A Lament of Moonlight (2 page)

Abigail thought she could imagine the woman whispering the word she had heard several times that day:
Helvegr
. A moment later she decided that she was hearing things, and brushed it aside.

One painting drew her attention to it, and she stood staring in awe, it was of the Middle Garden though the land mass was far in the background, and in the foreground was a sea of fire and a large, blackened boat filled with rotting gaps and holes so big that it was amazing the structure could float at all. The land in the back, the Middle Garden, looked to be a paradise of sorts, equipped with a tree that stretched up to infinity, purportedly the same tree she had seen painted before with human stations on it. There was even a rainbow stretching from the ground up into the heavens, or at least from the ground up to the top of the tree. Stranger still there were people treading that rainbow, as if it were a bridge carrying them to the Everafter, for Abigail was sure that the top of the tree represented just that, the Holy Kingdom.

All around the island paradise the same snake from before stretched, its mouth fixed tightly to its own tale, as if it were the ring that held the paradise in place, the circle from which O contrived its name or maybe a monster that surrounded the entire island waiting for swimmers to eat, for tales told them that outside the border of their lands existed serpentine monsters before the edge of the world dropped off into oblivion.

The boat was not too far from the Middle Garden, but the picture played tricks on Abigail’s mind. She could not tell where the sea of fire the boat drifted on ended, and where the water of the actual sea started. It was almost like this boat could move around, and wherever it went, the fires would follow.

Aboard the ship Abigail could see passengers struggling against unseen bonds, trying to free themselves from the boat and the torments it held. The people on the boat appeared paler than those treading the rainbow to the Kingdom of Light, so Abigail figured that if the people walking the rainbow were going to the Holy Kingdom in the tree, than those pale souls must be those struggling against a darker afterlife in the
ocean
; the Otherworld
.

She didn’t get much further in her inspections, for just then she heard voices coming closer to the stairs that led to where she was, and she ran for the door, Luna fluttering after her apparently finished with her communion with the murky window.

Sometimes at night the forest was like a living entity that breathed and sighed with what seemed, and sounded like, a deep inhalation and exhalation of breath. The pines, which are so common in the north-western part of the Middle Garden, roared and twisted, whispered and danced. Normally the nocturnal sounds of the massive Fey Forest were frightening for it spoke of another world not fully known, a world just this side of imagination where anything was possible, even if highly improbable. Even more recently with the coming of the shadkin the forests seemed all but hostile at night.

But sometimes the breathing of the great, ancient woods the Bordeaux family inhabited was like something from out of a story book. Sometimes the sounds of the forest would carry the mind on its whispering to a place where tales were born, where even the most mature mind could not help but follow, and dream of times long past, of a world just beyond seeing, of creatures born of myth, of legend and fear.

This night was both frightening and fan
tastical, as sometimes happens.

This night the wonderfully terrifying air carried with it a tremendous storm that would touch more than the physical world encompassed within this fairytale grove. However, this storm was not to happen yet, for it was foretelling that which was to come, there were many more events to fall into place before the storm could be fully realized. For now the immense lightning pacified itself with minor flashing and rumbling from time to time.

It was within the first flash of lightning that the deplorable word was whispered again:

“Helvegr,”
the word cut through the night. The name carried through the house,
“Helvegr,”
and all within could feel the weight of it, feel the steely dread of the unknowable word as they slept, their bodies tossing fitfully as the word invaded their minds and turned their nightly musings from fond thoughts to terrible mares.

“Helvegr,”
the word said, and Luna, now in her glass jar fluttered fitfully at the metal cap which held her captive. Her luminescent wings seemed to respond to the word, trying in vain to remove the word from the house where Rorex was sure to know what it meant, though he would tell himself soundly that it was nothing more than his overactive imagination, for Helvegr could not reach this far. . . .

It was in another flash of lightning that Luna could sense the dreams that taunted each of the youths for this specific butterfly was able to pick
up on such things. The dream of Helvegr
and its mistress consisted of a long poisonous hall of bone and a half rotten woman who sat on a chair made of corpses at the end, smiling ruefully at them.

In terror of what the youths were seeing, for surely it was too early in life to glimpse such things, Luna battered wickedly at the jar, somehow shattering the thick glass with her translucent gossamer wings.

As the glass shattered, and the lightning flashed widely Abigail and Ruby crashed awake, their gasps mirroring
each other’s
as they sat up
, their gazes flickering from one to the other.

“What was that?” Ruby asked in her sleep laden voice, but there was truly no need to ask for Luna was out, fluttering about them wildly, buffeting each of their faces with her ineffectual wings. Ruby, who never liked being woken especially so suddenly from a nightmare, swatted at the pest, but Luna glided away from her hands intent on harm.

“Don’t swat at her,” Abigail said her voice sounding as though she took nearly as much affront at the gesture as Luna was sure too.

“What has her in such a state?” Ruby asked, her voice coming out hair-raisingly close to a whine as it always did when she was tired. Luna began beating at the window as another flash of lightning lit the outside.

“I don’t know,” Abigail said. “She might just want to be outside again.”

“You should let her go,” Ruby said, and at her words Luna flew back into the center of the room, spiraling around, before landing rapidly on the floor.

“No!” Was Abigail’s predictable reply. “She is too beautiful to let out in a storm. Anyway, I want to keep her.”

“You do know that you kill whatever you keep?” Ruby asked her.

“I don’t kill them, they just die,” Abigail said, it was true that things died much more quickly in her care than they did in nature, but Abigail didn’t see that.

It was then that Luna did something to stop the argument as it was about to start, which was a feat in itself, but the extraordinary, non-butterfly thing she did this time was such the antidote. Luna flew at the window, and this time instead of battering off it the butterfly went
through
the glass.

“Whoa!” they exclaimed jumping out of their beds to stare at the window and the plum outlined butterfly that was now perched on the outside of the glass, its wings treading the air slowly as if beseeching them to follow.

“I am going out there,” Abigail said. She didn’t realize the window of fate that opened all about them with that one statement.

“Don’t be silly there are wolves out there, and bears, and, and,” but Abigail was not listening, instead she pulled on her pink cardigan over her purple sleeping gown and made her way to the window. “I’m telling
dad
!” Ruby spluttered having no other feasible way to stop her sister, but even this threat didn’t stay Abigail’s hand as she unlatched the window and pushed it open.

As the door opened and Melvin stepped in, obviously having heard the commotion, fate tightened about them even more.

“What is happening in here?” He asked, his voice also heavy with sleep.

And so they told him and his face showed his disbelief.

“Well if you are going out there,” he gestured to the night outside. “We better take something to protect ourselves with, there are wolves out there.”

“And bears,” Ruby said. “Isn’t there Melvin, there are bears out there too, isn’t there?”

“Yes Ruby, there are bears,” he agreed.

The three of them went into the main part of the house, to
scout
out weapons of their own. Ruby came back with a knife and Abigail with a fire poker.

Melvin, however, reached for the one thing that kept drawing his attention; his father’s hammer that was on display above the fireplace. Surprisingly it was much lighter than it appeared, though still slightly heavier than Melvin was able to heft about conveniently.

Moments later saw Melvin, Abigail, and Ruby outside in the warm night breeze, raising goose bumps on their arms as the calmly terrifying energy of the night pressed in on them in a whisper of wind. The impossibly tall trees of the forest surrounded the freshly manicured lawn of their home.

“Where are we going?” Melvin said as the moon broke free of a cloud, only to go back into hiding once more as the storm clouds overhead thickened.

“There!” Ruby nearly yelled in excitement having just saw Luna land on a branch of an apple tree.

“Shh!” insisted the other two.

“Well she’s right there!” Ruby said once more, this time indignant as she pointed with her butcher’s knife.

“We know, but you will wake the entire neighborhood with your yells, aunt Matty only lives over that hill!” Abigail gestured with her fire poker.

“Besides, how do you know it is a girl?” Melvin asked in an off handed manner as they headed out.

“Because she is purple,” Ruby replied as if that had been obvious.

“That doesn’t mean it is a girl,” Abigail scoffed clutching her weapon closer to her in fear of the odd night in which they found themselves.

“Well she is annoying enough to be a girl. I think Ruby is right,” Melvin said crankily.

“Thanks . . . HEY!” Ruby complained only now realizing that Melvin had not only sided with her but insulted her too.

“Shh,” Abigail insisted again as they finished crossing the wet grass to where Luna perched. “Now you come back and go to bed,” Abigail said reaching out a hand, but Luna was off again, fluttering a ways ahead to another tree a little further away from the house, and a little closer to the dark woods that the oddness of the night was permeating. “HEY!” Abigail said in dismay, and stomped after the butterfly.

But again, just as Abigail reached Luna she fluttered
off to
the next tree, bringing them all closer yet to the woods, and further from the brick house. Time and again they would get just on top of the butterfly, and it would flutter off acting most unlike Luna had previously.

“Maybe she was sick, and that is why she allowed you to catch her in the first place.” Ruby suggested as they trooped further along going in a zigzag pattern further and further into the woods barely even noticing that they had strayed from their yard and into the frightful woods, so intent were they on retrieving Luna from her nightly meanderings, but the butterfly obviously had different ideas on the matter.

“Abbie,” Melvin said finally coming to rest against a tree, the fire of an outside light still visible (barely) through the trees. “I think we should turn back, let her go.”

“But she is too lovely, and I will have her before long,” Abigail protested, and no matter what was said he could not turn his sister back from her mission. Ruby, it seemed, was just as nearly caught up in the mission as Abigail was, for she was following close behind exclaiming when Abigail just missed Luna. Soon they had made their way yet further from the safety the house had offered, and unbeknownst to them further from the common, normal life they had once lived.

Melvin was forced to follow, and he cast a glance back at the house, and with a reluctant nod he motioned Ruby ahead of him, and began notching a tree every so often with the hammer so that, if chance took them too far from the sight of the house, they would be able to find their way back
in the dark
.

Lightning flickered once more overhead and illuminated before them a knoll which they climbed on han
ds and knees do to the soaked ground
which prevented safe passage upright.

Still Luna flew on no longer landing on trees every now and again, but instead drifting in lazy circles through the night ahead and away from home.

But eventually tiredness wore out and Abigail halted by a boulder, leaning against it with a sigh. “Alright, I give up,” she said defeated.

“Good, let’s go home,” Ruby said.
             

But just as they were about to turn and go home they heard a terrible baying ahead, and darkness seemed to ride the night, turning the fanciful air about them, and whispering breeze to cold dread and harsh laughter.

“What was that?” Abigail asked already knowing.

“WOLVES!” Ruby shrieked frantically turning here and there as if they would bound out of the trees at any moment to feed on them.