Novelties & Souvenirs (10 page)

“Different things should have different names,” said the Girl.

The difference between the way things once were, and the way things are now, and the way things will be, was the biggest difference the Boy and the Girl had yet learned.

They called the difference Time.

“Is that the Moon’s secret?” asked the Boy.

The Girl asked the Moon: “Is that your secret?”

But the Moon only answered: “Keep your eye on me.”

And still the Moon grew thinner with every night that passed. Now it was only the palest and thinnest of fingernail parings, and almost not there at all.

“I die,” said the Moon.

“What does that mean?” asked the Boy.

“Just watch me,” said the Moon, and it seemed that a silver tear stood in its eye. “Good-bye,” it said.

And the next night there was no Moon at all.

The stars glowed more brightly than they ever had, but the night was deeply dark. The Boy and the Girl could hardly see each other.

“It’s gone,” said the Boy. “Once it was, and now it’s not anymore. Once there was a Moon, and now there’s not a Moon any
more. It dies.” And he sat very close to the Girl in the fearful darkness. “That’s the Moon’s secret,” he said.

The next night was just as dark.

But on the next night, as the Boy and the Girl sat close together watching the darkening sky in the east, they saw, rising over the purple hills, as thin as could be and as pale as anything, a new Moon.

“Moon!” said the Girl in wonder. “You came back!”

“Did I?” said the new Moon. Now it faced the opposite way, and its small cold voice was smaller and colder than before. “Well, I come and I go. Ah, but it’s good to be young!”

And every night thereafter as they watched, the new Moon grew fatter and fuller. Its smile broadened and its cheeks puffed out. “Ah,” he said proudly to the Girl, “it’s good to be strong and beautiful.”

“Am I like you?” asked the Girl. “Am I strong and beautiful?”

“You’re very much like me,” said the Moon. “Look inside yourself and see.”

The nights passed. The full-faced new Moon began to shrink and lose its shape, just as the old Moon had done.

“I wane,” said the Moon. “I grow old.”

“Will I grow old?” the Girl asked.

“We’re alike,” the Moon said. “Look inside yourself and see.”

The Girl looked within herself. And she saw that what the Moon said was true: they were alike. She too would change. She was changing even now, as though she had a Moon of her own within her. She was strong and young and beautiful: and yet she too would grow old. “That’s the Moon’s secret,” she said. She had thought that the Moon’s secret was a secret about herself: and she was right.

When day came, the Boy and the Girl looked around themselves. The world seemed to be different from the way it had been.

“Everything’s changed,” said the Girl. She looked at the Boy. “You’ve changed.”

“You’ve changed,” said the Boy, looking at the Girl. “Why?”

“We’re different now,” said the Girl. “Different things should have different names.”

“Why have we changed?” asked the Boy.

“Well,” said the Girl, as the Moon had said to her, “there it is.”

“What name will you have, then?” the Boy asked.

“I will be the Woman.”

He straightened his shoulders, he lifted his chin, and he looked firmly far off. “All right,” he said. “Then I’ll be the Man.”

They took hands then, and looked at each other, and felt suddenly shy, and didn’t know what to do next.

The Man and the Woman walked together in the forest. They saw that the summer’s flowers had wilted and drooped on their brown stems. They hadn’t noticed that before.

They saw a hunting hawk fall from the sky on a brown mouse, and they heard a tiny shriek as the mouse was speared by the hawk’s sharp claws.

They saw a frog on a lily pad shoot out its long tongue, catch a careless dragonfly, and eat it. And they saw a heron step up silently on long legs behind the frog, catch it in its beak, and swallow it.

They kicked the dry brown leaves underfoot, leaves that had once danced green and dewy on the branches of the trees.

“Everything’s changed,” the Woman said.

“Nothing lasts,” the Man said. He took the Woman’s hand in
his. “For everything, there was a time before it was alive, and a time after it isn’t alive anymore.”

Bigger than the difference between a Squirrel and a Stone, bigger than the difference between Night and Day, was the difference between being alive and not being alive anymore.

They called the difference Death.

“I die,” said the Moon to the Woman that night. It had grown as thin as thin, and was almost not there.

“Will I die?” asked the Woman, and the Moon didn’t answer; but she needed only to look inside herself to know.

She looked up, and blinked the tears away that had come into her eyes. “Oh, look!” she said. “Look, look!”

For she could see, as the old Moon rolled away, that held within its long, long arms was the new Moon that would come to be in its place. It wasn’t easy to see the new Moon; it was a pale, ghostly shadow. But it was like a promise. And the Woman knew that the promise had been made to her: for she and the Moon were alike.

“Now I know the Moon’s secret,” she said to herself, though what she knew she could never say in words.

Now through all this time the Nightingale had gone on with the business of his life: that is, singing in the day and sleeping at night, eating bugs and berries, raising his young and going about in the world to see what he could see.

One day was very much like another, as it had always been and would always be.

He didn’t know that the Man and the Woman had invented Time.

When he came upon them one day, he greeted them as usual:
“Hello, Boy,” he sang. “Hello, Girl.”

“I’m not a boy,” the Man said. “Not anymore. Once I was, but now I’m a Man.”

“I’m not a girl,” said the Woman. “I’ve changed. Now I’m a Woman.”

“Oh,” said the Nightingale. “Sorry. I’ll try to remember.” He sang a few notes, and then he asked the Man, “Did you ever find an answer to your question?”

“No,” said the Man. “But I learned a lot of things.”

“Is that so,” said the Nightingale.

“Yes,” said the Man. He pointed up at the Nightingale. “Things aren’t as you think they are.”

“No?” said the Nightingale.

“No,” said the Man. “Listen to the Moon. You’ll learn.”

“Oh?” said the Nightingale. “The Moon never spoke to
me.
What did the Moon say?”

“There is Time,” said the Man. He came closer to the branch where the Nightingale sat. “There was a time before you were,” he said, “and there will be a time after. You won’t live forever. You will die.”

“Do you think so?” said the Nightingale, who didn’t know at all what the Man meant.

“You will. There are hawks, Bird. There are foxes. There are owls and weasels.”

“But not just now,” said the Nightingale, looking around quickly.

“There will be!” said the Man. His expression was so fierce and strange that the Nightingale flew to a higher branch away from him.

“You will die, Bird!” said the man in a terrible voice. “You will die!”

The Nightingale was astonished and troubled and didn’t know what to do. So he sang. “It’s all right,” he sang. “It’s all right.”

“It’s not all right!” cried the Man. “It’s not. Because you’ll die. And so will I!”

And just at that moment, with a noise of winds and many rivers, with a clamor of birdsong and a sound of leaves falling, Dame Kind came striding through the forest toward them.

The Woman leapt up. “We’ll run and hide!” she said. She took the Man’s hand. “Quick, we must!” she said, and together they ran to hide in the forest.

“Come out,” said Dame Kind.

She waited.

“Come out,” she said again. And the Man and the Woman came out from where they had hidden themselves.

“Why did you hide?” asked Dame Kind.

“Because we were afraid,” said the Woman.

Dame Kind looked at them sadly for a long time. Then she said in a gentle voice: “Who told you you should be afraid?”

The Man and the Woman looked away from Dame Kind, and they made no answer.

“And who told you that you would die?” Dame Kind asked them. “Was it the Moon?”

“It was the Moon,” said the Man.

“No,” said the Woman, and she raised her eyes to Dame Kind. “It wasn’t the Moon. We learned it ourselves.”

And that was true.

Dame Kind took the Man’s shoulder in her great hand. She gently brushed away the hair that fell before the Woman’s face. She said, “Oh, dear. Oh, my poor children.” Then she covered her eyes with her hand and shook her head. “Oh, my,” she said. “Oh, dear.”

“We only wanted to learn,” said the Man. “There
is
Time, and there
is
Change, and there
is
Death. And you never told us.”

“You never told us,” the Woman said, her eyes filling with tears. “You never told us we would die.”

Dame Kind lowered her hand from her eyes. “No,” she said. “I didn’t. And I will tell you why. Until you thought of those things, they did not exist.

“Until you thought of Time, there was no such thing. Things went on as they always had; there wasn’t a Yesterday, and there wasn’t a Tomorrow; there was only Today.

“Until you thought of Change, everything remained the same. The flowers were always growing, the young ones were always being born, the Sun and the stars and yes, even the Moon, were always doing just as they always do. Now you will see them change, you alone, and nothing will ever be quite the same for you.

“Until you thought of Death, dear children, nothing died. My creatures only lived. They didn’t know of a time when they had not been, and they couldn’t think of a time when they would not be. And so they lived forever. And so would you have too: except that you thought of Death.

“And when you thought of those things,” she said, “you thought of fear, too.

“And you thought of weeping.” She dried the Woman’s eyes with the sleeve of her gown.

“And the worst thing is,” Dame Kind said, and a tear came to her own eye, “that now you have thought of these things, you cannot take them back, ever. That’s the way it is with ideas. Once you have one, there’s no going back.”

The Woman wept, and the Man hung his head at these words of Dame Kind’s; and the Nightingale remembered a morning—an
important morning—when Dame Kind had said those very words to him: once you have an idea, there’s no going back.

Dame Kind crossed her arms and rose up to her full height. “And now,” she said. She shrugged her shoulders. “Well, what now? I just don’t know. I don’t know if you can ever be happy here again; not as happy as you once were.” She looked around her at the blooming forest. “I can’t have you going about the world weeping. I can’t have you telling the birds and the beasts that they will die. I can’t have that.”

“It’s all right,” sang the Nightingale. He hadn’t understood much of what had passed between Dame Kind and the Man and the Woman, but he didn’t like to see them sad. “It’s all right,” he sang. “I don’t mind.”

“All right then,” said the Man. His face was brave, and his eyes were dry. His knees shook, but he pretended that they didn’t. “All right then, we’ll go someplace else.” He clenched his fists and set his jaw. “If we can’t be happy here, we’ll go someplace else.”

“You can’t,” Dame Kind said. “There isn’t anyplace else.”

The Man put his arm around the Woman. “All right,” he said, all right then: I’ll make one up. I’ll make up another place. I’ll make up another place, a better place, and go there.”

“Oh, dear,” said Dame Kind. She lifted her fingers to her chin in alarm and puzzlement.

The Woman brushed the last of her tears from her eyes. She said, “Yes! I’ll make up someplace else, too. A better place. And I’ll go there.”

“No!” the Man said turning on her. “
I’ll
make up another place, and we’ll
both
go there. Come on!” And he took the Woman’s arm and led her away; and though she looked back once, and though her eyes began again to fill with tears, she knew that she could not
leave the Man; and so she went with him, and they went out of the forest together.

“Perhaps,” Dame Kind said when they were gone, “perhaps I made a mistake.” She sat sadly on the stump of a tree she had made long ago, and had made to fall down, too. “Perhaps the Boy and the Girl were a mistake.”

“Oh, no,” the Nightingale said. “I don’t think you could make a mistake.”

“I didn’t think so either,” Dame Kind said. “Well—I have made one or two—some animals and plants that didn’t work out—but they all came right in the end. They did their part.”

“So will the Boy and the Girl.”

“I don’t know,” said Dame Kind. “It’s odd, having things come about in the world that I didn’t think of. This place they’re going to make up: What will it be like? I don’t know. Because I didn’t think of it.”

“But you did,” said the Nightingale. “I don’t know anything about it, but—didn’t you think up the Boy and the Girl? If you thought up the Boy and the Girl, didn’t you think up everything they can think up? In a way, I mean.”

Dame Kind thought about that.

“I guess I did,” she said at last. A broad smile came over her face, a smile that was like the Sun coming from clouds; and in fact at that very moment a mass of thick clouds did go away from the face of the Sun, and the Sun’s smile remade the patterns of light and dark amid the ferns and the flowers. “I guess I did at that. In a way.” She sighed, and stood. A thousand thousand duties were calling to her. “Anyway, I’ll just have to get used to it. And I don’t suppose the story’s over yet.”

The Nightingale didn’t know what she meant by that, but he was glad to see Dame Kind happy again. He sang a few notes. “It’s all right,” he sang.

“You know,” Dame Kind said to him as she went away, “all those things the Man said are true. About Time. About Death.”

“It is?” said the Nightingale.

“But if I were you,” said Dame Kind, “I wouldn’t worry about it.”