A Nearer Moon

by Melanie Crowder

  Perdy dashed back and forth, searching, fear rising like bile inside her. Though her arms and legs were scraped raw, she climbed partway back up the trunk—maybe she could see something from higher up. Even in the full, near moon, the shadows grew, bleeding into one another. How had night fallen so fast?

  Crickets chirruped mournfully as starbursts of flame leaped into the sky from the humans’ celebration, lighting Perdy’s path scarlet and golden. She stumbled to the edge of the water and let herself fall in, let herself be carried away in the winding currents, let the cool, clean water soothe her aching skin, her split-open heart.

  Her mother was gone. Her uncles and aunts. Her grandparents. Her sister, in whom a twin heart always beat, echoing her own. Could Gia still feel it, so far away? Perdy lifted her hand to her chest and closed her eyes.

  Thump thump.

  Thump thump.

  Silence.

  Perdy’s anguish rose from her throat like a wild thing. Without knowing what she did, she called on the raw, unpracticed magic that every sprite holds within. It fed on her sorrow; it lashed out at anything in its reach. It felled the trees where they stood, and they crashed into the river, tumbling one on top of another, their leaves sticking like mortar into the spaces between the logs.

  The river swelled and bulged over its banks, tickling landlocked tree roots and creeping to cover the mossy beds where wood sprites had danced just hours before. The river slowed until it no longer flowed at all, and the water swirled, furious and nervous, devouring the meadow.

  Already, the felled trees were stemming the flow of water. Already, Perdy’s treasured river was turning into something she didn’t recognize.

  She was alone.

  She was lost.

  And the locket—the one thing that could call her back to Gia’s side—was gone.

  16

  Luna

  Luna breathed deep the damp air that hung over the swamp and blew it back out of her lungs as hard as she could. Even the air seemed weighed down by sadness.

  Her whole body itched to get out of the hut, to do something. But knowing the swamp was sick and knowing how to fix it were different things altogether. Luna quieted her breath and calmed her steps, slipping back to Willow’s bedside. She set a checkerboard on the bed and lay down, chin in hand, where she could look up into her sister’s face.

  “I haven’t seen Mama today,” Willow said.

  “She was here this morning. She kissed your forehead, and made your soup. And you know she’s been praying for you every second in the chapel.”

  “Is she still mad at you?”

  “She thinks I’m reckless.” Luna shrugged. “I guess she’s right.”

  Luna clicked the wooden checkers stacked in her palm in a rhythm that kept time with her thoughts casting out and back, out and back. “I know she wishes it had been me that got sick instead of you.”

  It felt good to let those words out, to let the net slap against the water and sink slowly down. She shook her head when Willow tried to protest. “No, I wish it too. Every day I wish it had been my side of the boat that tipped into the water.”

  “I don’t want that,” Willow said, her voice trembling. “It shouldn’t have to be either one of us.” She gripped Luna’s hand and squeezed hard until Luna raised her eyes. “Mama may not be seeing things right, through all that sadness, but she’s going to need you when—”

  “Don’t say it,” Luna said and she jumped off the bed. The checkerboard crashed to the floor. “Don’t you dare say that. It’s not going to happen. I am not going to let it happen!”

  Luna threw her handful of checkers against the wall and ran out of the room, out of the hut. The walkway lurched beneath her. The sludge bubbled below and stars swam in her vision as she hung over the railing—the only thing keeping her from tumbling into the swamp. It dug into her ribs and cut her breath in half.

  The stupid swamp that was taking Willow away. So what if it was sick—what could Luna do about it? How can you fight something so big, so sick you can’t touch it without getting sick yourself?

  “Benny!” Luna shouted. The door across the walkway swung open, and Benny stepped outside, his hair mussed like he had just climbed out of bed.

  “Hi, Lu—hey, what are you doing? Quit hanging so far over the railing.”

  When she didn’t move, Benny strode out onto his porch. “Luna, quit it. I mean it!”

  She pushed herself upright, swaying. Their eyes met and held for a long moment. Benny didn’t ask. Luna didn’t have to say that it felt like the world was breaking apart under her feet.

  “Mama made fried fish and rice balls, and tamarind cakes for dessert,” Benny said tentatively. “Want some?”

  Luna nodded, and he ducked back into the hut. A minute later, he stepped outside, a half-dozen tins balanced precariously in his arms. Luna and Benny sat on the walkway between his hut and hers. A breeze set the little bridge swaying, and they dangled their legs over the water.

  They chewed in silence, watching the swamp swirl below. A water lizard slunk off a log until only his nostril slits and round, buggy eyes showed. Then with a flick of his tail, he dove below the surface, with no more than a ripple to show he had ever been there.

  Benny shivered and pulled his legs back up onto the walkway. He turned out his pockets, dumping a pile of pebbles onto the decking.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Luna said. She stood and picked up a stick as long as her arm from the kindling pile. One by one, she tossed the pebbles into the air and, aiming for the gibbous moon already risen in the afternoon sky, swung her stick. With a satisfying thwack, she knocked the pebbles out over the swamp. “Do you remember what that doctor said—about the swamp being cursed?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Benny answered, flicking the pebbles and watching them plop into the water, ripples spreading outward in quiet circles.

  “Everybody always says the swamp is cursed, but Granny Tu said it differently today. She said the water is sick, just like Willow. I can’t do anything about a curse. But what if I could do something about the swamp being sick?”

  Benny bit the skin at the corner of his mouth. “When we were on the river, that water was moving all the time. It never stayed still long enough to help or hurt anybody.”

  “Exactly,” Luna said. “If the dam wasn’t here, if all the trapped water moved like it did when it was a river, the sick water would wash far away from here.”

  Luna tapped the stick against the side of her head.

  “What?” Benny asked. “What is it?”

  “Let’s just get rid of it.”

  “What—the dam? How are we supposed to get rid of an old dam all by ourselves? And what about getting caught? Poppa’s just barely beginning to let me out of the house again. Below the dam is one place I am definitely not allowed to go. And neither are you!”

  “I’m thinking,” Luna said. She turned in a slow, tight circle, tap, tap, tapping.

  “I can see that.”

  Luna switched directions, circling the other way. “We’d have to dig the mud out from the underside of the dam somehow. If we dig deep enough, the water will slip through, a little bit at a time.”

  “Yeah, slip through right on top of us,” Benny said with a snort, swatting at the stick. It spun out of her hands and landed on top of the water. “And then we’re neck deep in muddy swamp water, and if we take even one sip, we’ll get sick too. We can’t help Willow if we’re laid up in bed. And what if one of those trees came loose and smashed right down on top of us? No way. It’s too dangerous.”

  Luna stopped her circles and hunched down beside him. “But what if when the sick water is gone, the sickness leaves Willow, too?”

  Benny scrambled to his feet, the walkway tipping and swaying with his sudden movement. “Wait a minute. What if we weren’t behind the dam when the mud broke apart? What if something else knocked it loose and we were far away, high up on the riverbank?”

  “Something else?”

  Hi
s eyebrows wiggled up and down. “A little explosion . . .”

  “Right, because that wouldn’t get us in trouble at all!”

  “I’ll just say I’m practicing for the festival. If we stick my comets into the mud and light them all at the same time, they’ll blow little holes in the dam. And little holes, with the water pushing against them, might turn into a big hole.”

  “You’re crazy,” Luna said.

  “Crazy brilliant, you mean!”

  “Okay, but we have to light those fuses and get out of the way quick—far out of the way.”

  “We’ll only get in trouble if it doesn’t work,” Benny said with a wicked grin. “If it does work, if we wash all that mucky swamp water downstream, we’ll be heroes! And you’re right—Willow just might get better.”

  “You really think a couple of comets will be enough to bust up the dam?”

  “If it isn’t, I’ll still have the spinners and fireballs left over for the festival.” Benny shrugged his shoulders. “And at least we’ll have tried something, instead of just sitting around and watching Willow get sicker and sicker.”

  Luna nodded. “Tomorrow. Meet me under the dam at lunchtime. And bring your comets.”

  17

  Perdita

  At first Perdy was afraid to travel too far from where the door had been in case it reopened, pulling her through to join the rest.

  But it never did.

  She went back every day until the water covered everything, and the moss and whatever secrets it held were buried under layers of silt and mud. Perdy asked the fish and the frogs and the skinks to help her search for the thing she had lost, to search beneath the mud, to sift through the silt and comb through the fallen branches. But the locket was never found.

  Eventually, Perdy began to lose hope. Sadness settled into the empty spaces inside her.

  As the rising water loosed the dirt from around their roots, massive serayas with low-slung branches crashed, one by one, into the growing swamp. The dam thickened, week by week, month by month, as the trees lodged against the mud, mortaring themselves into a solid wall. High-kneed pulai trees sprouted in their place; somehow their seeds had smelled the swamp and had known which winds to follow to find the still water.

  The humans could have left. They might have left their homes and walked up the hill or upriver to find new places to live and start new stories on higher, dryer ground. But most of them didn’t. They stayed in the place where their grandparents had lived, in the homes where their great-great grandparents had first taken a felled tree and carved a boat to winnow through the streams.

  Perdy went, sometimes, to watch the frantic scramble as the humans battled to keep their homes above the rising water, as they tried to pry the logs loose and cut out enough of the dam to make the river flow again. None of it worked, and after a time, they gave up trying. Perdy thought the presence of other creatures might comfort her, but it did not.

  It only made her feel more alone.

  If Gia were there, Perdy would have tromped through the thickening weeds and the water that spilled over meadows and swallowed logs. If Gia were there, Perdy would have greeted every new winged thing that buzzed over the waveless water. But Gia was not there.

  The creatures tried to cheer her, tried to nudge her into their games as they had before. But after a time, they stopped trying. When the first snake slid into the swamp, Perdy hardly lifted an eye. When chains of moss grew together, she barely paused to run her fingers over the velvety links. She only dangled her feet in the water and sat, watching the space where the door had been. She sat still so long she might have grown a thatch of moss herself.

  The wet months came and the swamp grew swollen, stretching wider and wider, until it didn’t flow at all, until the riverbed grew thick with weeds reaching toward the sunlight and mud clogging every crevice. All around her, buds blossomed out of new green growth, gasping for first breath in the moist air of the trapped river. All around her, new life burst forth, and it only made the ache of all she had lost even worse.

  The dry months swept in on hot winds, and still Perdy was alone. The heat drained the reeds and drove the fanged frogs down into their months of mud-burrowed slumber.

  Each season that spiraled by pained Perdy.

  A year passed, and sorrow drove her down to the water, where at least the coolness soothed her skin and she could see the jungle and the space where the door had been.

  By the second year, the trees where the door had hung groaned and leaned, their roots failing to stick in the wallowing mud, and they toppled one after the other into the swamp.

  Perdy sank just below the water where the sun still sparkled and warmed and winked, where she could slip into the shadows if she didn’t want to be seen. Where she could float right below the surface, watching the clouds shuttle by, watching the world, altered and refracted through the ripples above her head.

  Perdy stopped wandering upriver, stopped listening to the wavelets splashing against the rocks. She no longer raced the water skippers and danced the pondering underwater dance of swimming turtles and sprightly frogs.

  Nothing sparkled; nothing shone.

  Not without Gia.

  18

  Luna

  It was the second of Mama’s rules never to be broken: Don’t go below the dam.

  The rule wasn’t there for nothing. Luna knew that. The layers of logs and muck that made up the dam were all haphazard, flung together and held there by a wall of water. If anything shifted, those logs could come tumbling over into the dry riverbed below and crush anyone foolish enough to be caught beneath them. And if someone was trying to shake things loose? Well.

  Benny whistled as he wound through the reeds that rimmed the swamp. He wielded a stick in his hands like a sword, stabbing anthills and swatting at the tasseled tips of tall grasses.

  “Hey, Benny.”

  “Hey, Luna. You ready?”

  Luna swallowed. “Yep.”

  She kept watch to make sure they weren’t spotted, while Benny hopped down into the dry riverbed, hands on hips, studying the dam that stretched high over his head. It was mostly mud, to look at it, with a few rocks and sticks poking out of the dirt.

  “I think the mud’s thicker at the sides, and at the bottom,” Benny said, swinging his arm in a circle at the heart of the dam. “So we should stick the comets here, right in the middle.”

  “You’re the firecrackers expert.”

  Benny dug divots into the mud with the end of his stick and wedged the firecrackers in until all that showed were twisted wicks hanging expectantly downward. All told there were five, arranged in a frown, right at the heart of the dam. When Benny was happy with the way he’d placed all the little bombs, Luna dropped over the lip of the old riverbank. Her legs slipped out from under her and she fell in a tumble of rocks and grit to the dry riverbed.

  Benny dusted off his hands and helped her up. “You’re worried. Don’t be worried, Luna.”

  She shook her head; her lips pressed together in a thin, white line. “I’m not worried.”

  “Look, it’ll be easy. You take these matches and light those two right there, closest to the riverbank. I’ll light these three at the far end, and I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Why do you get the risky part? It’s my sister we’re doing this for. It’s my fault we’re in this mess at all.”

  “Yeah? Well, they’re my firecrackers. Besides, it’s my turn to be the reckless one,” Benny said with a wink.

  Luna’s hands shook, just a little, just enough that the pink tips of the matches wobbled in the air. She stood in front of her two wicks and waited for Benny. He arched an eyebrow and lifted his shoulders in a shrug.

  “Ready or not,” he said, and he struck his first match. It crackled to life, and Luna hurried to light hers. She cupped her hand around the wobbling flame and lifted it to the wick.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” she whispered. The flame danced around the wick, tickling all the edges
before a thread of smoke rose into the air and the fibers whooshed into flame. The smell of singed peppers filled her nostrils as the match burned down, too close to Luna’s fingers, and she hopped from foot to foot, shaking the match in the air and blowing it out.

  The flame crackled as it ate up the wick, burning fast toward the mud. Luna struck her second match and it popped into flame. Beside her, she could hear first one, then two of Benny’s wicks begin sizzling toward their firecrackers.

  “Come on, come on, come on,” she whispered as she fumbled to light the second wick. It flared to life, and Luna darted a look at Benny. He flashed her a smile as he shook the flame out of his last match.

  “Go!” he shouted as he dashed for the riverbank.

  Luna turned and ran. She clambered up and sprinted toward the trees. She looked back over her shoulder once, just in time to see the wicks fizzling down to the very nubs and Benny’s exhilarated face peeking up over the riverbank. Just in time to see him stumble over a loose rock, scrabble for a handhold, and fall back into the riverbed.

  Luna skidded to a stop. “Benny!”

  BAM! BAM BAM BOOOOM!

  Luna covered her head with her arms as dirt and hunks of rock flew into the air. Mud thwacked against tree trunks and a rumbling thundered at the base of the dam, a rumbling like boulders clunking against one another.

  And then it all stopped.

  Luna raced back to the riverbank. She couldn’t see Benny anywhere. Everything was coated in a thick layer of mud. The dam held, even though five craters as big as crab pots pocked its surface. Luna dropped over the side.

  Her head was ringing. Her arms were scratched and bleeding. She could hear shouts coming from out in the swamp, people running toward her, yelling at her to get away, get out of the riverbed.

  Above her, the dam creaked, like it was trying to find a new balance, like the water was pushing hard as it could against the weak spots.