake. Not far from the dock 
was a great house, not more than one story, but broad and generous in its 
use of space, almost villa-like, she thought, with two smaller wings 
attached to a larger central portion, forming a U-shaped structure, and a 
walled garden courtyard in the space between the two wings. This was the 
Caldera House (at least, she mused, bygone Dictators hadn't simply named it 
the Atner House as they had named nearly every other feature of the island 
after the ruling family), to which Kings and Queens and Dictators 
throughout Mendellia's history had withdrawn when the peace of the island 
was sufficient to warrant vacation time for its leaders.

They walked down to the house. Thayer showed her around, but it was 
inevitable that in a place like this no work of man could hope to compare 
to the natural beauty in which the house was set, so they soon ended up 
back at the lake, sitting on the dock and watching the stillness of the 
lake, drinking in its calm.

Thayer seemed oddly flustered. "I should mention something about the 
house," he began.

"It's a nice house," Becki murmured absently.

"Yes Ñ well Ñ I hope you won't mind . . ."

"What?" His uncharacteristic anxiety brought her out of her reverie.

"It's a very plain house, really, and rather out of the way, but there's a 
tradition."

She smiled impishly. "A tradition? In Mendellia? Heaven forfend."

"About royal weddings, I mean," he said, brushing off her sarcasm. 
"Tradition holds that a royal marriage must be consummated in the Caldera 
House."

She blinked in momentary uncomprehension at this unlooked-for development, 
then said simply, "Oh."

"Just the wedding night," he hurried to explain. "After that, we can go 
elsewhere for the honeymoon if you'd like. I don't suppose this is much of 
a place for one. Beautiful though it is, it's still rather limited. And 
it's so close to home Ñ I know you like to travel Ñ and thus also close to 
councillors who" he gave her a wearily meaningful look "may not quite grasp 
that the point of a honeymoon is for the King and Queen to have a few days 
*alone* before the rest of the country descends on them."

She chuckled and kissed him. "It's fine. It *is* beautiful. And plenty 
*alone*, if Irpac and Suivusev are the guards you hired 'em to be, hm?"

"You don't mind, then?" He smiled hopefully.

"Wherever you and I are, love," she murmured, "is home, whether we spend a 
day there or the rest of our lives."

He held her close in relief, while they sat for a long while in silent 
contentment.

The question of the honeymoon led to thoughts of the quickly progressing Ñ 
quickly, it seemed to Becki, snowballing Ñ wedding plans. She soon grew 
restless under the weight of her own anxieties. Thayer, feeling her grow 
tense, asked what was wrong.

"Oh, nothing," she insisted. "Just that there's still so much to do. How 
does anyone ever plan a wedding without, like, ten years to prepare for 
it?"

He chuckled. "Don't worry about that. These things tend to work out despite 
all signs to the contrary. Weddings, too, are a matter of tradition in 
Mendellia, mind you. There are still enough people alive who witnessed the 
last royal wedding" Ñ his parents' wedding, she realized Ñ "that we have no 
lack of advisors on how these things must be done."

"Tradition nothing," she laughed. "Royal Mendellian weddings are nothing 
short of pageant, from what I've heard of the plans so far."

"Well, you might say that."

There was something else. She stirred under his arm to look at him, 
hesitated, then asked it. "Thayer, I've been wondering." She paused, trying 
to decide how to put the question, and finally gave up and asked directly. 
"You're Catholic and I'm Protestant. So what does that make our wedding?"

He gave the question a moment's consideration before answering, "Neither, 
really, I suppose. Royal weddings are something else entirely. A pageant, 
as you said. The traditional bits come mainly from Mendellian history, 
especially from the story of Reenaccub and the first Queen . . . and there 
was nothing particularly Catholic *or* Protestant about either of them."

She considered this. "But the ceremony's to be in the Cathedral?"

"It usually is. The Bishop's leave is required, but he has already granted 
it for us."

She sighed. "I never thought I'd be getting married in a cathedral. 
'Course," she grinned, "I never in my life dreamed I'd be marrying a 
Catholic, either." She kissed him to show she meant it not unkindly.

"And what, may I ask, would be so bad about that?" he teased in return.

"Nothing at all," she answered. But he caught the hint of tension returned 
to her voice.

"Bec," he insisted, "what's *really* wrong?"

Again she sighed. "The sooner we break the news to my family, the better, I 
guess. I'm worrying myself silly over what they're going to think."

"Of our engagement?"

She nodded.

"Won't they be glad?" he asked.

"I'm sure they will. Once they get over the surprise."

"Well, then what's to worry?"

She shook her head thoughtfully. "It's just . . . I keep remembering this 
girl we knew. Her parents were in our church Ñ my high school band 
director, actually. The daughter, when she finished college, got married to 
a young man from Spain. He was Catholic Ñ and for our small-town church 
that might have been scandal enough Ñ but she converted to marry him, and 
then they moved back to Spain. I didn't get to go to the wedding, I was out 
of town or something, but my mom and sister went. Whenever they, or anyone 
in church, talked about it afterwards, it was always in lowered voices, 
with that look on their face and that tone of voice that said, What can you 
do? It was her choice. . . . But the look said they just knew they'd lost 
her." She looked away from him, out over the still lake. "I'm afraid to 
think of my family having that look when they talk about me."

Thayer opened his mouth to reassure her that the situation was hardly the 
same, then reconsidered. It *was* quite similar; just substitute Mendellia 
for Spain; but Ñ "But you're not converting," he reminded her gently.

"I wonder," she sighed, "how much difference that makes."

"Your family loves you," he said. "As do I. And to have raised you as they 
did, they must love God, as do I. Therefore I think we have quite enough in 
common to get along."

"I hope so," she chuckled at his logic. "It should be so. But where I come 
from, there's a mistrust of Catholicism in general that runs deep. Of 
course, there were never very many Catholics around to contradict 
Protestant misconceptions of them. I doubt I ever even knew anyone Catholic 
until college. And Terra Group. And you."

"I presume, since you're marrying me, those of us you've met have sufficed 
to contradict these misconceptions?" he teased.

She gave him a wry smile and ignored the question. "But I never thought I'd 
marry anyone outside the AG. I saw too many of my friends get involved with 
people outside the church and have it all go wrong. It always seemed 
simpler, safer, and generally best that a husband and wife be of the same 
faith to begin with." She thought about this a moment. "And it still seems 
so."

"We are of the same faith, love," he assured her. "Different branches of 
one family, and very different traditions, yes; but the same in what 
matters."

"I know that," she said. "But those different traditions still complicate 
things."

"Sometimes," he suggested, "the very complications are what make a thing 
worthwhile. We each can learn much from the other's traditions. And we have 
a lifetime, by grace, to work out the sticky spots. This will work, love. 
If anyone can make it work, wouldn't it be us?" He smiled and lifted her 
chin.

She smiled back, transfixed as usual by his eyes. "All right, then. But 
it's not so much me that needs convincing as it is my parents."

"Honestly, after convincing *mine*, how much trouble can yours be?"

Becki laughed at the thought of Llessur Atner's change of heart; she had 
begun, in her autocratic way, to warm to her soon-to-be daughter- in-law. 
This was sometimes an alarming thing to see. "Speaking of your mother," she 
said, "we should be going back. She'll have a fit if I miss dinner tonight 
and her chance for more impromptu etiquette lessons."

"She only fusses because she likes you so well. She's determined to see you 
succeed as Queen. . . ."

"I only tease because I like *her* so well." She paused as they made their 
way toward the path down the mountainside, considering. "Maybe you're 
right. If Llessur and I can be friends, I'm sure my parents can get used to 
you." She latched her arm through his elbow and drew him on with a teasing 
grin. "What's not to like?"