Tales of Wonder by Jane Yolen

scar. It is no more than a raised pinprick now.
    To this day, the original thirteen is called the Prime Pack. Does that confuse you? You are counting on your fingers. There were eleven done at the Hall of Grief. And then, after my week of sleep, I rose and painted two more. The Prime Pack is kept on velvet in the Queen’s Museum, under glass. They are arranged at each month’s turning in a new order. As if the order mattered now.
    That first pack spoke directly to my need. There was no arcane symbology. The Seven Grievers were one for each of the great families. The Cave That Is Fed By No Light—the darkest card—is of course the death card. For as we come from the womb cave, so we go to that other cave in the end. And, of course, my beloved Wanderer came to her end in a real cave. The picture on the card is an exact rendering of her last resting.
    The Queen of Shadows is the major card, for the Wanderer was always loyal to the queen on the throne. And the Singer of Dirges is the minor card. The moving card, the card that goes with ease from high place to low, was the card I called after my master, the Gray Wanderer. Its face is her face, and the dark hair under the cloak of gray is twined with flowers. But it is the Wanderer as she was when she was young, not crabbed with age and in pain, but when her face was unlined and she had a prince for a lover.
    Seven Grievers. The Cave. The Queen. The Singer. And the Gray Wanderer. Eleven cards in all. And after my sleep I added two: the Man Without Tears and the Cup.
    I sometimes think it was only a sentimental gesture. Gray often told me I must not confuse true sentiment with sentimentality. I wonder what she would have thought of it. But I meant it for her, I meant it as all true grievers mean the poems and scriptings and songs they make. Those are the old, slow ways, but for all that they were old and slow, they were about life and death and the small passage between.
    I did not have to explain the cards to the many lines of mourners who came to honor my master. Not the way I have to explain them today. Over and over, to those like you who have come from the far stars with voice boxes and light boxes and faulty memories, who say “I see” even when you see nothing at all. And over and over to those of my own people who now ape grief with comic songs and dances and who turn even the cards of grief into a game.
    But I will do it once more. One final time. I will tell the Prime Pack. Forgive me if the telling is one whose parts you have heard before. And this time I will tell it with infinite care, for there have been times that I, even I, have told them as a rota, a list, without meaning. This time I will unwind the thread of honest grief. For the Gray Wanderer. And for myself. For the story must be told.
    I lay out the cards, one by one. Listen well. Do not rely on your boxes. Use your eyes. Use your ears. Memory is the daughter of the eye and ear.
    Here are the Seven Grievers.
    The figure on each card is dressed as one of the great families. There is not a person in our world who cannot trace connection to them. I am myself of Lands. And all who work the soil—farmers and stockmen, harrowers and pigkeepers—are here. So it is the Number One card because it is mine. We Lands were first before all the rest, and will remain when all the rest lie forgotten. In the Prime Pack, Lands wears the brown tunic and trews of our family and rides astride a white sow because that is, in a sense, how I was found.
    The Number Two card is Moon, those who know the seasons’ turning and can reckon the changes—the seers and priestesses, dressed in white. Three, Arcs and Bows: the warrior–hunters. Four, Waters and all who plow there. Five, Rocks who wrest gemstones from the mountain face and craft them. Six, Stars, who carry our world’s knowledge and script that knowledge into books. And Seven, the queen’s own, the Royals, the smallest family of