A Nearer Moon (2 page)

“Of course I'm kidding,” she said, setting the boat to spinning again.

Willow's laughter echoed through the swamp, and it filtered down into the layers of silty water beneath. Down through the fingers of floating weeds, down beneath the lip of an underwater cave where a wretched creature huddled and tried not to listen, tried not to hear the sound that grated most against its ears, that carved new scars into its rotten heart.

The laughter didn't stop, so the creature, no bigger than a frog, rose toward the surface. The slick moved with it. The creature rose and reached a gnarled hand toward the bobbing, spinning boat. With a tug of its tiny fingers, just a hair's breadth away from the charm tacked to the bow, it gripped the wood and dipped the boat beneath the surface, just for a second, just long enough to fill the little one's mouth, opened wide with laughter, full of black swamp water.

The laughter stopped and the boat ceased its spinning. The creature slid, unseen, back to its cave, the silence
smothering its aching heart like a damp blanket over hot coals.

Willow sat up quick, her eyes wide as a startled rabbit's. Water streamed down her nose and over her temples. She sputtered and coughed the filthy swamp water off her tongue.

Luna scrambled toward her sister. “Spit it out! Spit it all out!”

Willow leaned over the side of the boat, her stomach heaving as she retched, her eyes teary and her nose running. Luna gripped her sister's slight shoulders to keep her from falling in.

When Willow leaned back at last, Luna helped her sit, wiping her lips dry with the edge of her cotton shirt. “Are you all right? I'm so sorry—we weren't anywhere near the slick—I was just teasing. I don't know what happened!”

The two girls stared in stunned silence at each other. Streaks of silt dried on Willow's face like shadows laid over a patch of sunlight. She managed a wavery grin and spat again. “Let's just go home, okay?”

Luna gripped her pole in trembling hands and settled herself at the stern on unsteady legs. She guided her boat between the pulai trees and skimmed over the swamp, never spinning or dipping or bobbing the slightest bit.

“Granny Tu will make you a pot of tea, and we'll forget this ever happened,” Luna said, though the words rang false even in her ears. She knew, and Willow knew, that it was already too late.

H
umans have a way of possessing the land over which they walk, the water over which they travel. As they multiplied, as they staked their claim with the gnash of steam and the clash of gears, the sprites began to fade.

The woods thinned of their dancing spirits. The air seldom felt the breath of little wings stirring up the wind; the skies filled only with bugs and birds and lonely, passengerless clouds. And the water, where once the sprites had skipped like stones across the river, fey and feral, had to be content with its own splashing, and a mere handful of the tiny creatures to frolic in the frothing tips of the waves.

Perdita and Pelagia were born on the same day, in the same hour, only a few seconds of the same minute apart. All the air and wood and water sprites gathered around while they were rocked by the same wavelet, the fish below buoying them up on a pillow of bubbles. A thousand droplets leaped away from the steady flow of the river to kiss their tiny brows.

It was a rare thing for the sprites to come together, for they are fickle creatures, hardly ever enticed to hold a single thought for long. But rarer still is a birth, and the whisper of hope that comes with the newness of life. Just enough hope to believe they had a chance—if they could find another world lush with green growing things, a world where clear, clean streams flowed unfettered through the land.

Hope is uncommon but not unwelcome.

A decision was made.

Perdita and Pelagia blinked and smiled and gurgled in the contented way that newborns do, unaware of the great change they had brought, unaware of the great sorrow it would bring back upon them.

H
ome was a modest hut: a single room with a kitchen, a table cluttered with dishes or strewn with Granny Tu's charts tracking the nearing moon, and a large knotted rug spread over the bare floor. Paneled screens created two bedrooms at the back. Granny Tu and Mama shared one, and the girls shared the other. On any normal day, the hut would have been filled with the sounds of cooking or cleaning, or small feet pattering across the floorboards. On this day, however, the only sound was the uncanny stillness of held breath.

Mama, Granny Tu, and Luna stood around the edges of the bed that the girls shared, watching Willow lift
spoonful after spoonful of mushroom soup to her mouth and blow to cool it.

She was sick. Not with the sniffles or a dusting of hay fever: Willow had caught the wasting sickness that arrived with the swamp, which not a single person had survived. The sickness always lasted three weeks to the day, whether the patient was young and strong or already made frail by age.

“Okay,” Willow finally said, dropping her spoon. “Stop it. Granny Tu, sit down.” She motioned to the worn rocking chair in the corner. “Luna, go fishing. Or go muck around with Benny. I'll be right here when you get back. Mama—”

But no one moved. Each of them looked as if she'd been struck flat across the face. Luna wanted to reach out to Mama, who stood still as a limbless snag, trunk hollow and roots rotting in the dirt below. She wanted Mama to take her hand or tuck her under her arm, to say it wasn't her fault and Willow was going to be fine.

I'm so scared, Mama.

Luna watched the side of Mama's face, willing her to turn, to look at her. But Mama didn't turn. Luna's knees wobbled and her head seemed to float atop her neck, grief pulling her loose like a boat slipping its mooring. She stumbled to the side of the bed and lifted the
covers, twining her ankles around Willow's, clutching Willow's arm and pressing her cheek against her sister's shoulder, as if Willow could hold her there, could keep her from drifting away.

Willow sighed and opened her mouth for another spoonful. “Fine, then,” she said. “Tell me a story.”

Granny Tu moved to the rocker, gripping rails worn smooth and familiar over the years as she sank into the wide seat. She tipped the rungs back, and the wood groaned beneath her. She raised her eyes to the ceiling, searching the cobwebbed corners of her mind.

Granny Tu's tales had a way of blending together: stories that her grandmother had been told by her grandmother, of each summer when the moon drew near and the Perigee festival brought fire to the sky and cheer to the village, of the magical world hardly anyone believed in anymore, of water lizards rolling their prey into underwater caves, of Willow's first step and Luna's first word, and of the smash and bang beginning of the world. They all blended together until the truth was buried deep as the roots of the groaning pulai trees.

“Let's see,” she began. “How about I tell you of the trip I have planned for you and your sister once you get better?” Granny Tu's voice trembled, and her eyes didn't lift from her swollen knuckles, clasped tight in her lap.

Willow nodded as she blew to cool her spoonful of soup.

“My poppa took your uncle Tin and me when we were about your age. We went up the turning, twisting river, up to the city that floats on a cool lake at the base of a mountain, a lake so deep and clear they say it has no bottom, no matter how far down you go. A cool, clear lake that flows under the very earth and straight out to the sea.

“There were boats driven by the wind across the water, their bright sails puffed out like the ribcages of giant beasts. Above our heads, lanterns floated like newborn clouds, rising to meet the stars burning yellow holes in the sky.

“Poppa took us through the stalls on the floating barges. They had everything you could imagine—metalworkers, falcon trainers, woodworkers, medicine makers, and every kind of sweet thing: pies, cakes, and even ice brought down from the top of the mountain and dusted with sugar and cream.”

As Willow slid farther and farther down in the bed, her eyelids beginning to sag, and her breathing becoming heavy, Granny Tu's voice slowed to a murmur. Luna lifted the soup out of her sister's hands and tucked the blanket up under her chin. Granny Tu and Mama and
Luna met one another's eyes, mirrors of their own shock, their own mourning.

Willow would never go to the floating city, would never steer a boat of her own, would never see her next birthday.

Maybe Mama didn't recognize the silent plea in Luna's eyes; maybe she didn't know how the thought of losing her sister seared Luna's skin like a fever. Mama took a last look at Willow, at the rise and fall of her chest, the darting eyes under closed lids, and then she turned and walked out. Luna slid out of bed and tiptoed around the paneled screen.

“Wait!” she called out as she stepped outside.

Mama was already halfway across the walkway that led from their hut to Benny's next door. When she turned, the wooden bridge rippled beneath her.

“Mama, what can I do? Give me something to do that will make Willow better.”

“There's nothing to be done,” Mama said, her voice flat as a leaf driven to the ground by hard rains. “You know that.”

“But we can't just sit here! We have to try—”

“You think no one has tried? You think you're the first person to lose someone?” Mama's voice broke and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

“But Granny Tu said there were medicine makers in the city. Mama, if there's a doctor, maybe he has medicine for Willow.”

“Luna, I'm not going to run off to the city when Willow needs me here. There's nothing a doctor can do for her. There's nothing any of us can do.” The last words were barely audible. Mama turned away and walked slowly past Benny's, past the school, and up to the chapel at the highest point in the village.

Luna folded her arms over her chest and blew an impatient breath through her nostrils. Clicking beads around and around in a circle wasn't going to do any good. Sitting by the bed and telling stories wasn't going to fix anything either.

She could be out and back in a day. Mama would be mad, but she was going to have to deal with it.

Luna was going to the lake. She was going to find that doctor.

J
ust as air sprites skipped from one gust of wind to another and wood sprites dashed from leaf to twig to leaf again, water sprites were happiest on, or in, or near the water. Before they learned to walk, before they even learned to crawl, they were dropped into the river so they learned to swim.

To a water sprite, currents and waves were nothing to be feared. The water rose up to greet them, it swelled beneath their arms and pushed against their legs, teasing them into a paddle. Perdita and Pelagia kicked, marveling at the whorls of bubbles that spun in their wake as they swam, reveling in the silken water giving way under their hands.

Their playmates were newts and minnows; they rode on the backs of ducklings, stroking their downy feathers and tickling their little webbed feet. They played while grown-up sprites, who were strong in the air magic that lifts and carries, and the woods magic that grounds and grows, and the water magic that washes and renews, built the door that would take all of them into the next world.