by Jane Yolen
The Moon Ribbon
THERE WAS ONCE A plain but good-hearted girl named Sylva whose sole possession was a ribbon her mother had left her. It was a strange ribbon, the color of moonlight, for it had been woven from the grey hairs of her mother and her mother’s mother and her mother’s mother’s mother before her.
Sylva lived with her widowed father in a great house by the forest’s edge. Once the great house had belonged to her mother, but when she died, it became Sylva’s father’s house to do with as he willed. And what he willed was to live simply and happily with his daughter without thinking of the day to come.
But one day, when there was little enough to live on, and only the great house to recommend him, Sylva’s father married again, a beautiful widow who had two beautiful daughters of her own.
It was a disastrous choice, for no sooner were they wed than it was apparent the woman was mean in spirit and meaner in tongue. She dismissed most of the servants and gave their chores over to Sylva, who followed her orders without complaint. For simply living in her mother’s house with her loving father seemed enough for the girl.
After a bit, however, the old man died in order to have some peace and the house passed on to the stepmother. Scarcely two days had passed or maybe three, when the stepmother left off mourning the old man and turned on Sylva. She dismissed the last of the servants without their pay.
“Girl,” she called out, for she never used Sylva’s name, “you will sleep in the kitchen and do the charring.” And from that time on it was so.
Sylva swept the floor and washed and mended the family’s clothing. She sowed and hoed and tended the fields. She ground the wheat and kneaded the bread, and she waited on the others as though she were a servant. But she did not complain.
Yet late at night, when the stepmother and her own two daughters were asleep, Sylva would weep bitterly into her pillow, which was nothing more than an old broom laid in front of the hearth.
One day, when she was cleaning out an old desk, Sylva came upon a hidden drawer she had never seen before. Trembling, she opened the drawer. It was empty except for a silver ribbon with a label attached to it. For Sylva read the card. The Moon Ribbon of Her Mother’s Hair. She took it out and stared at it. And all that she had lost was borne in upon her. She felt the stars start in her eyes, and so as not to cry she took the tag off and began to stroke the ribbon with her hand. It was rough and smooth at once and shone the rays of the moon.
At that moment her stepsisters came into the room.
“What is that?” asked one. “Is it nice? It is mine.”
“I want it. I saw it first,” cried the other.
The noise brought the stepmother to them. “Show it to me,” she said.
Obediently, Sylva came over and held the ribbon out to her. But when the stepmother picked it up, it looked like no more than strands of grey hair woven together unevenly. It was prickly to the touch.
“Disgusting,” said the stepmother, dropping it back into Sylva’s hand. “Throw it out at once.”
“Burn it,” cried one stepsister.
“Bury it,” cried the other.
“Oh, please. It was my mother’s. She left it for me. Please let me keep it,” begged Sylva.
The stepmother looked again at the grey strand. “Very well,” she said with a grim smile. “It suits you.” And she strode out of the room, her daughters behind her.
Now she had the silver ribbon, Sylva thought her life would be better. But instead it became worse. As if to punish her for speaking out for the ribbon, her sisters were at her to wait on them both day and night. And wheareas before she’d had to sleep by the hearth, she now had to sleep outside with the animals. Yet she did not complain or run away, for she was tied by her memories to her mother’s house.
One night, when the frost was on the grass turning each blade into a silver spear, Sylva threw herself to the ground in tears. And the silver ribbon, which she had tied loosely about her hair, slipped off and lay on the ground before her. She had never seen it in the moonlight. It glittered and shone and seemed to ripple.
Sylva bent over to touch it and her tears fell upon it. Suddenly the ribbon began to grow and change, and as it changed the air was filled with a woman’s soft voice speaking these words:
“Silver ribbon, silver hair,
Carry Sylva with great care.
Bring my daughter home.”
And there at Sylva’s feet was a silver river that glittered and shone and rippled in the moonlight.
There was neither boat nor bridge, but Sylva did not care. She thought the river would wash away her sorrows, and without a single word, she threw herself in.
But she did not sink. Instead she floated like a swan and the river bore her on, on past houses and hills, past high places and low. And strange to say, she was not wet at all.
At last she was carried around a great bend in the river and deposited gently on a grassy slope that came right down to the water’s edge. Sylva scrambled up onto the bank and looked about. There was a great meadow of grass so green and still, it might have been painted on. At the meadow’s rim, near a dark forest, sat a house that was like and yet not like the one in which Sylva lived.
“Surely someone will be there who can tell me where I am and why I have been brought here, she thought.” So she made her way across the meadow and only where she stepped down did the grass move. When she moved beyond, the grass sprang back and was the same as before. And though she passed larkspur and meadowsweet, clover and rye, they did not seem like real flowers, for they had no smell at all.
Am I dreaming? she wondered, or am I dead? But she did not say it out loud, for she was afraid to speak into the silence.
Sylva walked up to the house and hesitated at the door. She feared to knock and yet feared equally not to. As she was deciding, the door opened of itself and she walked in.
She found herself in a large, long, dark hall with a single crystal door at the end that emitted a strange glow the color of moonlight. As she walked down the hall, her shoes made no clatter on the polished wood floor. And when she reached the door, she tried to peer through into the room beyond, but the crystal panes merely gave back her own reflection twelve times.
Sylva reached for the doorknob and pulled sharply. The glowing crystal knob came off in her hand. She would have wept then, but anger stayed her; she beat her fist against the door and it suddenly gave way.
Inside was a small room lit only by a fireplace and a round, white globe that hung from the ceiling like a pale, wan moon. Before the fireplace stood a tall woman dressed all in white. Her silver-white hair was unbound and braded to her knees. Around her neck was a silver ribbon.
“Welcome, my daughter,” she said.
“Are you my mother?” asked Sylva wonderingly, for what little she remembered of her mother, she remembered no one as grand as this.
“I am if you make me so,” came the reply.
“And how do I do that?” asked Sylva.
“Give me your hand.”
As the woman spoke, she seemed to move away, yet she moved not at all. Instead the floor between them moved and cracked apart. Soon they were separated by a great chasm which was so black it seemed to have no bottom.
“I cannot reach,” said Sylva.
“You must try,” the woman replied.
So Sylva clutched the crystal knob to her breast and leaped, but it was too far. As she fell, she heard a woman’s voice speaking from behind her and before her and all about her, warm with praise.
“Well done, my daughter. You are halfway home.”
Sylva landed gently on the meadow grass, but a moment’s walk from her house. In her hand she still held the knob, shrunk now to the size of a jewel. The river shimmered once before her and was gone, and where it had been was the silver ribbon, lying limp and damp in the morning frost.
The door to the house stood open. She drew a deep breath and went in.
“What is that?” cried one of the st
epsisters when she saw the crystalline jewel in Sylva’s hand.
“I want it,” cried the other, grabbing it from her.
“I will take that,” said the stepmother, snatching it from them all. She held it up to the light and examined it. “It will fetch a good price and repay me for my care of you. Where did you get it?” she asked Sylva.
Sylva tried to tell them of the ribbon and the river, the tall woman and the black crevasse. But they laughed at her and did not believe her. Yet they could not explain away the jewel. So they left her then and went off to the city to sell it. When they returned, it was late. They thrust Sylva outside to sleep and went themselves to their comfortable beds to dream of their riches.
Sylva sat on the cold ground and thought about what had happened. She reached up and took down the ribbon from her hair. She stroked it, and it felt smooth and soft and yet hard, too. Carefully she placed it on the ground.
In the moonlight, the ribbon glittered and shone. Sylva recalled the song she had heard, so she sang it to herself:
“Silver ribbon, silver hair,
Carry Sylva with great care,
Bring my daughter home.”
Suddenly the ribbon began to grow and change, and there at her feet was a silver highway that glittered and glistened in the moonlight.
Without a moment’s hesitation , Sylva got up and stepped out onto the road and waited for it to bring her to the magical house.
But the road did not move.
“Strange,” she said to herself. “Why does it not carry me as the river did?”
Sylva stood on the road and waited a moment more, then tentatively set one foot in front of the other. As soon as she had set off on her own, the road set off, too, and they moved together past fields and forests, faster and faster, till the scenery seemed to fly by and blur into a moon-bleached rainbow of yellows, greys, and black.
The road took a great turning and then quite suddenly stopped, but Sylva did not. She scrambled up the bank where the road ended and found herself again in the meadow. At the far rim of the grass, where the forest began, was the house she had seen before.
Sylva strode purposefully through the grass, and this time the meadow was filled with the song of birds, the meadowlark and the bunting and the sweet jug-jug-jug of the nightingale. She could smell fresh-mown hay and the pungent pine.
The door of the house stood wide open, so Sylva went right in. The long hall was no longer dark but filled with the strange moonglow. And when she reached the crystal door at the end, and gazed at her reflection twelve times in the glass, she saw her own face set with strange grey eyes and long grey hair. She put her hand up to her mouth to Stop herself from crying out. But the sound came through, and the door opened of itself. Inside was the tall woman, all in white, and the globe above her was as bright as a harvest moon.
“Welcome, my sister,” the woman said.
“I have no sister,” said Sylva, “but the two stepsisters I left at home. And you are none of those.”
“I am if you make me so.”
“How do I do that?”
“Give me back my heart, which you took from me yesterday.”
“I did not take your heart. I took nothing but a crystal jewel.”
The woman smiled. “It was my heart.”
Sylva looked stricken. “But I cannot give it back. My stepmother took it from me.”
“No one can take unless you give.”
“I had no choice.”
“There is always a choice,” the woman said.
Sylva would have cried then, but a sudden thought struck her. “Then it must have been your choice to give me your heart.”
The woman smiled again, nodded gently, and held out her hand.
Sylva placed her hand in the woman’s, and there glowed for a moment on the woman’s breast a silvery jewel that melted and disappeared.
“Now will you give me your heart?”
“I have done that already,” said Sylva, and as she said it, she knew it to be true.
The woman reached over and touched Sylva on her breast and her heart sprang out onto the woman’s hand and turned into two fiery jewels. “Once given, twice gained,” said the woman. She handed one of the jewels back to Sylva. “Only take care that you give each jewel with love.”
Sylva felt the jewel warm and glowing in her hand, and at its touch felt such comfort as she had not in many days. She closed her eyes and a smile came on her face. And when she opened her eyes again, she was standing on the meadow grass not two steps from her own door. It was morning, and by her feet lay the silver ribbon, limp and damp from the frost.
The door to her house stood open.
Sylva drew in her breath, picked up the ribbon, and went in.
“What has happened to your hair?” asked one stepsister.
“What has happened to your eyes?” asked the other.
For indeed Sylva’s hair and eyes had turned as silver as the moon.
But the stepmother saw only the fiery red jewel in Sylva’s hand. “Give it to me,” she said, pointing to the gem.
At first Sylva held out her hand, but then quickly drew it back. “I cannot,” she said.
The stepmother’s eyes became hard. “Girl, give it here.”
“I will not,” said Sylva.
The stepmother’s eyes narrowed. “Then you shall tell me where you got it.”
“That I shall, and gladly,” said Sylva. She told them of the silver ribbon and the silver road, of the house with the crystal door. But strange to say she left out the woman and her words.
The stepmother closed her eyes and thought. At last she said, “Let me see this wondrous silver ribbon, that I may believe what you say.”
Sylva handed her the ribbon, but she was not fooled by her stepmother’s tone.
The moment the silver ribbon lay prickly and limp in the stepmother’s hand, she looked up triumphantly at Sylva. Her face broke into a wolfish grin. “Fool,” she said, “the magic is herein. With this ribbon there are jewels for the taking.” She marched out of the door and the stepsisters hurried behind her.
Sylva walked after them, but slowly, stopping in the open door.
The stepmother flung the ribbon down. In the early morning sun it glowed as if with a cold flame.
“Say the words, girl,” the stepmother commanded.
From the doorway Sylva whispered:
“Silver ribbon, silver hair,
Lead the ladies with great care,
Lead them to their home.”
The silver ribbon wriggled and writhed in the sunlight, and as they watched, it turned into a silvered stair that went down into the ground.
“Wait,” called Sylva. “Do not go.” But it was too late.
With a great shout, the stepmother gathered up her skirts and ran down the steps, her daughters fast behind her. And before Sylva could move, the ground had closed up after them and the meadow was as before.
On the grass lay the silver ribbon, limp and dull. Sylva went and picked it up. As she did so, the jewel melted in her hand and she felt a burning in her breast. She put her hand up to it, and she felt her heart beating strongly beneath. Sylva smiled, put the silver ribbon in her pocket and went back into her house.
After a time, Sylva’s hair returned to its own color, except for seven silver strands, but her eyes never changed back. And when she was married and had a child of her own, Sylva plucked the silver strands from her own hair and wove them into the silver ribbon, which she kept in a wooden box. When Sylva’s child was old enough to understand, the box with the ribbon was put into her safekeeping, and she has kept them for her own daughter to this very day.
Godmother Death
YOU THINK YOU KNOW this story. You do not.
You think it comes from Ireland, from Norway, from Spain. It does not. You have heard it in Hebrew, in Swedish, in German. You have read it in French, in Italian, in Greek.
It is not a story, though many mouths have made it that way.
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It is true.
How do I know? Death, herself, told me. She told me in that whispery voice she saves for special tellings. She brushed her thick black hair away from that white forehead, and told me.
I have no reason to disbelieve her. Death does not know how to lie. She has no need to.
It happened this way, only imagine it in Death’s own soft breeze of a voice. Imagine she is standing over your right shoulder speaking this true story in your ear. You do not turn to look at her. I would not advise it. But if you do turn, she will smile at you, her smile a child’s smile, a woman’s smile, the grin of a crone. But she will not tell her story anymore. She will tell yours.
It happened this way, as Death told me. She was on the road, between Cellardyke and Crail. Or between Claverham and Clifton. Or between Chagford and anywhere. Does it matter the road? It was small and winding; it was cobbled and potholed; it led from one place of human habitation to another. Horses trotted there. Dogs marked their places. Pig drovers and cattle drovers and sheepherders used those roads. So why not Death?
She was visible that day. Sometimes she plays at being mortal. It amuses her. She has had a long time trying to amuse herself. She wore her long gown kirtled above her knee. She wore her black hair up in a knot. But if you looked carefully, she did not walk like a girl of that time. She moved too freely for that, her arms swinging. She stepped on her full foot, not on the toes, not mincing. She could copy the clothes, but she never remembered how girls really walk.
A man, frantic, saw her and stopped her. He actually put his hand on her arm. It startled her. That did not happen often, that Death is startled. Or that a man puts a hand on her.
“Please,” the man said. “My Lady.” She was clearly above him, though she had thought she was wearing peasant clothes. It was the way she stood, the way she walked. “My wife is about to give birth to our child and we need someone to stand godmother. You are all who is on the road.”