Bitter Moon Saga Read online

  When they were done with their stew and the family was done with their big dinner at the table, they all gathered by the hearth and solemnly exchanged gifts, and the gifts more than made up for missing dinner. After that, they told Goddess stories.

  The children from Clough had been shocked at the blasphemy when they first heard about Goddess stories.

  “You tell… lies about the gods?” Aldam’s eyebrow wrinkled over his eyes.

  “No….” Roes frowned and bit her lip, looking at her mother for help. Even Torrant and Yarri looked up from their gifts, which was difficult because the gifts themselves were wonderful. Lane had given Torrant his newly polished and tuned lute. Roes had given Yarri a floppy rag doll of her very own, and Bethen had, of course, gifted the entire family with new sweaters and thick socks. Everyone had given Cwyn carved, wooden toys, and little Starry had a new quilt with her namesakes embroidered across the top like threaded diamonds.

  Lane and Bethen were, in fact, still recovering. They had both gone very quiet when they opened the sheaf of parchment and looked at each picture of the family the three of them had loved. Goddess… Owen was going gray…. I hadn’t realized he’d grow older too. Tal and Qir were so strong—like the twin gods themselves. Ellyot looked just like you, Torrant, and just like his brothers too. Your mother was so beautiful. I had forgotten what a pretty woman Myrla was. Is this your mother and aunt, Aldam? They have kind faces. They look just like Yarri described them. There had been watery smiles and quiet tears all around, and then Torrant had played the lute and sang until his voice went hoarse, and he had to stop. That was when Roes shocked them all with the idea of Goddess stories.

  “Well, they’re sort of like regular stories,” Bethen said thoughtfully, “except we all know the characters—they’re Oueant and Dueant and Triane. But you never know how they’re going to be related or what they’re going to be doing. Oh my….”

  Because now they looked more confused than ever.

  “Maybe if they heard a couple?” Lane suggested in his wise way, and Bethen was about to agree when Stanny interrupted.

  “I’ve got one!” he said insistently. His eyes were narrowed, and Torrant wondered what he was thinking. On the (many) days they had gone outside to wrestle and tire out the younger children in the snow, Stanny had watched Torrant and Yarri’s gymnastics with envy. Torrant had spent some time teaching him things—avoiding a tripping foot, rolling under a tackle, leaping to the side, and keeping his balance. Stanny was more determined than ever to join the town’s running ball team in the spring. The look in Stanny’s eyes now was that same look of sly determination he had when Torrant was teaching him something new. Stanny had a goal in mind, and this story was his pathway to it.

  Bethen clearly knew it too. She closed her eyes in exaggerated patience and gave a soft sigh. “Fine, Stanny. Go right ahead.”

  Stanny smiled. “Once there was a god who was in two parts—get it? One god, but in two parts for the two moons.”

  “We get it, Stanny,” Lane said dryly. “Go on.”

  “Well he had two parts. He had the part that stayed, sat, and worked and did math and kept books for his father, and the part that played ball. But he still stayed in the sky. And that’s all.”

  Torrant heard some smothered sounds from Bethen and Lane that made him think maybe this wasn’t exactly the way a Goddess story was supposed to be told, and then Roes spoke up indignantly.

  “That’s so stupid, Stanny! You can’t tell Goddess stories at all!”

  “Roes,” said Bethen in a pained voice, and then she took charge. “Stanny—I do get your point, and I’ll think about it. Roes, do you have another story to tell?”

  “Yeah.” Roes nodded, as though making up her mind. “Yes, Mama—I’ve got a good one.” Her glance was also sly, but her face was thoughtful, and she obviously took the Goddess stories seriously. At her mother’s nod of encouragement, Roes continued.

  “Once there were two gods, Oueant the brave and strong and Dueant the compassionate and honorable, and they haunted their orbits like twin moons from the time that they met as children. They worshipped a young Goddess, who played like a little girl and scampered to keep up with one and then the other and learned everything that they knew—but did not know about playing with dolls. One day a hurtling meteor destroyed Oueant. Dueant’s life almost went out without his brother, but he kept on because the little Goddess needed him, and together they orbited the earth until they came upon another brother. This new Oueant moved slower, was not quite as bright as Dueant and Triane, but they loved him anyway, and they lit the places he could not see and moved slowly so as not to leave him behind. One night they made a terrible slide from orbit to the earth, and there they encountered….”

  Roes blushed, and her gaze dropped, but she raised it again and fastened her earth-brown eyes on Aldam’s avid face. He was hanging delightedly on her every word, and at her pause he nodded, propping his chin on his knees and hugging them to his chest as her story caught his heart.

  “A rose bush,” Roes rasped at last, looking away from Aldam’s pure-blue gaze. “A young rosebush, but”—she flushed—“but still with a sharp tongue. And she was quite dazzled by Dueant and Triane, almost a little embarrassed around them because they were so bright and dazzling and she was just a rosebush with her toes in the earth and barbs she didn’t know she had ready at any moment to shed blood she hadn’t wanted on her hands. But Oueant, the new Oueant… his light was gentle to her sharpness. His beauty was soft and quiet to the rose’s… overbrightness.” Her mouth, a little bee-stung bow of a rosebud mouth, quirked up in the usual self-deprecating humor that Torrant had learned to associate with Yarri’s young cousin. And then she continued the story, and Torrant forgot everything but a breathless hope for a future spelled out in the moons.

  “And the rose loved that moon, that round-faced, blue-lighted moon, and she thrived under the moon like she’d never thrived under the sun, and her flowers opened, and she bathed her face in the softness and the kindness of this new Oueant. And Oueant, for his part, grew brighter in the face of all that adoration, and although Dueant and Triane rose back up in the sky, Oueant, this new Oueant, never strayed far from his rose, because he knew that without his light, she would wither and shrivel, an old maid of a flower, and if that were to happen, his own light would fade into night.”

  She finished, and the family let loose a collective shuddery breath as the story eased its grip on their lungs, and suddenly Lane spoke up, his deep voice resonant and gentle, and he continued the story to the end his daughter would not.

  “And the little rosebush grew lush and brilliant, and her flowers were so extraordinary that she could no longer be called a common earth rose anymore.” His hand fell to his daughter’s autumn-leaf-colored hair, and he stroked it softly in the firelight. “So she became a Goddess among roses, rising into the sky to join her Oueant in a small orbit of kindness and rose petals that made the world just a little sweeter and a little sharper and a little more gracious kind of place.” Lane’s mouth quirked, and he gave Roes’s head a little push, and she pushed back, and the moment became lighter than it had. “The end,” he finished, and she giggled and leaned her head against his legs as he sat in his favorite stuffed chair.

  “Goddess, Roes,” Torrant asked, shaking his head just a little to clear the web of storytelling a little faster, “are you sure you’re only eleven?”

  “Shut up, Dueant,” Roes returned amiably, and the family laughed a little.

  “You mixed them up!” Yarri corrected with a pout. “Torrant is Oueant and Aldam is Dueant.”

  “They’re a little bit of both, dearest,” Bethen said thoughtfully, looking at the two young men with stories in her eyes.

  “I thought it was wonderful,” Aldam said fervently, his eyes still fixed on Roes’s face. Bethen took that moment to clear her throat wryly, and then she took up another story, and the fire burnt low on the hearth into the night.

  AND TH
E night spun on into the day, and the day spun into the night and so on. Moons spinning around earths spinning around suns in the same way that seasons spin into each other, until, like a subtly dyed yarn in shades from red to brown to green to yellow, winter turned to spring.

  The Moons in Clough had celebrated Beltane every year, with a beribboned pole and fierce and joyous dancing, but their hold had been only the size of a large, extended family. Torrant, Yarri, and Aldam were unprepared for the pure vernal force of an entire town celebrating the rites of spring.

  In spring, every girl from little Starry to the constable’s wizened great grandmother wore their finest, prettiest dresses. Bethen had put down her knitting needles for a whole month and worked with the girls on embroidery in order to make over her oldest dress for Roes and Roes’s baby dress for Starry. On Beltane morning, Bethen shoved all the men, including Cwyn, outside in their best clothes—new, black woolen vests for all of them, with embroidery in bright reds, blues, and yellows tripping across the borders like dancing children.

  Bewildered, Torrant and Aldam, with Cwyn in tow, followed Stanny and Lane out of doors. Together they ventured to a broad meadow far upstream from where they’d made their hushed and panicked winter’s trek. They passed under the bridge that marked the route to the Old Man Hills, and up toward where the river ran swift and fresh in a gorgette and the green hill on the town side made a broad, flat green. There, they joined the male half of the town as they reopened cooking pits and set up outside trestle tables and hauled out vast, wooden bowls. The bowls would be filled with the last of the winter preserves and a crispy fried chip made from the corn and flour left over from the winter stores. The whole town would feast all day on what the winter had spared them and celebrate what the summer would bring.

  The excitement was as infectious as the baby’s giggle.

  “There will be dancing?” Aldam asked shyly.

  “There was in Moon Hold,” Torrant told him. “Moon and Kes used to set the tone, and then….” He remembered his family forming couples to make the patterns. The boys would all fight to dance with Yarri, and Old Jed would come ducking to Torrant’s mother with a courtly bow and an apologetic smile. You look like her, he’d say, embarrassed, and Torrant’s mother would laugh softly. You look nothing like Torrian, she’d reply with gentleness, but I’ve always loved to dance.

  “We didn’t dance at home,” Aldam said, looking away. “We had no Goddess holidays to dance for… and I wasn’t invited to any other gatherings.”

  “Why wouldn’t they invite you?” Stanny was stumped. If Aldam and Torrant were brothers, then Stanny and Aldam were best friends.

  “I was simple and a freak of the Goddess.” Abruptly, Aldam changed the subject. “But I’m glad I get to watch the dancing here.”

  “You’ll get to join the dancing here,” Lane said, and Aldam’s smile turned the head of every young woman in the clearing.

  “I’ll get to dance?” he asked loudly, his excitement crackling through the glorious spring sunshine, and suddenly all the girls who had stopped to play or to talk with the children in front of the Moons’ house during the long winter gathered around. Torrant, Aldam, Stanny, and the young men quickly found they would not need to worry about being the only ones not dancing.

  Torrant finally fought his way clear of the press of girls and made an observation to Lane. “None of the refugees are here.”

  Lane nodded. Most of the refugees had been cleared out of his warehouse and the barracks and into newly built homes on the outskirts of the town, or into ships or horse carts that would take them to kin. It was a relief for Lane because ships had been coming in for the last two months, and there would be no place now for anyone to sleep, even if the refugees hadn’t seemed to feel any relief of their own. Though the town had expanded by almost a third, those who had run from Clough had not yet relaxed into the heartbeat of their new home.

  “I don’t know what it is,” Lane murmured. “I know they didn’t celebrate the Goddess’s days in Clough… but if they’re free to do so here….”

  “They stopped believing in them,” Torrant said glumly, remembering Moon talking about the pall of fear that had begun to take over their beloved home. “Moon said that… Consort Rath made people afraid of their faith, and then he made them ashamed of it.” Torrant sighed, an adult sound for a young man. “Not everybody who came from Clough had a family to make them feel safe,” he finished.

  Lane swallowed a little. “Glad to do it.”

  Torrant flashed him a grin then, unbridled, unafraid, unashamedly grateful. “You won’t be when Yarri remembers how to shirk her chores.”

  Lane laughed out loud, and Torrant found himself pulled into the press of young people heading for the tree stand to the south of the fairgrounds.

  The young men over fourteen and the young women who’d seen their first moon cycle all got to go into the forest that bordered the clearing and cut a tall sapling for the ribbon pole. Stanny practically threw Cwyn at his father and pulled at his new cousins to join in the hunt—apparently it involved lots of chasing and flirting and occasionally kissing, and this was Stanny’s first year to join in. He almost knocked Aldam over when Aldam stopped to see if Roes and the women had arrived yet.

  “Roes will be angry if she misses this,” he said anxiously, and Stanny rolled his eyes.

  “Roes can’t come—she’s still wearing white flowers on her dress this year. Girls don’t get to come until—” His voice dropped uncomfortably and he darted his eyes left and right to make sure nobody could hear him say such a grown-up and unmasculine thing. “—they bleed every month.” Stanny finished speaking, and an odd expression crossed Aldam’s face.

  “Roes is much younger than I am,” he murmured, as though the idea had just hit him.

  Stanny rolled his eyes again and plunged into the giggling shade that was the ribbon pole hunt, but Torrant understood.

  “She will grow,” he said quietly. “Time passes; girls grow. You’ll dance with Roes someday.”

  “Perhaps,” Aldam said with quiet dignity. “But by then, she might not want to dance with me.”

  A cold flutter went through Torrant, the jangle of cathedral bells out of sync and off their sound. “You heard her Goddess story,” he said at last. “You just need to wait for that rose tree to grow.” And with that, he pushed his brother into the shaded woods, where the giggles of pretty girls were almost frightening under the glorious sun of a new future.

  Stanny was sweet and handsome, and his father was fairly well off. Aldam was pretty and exotic and new to the town. Torrant was (as a gaggle of girls was heard whispering) almost dreamily handsome. His wizard’s lock had turned frost white this winter, and the glorious contrast between it and his dark-brown hair alone was striking enough to attract girls who had grown up in the same town together. By the time the fifteen-foot sapling was found and stripped and carried back into the square, the three boys had started huddling together for safety against the sudden, frightening push of hands against their bottoms and budding breasts against their backs or arms when they were not expecting to find any human next to them at all. When they emerged, as skittish as new stallions in a herd of musty mares, they almost ran to the safety of their family.

  “What’s wrong with you three?” Roes asked disgustedly as Stanny took Starry from his mother and cuddled her to his chest like a shield. Roes’s “reworked” dress was nothing short of brilliant, Torrant noticed. Many shades of leaf green, it was also swirling with rose and mauve and blush-colored embroidery, with the occasional twinkle of yellow for brightness. Only the bright white of the ribbon-shaped roses at the hem seemed out of place, and Roes’s disgust with not yet being able to sew on the red-and-pink flowers of the other girls her age was palpable. Yarri’s dress was much like Roes’s—many shades of green, but with bright pink, orange, purple, and yellow flowers decorating the laced-up vest at her middle, and white ribbon roses at her hem. They were happy colors, and Torrant’s anxio
us look eased a little just looking at Yarri in her new finery. Bethen was wearing a shirt of dark violet and swirling skirts of green, and the many shades of purple and yellow on her vest were both happy and soothing and everything that was Bethen. Torrant noticed that Lane’s soft glance fell more often on his wife than anywhere else in the colorful clearing of ladies dressed for spring.

  “Nothing!” Aldam said shortly in response to Roes’s question. Almost desperately he picked Cwyn up and swung him around to make him giggle. Or used him as a mace to ward off encroachers—either one.

  Torrant looked back from where they’d come and saw four girls—the four who had been the most aggressive toward him and the most dismissive toward Stanny and Aldam—and then looked back at the family and suppressed a whimper. All the babies were taken. With not a little bit of panic, he grabbed Yarri’s hand and said, “Look, Yar—they’ve got one of those circle swings—the ones where you sit on a bench and twirl round and round…. You want to go?”

  “Please?” Yarri looked up at Bethen, who nodded readily, laughing gently at the situation, and she urged Roes to go with them.

  “Fine,” Roes sniffed in a transparent display of irritation. “It’s not like I’m going to wear myself out dancing this year, is it?”

  “There is no law that says you can’t dance, my darling,” Bethen said with brusque sympathy.

  “But not with Aldam,” Roes finished, then flounced down the hill after Torrant, grabbing Yarri’s hand with all of the bossiness she could summon under the circumstances.

  LANE SIGHED, watching both his daughter’s posture and the disappointed posture of the four girls. Each girl tossed hair in a different brilliant shade in the sun, as they saw that their new moons had hidden themselves behind clouds of children. With sighs, they turned back toward the ribbon pole, which was being erected in the center of the square, and started vying to scroll the ribbons out from the center in anticipation of the first dance. Soon, Lane thought, soon his little girl would be one of those predatory creatures—and unlike those girls, his daughter had a clear scent for her prey.