Dark Moon Daughter

by J. Edward Neill

  “Mistress?” He came no closer than the table’s far end.

  “Yes?”

  “Um, greetings again, mistress. Is supper to your liking?”

  “Yes.” She clinked her fork against her goblet.

  “And your wine?”

  “Yes, that too.”

  “Well and good, mistress,” he stammered.

  Frightened, she guessed of him. No doubt his ears poisoned by the rumors about me. “No need to be afraid.” She smiled for his sake. “Just say why you are here.”

  He approached, his hands folded before him. “I…um…have a message for you, mistress.”

  “Oh?” She quaffed the rest of her wine.

  “Lord Tycus bid me tell you that your friend, Garrett Croft, has returned.”

  Garrett? Back? Her heart warmed from more than the wine. “Go on,” she urged.

  “Master Croft has retired to his cottage for the eve, but he’s already given a full report of his findings.”

  “His findings?”

  “Yes, mistress. Lord Tycus thought you might like to know what Croft discovered during his expedition. He guessed you’d want to be the first to hear it. Milord invites you to his parlor, should you be interested.”

  Alone with Tycus. She wrinkled her nose. I think not. “You say Croft is at his cottage?”

  “Yes. But Lord Tycus would see you upstairs, in his reception room.”

  “Thank you.” She stood, kissed the poor lad on his cheek, and made for the door. What Tycus would think, she never would know. Her thoughts were all for Garrett. Expedition? What expedition? She thought as she fled the hall. Did they send him after Grimwain? Did he…? Could he have…?

  She remembered the way to Garrett’s cottage. The same Rellen lived in so many months ago, the little stone and thatch house I avoid whenever wandering the courtyards. Anxious, she slid out the castle door and across the bristle-tipped lawn. Stars riddled the night sky, the white eyes winking at her as she walked. Sailed to Cornerstone by now. She remembered her father. Watching these same skies. Or perhaps he is dead. Drowned in the irons I gave him.

  She arrived at Garrett’s door. The breeze trailed her, her black tresses and pale skirts fluttering. She peered through the door’s tiny circular window, across which an ivory curtain floated. She saw light and heard muffled sounds. Alive. Awake. But what will I say to him?

  She rapped thrice on the door and backed away. The sounds of footsteps answered. The door squeaked open. Garrett leaned in its frame, clad in leather leggings and dirty boots, but with his torso bare. She winced upon seeing him, for she had never before noticed the slender scars upon his sides, the dozen or so pale marks striping his flanks. Some old. Some new. He is not so much my elder. And yet, how many battles?

  “I hoped you would come,” he said.

  She cracked her lips to say his name. Nothing came out. She swayed on his threshold, feeling small and foolish. She had assumed seeing him again would not affect her, that his return would not change a thing in her solemn, sorrowful existence.

  I was wrong.

  He opened the door wider. Ducking under his arm, she slid into the cottage. Garrett shut the night out and wriggled inside a black, loose-sleeved shirt. Stoic again, she observed. Made of mountain stone. As if nothing happened in the Undergrave. As if Rellen had not died.

  He lowered himself into a wicker chair, his sea-shaded eyes giving nothing away. “You look well. Different, but no less beautiful.”

  For what seemed a slow eternity, she hovered in the heart of the tiny room. What is the matter with me?

  “Sit. Relax.” He gestured to the bed.

  No. Do not sit. Heart beating too hard. Still anxious, she pawed at a floor plank with her naked foot. “Did you find Grimwain?” she questioned. “Did you kill him?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Her breath fell out of her. “Did you look for him at the orchard village?”

  “You mean Rose. Yes. We looked there.”

  “And?”

  “Rose was not there.”

  “Not there? What do you mean? It was gone?”

  “It was never there.”

  Her memories of Rose were vivid. Its verdant trees and tidy clusters of cedar-planked cabins were the very first sights she had seen after escaping the Midnon murk. The barn. The little houses. The apple trees. The perfect lawns.

  “More of father’s illusions,” she sighed.

  Garrett nodded. “I should have known it from the start. I led the Thillrians along the same trail Hadryn used. We were to go to Rose, then to Shivershore, then to the very footsteps of the dark forest, but when I mentioned the orchard and the village, the men looked at me as though I were mad. We came to the place I remembered, but there was no Rose, no people, nothing to prove me right. We found only dry grass and a lone apple tree withered by the winter. We searched the fields for days. We found only a fallen tent, a few rotting bedrolls, and a mound of apple cores half a man high. There was no Rose, only a lie.”

  She sank onto the only uncluttered corner of his bed. His hauberk, a Thillrian sword, and bundles of soiled clothing made a mountain beside her. “The tent must have been his,” she exhaled. “And the bedrolls for us to sleep on while our minds roamed Midnon. Rose was a trick, a disguise. I remember the hunger I felt when I escaped. I stole apples from a house, but they failed to fill me. There were no trees. The apples were not real. Nothing was there.”

  “Yes.” Garrett nodded.

  With another sigh, she recalled that Garrett had suffered in Midnon just the same as she. She felt guilty, terribly so, for not having been the one to free him. “I never said it before, but I am sorry. I left you in that awful place. I did not know. Neither father nor Ona said a word.”

  “I should never have been there to begin with.”

  “I…no…Garrett, I feel sick when I think of what you had to do. I feel worse when I think of your friend, my sister. Poor Ona. I hardly knew her.”

  “So very like you,” he said, and she swore his voice cracked. “Nothing was your fault, Ande. Dwelling on it now leads us to no better end.”

  She felt wretched. She tried to look at him, but felt too lightheaded to focus. While she brooded, he removed his boots and sank ever deeper into his chair.

  “You did not come here to ask about Grimwain.” His calmness broke her concentration. “Nor to apologize for things already forgiven.”

  He knows me. Crows take my heart, I do not care about Grimwain tonight. Nor about father. I only care about…him.

  “I am glad you are back.” She smiled shyly. “I was worried.”

  “I trust Saul kept you company.”

  “He tried. I resisted. I am still upset with him. He recommended father to that dreadful island. I try to be fair and see things his way, but it is hard. He does not understand. No one does.”

  She expected him to scold her, to remind her a dozen times that her father’s exile was justified, but he did nothing of the sort. “We found your father’s tower,” he said. “We tracked his travels to the southernmost tip of Shivershore. The old spire among the rocks, its bottom half-drowned by the ocean. It was empty when we got there, but we did find one thing.”

  “What was it?” Her eyes widened.

  “His name. We found it etched in a puddle of old wax. We knew it was his because no one has gone there since, so say the locals. I could tell you if you wanted.”

  “I know our family name.” She shivered. “Anderae. We are the second oldest bloodline of Archithrope, or so he told me. But you found more, I imagine. No. I do not want to know. He lived a hundred names. I will remember him as father.”

  “As you wish.”

  “May we talk about something else?” She drummed her toes against the floor.

  “Of course.”

  “Good.” She leaned against his mountain of clothes. His shirts smelled of the earth, of rain and grass and sunshine. “Winter was long enough,” she said. “Four months of misery. I am ready t
o live again.”

  She rubbed the sleep from her eyes. The candles beside the bed guttered, but the room appeared brighter than before. Garrett makes the Nightness wane, she realized. Always, since first we met, he calms me.

  For a long while afterward, she and he spoke at ease. She made no further mention of Grimwain, of her father, or even of Rellen. She strayed into far less painful subjects, and the dullness of the past hundred days lifted from her heart. She reminisced of the day she and he had met, of their travels in the faraway land of Mormist, and of their reunion beneath the great Grandwood oaks. He abided her nostalgia with perfect patience. He would listen if I talked until dawn. I should love him for that.

  And perhaps I do.

  Long after the midnight hour, the night sheltered Aeth, Denawir, and the sea. She felt as though she and Garrett were the only ones awake in the world. She smiled at a memory of walking through the rain with him in Mormist, after Furyon. She laughed when he recalled the green dress he once had bought her, the leaky boat he had stolen to ferry her away from Furyon shores, and the long voyage through the Crown Mountains, just me and Saul and him.

  Gloom fell over her again.

  “Something is the matter,” Garrett recognized.

  She shut her eyes. “I feel ashamed. With all that has gone wrong, here I am, still alive.”

  “You cannot grieve forever,” he reasoned. “You must leave the darkness behind. Remember the Andelusia you used to be. Be who you wish to be, not the woman your father wanted.”

  Yes. He is right. Throw it aside. Let the Nightness fall away. “Tonight I stop,” she murmured. “No more self-pity. I will move on. I promised Rellen. I will live up to it.”

  “Good,” said Garrett.

  She sat up from the bed and paced the creaking floor. “I have to ask you something.”

  “Ask.”

  “I am not sure how.”

  “Ask. No secrets between friends.”

  Just say it, she scolded herself. For once in your life, speak your mind to him. “I am alone in my tower.” She fidgeted. “Cold and quiet, always. I venture out rarely, and when I do, people whisper unkind things in my wake. I try to ignore them, but it hurts. Some revile me for not damning father, while others treat me like a piece of glass, too fragile to touch.”

  “You should find another place to stay.”

  “Well…I was hoping…” She paused, building her courage. “I wondered if I could stay with you. Aeth has no other cottages or rooms. If I could sleep on your floor, I would be grateful. I would never make a peep, not unless you wanted to talk. If this is not acceptable, I will not be upset. I only hoped…”

  “I will sleep on the floor. The bed is yours.”

  “You do not worry for what the Thillrians will say? Their customs are not ours. Men and woman do not share a room, not unless…”

  “In Mormist, we sleep where we like.” He shrugged. “No shame. No rules but what we make for themselves. In spirit, I am home within these walls. This is a small sliver of the mountain country, and you are my guest until the day we depart.”

  She felt her shoulders unknot and her tension drain onto the floor. “Thank you. I mean it. My tower is more a prison than a sanctuary anymore.”

  He rose from his chair, touched the front of her shoulder, and rounded the bed too quickly for her to lay her carefully-planned embrace upon him. With three great sweeps he knocked his sword, clothing, and satchel to the floor. Beneath it all, soft linens awaited.

  “Here you have it.” He smiled a rare smile. “A cradle to keep her highness warm while her favorite servant naps on the floor.”

  She laughed, “Garrett Croft, we all know you serve no one. If it is no trouble, I will fetch my things tomorrow. So sleepy tonight. If I snore, forgive me.”

  “Snore as much as you like. Wake me if you need me.”

  He pecked her forehead with a kiss and brushed past her on his way to his washbowl. He splashed his hands and face clean, and after toweling himself dry he stripped his shirt off and cupped a candle to guide the way to the corner. His bedroll lay in a lump on the corner floor. She looked at her soft bed and felt guilty again.

  “Goodnight.” He pinched his candle and stretched out on his bedroll like a bear. “Breakfast will be late.”

  She climbed onto her borrowed bed and lay atop the silken coverlet. By the time she stretched her legs and folded her hands across her belly, Garrett had fallen asleep. In the total darkness she laid still and silent as a white rabbit on a pillow of snow. I am not so tired. That was a lie. No sleep. Not tonight.

  An hour went by, then two, then three. She lay inert with her eyes shut to the world, her mind venturing into realms far beyond the real. I am in a theater, she dreamed herself standing on a Thillrian stage. Beneath the stars, I dance. Garrett is my audience. Snowflakes sprinkle us, but it is not cold. I hear the sea. The waves roll up the sand. Aeth is above us, no lights in its windows. I am a Thillrian queen this night.

  I walk Denawir’s streets. Garrett walks beside me. The people love us. Women throw flowers at my feet. Men kneel on the road, begging for my hand in marriage. But no. This is not real. I am dreaming while awake. I am a widow who never wed. My love is Grandwood, the trees, and the shadows the oaks cast even when the sun burns high. Denawir is not mine. I will return to Graehelm. I will live a hundred years more, a thousand if what father said is true. I will be a wrinkled old storyteller, haunting Gryphon’s alehouses, spreading tales of Thillria, of the Uylen, and of magicks deep and dark. I will find happiness again. Though I will do it alone.

  Or will I?

  At her dream’s bottom, she forgot all her horrors. Her memories of the Ur whispering in her head, Rellen’s boat burning on the cavern lake, and the Uylen clutching at her throat crumbled from her mind. She opened her eyes. Her heart beat hard beneath her breasts. Garrett. He will come with me. He will never let me be alone. He is the one. He always has been.

  She crept to the corner of the bed and clung childlike to its edge. She watched over him, measuring her breaths against each rise and fall of his muscled ribs. For eons uncounted she observed him, and she tried to remember the last time anyone had touched her, held her, or done anything more than pity her from afar.

  Holding her breath, she slid soft-footed from the bed and knelt beside his bedroll. He rested upon a pillow that had seen far too many nights beneath the stars. The candles had long ago died, but she saw his chest rise and fall, and she breathed the same rhythm as he.

  “Garrett?” she wooed him to consciousness. “Are you awake?”

  “Ande.” He yawned. “All is well. Sleep now. We will talk in the morning.”

  She laid her palm against his arm. So warm, she thought. “Can I trouble you for something?” she whispered.

  He opened his eyes. Even in the dark, he sees me. “I am listening,” he said.

  She trembled and swallowed the stone in her throat. No matter all the terrors she had endured, she feared what Garrett might say. “I want to sleep beside you. I mean nothing by it, but I need to be near someone tonight. I am numb. I cannot feel my own skin. It has been so long. Please.”

  “Rellen would be angry.”

  “Rellen is gone, and I cannot grieve forever. Those were your words, remember?”