A Creature of Moonlight

by Rebecca Hahn

  Still, he watched me close all the rest of the evening, and I went to bed uneasy that night, with an itching in my feet.

  It may be irritating, to be courted with sideways glances and half-formed flatteries, but at least these village lads are harmless. The real danger, I know, is from the lords.

  Jack and the others might get frustrated. They might raise their voices, pushing for a word from me, an answer to some fool question—but a snap of Gramps’s dark eyebrows, and they hush again.

  They’re in awe of him. They’re in awe of how he speaks, the way I never learned to, with the short vowels and the clipped consonants. Every word out of Gramps’s mouth sounds like he means it, like he knows just what he’s saying and why. Out of my mouth, out of the villagers’ mouths, the words all mash together, as if we can’t be bothered to keep them one from the next, as if we haven’t any time but must rush headlong from one thought to another. Times are I’ve tried to speak like Gramps, but it never seems natural. I’ve always latched onto the villagers’ way of speaking—it’s how my mouth wants to work, I reckon.

  He sits so still, too, my Gramps, so tall and straight. He holds his cane across his lap, and he rests both hands along its shaft lightly. His shoulders roll back. His neck stretches up. Not even the lords or ladies sit like that. They loll lazily in their chair, bending forward when they laugh, leaning an elbow on the table. I imagine it isn’t easy for Gramps to sit just so. His legs are half dead, so the other half of him has to work twice as hard to get across the floor or to reach for a cup or to rise up out of his chair. But he sits so easy you’d think he doesn’t strain at all, that it’s nothing.

  When the villagers come, I see them sitting as straight as they can too, imitating him. The lords and the ladies don’t even try. Could be they don’t care what he thinks. Or could be that to give in on this, Gramps’s standard of posture, would be to acknowledge something they can’t bear: that Gramps is better than they are, and that they knew it once. Once, they hung on his every word; once, they fought for the honor of sitting at his side.

  Maybe it’s this refusal to remember that makes the lords glance my way with eyes the villagers would never dare make at me. That’s a newer thing than the visits from the village lads; it’s been a month or two, now, that it’s been happening. There I’ll be, leaning in my usual place against the wall, watching our morning glories curling around the wooden porch columns, and I’ll sense a pair of them, dark and hungry eyes. It’ll be someone not sitting on our visitors’ chair, but the escort for a lady or a tagger-on to a large carriage group, someone not talking with the rest, someone whose mind has been able to stray.

  And Gramps can’t do a thing about it. He notices, sure, and I see the tightness in his face. At first I’d get all tight myself when it started to happen. They shouldn’t be able to do that, I knew, and I worried what would come of it, who’d finally make some move toward me or come back late at night when Gramps was snoring and I was lying awake in my bed by the window. I used to stare up from my pillow at the moon, waiting for the shape of one of them to darken it, to reach in toward me, to cover my mouth before I could scream.

  Now I stare back, as often as not. If they want to make something of it, they should go right ahead. Nothing has been stopping them all these years from coming round in the middle of the night to smother us as we sleep. Nothing stops them now from coming round to do other things. Nothing but the king, I guess—assuming he’d do anything about it. And their own small honor. And their fear of something else, of how close we are to the woods, of how strong Gramps always looks despite his legs, of how my mother was the only one who ever came back alive.

  There’s a story Annel used to tell about this girl, near grown, who was out in a meadow or somewhere, picking flowers. She was singing to herself, happy I guess, and as she reached down to pluck this red tulip, up comes a big brown horse with a man on its back.

  Except it wasn’t just a man, it was a sorcerer, and he didn’t just happen to ride up right then. He had been watching the girl with his magic, and there was something about the way she picked the flowers, something about the way she leaned over with her hair all long and flowing and her lips spread wide in song, that made him love her. Or at least that’s what he told the girl when he had gotten off his big brown horse and was standing there in front of her, and her mouth was wide with surprise now, and the tulip was still in her hand.

  He wanted to take her with him back to his big old sorcerer’s house, and he said she’d have jewels and dresses and anything she could want. Only thing was, if she came with him, she wouldn’t ever go back home.

  Well, the girl cried for a bit, thinking on the choice she had to make, but it turned out she already had a sweetheart back in her village. So she said no to the sorcerer, and he got angry and threatened her with his magic, and she stuck out her tongue at him—either brave or real stupid—and she ran back home and didn’t tell anyone about it.

  Except it didn’t matter whether she told them or not, because two days later the sorcerer came around and killed them all. Killed her whole village: her parents, her brothers, the old teacher at the schoolhouse—everyone the girl had ever known. He left only her alive, and when she was sitting by the grave of her sweetheart, crying herself a lake, he came by on his big brown horse again and got off and stood by her.

  He said he was sorry, that he didn’t want to hurt her, but she could see, couldn’t she, that there really was nothing to do but come with him. There was no reason anymore not to come.

  But that girl didn’t stand up and get on the horse and ride away with him. She sat there crying and crying, and while he watched, she stopped being a girl at all. She bent down toward her sweetheart’s grave, and she trickled out of herself until she went and sprouted roots. And then there was nothing left of the girl the sorcerer said he loved, and all that was there was a red tulip, wet with dew, bending in the breeze.

  The sorcerer could have plucked her up and carried her away with him, I guess, but he didn’t. He let her be. He climbed back onto his horse and went home to his big old house. The girl stayed there like she wanted, though I suppose she hadn’t planned on being a flower, and when the winter came, she shriveled up and died.

  When I see those lords staring with their dark and hungry eyes, when I see the village lads shooting their looks at me, I think about this story, and I imagine a sorcerer riding up to our front porch or around to the back of the hut while I’m out picking flowers. I imagine him reaching out a hand to me, telling me I can come with him or I can stay at home, and I look up at him, and I don’t cry or stick out my tongue.

  I leap from the porch or get up out of the dirt. I jump on his horse before he has the chance to change his mind. I leave with him at once, and I don’t ever turn myself around to look behind.

  That’s what I imagine, anyway. And then I look across the porch and see Gramps there with his legs all twisted, and I know if it came down to it, I couldn’t really leave. Not for a sorcerer, not for anyone.

  Not if the dragon himself came down from his mountain and told me he would kill everyone who’d put us here, and all I had to do was leave my Gramps behind.

  See, Gramps never left me behind. Not when his own son wanted me dead, not when the world thought I was nothing, no one, as wicked as anything. He picked me up and carried me here, even when he couldn’t walk. He spent his life becoming no one too, so he could live with me, so they would let me live.

  Three

  IT’S A BRIGHT, hot day in the middle of this summer, the summer the woods keep moving in, and I’ve been hammering stakes into the ground for the tall plants, the hollyhocks and the delphiniums, to brace themselves against, to reach up toward the sun. Gramps was helping earlier this afternoon, hoeing the tough ground where the stakes didn’t want to go in. But as the day got hotter, I could see the sweat growing on his forehead, and he was pausing to breathe more often than he was hoeing. I sent him to cool off in the porch’s shade with a glass of w
ater from the well.

  I’m eyeing the shade of the trees myself. If I get a few more of these stakes done, I’ll be good for the day. And Gramps won’t miss me for a time. I can almost smell the deep pine there’ll be if I get in a ways. I can almost hear the soft crunch of leaves under my feet, the crunch that never quite goes away, not even in the height of summer, with the grasses trying their best to carpet the woods.

  I’m so caught up in my thoughts, I don’t notice our visitor at first. He’s come slipping his way around the hut—though I reckon if this one took a mind to go through, even I might not dare tell him no.

  When I do see him, pacing round and round the geraniums on the far side of the garden, I stop and stare. Oh, he comes down now and again, like the rest of his court. But usually it’s to have a quick word with Gramps; I’ve never seen him walking alone like this.

  I get back to my hammering, but I keep an eye on him. He looks a bit like Gramps, around his serious eyes and in the shape of his nose. His hair is darker, but Gramps hasn’t lost all his color yet neither, and their hair flops the same way about their ears, little bits of it sticking out no matter what I do to smooth Gramps’s down with my fingers; no matter what, I guess, his servants do to smooth his down with their dabs of scented water and their soft hands.

  He’s shorter, though, than Gramps would be standing up out of his chair straight and tall; and he’s stockier; and he walks with determined, quick steps, unlike Gramps’s careful stroll. I think Gramps would walk real careful even without a stick, taking each step just as he does everything: picks up his cup, places it down, turns from folk to folk, lifts his head to smile at me. This one is in some sort of hurry, to be always stamping about so.

  He goes all along our paths, through and under our fences and bushes, to the edge of the woods and back. He never looks my way, and he never comes up close to me until he’s walked the whole garden back and forth at least three times. Then he stops and does look, all the way to where I’m putting the spade and hammer back into our shed. He looks at me as I’ve never seen him look before, straight and steady, not turning away the next moment, not pretending he never saw me.

  I let him. I don’t stop or smile or . . . or wave, or whatever it is that people do to people they want to see.

  But today I can’t figure him out at all. Not only does he keep on looking, but he makes his way across the garden toward me, not stepping quick now, but almost as slow as Gramps, and after I’ve closed the shed door, I just stand there watching until he’s right up close.

  I’ve never seen him quite this close.

  Whenever he comes and talks to Gramps, I don’t stand listening on the porch. I go out back and don’t return until they’ve finished. I’ve always stayed out of his way, just as I was staying out of his way a minute ago when he was still ignoring me, as he did for the first sixteen years of my life.

  But now he’s not three steps from me, and I can see the colors in his eyes, and then I don’t want to. I know now who shares my green and brown swirls; they’re staring right back at me. And I can see his teeth, how he’s missing an upper left one, so his smile’s off a bit—or it would be were he to smile. When he scowls, as he’s doing now, you barely notice that empty space until he opens his mouth to speak.

  He opens his mouth to speak.

  “You’ve grown tall, Marni.”

  Am I supposed to answer that? It’s the first time I’ve heard my name pass those lips.

  But he is the king, so I say, “Yes, I suppose I have.”

  Then there’s this silence, as if he’s about to say another piece at any moment, but he can’t pull out the words, and he’s glowering at me, and I’m looking back at him, as cool as I can manage.

  And then he’s gone again, back across the garden, over the path around the hut, and I’m left there, thinking things through in my head. I’ve grown tall? If that was all he was after, he could have said it at any moment of my life; I’ve been growing tall since before I could even talk, I reckon.

  When I fetch another cup of water from the well for Gramps, the king is with him on the porch, talking in a low-down voice. I stop before the open front door, sliding back so they won’t see me.

  “No one’s noticed her but a few of the village lads, and they only see that she’s a girl growing up into a pretty woman.” That’s Gramps.

  “It’s only village lads so far,” the king says. “It won’t be long, though, before others take notice—if they haven’t already.”

  “You can control the men of your court, I’m assuming,” Gramps says in a bone-dry voice, his ironic voice.

  The king snaps, “Of course.” There’s a pause, and then he continues. “That’s not what I mean, anyway. You know it. There are other sorts of attention, from other sorts of people . . . and things.”

  “Things . . .”

  I can hear the head shake in that; Gramps will be rolling his eyes, sighing a bit.

  “Don’t give me that look. Just last night, the woods at the northern border moved in ten whole feet, and the villagers there are hearing birds cry from the woods, birds they haven’t heard in years; and they’ve seen—” A pause. “They’ve seen a phoenix flying across the mountains.”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with us.”

  The king, impatient: “You know as well as I, what with the woods moving in like this, what with all the things her mother was mixed up in—”

  “And you know better than to talk about your sister to me, Roderick.” There’s no irony there. Only silence, a long silence that stretches and stretches until I almost want to burst from the length of it, and the water is growing warmer in my hand.

  And then Gramps says, “You should be getting on, then,” and he sounds almost like me, his words running together, as if he’s changed in the length of that silence from a man who could reprimand the king back to the flower man, a nobody living on the edge of the kingdom.

  When I can’t hear the king’s footsteps—even holding my breath, closing my eyes, and opening my ears real wide—I step through the door to hand my Gramps the water.

  He smiles at me as though nothing just happened, as though the world is as it always has been. He takes a drink, but he doesn’t seem about to say a word, so I ask, “What is it the king wanted?”

  He takes another drink, then twists the glass on the table. He’s fidgeting—my steady Gramps. “Nothing much,” he says. “Court matters.”

  “In truth?”

  “In truth, Marni.” Now he does look up. I know the stubbornness in his eyes. He’ll not be telling me another thing. So I swallow my questions, and I pat the top of his head with my hand, the way he used to do to me before I grew tall, and I go out to walk and think my thoughts in the woods.

  The woods at this time of day are long and spread out, the silence patient. If you hum as you walk, you might forget how many eyes are watching you.

  I don’t think, as I step over fallen logs, around bramble thickets, about the scowl on the king’s face.

  I don’t think about what he and my Gramps were talking about, neither. Not at the top of my mind. Underneath, there’s a voice that whispers to me, words I can’t make out, but they slide in anyway, and I know from the feel of them they’re about my mother.

  These half-formed thoughts blend with the rustle of the leaves, the scurry of the creatures through the undergrowth. They swirl and sift through me until I’m whispering to myself, the story that pulses in my blood, the thing that tells me who I am. My Gramps doesn’t like to talk of it much, but I know it inside and out, all he’s told me.

  My Gramps, he was the king then, and my mother was a princess. There was a prince, too, Gramps’s son, her brother. My uncle, who’s now the king.

  You will remember what I said about the girls who vanish into the woods not ever finding their way back home. It’s true. It was true for Annel, and it’s true for almost all the girls who skip off into the trees.

  Almost all, but not quite.


  One got lost, just as the hundred girls before her did. One ran away, following a laugh on the wind, believing in a wild dream, and her family fell into pain, just as the families of all those girls do.

  But this one, ten months later, as the snows were melting, this one came back. She stumbled, shivering, out of the trees and ran all the way home, and her father near didn’t recognize her, and her brother cried and cried with joy to see that she yet lived. Then it was with joy.

  Later the tears turned to fear, and then the fear to rage.

  See, this one girl didn’t come back alone. She was carrying me within her—the child of the woods, the child of the dragon.

  It would have been better, maybe, if I’d been fathered by a village lad. At least then he would have been from our kingdom. At least then he would have been human. As it was, it struck the prince as something quite like treason.

  My Gramps tried to calm his son down, keep him reasonable. But the prince wouldn’t listen. Wouldn’t be turned from his path, wouldn’t stop telling everyone what she had done to them, to him.

  Soon enough, half the king’s army was after her, and the king’s son as angry as a hornet. I’ve asked Gramps, and he says there was nothing he could do, not without risking his own men turning on him. So the princess was on her own, just one young girl not that much older than I am now, and she was running from a whole big country.

  And she escaped. For many long months she kept hidden—I reckon she must have been clever to keep away from them for so long. I was almost one by the time they found us, and they’d been looking since before I was born.

  They killed her, then, my uncle and his men, and my Gramps couldn’t stop them. He did try—he got in the way of the sword before it found her, and that’s the one that took the strength in his legs, that made it so he’d never walk straight again.