by Kathi Appelt
See Sabine: intrepid hunter.
See Sabine: loyal friend.
See Sabine: lion-hearted.
72
WHAT DOES A snake live on when she is trapped in a jar for a thousand years? Even an enchanted being like Grandmother Moccasin needs something to sustain her. Wishes are not enough, surely. A snake cannot survive on those alone, even one with magic in her blood. Grandmother twirled around in her clay prison. Hope filled the jar.
• • •
After Night Song slipped into the creek on that night a thousand years ago, Hawk Man went wild with hope. He clung to it like a spider to a web. He was desperate with it. Hope that he was mistaken, that he had misread the terrible tracks in the sand. Hope, bright and slippery, wrapped itself around him.
His daughter, the little girl who glimmered, watched him walk back and forth along the banks of the creek, his feet pounding the red shore, hope urging him on. She listened as he called Night Song’s name, called it over and over, until his throat was raw and sore, called some more, hoped that she would swim back to him. Night Song. Hope was caught in his chest, in his legs, his thighs, his feet. He was covered with it, it settled on his skin like sweat. He was so consumed by it that he could not turn his face away from the water. Finally, he stopped pacing and slumped down on the ground beside it.
The girl was afraid that she would lose Hawk Man, too, that he would also disappear. Since she had pointed out her mother’s footprints, her father had not even looked at her. All that hope took him away from her, like the night had taken her mother.
When at last Hawk Man stopped his frantic pacing and sat down, the girl walked to his place by the creek and sat next to him. She didn’t know what words to say. Didn’t have the language for all this loss. So she leaned her head on his shoulder, and then, like she had done when she was just a day old, she held her hand up to him and touched him on the chin. It was the only thing she knew to do.
And finally, for at least a little while, the circling birds settled back into their nests. They had done all they could. As the little girl leaned against Hawk Man, she looked at the jar with its crescent moons and the etching of the huge snake on its surface. She noticed the graceful curves of the serpent’s lines, the exactness of the diamond-shaped scales, the large head with its eyes set wide apart. Grandmother. The girl squinted, and when she did, the snake’s tongue seemed to flicker, as though it were trying to tell her something. At once the girl knew that here was someone who could tell her what had happened to her mother, one who could explain why her mother had disappeared, one who knew the forest best.
Hope, brilliant, flew onto her shoulders, its invisible feathers ablaze. Hope stirred the air around her, chirred into her ears, whispered the name she needed to say out loud. “Grandmother.”
The girl knew what she had to do. She had to find Grandmother Moccasin. Grandmother would know how to help. She would know where to find her mother. She would know how to help her father.
Grandmother, with her old magic. She would know.
73
THAT NIGHT, WHILE her father slept, the girl sat up from her mat. Beside her sat the jar. By the tiny fragment of light from the new moon, she rubbed her thumb over the smooth edge of the rim. As she did, she felt the last touches of her mother’s own fingers where they had rubbed the smooth surface. The jar seemed to hum. She rose and lifted it into her arms and held on to it as hard as she could. It did not seem as heavy as it had before. Silently she walked out of the hut, and down to the edge of the creek, careful not to wake anyone, especially her hope-filled father.
Once there, she set the jar down again in the soft sand, just as she had done earlier that morning. “I’ll return to you,” she said, and ran her hand along the smooth curve of its round body. As if in reply, the small crescent moons carved by her mother’s thumbnail glinted in the light of the pale moon, tiny sparks in the darkness. Then she turned, put her own feet into her mother’s disappearing footsteps, and stepped into the water. It was cold, and she had to gulp to keep from crying out.
As the water came up to her chin, she held her breath and rolled onto her back. How many times had she floated on the creek’s surface? Her mother had taught her how to ride on the back of the current and let the water hold her up. It was just that her mother had always been there with her, holding her as she drifted by, and then pushed her back to the edge of the village. Now here she was, alone in the water. The current that curled around her small body felt swifter than she remembered. She looked over her shoulder and caught a last glimpse of the jar. The etching of Grandmother glowed.
Water splashed over her face. For a moment she felt a small jolt of panic race through her chest, and she began to flail against the push of the water. Then she remembered, Grandmother could tell her what had happened to her mother. She would find Grandmother Moccasin. She relaxed and let the current carry her, carry her along on its steady roll to the south, let her float on its silvery surface until it pushed her to the other side, where she climbed onto the quiet bank and stepped into the deep, deep woods.
Only the trees took notice, and they could not say a thing. If they could have, they would have told the girl that she had gone too far. A thousand years ago this girl in search of Grandmother Moccasin, this one and only daughter of Hawk Man and Night Song, rode the creek to the other side, but she rode too far. Here, then, is a little girl, radiant with hope. Lost.
74
SOMEONE ELSE WAS on the hunt. Gar Face. His nights and days were filled with the prospect of trapping and killing the Alligator King. Each night he spent more and more time poling his pirogue along the waters of the large bayou. Several times, the beast had released bubbles underneath his boat. But each time, it was in a different part of the bayou. And it didn’t happen every night.
Gar Face knew he was there. He knew that the monster was teasing him. This was no ordinary alligator. He began to consider what it would take to bring the creature in: something for bait, a sturdy chain, a long-handled knife, and his rifle. He clutched his father’s rifle in his hand and stared at the murky water.
Determination, brilliant and cold, curled around his heart.
He closed his eyes and envisioned the other trappers and poachers, the ones who sneered at him whenever he drove to the old tavern along the hidden road, that invisible tavern, tucked away beneath the canopy of trees, the blackjacks and junipers, the sweet gums and tupelos. In all the nights he had been there, no one had ever invited him to drink with them, inquired about his health, or asked him what his real name was. He had felt their disgust in the crevices of his broken face. Disgust burrowed deeply into the scars left there by his father.
What would they say when he showed them the skin of a gator a hundred feet long? What name would they give him then?
• • •
In her jar Grandmother remembered all her names. Lamia, her original and oldest. Wife, given to her by her beloved, the one who turned his back on her. Sister, bestowed upon her by her reptile cousins, the copperheads, the eastern hognoses, the yellow corn snakes, and also by her friend the Alligator King. Grandmother Moccasin, her best known, a tribute from the tribe of cottonmouths. The one that mattered most: Mother. That’s what Night Song had called her. She tucked her head beneath her scaly body and sighed. Mother.
75
AFTER SO MANY hours of looking for Night Song, after so much calling and calling, until his throat was raw, after searching in the woods, Hawk Man knew the truth. He did not have to see her to know that Night Song had broken the rule, she had slipped into her serpent skin and was lost to him now. He knew that was the only reason that she had not come home.
Hadn’t she known the rule?
He searched his memory, but he could not recall discussing it with her. He had taken it for granted that she had known, just as all the shape-shifters knew. Didn’t they? Surely, he thought, her mother had told her. Grandmother Moccasin. She should have told her.
As he tumbled onto h
is sleeping mat inside his hut, every bone, every muscle, every inch of him exhausted, he fell into a deep, deep sleep. He did not notice the rising of the slim moon. He did not hear his daughter pick up her jar and slip out of the hut. He did not feel the sun rising above the roof and warming the day. Instead, he felt only weariness, thick and hard. He slept and slept and slept.
He slept so long that he got lost in the solitary act of sleeping. And while he slept, he dreamed. He dreamed of stretching his wings and floating on the warm air currents, of soaring over the tops of the trees and looking over the wide and green expanse beneath him. He felt the rush of the breeze as it lifted him, as it curled around him in the sky. He saw the bluey blue of the water far to the south and the inky black of the night as he spun below the stars.
Flight. How long had it been since he had lifted his body up into the sky? More than ten years! Long years. Flight. He missed it, ached for it, longed to spread his arms and soar. Flight.
In his dreams he sailed into the air. Why, he wondered, had he given it all up? He circled the green woods below. Why?
And then he remembered the lullaby, the beautiful song without lyrics, the one that had called directly to him. Night Song! Suddenly flight didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was Night Song. That was all. In his dreams he started falling, spinning, faster and faster. Yes, he had given up his wings for a different kind of flight, the flight of his heart. Night Song.
But there was another, wasn’t there?
Another. One who glimmered, whose skin changed colors in the light, his daughter. Yes. His daughter.
He remembered her. He had sung his own song to her, a father’s song. Then sleep wrapped its heavy arm around him.
He had another name too: Father.
76
FROM THE DEEPEST part of the Bayou Tartine, the Alligator King watched each night as the man poled his boat around and around. It was becoming a game to him. He knew that the man was looking for him. He also knew that the man would eventually try to trick him. It was a dangerous game this man was playing.
The Alligator King, however, didn’t mind danger. It had been a long time since anyone had tried to hunt him down. Many centuries earlier, a group of them from the old village had ventured into his territory, looking for him.
Alas, they had made the sad mistake of trying to cross the quicksand on the triangle of land between the two bayous. The alligator had pulled himself onto the bank and watched as they slipped beneath the shifting mud. He could still remember their pitiful cries. But he could do nothing to help them, even though he was sorry that the quicksand took them before he could have them for dinner. Alas.
He knew the man in the boat would not make the same mistake. But he also knew that a mistake would be made.
• • •
Mistakes. In her underground prison, Grandmother swirled in a circle. Mistakes. Ssssssssttttttt!!!!
Everyone made mistakes.
And there was always a price to pay.
77
AT THE BASE of the old tree, Puck sat just in front of the opening to his den. In these past several days he had accomplished three important things: finding a place to sleep, filling up his belly, and recognizing the moon. But despite these small victories, he couldn’t shake the mistake he had made when he broke the rule about the Underneath. Mistake was all around him, right here in his mud-caked fur, here in this patch of sunlight, here in the trees looming overhead. Mistake, mistake, mistake.
Mostly it was in the rushing sound of the salty creek, the last place he had seen his mother. Promise you’ll go back. It was as if the creek itself were speaking to him. He had promised. He had.
And that promise bound him as tightly as the chain that bound Ranger to the post beside the tilting house.
Ranger. Puck cocked his ears. Why didn’t the old hound bay? Without a beacon, Puck had no way of knowing which direction to go. He looked below at the tumbling creek. He blinked. There was the hummingbird. She was there, just over the water, a small rainbow, and then she was gone.
While he watched, a shadow filled up the sunny patch in front of him. He looked up. The bird! It was the same large bird that had dropped the mouse. Puck fluffed up his fur. Was the bird returning for his lost mouse? The little cat hissed. He had scared the bird before, and he could do it again.
But just in case, he slipped into his quiet den and curled up into a circle, a circle of fur and mud and something else.
Loneliness.
As deep as the creek.
78
WITH THEIR ROOTS exposed to the very innards of the Earth, where they can feel all its tremors and movements, trees, with their branches skimming the sky, branches that serve as antennae, can tell when something is awry. They knew then, a thousand years earlier, that when Night Song donned her serpent skin she began to die.
From the moment Grandmother told Night Song that she could not return to the village of humans, that she was destined to wear her serpent skin for the rest of her life, the smaller snake had climbed into the branches of the cypress above the bayou and refused to come down. She refused to eat. She also refused to sing.
At first Grandmother left her alone. Soon she’ll feel better, she thought. Grandmother waited. Grandmother watched.
Then one morning, as the sun began to rise, she looked up to see Night Song and gasped. Her daughter was a different color. Her shiny skin, black as coal, once so black it looked blue, had changed. No longer shiny at all, even in the goldy sun, it looked purplish, with a slight tinge of yellow.
If Night Song were a human, her body might look like a bruise, that color that is the result of blood pooling just beneath the skin. Grandmother was alarmed. She called to Night Song.
Come to me, my lovely daughter.
But Night Song could not hear her. The only things she could hear inside her head were the echoing voices of her husband and daughter. Even though neither of them was nearby, that was all she could hear. That was all she would ever hear.
She did not hear Grandmother calling to her.
Sing, my daughter, sing!
Did not hear her at all.
Despite Grandmother’s desperate pleas for Night Song to eat and swim and sing, the smaller snake remained coiled in the branch, listening only to the two voices she loved so well, listening to them over and over, swirling through her brain, through every diamond scale.
How long did Night Song stay there, losing her color, and listening only to two invisible voices? If you could translate the language of mulberry and tallow and cedar, the trees might tell you that she did not last for very long.
Her colors diminished, the purple turned to lavender, the yellow turned to gray, until finally the morning came when there was no color at all, only the merest shadow of a hollow body. Here was one of the waterfolk dying of heartbreak, becoming transparent, her scales as clear as glass.
And while her diamond scales, one by one, vanished, her own daughter became thoroughly and profoundly lost, far away in a distant part of the forest, all alone, and back in the village her husband was caught in a sleep so deep, he couldn’t move.
At last, bereft of all substance, Night Song, beloved by the denizens of the deep, piney woods, and most of all by her husband and daughter, faded into air.
79
WHEN THE DAUGHTER of Night Song and Hawk Man stepped out of the creek, she did not realize that she had floated far to the south, much farther than she should have. She shook herself off and leaned against a friendly tupelo tree, waited for the morning to drift through the branches and offer her some light.
She looked around. Nothing was familiar. She blinked her eyes to try to get her bearings, to try to remember what her mother had told her about finding Grandmother.
Cross the creek to the other side and walk until you get to a place where the ground is so soft, your footsteps will fill with water. Go, and go some more. When you find the place where the cypress trees grow in the middle of the water, where the moss dra
pes down like curtains, so thick they shade the sun, where the land shifts and sways, there you’ll find Grandmother.
She stared at the landscape in front of her. To an unknowing eye, it might look just the same as the landscape that surrounded her village. But when a girl grows up in a thick forest, she knows the trees, knows their differences and similarities. The trees she saw here were not unusual. But there were too many spaces in between. Here, the pines and hollies and winged elms were not as close to one another, their branches did not intertwine as tightly as those pines and hollies and winged elms that she knew, they were more spread out, the gaps between their trunks were wider. She looked up and realized that she could see more of the sky than she ever had, open and blue. So much sky, so much blue. She stretched her arms and let it settle on her skin. For a small moment she felt happy.
But then she looked at her feet and realized that the ground here was different too. There was more grass and fewer pine needles. It was firmer than the soft ground of the wetlands that she knew so well. She looked around. Where was she?
This could not be the way to the deep cypress groves. This could not be the dark area where the bayous met. The ground was too hard, the trees were too sparse. The sky was too big.
“Where am I?” she asked.
80
A THOUSAND YEARS later, a small gray cat with a patch of silver fur looked out across the creek and asked the same question. Below, the water tumbled by, whispering as it rolled. Here and here and here, it seemed to chant. Puck wondered. Where was here? Where was Sabine, his twin? Where was Ranger, his hound-dog papa? Where was his home in the Underneath?