by Mike Barnes
Moira knew she had to try. She couldn’t wait any longer.
It was strange to leave a place without packing or saying goodbye. But she had brought nothing with her, so she had nothing to take back. And though she had talked to the other moon children when she met them in the tunnels or around the Jampot, she found it hard to remember their names or what they had talked about. It was hard even to remember their faces. With their silvery skin and dark eyes like coals, they all looked much the same. There was only Edgewick to say goodbye to. They stood on the floor of the crater, with the foggy glowing light around their feet and the moon’s black sky above them.
“I’ll miss you,” Moira said. “You won’t have anyone to talk to.”
“That’s true,” Edgewick nodded sadly. “But I’ll have someone to watch again.”
And Moira understood, at last, what she should have guessed before. Why, from the moment she arrived, Edgewick had had nothing to do except walk on the floor of the crater and wait for her to walk and talk with him.
“Goodbye,” Moira said.
“Goodbye,” said Edgewick. “Fly hard.”
Moira turned and walked a few paces away. She unfolded her wings and felt them rise above her back. They felt as strong, or almost, as they had back on her window ledge. She turned to look one last time at Edgewick, memorizing his yellow hair and mercury skin. He made an “Up, up!” motion with his hands. He was telling her to go . . . go . . . go. She flapped once, to clear the ground, then twice more, three times, hard. She was high above Edgewick now. He looked like a flagpole or a tall, bare tree. She was halfway up the walls of the deep crater. Before she left, she made one slow gliding circle. Now, around the bare stick that was Edgewick, she saw dots as the other children gathered, their pale upturned faces shining like mushrooms. It was flight that drew them out, someone coming or going. Only that could tempt them from the Otherones in the flickering earthlight of their telescopes. As she began to climb higher, they left by ones and twos, disappearing like ants back into their shadows and tunnels. Only Edgewick remained, unmoving, watching faithfully.
She climbed in a spiral the walls of the crater, just as she had come down them, and then began the long flapping journey across space back to earth. Her second wings were not as strong and it took her much longer, many days and nights of hard flying. Earthlight grew stronger until it was a blue lake of light she was swimming through. Earth’s huge coloured continents and oceans filled her sight until the gray and black moon behind her seemed tiny, almost a dream. Her country loomed . . . then her city, her street, her building . . . and then her window, still open partway, as if waiting for her to return. Her bed was made up and the covers turned down for her. She slipped into it quietly, anxious to see her mom again but glad to have some time by herself to get used to being back. For now she felt herself to be not quite a moon child, not quite an earth child—but a hawk that flapped in blackness somewhere between the two.
In the morning would be her reunion with her mom, and the happy tears they would shed together. And many questions—Where did you go? Why did you stay away so long?—that Moira wouldn’t be able to answer. No one on the moon had told her that the life there was a secret, but she felt somehow it was. And besides, no one would understand or even believe that other world who hadn’t been there. And if they had been there, there was nothing she needed to say.
She got better, but very slowly. It was many more months before she could go outside, and more months after that before she could return to school. She was older than the other children in her class, who kept their distance from her, as if they sensed she had been to a strange place and might be somehow dangerous. Moira didn’t mind. She liked being by herself. Her wings were gone now. She had only two small sore places, like tender bruises, where they’d been. It had started happening as soon as she got back, even though she wasn’t eating Jamcake or anything like it. Moira knew, a little sadly, that they would never return. And that she would never tell anyone the whole truth about where she’d been. No one would ever know that when she looked up at the moon, she saw more than a white shining disc in the sky.
Sometimes in art class she drew pictures of craters and tunnels and children with silver skin and a boy so tall and thin the other children said he must be a skeleton. Good, good, very interesting, said the art teacher, but the way he said it told Moira that her pictures were not good or interesting, or not in the right way at least, and she went back to drawing what the other children were drawing: houses with chimneys with smoke curling out of them, clouds, trees, and a yellow sun. She did well in art and English and music, and not quite so well in math and gym. At home or in school, she tried to do everything as well as she could, so that Edgewick would have a good life to watch from the moon.
The Jailed Wizards
A wizard caught a rival wizard and locked him in a dungeon beneath his castle. First he stripped the captive of all his magical powers. Then he left him in a small, bare room, cold and damp and almost completely dark except for a bit of grayish light that leaked through a tiny barred window high above the floor. The stone walls were so thick that the imprisoned wizards—who were numerous, for the powerful wizard made war on anyone whose magic he felt threatened his own—could not even hear each other’s screams.
“How long will you keep me here?” the prisoner asked before his captor shut the stone door.
“How long does a wizard live?”
“Forever,” said the prisoner.
“That is how long you will remain,” said the powerful wizard. And he closed the massive door with a crash, and sealed it with an unbreakable spell.
Years passed. Twice a day a slot beside the door clanked open. The first time, a dirty hand pushed through a lump of stale bread and a cup of water; later, another dirty hand took back the cup. Nothing else occurred. Until one day the massive door creaked open on its ancient hinges, and the powerful wizard stood before his former rival, now filthy and wretched and listless with despair. “I have decided forever is the wrong sentence for you,” he announced. “There is a crack in the wall that lengthens a little each year. I am sure you have studied it. When it reaches the floor, I will let you go.”
“I thank you,” mumbled the prisoner.
“Don’t,” said the wizard. “This is not mercy. I want you to suffer as much as possible. Those who lose all hope do not suffer like those who still believe their suffering may one day end. That is all. Goodbye.”
Years passed again, but now they passed with the constant measuring of a tiny crack. Many times a day, the jailed wizard reached up and ran his hand over the break in the stone, wondering if it had lengthened by a hair or if he was only imagining that. It did, in fact, grow longer, but it did so with horrible slowness. Once, he did not allow himself to measure the crack for a hundred days—two hundred openings and closings of the slot—and when he measured it again, he was sure it was a finger’s width closer to the floor. Ten years passed in this way. Then twenty years. Then thirty. Now the crack in the wall had reached the level of his eyes. Now, he thought, I know I will get out one day. But when? In five hundred years? A thousand? I mustn’t think of that. One day I’ll leave.
Many long years later, the jailed wizard was standing next to the wall where he spent his days, examining the crack with his eyes and fingers to see if it had changed, when he was startled by a tiny movement just above him. Something very small and dark was moving within the crack. As the wizard watched, an ant stuck its head out of the crack, its tiny antennae moving in the stale air. Tears filled the wizard’s eyes to find his absolute loneliness broken by a visit from another creature, even an ant. Tears of joy and misery ran down his wrinkled face and into his long, dirty beard. Despite his extreme hunger, in the coming days he put little pellets of bread in the crack, and soon he had a line of ants he could watch, coming to get his crumbs and carrying them along the crack and out the window back to their nest. The sight brought joy and endless interest, and it stirred guilty m
emories.
Long ago, in one of the endless wars that are a wizard’s life, he had defeated a very minor wizard. The defeated wizard had been a storyteller, which is one of the lowest and most common grades of magic. Cruelly, out of sheer contempt, the victorious wizard had taken the defeated wizard’s strength and long life, though he had left him, as a power not worth stealing, his storytelling art. Now the jailed wizard struggled to remember what he had once known of this lesser magic. A story was at least a way of reaching other ears. This, after freedom, was what he longed for most.
Tiny animals, he remembered, were often used to gather stories and return them to the storyteller. Since the animals couldn’t speak our language, people told them things they would tell no other person, secure in the knowledge they could not repeat it. He couldn’t remember exactly how it was done, but even without a wizard’s magic he still had a wizard’s cunning, and he invented a way. He placed a tiny pellet of bread inside his ear and stood with his ear against the crack. Soon he felt the tickle of an ant entering his ear. He turned from the wall and plugged his ear with his finger. He felt the ant touch his finger and then, finding no way out, turn the other way and explore the inner chambers of his ear, walking around the words of the story in his head. When he judged that enough time had passed, he unplugged his ear and stood with his ear against the crack and let the ant find its way out. He watched it carry the pellet of bread and his story away up the crack toward the window high above. Would it carry it to someone who could understand? Would it be crushed under a careless foot? Perhaps he would need to tell a thousand stories to a thousand ants before one would find a listening ear. He could do that. Before his imprisonment he had lived a long, eventful life, each day of which had teemed with stories. Sitting with his back against the stone wall, he began to prepare the next one.
Some weeks later, in the village near the powerful wizard’s castle, an old, sick storyteller was sitting, as he always did, by the window of his hut. A line of bread crumbs and sugar led from his window to a stone covered with black ink, and beyond that to a sheet of clean white paper. The storyteller no longer had the strength to make up stories on his own, and he lived in the shrinking hope that one would come to him by itself. Day by day, ants walked over his trail of sugar crumbs and over his ink and paper. But the marks they made with their tiny inky feet spelled chaos, spelled nonsense—spelled nothing. Still, he had always done all he could do, and all he could do now was wait.
On this day, an ant came in across the window sill, walked down over his ink stone, and across his paper. Around it went in a circle—O—and then down, and up, and across a short curve, and down again—n. O . . . n . . . c . . . e—“Once,” the storyteller murmured with excitement, “once . . . and then?” Gently he sprinkled more sugar crumbs on the page, and waited, while the ant waved its antennae, and continued tracing letters with its feet.
I knew, I knew, I knew, whispered the storyteller. I knew there was no better place to wait than near a castle filled with jailed wizards, souls with endless tales to tell and no one but the ants to tell them to.
Neverday: The Grateful Sprites
You will find on Saturday
You on Friday next
You will dig till Neverday
And then you’ll find what’s best
In a village by the sea, a fisherman made a hard but happy living from his nets and boat. Often he came home empty-handed after a long day of setting and hauling, but he was young and strong and did not become discouraged for long. He remembered the other kind of day that came every so often, when fish of every kind slid into his boat and piled up flopping around his knees. On such days, after he had sold his catch at the market and given his parents what they needed for the house, he put whatever coins he had left in a wooden savings box he had carved. He loved a girl who worked in the fish market, and they planned to marry when the box was full. Her initials were cut into the bottom of the box, where he could feel them with his fingers whenever he counted his savings.
One day, he hauled up a strange fish in his net. Large and bright green, it lay quivering on its side, with one eye staring at him, under a pile of flipping and squirming herring. When he had removed the herring, he saw that a strand of the net was caught under the green fish’s gill, with other strands wound tightly around its tail. As he moved to free it, the fish began speaking to him. Its lips moved only a little, but the voice, though quiet, was clear and high. I am a water sprite, said the green fish, put here under a spell. If you help me you will receive treasure more than you have ever wished for.
With or without the offer of reward, the fisherman was glad to help, and did as the green fish told him.
With his filleting knife, he scraped a green scale from the fish’s side. Then a few salt crystals drying on the fish’s spiny dorsal fin. Now you must take a drop of my blood, said the green fish. The fisherman hesitated; though he cut up fish every day, he had no wish to hurt this one. Go ahead, said the clear high voice. So the fisherman stuck the point of his knife into the fish’s thick back muscle, where it would bleed but strike nothing vital. A bead of red blood stood on the point. Now take a piece of flesh from my belly. Again the fisherman hesitated, but did as he was told. He cut a little wedge out of the fish’s orange-yellow belly.
Now put those things in your left hand, and free me, said the fish.
The fisherman did as he was told. Green scale, salt crystals, drop of blood, and wedge of flesh went into his left hand, and he closed his fist over it, and with his right hand freed the green fish’s gill and tail. As soon as he lifted the last strand, the fish was gone and a shining slender boy, draped in seaweed, stood in his boat.
The fisherman stepped back in shock, and heard a small clattering in the bottom of the boat. Looking down, he saw the jewels that had fallen from his open hand. He picked them up wonderingly: an emerald, three small pearls, a ruby, and a gold coin. He looked up at the slender boy with his glowing milky skin.
His pale green eyes had a mischievous twinkle, though he did not smile. They are yours to keep, he said, but if you bury them in a chest and wait a year, you will have more treasure than you have ever hoped for.
With that, the boy leapt nimbly into the water, and the astonished fisherman watched as a long milky shape sped quickly into the depths and out of sight.
That afternoon, on a pebbly beach beside the fish market, he and his beloved made their future plans excitedly. Though neither of them could judge the true worth of the jewels the fisherman now carried in a little bag hung inside his shirt, they knew that in a single miraculous encounter he had more than filled his savings box. They could marry now. Except—was it better to wait? What of the sprite’s promise of even greater treasure if the jewels were buried in a chest for a year? They debated the question—spend what they had, or wait while it grew—each taking one side and then the other.
At last, however, the fisherman pointed out with a laugh that there was a middle way—obvious, yet they hadn’t seen it. Bury the chest for a year, get married in the meantime; and if in a year it gave back only what they had now, why that was already more than they needed. She fretted that the sprite might trick them somehow, but he told her not to worry; why would the creature he had rescued want to trick him? Kissing him lightly, she agreed.
A year later to the day, he went alone to the small, unvisited beach, far from the village, where he had buried the chest. He had done so at night, using no light but the moon, and had carefully covered his traces. For the first week he had returned every night with his heart pounding, but never had he seen the slightest sign of any disturbance. He had stopped going, and had devoted himself to the happy duties of making a home with his new wife. Now, returning to the beach, he was relieved to see sprigs of wiry grass growing in the sand above the chest, a sure sign that no one had found his hiding place.
He dug quickly with the spade he had brought. When he struck something with a hollow clunk, his heart skipped with excitement. Hurried
ly he scraped away the sand. Without bothering to raise the box from the hole, he unlocked it and flung open the top.
It was empty. Not even the scattering of original jewels lay in it. He blinked rapidly in disbelief. Though it lay in shadow, the bare wood of the box’s interior seemed to strike his eyes with a painful glare. Numbly, he groped inside the box, praying his fingers would find what his eyes had somehow missed. The cool wood felt like mockery. He remembered the sprite’s pale laughing eyes. And wished with a trembling rage he’d gutted the green fish and tossed its filthy insides to the gulls.
With a hoarse shout of anger, he hurled the deceiving chest as far as he could and watched as the tide slowly moved it out to sea, wishing he had smashed holes in its bottom so that it would sink out of sight forever.
As he trudged home, he wondered how he would tell his wife the news. The fishing had been poor the past year, and it was only thanks to the little she made at the market, plus the occasional fish she was allowed to bring home, that they kept food on the table. Whenever things got too scanty, one or the other would say: Wait until the end of the year. Then our troubles will be gone for good. He paused on the road outside their small, unpainted hut.
Suddenly, the door sprang open and she ran down the path towards him. Had she seen him through the window and guessed from his face what had happened? Would she forget what they had both decided and blame him for their loss?
But, no; she was smiling. There was a wild light in her eyes. Here, she said, putting his hand on her belly. I am carrying our child.
