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For my sisters,
Timme and Chelle
Prologue
The river flows.
It begins as a trickle deep in the heart of the jungle, in the thick, secret heart of the jungle. It surges and swirls, gorging on the breath of a thousand streams. The river, it bells, and it swells, and it flows, and a reed-thin girl on a push-pole boat skims silently by.
Just beyond a stretch that wiggles like a crimped ribbon, a log jam stops the river in its headlong sprint. Long ago the dam formed, gathering storm-tossed sticks and rising, the water creeping inch by inch to bury the silty flats, to brush the shins of trees unaccustomed to getting their feet wet. The dam rose and a swamp was born. The pent up, penned in river dove deep underground, probing through tunnels of granite and caverns of crushed rock for a place to rise again to the surface, willful and wild.
Out in the middle of the swamp, the water spirals in a lazy arc, collecting a scattering of leaf litter, a few vagabond insects, and a leisurely film of dust. A flat slick catches and holds the swill, holds still while the rest of the swamp moves in a slow waltz around it. A person who didn’t know this water might think the slick was just an eddy, caught and swaddled in a crook of the swamp’s arm. But the villagers, who live and breathe by the ebb and flow of the water, know to steer wide of the still spot. They know that something beneath pulls at the water, a creature that makes the water skippers tremble and the otters skitter for their dens.
Year by year, inch by inch, the villagers raised the stilts that held up their homes, until they couldn’t remember anymore the sweet smell of a passing river, the eager slope of a riverbank, the sound of giggling water spilling over boulders and dancing over rocks.
The villagers marked the time in two ways: before the swamp and after. What came before was good. And all that came after was not.
1
Luna
At the edge of the swamp, rimmed round with tall marsh grasses and dotted with pulai trees dripping humid tears, a girl with long limbs and hair as dark as a moonless night stepped through the reeds and into her shallow boat.
On the hill behind her, seraya trees rustled their leaves, and a blizzard of tiny yellow flowers spun through the air. To the west, the river spilled in; to the east, the dam held back the water. In the space between, her village perched over the sweltering swamp.
Luna lifted a long steering pole and was just about to shove away from the shore when a smaller girl with the same black hair and gangly limbs called out as she ran down the hill from the garden plots.
“Take me with you!” Willow shouted.
Luna stepped one foot back on the shore to steady them both, reaching out a hand to help her little sister into the boat.
“You weren’t really going without me, were you?” Willow wobbled, arms outstretched, toward the bow.
Luna chuckled. As if her little sister would ever allow that.
Willow sat cross-legged on the rough-hewn floor and rubbed the tiny pewter charm tacked to the bow for luck. She gripped the edges of the boat, her whole body twitching with excitement.
Luna tested her weight and shifted the bundle of nets at her feet. With one solid push, the flat boat drifted out of the reeds, gliding between water lilies opening to greet the late morning sun. A haze of sticky, sweaty heat hung like a cloud of gnats over the swamp.
Luna dipped her pole into the water. Hand over hand, she lowered it down until the smooth wood caught in the mud below, caught and held like a child curling her fingers into a lock of hair and gripping tight.
Luna leaned out and pulled her pole away from the reluctant mud, hand over hand. Water trickled over her knuckles, streaming down her arms and drip, drip, dripping from her elbows, until the silt-drenched tip rose into the air, dropping the mud back where it came from.
The boat wandered through a grove of waterlogged trees and under the village perched above. The huts were raised on stilts and strung together just above the waterline by walkways that swayed in the gentle winds swirling through the swamp. As they passed by, Granny Tu left her rocking chair and stepped to the railing. Her skin was wrinkled as a plum passed over by the pickers and left on the tree to wither, but her eyes were sharp and sparkling. She cupped a hand to her mouth. “Bring me back a big one.”
“You bet!” Willow said.
Most of the villagers were tucked into the shadows, away from the buggy morning, but Luna’s best friend, Benny, pushed back the shutters and leaned out the window of his hut to wave as they passed. His straight black hair hung like a curtain in front of his eyes, and he swept it away impatiently.
“Come over after, okay?” he called.
Luna nodded, waving in return.
She steered away from the village and between the last set of pulai trees, weaving between their buttressed roots and gliding out onto open swamp. It was quiet except for the buzzing of water bugs and the bulbuls chattering in the treetops. Quiet and empty, with only her little boat moving on top of the water.
“How was school this morning?” Luna asked.
“We did our plusses, up to a hundred. And I’ve got spelling lists to study tonight.” Willow leaned back until she could see her sister’s face, upside down and swaying as Luna pushed her pole into the mud and hefted it back out again. “You’ll help me, won’t you?”
Luna nodded. But Willow already knew the answer. She was the sun that the rest of them, Mama and Luna and Granny Tu, orbited around. It had always been that way. Maybe because she was so much younger than Luna, maybe because she was just a baby when Daddy died. Maybe because she was all giggles and mischief, dewy kisses and unkempt braids.
“What else?” Luna asked.
“Lily’s gran brought lemon drops for snack. She told us a story of a wood sprite that lived in her rafters when she was little. They never once saw it, but if they so much as dusted the beam where its bundle-of-sticks house was, the milk would turn sour and vegetables would rot overnight.” Willow shuddered with glee, slapping her hand against the rim of the boat. “No, thank you. No sprites as houseguests for me!”
“Nah, there’s no such thing as sprites,” Luna said. She jiggled her weight from one foot to the other, just enough to set the shallow boat rocking. Not enough to tip it over—a boat wide enough to steer through the swamp was all but impossible to tip over—but enough to set Willow squealing in giddy protest.
Luna poled to the wide mouth of the swamp where it met and slowed the steady push of the river. Just out of sight, the channel narrowed and the current picked up speed. Luna wasn’t allowed past the bend in the river. Her flat-bottomed boat wasn’t made for cutting through bumping, frolicking water. But some days, if she was lucky, a fish that didn’t know any better would wander a little too close to the swamp and find the back of her net.
The boat slid into an eddy, and Luna cast her net out over the water. She wasn’t going to catch anything, not today, with Willow’s giggles startling the fish into the shadows. But on a day like this, when even the dragonflies seemed to tilt their wings to catch a little extra of the sun’s sparkle, empty nets were nothing to scowl at. Willow leaned over the edge of the boat and stared down into the clear water below. Luna kept half an eye on her sister, the other half on the net she flung out and back, out and back again, just for the rhythm of it, for the feel of the rope i
n her hands and the coarse wood under her bare feet.
When the sun was at its highest, and it was too hot to even pretend at fishing, Luna poled away from the river and let her boat drift out into the center of the swamp. She shoved her steering pole deep into the muck, pushing faster and faster, until the boat spun, and spun, and spun, never tipping or dipping into the swamp water the tiniest bit. Willow lay on her back, gripping the edges of the boat and laughing so hard it sounded like she might choke.
“Lunaaaaaaaaa!” she shrieked.
“I’m gonna steer you straight into the slick,” Luna teased.
Willow sat up and twisted to look over her shoulder at the tongue of still, filmy water at the far end of the swamp.
“That’s not funny, Luna. You would not.”
Luna turned the boat far away from the dead spot on the water. Of course she wouldn’t, and not just because it was one of Mama’s never-to-be-broken rules:
Don’t go past the bend in the river.
Don’t go below the dam.
Steer far away from the slick.
People said there was a creature that lived beneath the slick lying still as a gravestone on top of the water, a creature that cast a curse on the swamp and sickened anyone who drank it. But Luna didn’t believe in the creature, and she didn’t believe in curses.
“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.
2
Perdita
Humans 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.
3
Luna
Home 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.
A Nearer Moon Page 1