A Nearer Moon

by Melanie Crowder

  “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.

  4

  Perdita

  Just 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.

  The door makers began every day as the sun broke over the mountain, casting its first blush of light onto the lake below. They finished every evening as the sun ducked below the horizon again. Their nights were filled with the breathy songs of the air sprites and with the whistle of the wood sprites’ flutes echoing eerily down from the heights.

  If it had only been a matter of building a door from one place to another, leaving would have been a simple affair, done in a few weeks or in a few months at most. But finding the right place to go was not an easy thing. The door makers searched for a world where they wouldn’t be quickly uprooted again. A place the humans had not discovered and so, defiled. A place where the waters were clear and the skies were bright and the woods were still singing as they had on the very first day.

  While the door makers worked their magic, folk circled around them. Air sprites skittered down to sniff at the mossy offerings of the wood sprites, who learned to look with a little less horror on the willful splashing of the water sprites.

  The door makers worked as they searched, to be ready when the time came, and as the months passed, the door between worlds began to take shape in the air. Tall as the tallest of the sprites, and wide enough for two to pass through together side by side, it hung suspended in the air, no higher than the tips of a rabbit’s ears. The door seemed to glow faintly with a light of its own, if you looked for it with the edge of your vision.

  Even the humans, who bumbled and stumbled through life without any magic of their own, stepping right in the middle of a circle of stones or striding through a web of sunlight, somehow managed to avoid that space in the air, the space that seemed to hum with an energy of its own. And so the paths that wound from the humans’ huts, through the jungle, and up to the garden on the hill, veered to leave the space between the two towering seraya trees alone.

  “Stay close,” warned Perdita and Pelagia’s mother. “The door could be ready at any time.”

  The twins sat on either side of their mother, their backs to the door in the air, mesmerized by the light rippling on the surface of the river and the sound of water spilling over the rocks. But they did not sit still for long.

  The fact that they might be leaving soon hung in the back of their minds. They had a measured number of days, an allotted number of breaths in this world, on this beautiful river that wound in curves like a ribbon through the hardwood jungle, where the humans lived in small huts set into the bare earth and long-necked waterbirds strutted in the shallows. The new world on the other side of the door might be all kinds of wonderful, might be far away from the humans, but it wouldn’t be here, where the twins had first opened their eyes, where they had first greeted the water.

  There was so much for them to see and for their hands, still unmarked by calluses and scars, to touch. Perdy and Gia’s days were full, hunting for abandoned mollusk shells or stalking through the meadows, the tasseled tips of the grasses swaying high above their heads.

  Water sprites were supposed to keep to the streams, but Perdy was never one for following rules. She skipped across the riverbank, and Gia followed after, pausing beneath the white crown of a dandelion. Perdy took hold and shook, the seeds spilling like falling leaves onto their heads and shoulders and spinning down to the dirt like upturned umbrellas. Out on the river, they sat astride the backs of young carp, tunneling through the currents and leaping over the oncoming wavelets.

  Such was the bond between the twin sisters that if one lifted a hand to her chest, she would feel the echo of two hearts beating within.

  Thump thump.

  (Thump thump.)

  Thump thump.

  (Thump thump.)

  Such was the bond between them that they could not be apart for long before the absence, like a living thing, took hold in the space beneath their ribs and pulsed with an aching, empty beat. But as the twins grew, each developed a nature of her own. Desires the other did not share. Pursuits the other would not follow.

  For Gia, the knowledge that they would be leaving soon kept her close to her mother’s side so that when the making of the door between worlds was complete and the bells tolled for all the sprites to come, she would be there. She would not be left behind.

  For Perdy, that knowledge drove her farther and farther from home so that when the making of the door between worlds was complete, there wouldn’t be a single cave unexplored or a single eddy undiscovered.

  She was always wandering off, always getting happily lost. Always carried back home in a heron’s bill or on a terrapin’s back, or floating in a drifting spider’s web. Every time, Gia was there to welcome her home. Every time, there were kisses and promises and tears tiny as dewdrops in Perdy’s eyes.

  “I’ll never wander so far again,” Perdy would say.

  But that was a promise she could not keep.

  5

  Luna

  It was the first of Mama’s rules never to be broken: Don’t go past the bend in the river. The swamp was all Luna knew—all she wanted to know as long as Willow, Mama, Granny Tu, and Benny were there with her. But when Willow got sick, all that changed.

  So before even a hint of sunlight touched the sky, Luna tiptoed into the moonless dark. She climbed down the ladder that straddled the stilts holding their hut high above the swamp and untied her little boat from its mooring. She settled a small bundle at the bow, balanced her own weight against it, and stepped to the center of the boat’s rough belly. She lifted her pole and stood, finding her legs and setting he
r eyes on the water before her.

  The village hung over her, shadows looming, disapproving as she poled under the walkways that stretched from hut to tree to hut like a giant fishing net flung out over the swamp. Like a net that closed in on her from above, trying to hold her there, keep her safe.

  At the edge of the water, yellow eyes blinked, glowing faintly in the fading dark. The insects were burrowed deep in the mud and the macaques dozed in the treetops. The morning air wiggled with sweaty heat, waiting for the sun to rise and sizzle the moisture out of the sky. Luna shook her hair behind her and wiped her hands dry on her thin cotton shirt.

  She pushed against her pole, pushed off into the middle of the swamp, away from the village. The bunch of coins in her pocket pulled at her like a weight on a fishing line. Thief, it bobbed. Liar, it tugged. Luna thrust her chin in the air. This was for Willow. Mama wouldn’t care about the money if it made Willow better. And maybe Mama was so lost in her sadness anyway, so lost in the candle smoke and clicking prayer beads, that Luna could slide back home before dark, and Mama wouldn’t even notice she’d been gone.

  Every family in the village had lost someone to the wasting sickness, had buried resourcefulness under the heavy weight of grief. They had given up long ago on finding a cure; they had tried and failed too many times over the years to let their hopes rise, only to be dragged back down again.

  But not Luna.

  She had never been to the city on the lake, but the doctor Granny Tu mentioned might know how to save Willow. And Luna couldn’t just sit and do nothing. She had to try.

  Luna poled through the trees until at last the swamp thinned and the river began to push against her. The predawn hush of the swamp was replaced by water that shushed and leaped and splashed against the hull of her boat. The boat picked up speed, and there was no longer any space left in her mind for worrying—it all belonged to the river, to keeping the bow of her boat pointed forward and plowing through the oncoming water. If the bow ticked to either side, the current gleefully pushed against the broad side, and it was all she could do to dig in her pole and steer the boat straight again.

  Even the river knew she shouldn’t be out all alone before the fairy birds began their morning song and the freshwater crabs stirred in their burrows. Even the river knew such a flat boat had no business riding swift currents.

  It had been her daddy’s boat, and Granny Tu’s before that. When Daddy died, the boat was given to Luna. Her steering pole had been no taller than she was, and the wide boat had seemed big as an island beneath her feet. She was only allowed to steer through the reeds at the edge of the swamp, with Granny Tu or Uncle Tin or sometimes Mama to bump her back into the shallows if she drifted too far.

  The first time Luna had taken Willow out on the water, her sister’s eyes had never stopped roving over the swamp, wondering at all the finned and fan-tailed creatures beneath. Luna bit the inside of her cheek to banish the memory that tunneled holes in her heart. Willow was going to be fine. She was.

  “Hey!”

  Luna’s head jerked toward the riverbank, where a figure darted around the trees, waving his hands over his head and shouting.

  “Your mama’s gonna skin you alive!”

  Luna scowled and kept poling forward, concentrating on keeping the boat pointed upriver. She shouted back over her shoulder, “If you only came out here to scold me, you should have stayed in bed!”

  “Aw, come on. You know you want me along!” Benny called.

  Luna ignored him, and the sound of pitter-patter footsteps along the riverbank stopped.

  “I want to help Willow too, you know!”

  Luna’s pole snagged against a rock and the bow dipped under a curl of water that seemed to leap up out of nowhere. She lurched in the opposite direction to steady her boat as the bow speared, without so much as a nudge from her, toward the shore.

  The boat slid up onto the riverbank and sliced through the reeds. Benny scrambled in, rearranging Luna’s bundle behind him and shoving off, tipping until he was perched careful as a stork at the bow. He looked back and patted a lump at his side. “I brought honey cakes,” he announced by way of a truce.

  Luna’s traitorous stomach gurgled loud enough to wake wild pigs from their slumber. Benny’s shoulders shook in silent laughter, but he knew better than to let it out and give Luna even one reason to turn the boat around and dump him on the shore again.

  She squinted and pushed back into the current, coaxing her boat onto the flat tongue that wove down the center of the river. The river bottom was muddy in some places and rocky in others, and if she wasn’t careful, her pole would slide on a slippery stone and dump her in the water when she pushed too hard.

  The sun rose while she poled in silence. With the sun came the bugs, and the fish woke with them, jumping out of the water and splashing back down all around the boat. A black-winged darter leaped out of the shadows and pumped its wings, bobbing down the pulsing vein of the river, leading the way before them.

  Every time the sight of something new startled a gasp from her lips, regret rushed in. It felt like a betrayal, finding joy even in little things when Willow was in danger.

  Luna’s stomach broke the silence at last. Benny turned toward her and sat facing the stern while he handed her honey cakes one at a time. The smile on his face said, pure and simple, those honey cakes came with a price. And his price was answers.

  “So you’re going to find a doctor?”

  Luna grimaced. “And how do you know that?”

  “Not telling. I hitched a snare to your front door so I’d know when you left.” Benny leaned back and flashed a self-satisfied smile. “Really, I should be the one mad at you for even thinking of going without me!”

  Luna snorted. It was a supremely stupid thing she was doing. And if the brief history of her life was any indication, if she was set on doing a supremely stupid thing, it was best to have Benny along.

  6

  Perdita

  The little family floated in a banana leaf boat they had made for the day. Perdy stood at the helm, grasping the stem in one hand and swatting droplets of water out of the air with the other. Gia lay on her back and stared at the clouds in the sky as they shifted and shaped into globs that almost looked like a bird’s beak, or a blooming flower, or a skink sunning itself on a rock. Their mother lifted a hollow reed to her lips and blew, a stream of bubbles bursting below the surface and sending the leaf swaying across the water.

  Gia giggled at the sound every time, and Perdy brightened every time Gia laughed.

  “Why do we have to go?” Perdy asked her mother, abandoning her post at the bow of the boat to lay her head on the pillow of Gia’s arm. “The humans leave us alone. The river is lovely. The fish and the birds and the bugs are as friendly as could be.”

  Mother clucked her tongue. “You know the answer to that, Perdita. Whether they will it or not, as the humans grow, we ebb. There was a time when we were friends with the humans, when we did not hide ourselves from them and we shared our magic with them. Before they dug down in the earth and brought the deepest, darkest metals out to taste the air, to poison everything they touched.

  “Now this world cannot hold us both. If we wait too long, we may not have enough strength to make a door at all. We may not ever be able to leave. As it is, we can only make the one door, and hold the space between worlds open for a few minutes.”

  Perdy’s lips pursed together. Gia took a knot of her hair, unwound it, and wound it back up with a sprig of flowering vine tucked between the plaits.

  “You’ll see,” Mother assured her. “The fish will be just as friendly, and the waves just as fresh in the new world the door makers find for us.”

  “And we’ll be together,” Gia said. “That’s all that matters. When we get to this new place, I’ll help you map our new stream. I’ll go with you to learn the rhythm of the new rapids and the taste of the new lake. It will be an adventure—just what you love best. You’ll see.”

&nbs
p; But still Perdy was uneasy. So she decided to craft a thing to take with them so they never really had to leave this place behind. One for her, and one for Gia.

  Perdy wove a pair of coronets out of burnished fig roots. Into the wood she set crystals from the mountain streams, agates from the salty mudflats, and iridescent snail shells that glowed with the memory of the deepest depths of the lake. Every night, while they listened to the chanting of the door makers, Perdy wound a new treasure into the coronets. Every morning she emptied her pockets and set out again to search for that one last piece.

  “Perdy, will you stop this wandering?” Gia pleaded. “You heard Mother. The door will open and close any day now. You have to be here when it does.”

  “I can skate all the way from the lake and back faster than you can blink. There’s no way I’ll miss it.”

  “Quit being so stubborn!”

  “Quit being such a worrier!”

  Gia stomped away. She didn’t understand what it was that called her sister away again and again, farther and farther from home. But there was no stopping Perdy, so Gia set out to find a way to bring her back again if she ever went too far.

  She studied, and she listened, and she worked at the curious tangle of sprite magic. Gia watched the hands of the door makers and counted the phrases that passed through their lips as they fashioned the door in the air and probed the worlds beyond.

  Perdy had no interest in such a still task; she had no discipline to work at a tangle that did not easily come loose in her fingers. But Gia was a patient soul. She wasn’t looking for the same kind of magic the door makers worked. What she needed to know, what she wanted to master, was the coming home, the calling to the nest kind of magic.

  The door makers were too busy at their task to teach what they knew—there would be time for that in the next world, they said. So Gia had to work it out on her own. First, she spelled a leaf so she could drop it anywhere in the stream and it would find its way back to the sandy spot where she waited. Next, she magicked a beetle to come whenever she called from wherever she called.