Woman Who Loved the Moon (17 page)

He saw her.

She was combing her hair. Her robe was green, like the sea. She was looking straight at him at last—he strained to see her face. The rising sun beat in his eyes.

He urged the boat a little closer.

She was singing.

“Cape Cod girls they have no combs...” Clear and sweet and thin, it mingled with the ocean rush dinning at his ears. She stood up. “Comb their hair with codfish bones...” She saw him at last. She waved, a curl of her hand. “Doug!” she called.

“Laura?” he said. He pointed the prow of the boat forward into the sun. “Laura!” Under his hands, the tiller bucked, the boat seemed to leap at the island. He felt beneath his keel the scrape and tear of the rocks. She was smiling. Water surged through the planking. He was close enough to see her eyes.

They were green as the sea wrack, green as the beckoning sea.

At her feet lay the flotsam and jetsam driven up by the sea: wooden planks, a torn sail like feathers, rusty bolts, half hidden in the sand. A bleached shard of something that might once have been a shirt.

Why? he thought.

He tried to hold on to the rocks. Why did I do this?

* * *

The island sat in a ring of stone and a nest of fog.

It was a flat and sandy land, treeless, silent, smooth and white. Its toothy wet escarpment looked like a good place to lay lobster pots, but the fishermen never did. The way to it was treacherous. Once there had been a bell-buoy marking where the secret rocks began their rise, but something had happened to it. Fog lingered round it. Its name on the sea charts was variously rendered as Seal Island or Silk Island. On some charts it was not named at all.

The Dragon That Lived in the Sea

A number of my stories have the sea in them. I was brought up on the East Coast, near the Atlantic, and now live four miles from the Pacific Ocean. I have lived on two of the Great Lakes. I’ve never seen a sea serpent, though I’ve looked and looked. I’ve never seen a whale, either, except in captivity. But once, off San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, I saw a dolphin. I was sitting on the cliff, watching the waves, when one flung itself from the sea, twice. Out of that intense, solitary, and joyful moment, I wrote this.

* * *

There once was, in a far country, a dragon that lived in the sea.

He was a splendid beast, scaled and shiny, red and blue and gold and silver. His eyes were bright ruby, as dragons’ eyes often are. The fisherfolk would see him from their villages as he dashed through the waves, stretching his long neck like a monstrous arrow shot from a bow, racing the sea wind or the hurricane. On those days they stayed home. For the dragon, being a dragon, thought their fishing boats were toys for him to play with, mere chips of wood, and so he blew at them with his bright fiery breath, and watched them bum. He did not know that the boats carried people, and would not have cared had he known it.

The fisherfolk hated the dragon, but could do nothing against him, for none of them was a warrior nor a magician, and only warriors and great magicians can kill dragons. They fished warily, watching the sea always for a sight of that treacherous beautiful head looming above the waves. Their catches grew smaller daily, and they grew poorer and poorer, till they could not even buy rope to mend their nets, or iron fishhooks. Parents starved themselves to feed their children. Everyone was always a little hungry.

The young men and women said to the elders: “Why must we live this way?”

Glancing at the white curling waters, the elders replied, “It is the dragon!”

One afternoon a stranger came to one of the shore villages. She seemed a simple elderly woman, but she walked alone, with only the help of a tall ash staff, and she looked at everything she passed with grey quiet eyes. The villagers guessed her to be a witch. Filled with great hope, the elders of the village came trundling out to meet her, and invited her to stay for a meal. The village cooks racked their pantries to prepare a feast. They made the best of the poor things they had. She thanked them for it without irony. They asked: “Are you traveling far, Lady?”

“I am,” she said, and the elders sighed. When magic folk are on a journey you cannot hope to make them stay.

“Tell me your need,” she said.

And they told her about the dragon living in the sea. She said, “Even were I free to stay I could not help you. My art is with plants, herbs, chants, and the songs of healing. I cannot help you.”

The very oldest of them all, a woman whose name was Lara, looked up from her place closest to the fire. “I am older even than thee, Lady,” she said. “I have forgotten much. But I know that there are spells to harm and spells to guard, spells to keep and spells to cast away, and who should know these but a magician? Is it right that dragons should rule over humankind? This dragon has been our overlord for all my life, and my mother’s lifetime, and hers before her.

“Can you not give us some spell, some ruse, some power that we might employ to chase this beast from our shore?”

A bold young man whispered, “She will give us a magic weapon, a magic sword!”

The witch shook her head at him gently. “Would you wield even a magic sword against a dragon, fisherman’s son?”

The youngster thought of the dragon’s great towering head and ruby eyes, and of his burning breath, and shrank into silence.

Lara said, “Have we no hope, then, Lady?”

The witch frowned. The sea wind crept round the house and rattled mockingly at the eaves. “There is always hope,” the witch said. “But your hope cannot be in might. All that comes to me is a rhyme on the wind, which says in our tongue:
Mischief will flee a child without fear
.”

Lara said, “Then the dragon will never be gone. For humankind fears birth, and fears life, and fears death. This you know.”

“Yes,” said the witch sadly, “I know. Poor thanks have I given you for hospitality. And now I must leave. May a child without fear be born among you, soon!”

* * *

In the house where the feast had been set dwelt a woman named Tace. She was young, with soft red hair and green eyes, but her eyes were always sad now. Her man, Mor, had gone to fish in his boat one morning, and the dragon had sprung out from the ocean, and blown a fiery breath into the sails. The boat had burned, and Tace had watched helplessly from the shore as Mor leaped from fire to water to die. When she heard the witch’s words something sparked in her eyes. She cleaned the house slowly, stopping often to rest, for she was carrying a child, and her belly was big. “I know what the witch meant. I know.” And her eyes lost their sadness as she awaited eagerly the coming of the child.

Her child was born beneath an ash tree, and the midwives were amazed, for she slipped out easily from Tace’s body as if she wanted to be born. “Most babes fight to stay within the womb,” said one, “but this little one is fierce for life. She thinks she will like it here. Poor child!”

Tace caught the wrinkled red face close to her breasts. “She will like it here!” she said. And the babe opened huge green eyes at her, and gurgled. All the midwives clucked at this.

“How strong she is, how forward!” said the one who had spoken before. ‘“What is her name?”

“Her name is Elkas,” said Tace.

The day Elkas was two months old, Tace wrapped her in a warm cloak and brought her to Lara’s house. The elder admired the baby: “How big she is, and how quick! Look how she holds my finger. She will be crawling and walking months sooner than her cousins.”

“She is the child the witch meant,” said Tace.

“What?”

“The midwives can tell you how she slipped without a wail into life, and came right to my arms. You see she is brave. She fears nothing—and there must be nothing ever for her to fear. Nothing must ever hurt her or shame her or frighten her. She will overcome the dragon. I know it.”

Lara looked at Tace’s sure, set face. “We will make it so,” she answered.

So little Elkas grew and thrived. She became the happiest, strongest and most spoiled child that ever was. Anything she desired she was given. She was never hungry or cold or lonely or teased, nor afraid of even the least little thing. “It is good,” Tace often remarked, “that she has never desired the moon, for how would we give it to her? That would make her miserable. Spoiled brat,” she said lovingly to her daughter. Elkas laughed, tossing her red curls. She was not afraid of her mother. And since the world was so good to her, she was good to the world. She was never angry or cruel or mean. All things were her friends and playmates, from the green grass snakes to the seagulls to the whitecapped waves that played and sang outside the cottage door. When the ocean stormed she crowed at it. To her it was all a game.

She was not afraid of the dragon. And the villagers were careful to keep from her their own fear, for if she thought there was something that other people were afraid of, she might be afraid of it, too.

The day Elkas was seven years old, Tace said to her, “Today shall be a very special day for you.”

“Because I am seven!”

“Because of another thing.”

“What is it?” the child pressed. “Tell me
now
!”

“Surprises are fun too,” said Tace. “I will tell you soon, my heart. Go and play with the wind.”

Elkas pretended to pout. But when she saw her face in the shiny bottom of the big copper kettle, she burst out laughing. She ran naked outside to tell the wind and the sun that it was her birthday.

Tace went to Lara’s house. “Today is the day,” she said.

Lara was almost blind. But she did not need to see Tace. Determination and purpose sang out of her words. “Go then, child,” said the old woman. “May
thy
child, who has been our hope, truly be our deliverance.”

“She will!” Tace said. And she went out of Lara’s house and down to the harbor where the fishing boats sat rocking. She said to the fishers: “Make ready the boats.”

They answered her: “No! The dragon has been chasing whales off our shores all morning. We dare not go out.”

They turned. The great red and blue bulk of his coils lifted and shone and shook the sea apart.

Tace’s heart sang with hatred. My child will conquer you, she said silently at the dragon. My daughter Elkas will conquer you, killer. “Do as I say!” she told the fishers. Reluctantly the fishers made ready the boats. Tace ran to fetch Elkas from her play.

They sailed out into the deep ocean. Elkas stood on the prow of the first boat, held tight by her mother—a living figurehead. Out they sailed, toward the scaled and brilliant dragon. Elkas danced up and down with joy. She had never been so close to something so beautiful before. “He is made of rainbows!” she cried. “How beautiful he is. Come here and play with me, dragon!”

Lazy in the sun, the dragon heard her. Dragons have very keen ears. By now he knew that there were living things in those chips of carved wood. He knew that they feared him. Yet here was one of them calling to him! Curious, he swam very slowly toward the fleet and nosed his great snout between the boats. The villagers shuddered with terror as he touched the wood. Even Tace trembled as the ruby eyes stared down at her and at Elkas. Be not afraid, she begged her daughter silently. Be not afraid!

Elkas stretched out her small lovely arms to the dragon. “Come and play!” she repeated.

The dragon gazed down upon her laughing face. Surely the human things feared him, as did the dolphins and the whales and even the sharks who feared nothing else—and yet this human thing was not afraid. He could smell that she was not afraid, for the scent of fear is particular and peculiar and like nothing else. Elkas was not afraid.

Shamed in his deepest pride, the dragon laid his great head down and sank beneath the waves.

The villagers on the boats cheered and danced and chanted their joy. Tace stood tall and triumphant as they sailed back to shore. Only Elkas did not rejoice. She stood silently at the prow. At last she turned to her mother. The first tears she had ever shed were falling from her eyes.

“Why wouldn’t the dragon play with me?” she cried. “I want the dragon to come back and play with me; he is so beautiful!” She sobbed and sobbed and would not be comforted, for this was the first time she had not been given her want.

The dragon never reappeared. But upon that coast at dawn and dusk sometimes a fog rose from the water where fog had never come before. The fisherfolk said it was the dragon blowing his fiery breath through the chilly ocean. Elkas grew to tall and graceful womanhood. She never spoke of the dragon save to her youngest daughter, who she had named Lara. To Lara she said only, “He was made of rainbows.” And her daughter, who was like all other children, trembled, and did not understand the look of wistful loss upon her mother’s face.

Mindseye

This story first appeared in a corner of my mind around 1974. It went through several metamorphoses. For one thing, I could not decide which aspect of the story I wanted to concentrate on, the symbolic or the literal. It had started out as a fairly simple adventure story, but it rapidly transformed itself to a rather complicated story about madness and alienation—in short, it kept changing shape. I almost threw it out twice. Finally I changed the sex of the protagonist, Phil became Phillipa, and darkness light. The myth of the Ice Princess barreled out of my unconscious and took its place at the story’s climax.