New Decameron Forty-One: Nalo Hopkinson (Patreon)

Child Moon

by Nalo Hopkinson 

A noise wakes Amy. She sits up on the sleeping pallet she shares with her husband Dorin in their one-room cottage. The baby is in its basket, an arms-length away. It is chuckling to itself. It is holding its blanket between tiny hands and ripping it to shreds with small, sharp teeth. That's what had woken Amy up: the soft chortle; the sound of cloth tearing. Beside Amy, Dorin sleeps, oblivious.

The baby's been getting worse. Amy has promised Dorin to stop her monthly moondark pilgrimages to the spring. He offered to accompany her, but the woodwife says it must be the mother alone. 

Dorin doesn't believe in the woodwife's cures, and doesn't want Amy going out in the cool of night. Besides, he says, there might be leopards up there in the mountains.

But maybe just one last time. Maybe it will work this time. 

She has to take the baby with her; it's due another feeding soon. If Amy isn't there to give the baby suck, its hungry keening will awaken Dorin, and he will see that Amy isn't in the cottage. He will worry. Then he will have to feed the baby himself, and he's already so tired!

Amy rises quietly. She wraps the baby in its shredded blanket, and then cocoons it in one of her shawls, for warmth. Holding her bundled child to her bosom, Amy tiptoes out of the cottage. She has to latch the door from the outside, since it has no lock. But she'll be back before sunrise opens Dorin's eyes. She picks up the pail and spear that are kept just outside the cottage door. She takes the path towards the mountains. 

The girls between the rivers don't come down to the valleys. Amy has heard them warbling to each other from hill to hill during her climbs up to the source of the River Elta to fetch a bowl of water to wash her baby's hair. 

This is Amy's third visit up to the spring. She made the first pilgrimage in the month the baby was born sickly, and one the next month, because the baby wasn't better. The woodwife says it must be water collected on nights when there's no light shining on it from the mad-making moon.

The rivers Elta, Eisel, Ginife and Lucasta run between the mountains like the fingers of a hand a child presses into wet sand on a beach. The mounded sand between the fingers are the Grief Mountains, called by some the Goat Mountains. But really, there are no goats, though perhaps there were at some point. Perhaps the girls ate them.

Once she's well on her way up the mountain and she can see the shadow of the sleeping village below her, Amy pauses to pull back a corner of the baby's swaddling.

The child is awake and calmly alert. Amy hasn't seen it sleep in the two months of its life; not once. It lies quietly in its basket all night, eyes open and looking around. Its eyes are growing bigger. It has taken to biting Amy's breast when she gives it suck. No two-month old baby should have teeth.

Her baby is beautiful; chubby, with a head full of fat curls of hair, and those big, bright eyes in its brown face; those tiny, milk-coloured teeth, like kernels of young corn. Even Dorin agrees that it's beautiful, though he's doubtful about its pointed teeth and white hair; markers, along with its eyes and its velvety skin, of its illness. The rest of the village has been muttering and staying away. Such children aren't born often, and don't usually live this long.

Amy doesn't care. Whenever she gives suck to her baby -- milk with droplets of blood in it from the baby's overeager teeth -- a feeling of serenity comes over her, and she knows all is well. She thinks it's the baby doing that somehow, but she doesn't mind. She just wants to make her child normal and healthy so it will live.

Amy folds the swaddling snugly around the child again. She clutches it closer against her aching bosom and resumes her climb. She's about halfway up the mountainside. Tonight, snow frosts the tips of the short, sparse mountain grasses. They crunch underfoot. It's been winter in the high, high mountains for a month. The pail hangs by its handle from Amy's wrist, the one beneath the baby's rump. With every step, the pail knocks against the strings of wife beads around Amy's waist, under her wrapper. Amy hopes the clacking noise will scare away any leopards. 

Is that a sly rustling in the low, twisted mountain acacias beside the path? Amy stills her feet for an impossibly long handful of heartbeats, listening. Nothing. She starts walking again, a little faster.

Rustle. 

Amy stops. 

Silence.

She tells herself the sound is her, when she walks and the hem of her wrapper scrapes against the frost-rimed grass. She keeps climbing the mountain path, in a darkness so black it has a nap, like the dense fur of the village's barkless dogs.

Amy has gotten to know the way pretty well, but she still thanks Bondyè for the faint glow of frost edging everything.

The girls between the rivers feed on the moon. They sip from Her light night by night. Night by night, they bleed Her. They grow fat and torpid as ticks on a dog. The moon withers away till it dies. The girls between the rivers grow lean and hungry, their eyes avid, their ears keen. They huddle whimpering in their caves in the mountains, praying for the night sky to bless them again. If their prayers are heard, the child moon rises from the moon's ashes a week later. The cycle begins again.

From inside the twisted forest comes a dopplering yelp, suddenly cut off. Amy gasps and swings towards the noise. The baby, too, half-turns towards the sound. It's cooing, its eyes wide and bright. Its movement sets the pail a-swing, knocking the spear out of Amy's grasp. The bulk of the baby in her arms prevents her from seeing where it landed. The rustling through the forest and the panick-footed thud of something fleeing is coming closer. She needs the spear! Amy stoops with her baby -- the pail, its handle still trapped around her wrist, clacks painfully against her knees -- and blindly scrabbles for the spear in the short, spiky brush.

Her sudden crouch is what saves them.

A creature bursts out of the forest, bleating. Amy and her baby are directly in its path. Amy has a fleeting impression of four spindly legs. Long, whitish fur. The creature lurches in surprise at the apparition that is Amy and her baby. It's moving too quickly to detour around them. It barely manages to twist its headlong momentum into a clumsy leap. Amy has her baby on the ground beneath her. She curls her body protectively over it. The claws of one of the creature's back legs score Amy's shoulder, and then it leaps clear of them. It dashes across the path and enters the forest on the other side. Amy's searching hand closes around the shaft of her spear. She is still on her knees when she hears something else coming through the brush. Then it is upon them; a brindled shadow, as wide across as the heavy double wooden doors of the house of worship in the village. Intent on hunting the first creature, it doesn't seem to notice Amy and baby. It will brush by them, barely. Parental fierceness and something else half-realized put steel in Amy's thews. Still on one knee over her child, Amy braces the butt end of the spear against the ground. Two-handed, she pulls the tip up to shoulder height. The beast thunders by, so close that Amy can smell the must of its fur. The spear connects, jarring Amy's arms. The beast's momentum nearly drags the spear from her hand, but she holds on. The creature snarls and briefly twists away from the head of the spear. But it keeps galloping forward in the direction of its prey, until it, too, disappears into the scrub forest on the other side of the path.

Amy sits down hard. She's breathing heavily, tearily. Hher whole body is shuddering with reaction. She manages to lift her child, peel back its swaddling. The baby is unharmed. Its eyes are wide and fascinated. They reflect the faint glow of the frost-rimmed grass. 

The baby slobbers at Amy's fingers, which are wet with the beast's blood. The child is hungry. Amy lets it lick the blood from her fingers awhile as catches her breath a little. Then she pulls down one side of her tunic and puts the baby to her breast. She winces as it bites and latches. It sucks contentedly at her mingled milk and blood. It clutches one of her fingers in its small, trusting fist. Its tiny cheeks work in and out. Amy kisses the top of the baby's head, the tender spot at its crown that smells faintly of sweetlime blossoms. The times when Amy has been too weak and blood-let to give suck to their unweaned child, Dorin has in desperation put the baby to his own breast; let it bite him there; let it suckle his blood. He doesn't mind, he says. This is his child, too.

Now that the disturbance has passed, the small night animals in the knurled forest commence their wheeting and peeping noises once more. Amy knows she must get going again. She could nurse her baby while walking, but she's drained. Just a bit more rest. Her shoulder stings where the first creature's hoof grazed it. Her head is spinning. So she sits, breathing herself calm.

There are spots of the beast's blood on the path. And it comes to Amy what she glimpsed out of the corner of her eye as the first creature fled. Why she went to its defense.

After it leapt over her and her baby, it landed on two spindly, goatish legs. It kept running that way, upright, like a person.

And clinging to the fur of its back was a small, naked child.

The memory galvanizes Amy into a crouch, but she needs to hold onto her upright spear in order to lever herself up the rest of the way. The baby seems a lot heavier. Amy doggedly continues on up the path. Her head is swimming. She is panting. Her shoulder throbs, though her arms feel numb. The numbness creeps over her torso. She can't even tell whether the baby is still nibbling at her breast. Her thoughts are asking her whether she shouldn't perhaps go back down the mountain for help? But her sensible mind is far away, no louder than a tickle in her skull. She has to get to the spring. That's why she came up here. She can remember that. Back is complicated. Continuing forwards is simple.

There is a tree up ahead, just at the edge of the path. Its trunk is perhaps the thickness of her calf, but that's strong enough. Amy takes one wobbly step after another and all but falls against the tree. Her spear falls from nerveless fingers. Is she even holding the baby any more? She tries to squeeze it more tightly against her chest. It cries, but she cannot, will not let it fall.

Two small, sharp hands grab her by her upper arms. A pair of huge eyes, their depths glowing, looks into hers. The face is slim, foxlike, hairless, but surrounded by long, whitish fur. Amy screams. The face snarls, showing pointed teeth. As Amy's legs give way and she falls, she hears the chuckling of her child.

The sound of trickling awakens her. There is water, only a few steps from her face, plinking downwards tunefully over rocks, to disappear underground a little farther off. It is the spring that leaps down the mountainside to feed the river Elta. Amy is lying on the chilly ground at the third highest point of the Grief Mountains.

She sits up. Her pail and spear lie nearby. Her head is clearer. The feeling has returned to her arms, though her fingers still tingle a little. The wound on her shoulder stings much less than before. Amy pats it, and something flattish, dark and damps sloughs off onto the ground. She picks it up. It appears to be a poultice, but she doesn't recognize the smell of the herbs of which it is made.

The vista out over the valleys takes Amy's breath away with its beauty. Light limns the edges of the mountains. Darkness pools in the vast spaces between. The air is so deep between sky and valley, it's like another country. A country of air. Her village is somewhere down there. Amy sees she had been wrong; tonight is not the last night of moondark, but the first night of the child moon. It hangs in the night sky, a crescented sliver of silver, throwing a bluish glow over the scene. Maybe any water she draws tonight won't help her baby after all.

Her baby! The back of Amy's throat springs water, as though she's going to vomit: part terror that the baby is nowhere in sight; part shame because it wasn't the first thing she thought of when she returned to consciousness. Heartsick, she checks the spring first. She's terrified of what she might find. But if the baby has fallen or crawled into the water, she can't see it. For panicked heartbeats, Amy wheels and wheels about on the plateau, not knowing what to do.

She stills herself. Stifles her sobs. She must think. But then she remembers the wide, heavy beast, hunting deadly in the darkness, and fear for her child rises up so strongly in her that she chokes on it. She grabs up her spear and starts running, stumbling in the darkness. She tracks back and forth from the stream and away, working her way downwards.

Nothing. Nothing.

Someone is coming up the path. Amy has a brief, mad hope that it is Dorin, somehow come to her rescue.

The apparition is not Dorin. It is pale against the dark forest. It walks on two legs, dragging something heavy behind it. It is slightly shorter than she. And it is clutching her baby.

Amy runs towards, it, yelling and brandishing her spear. She shouts to the creature to leave her child alone. But it doesn't appear frightened. It lets go the thing it is dragging. It stands and waits for her, dandling the baby. Amy bares her teeth. She's ready to bite and slash and rend with them if she must, to protect her child.

When Amy is close enough, she snatches the baby away. The baby gives a startled wail. Amy inspects it frantically -- has the creature hurt it?

It's not her child crying. The sound is coming from behind the creature's head. The creature reaches up and back with small, sharp-fingered hands. It swings something over its head and into its arms. It coos comfortingly at the bundle it holds. Its own baby. The creature tenderly licks the baby's tears away, then gives the baby suck on one of its own nipples. It is the same creature that leapt over Amy farther down the mountain.

The creature keeps a wary eye on Amy. It -- she -- stoops and resumes dragging something large and brindled along behind her; the beast that Amy jabbed with her spear. It is very dead. Amy can see her spear gash in its side, red and working, like a mouth. The goat-legged woman is dragging the beast by one foot. After a moment's hesitation, Amy catches up. She tosses her spear down onto the beast's shaggy belly. She takes one of the beast's other legs and helps with the pulling. Each paw is the size of Amy's head. She can't hold the whole paw. She has to twist her fist in its fur instead. Stretched out, the thing is nearly as long as Amy and the other woman laid end to end. Its fur swallows light. Two pairs of tusks cross its upper and lower jaws. Its head has been nearly decapitated. The long-eared head bounces on the ground as they go. A dribble of blood trails from its neck. It wasn't Amy who made that killing blow. The beast is heavy, yet the goat-legged woman pulls it easily. She doesn't need Amy's help.

As they clamber up the path, Amy sneaks glances at the other woman. Her face, hands, and feet, like Amy's, are brown and hairless. Her narrow face with its merest suggestion of a muzzle is quite well-favoured. Amy tries to speak with her, to ask her who or what she is. The woman makes chuffing sounds, but Amy does not understand.

They lie the beast down beside the spring. The woman checks Amy's wounded shoulder, muttering her coughing speech the while. It could be an apology. The woman kneels and picks some leaves from beside the spring. She chews them, pats them into another poultice, and places it on Amy's shoulder. As the poultice draws out the remainder of the poison that came from the woman's claws, she hands Amy back her spear and with one stroke of her clawed fingers, lays the beast open from craw to cradle-string. Amy begins to wonder who had been hunting whom back there when she and her child got in the way of the chase.

The woman slices out organs, lays them aside. She removes a slab of liver which she rinses in the spring, then tears into rough strips with her claws. She offers one of the strips to Amy's baby. Amy says, "It's too young for meat."

But the baby takes the offal with eager paws and starts gnawing messily at it. The woman gives her own child a piece of the liver. It gums it, then tosses it onto the ground and goes back to suckling.

Amy unwraps her shawl from her baby. She spreads the shawl out onto the ground. The two women lay their children down upon it. They sit awkwardly side by side, two shunned mothers soaking their feet in the cool spring water. Amy eats a piece of the liver when offered. It is both fatty and stringy, deliciously unctuous. The babies roll and crawl around, warbling and chuckling at each other. The night is peaceful again.

Eventually, the child moon begins dipping into the valley. The sky is lightening from black to deep blue. It is time to go home. Amy stands. She swings the goat woman's baby into her arms to give it to its mother. Her new friend picks up Amy's baby. The two women stand there, each holding the other's child. Amy's baby is red-muzzled, red handed. A string of raw liver dribbles from the corner of its mouth. The goat woman's baby has muddy hands. Stubby, blunt fingers. A muddy face. No teeth yet. It has already fallen asleep on Amy's shoulder.

Her own child never sleeps.

The women's eyes meet. A decision is jointly made.

The goat woman accompanies Amy some distance down the mountain, to the point where the brindled beast attacked. Then she nuzzles and sniffs her child's neck, licks some mud off its forehead. The child's head lolls a little on Amy's shoulder. It doesn't wake as its first mother says goodbye. Amy touches her baby's arm. For not quite the last time, she strokes the near-invisible down that covers her child's skin; not unusual for a baby to be born with lanugo, but it should have fallen off long since. Amy now understands that the down will remain, will grow long, as will its fingers and toes. That the mild drunkenness that comes from the baby's bite will mature, with age, into a powerful soporific it will be able to deliver with a single swipe of its hind claws.

The goat woman chuffs at Amy, then heads into the forest. Amy continues down the hill. She's taking her child home. She will tell everyone that her baby was miraculously cured by the spring water. Everyone except Dorin; him, she will tell the truth. He will grieve, but she will make him understand. She will take him up the mountain with her sometimes on the first night of the child moon, so the two children can play together. Until her child is old enough to speak, that is; old enough to have memory. They will stop going up the mountain then. She will not put the burden on a child to keep so profound a secret. By then, he'll have playmates amongst the children of the village. He'll forget his eldritch friend soon enough.

Amy softly hums a lullabye as she strides down the mountain.

****************************************************

They sit in silence for a moment. "Moon girls," Maya says after a moment.

"I've never seen a happier use of changelings," he says. The cat, who has crept up on his lap while they were reading, yawns, stretches, and jumps down. 

"What a great story," Maya says. "I can't stop thinking about it. And what a powerful world!"

"Nothing to eat though," he says. "I didn't want mother's milk or blood!"

Maya shudders. "No!" She offers him the bag of nuts from the theatre in Riverside, and he takes a handful, absently. 

"So, shall we look for breakfast?" he asks.

"Sure. What have we got?" Maya eats some more nuts, finishing the bag, which she smooths out and puts down next to the coconut shells on the table.

"Beginning of a new Catherine Asaro novel?" he offers.

"Ooh! Is it in a series or -- no, don't tell me, just let me read it."

And they read.