Paper Moons Part 8 (Patreon)

Glancing hesitantly up towards the top of the stairs, I felt my gut twist.  I didn’t trust the woman before me. But her daughter perhaps would be able to help much more.  “I think I would like to hear what she has to say,” I said, nodding towards the girl.  She looked at me with wide, hazel eyes rounded in awe but also struck through with panic.

Before me, Lucinda tilted her head, the candlelight flickering into dark beads of black orange light.  “Why?” she asked simply. Her voice held no more of the firmness from before, but I felt as if I had overstepped. Somehow.

“Because I would like to exhaust all my possibilities,” I said. “Have all my options before me and make a decision from there.” My heart was racing. I was looking at raw power. The likes of which I knew I would not be able to do a thing against.

“Well,” Lucinda said slowly, letting the weight of her word press down on my shoulder with the bony hand of fate.  “Hazel,” she called to the girl, not pulling her eyes from me.  “Come down here and regale us with what you know.”

At first, the girl did not move. She was staring at her mother with deep uncertainty, debating whether she should just turn and run.  I wondered what made a daughter so fearful of the one who bore them.

Slowly, she began to come down the stairs and into the candlelit lobby.  The white bone of animal skulls chittered at her as she passed, their mouths stuffed with herbs, incense steaming from their eyes.  Hazel was not a tall girl and was obviously not a confident one either. She stood before me, wringing her hands in the pattern of her skirts. A black homespun fabric covered with a green moss apron.

“Speak,” Lucinda demanded of her daughter. “You had so much to say before, I don’t see why you are suddenly shy.”

Hazel’s eyes snapped upwards, looking at her and then at me.  “I just… I think that there is a way to help.  It would require us to rework a spell but I think we could take the same type of spell that is used to control the wolves during their moon turn and enhance it in a way that would keep the madness from the absence of the Knowing away.  It may not be a solution forever but it could be a temporary one.”

It sounded almost exactly like what I needed and yet my chest was full of a frozen breath as I looked between mother and daughter.

Lucinda’s eyes narrowed. “Wolves are controlled by herbs from the land because they are deeply connected to the roots of the earthen floor. Celestials are connected to the sky and the cosmos. The eternal night.”

Hazel nodded. “There is rumor that there is a point in the market that you can touch the moon. If we could get a piece of its light, I…”

Lucinda laughed. “Moonlight? Child, I thought you were trying to be helpful?”

Hazel looked down, cheeks a deep crimson.  I could see her slowly shutting down, her shoulders hunching in on herself as her fingers picked more violently at the frayed edges of her apron.

“Where would the location of this moonlight be?” I asked.

Hazel shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s really just a rumor. It could be nothing at all.”

“Go back to dusting, dear. You have wasted enough of our time.” Lucinda turned to me.  “Hallucinogenics,” she told me. “They will buy you time to do whatever it is you need to be doing. Run back to your celestial and ask him what it is he would like to do. You are merely a vessel after all and should most likely be doing the bidding of the life who has mistakenly put themselves in your hands.”

My jaw clenched.  I had been raised to never speak ill of my elders. To treat people with respect.  For most of my life, I had followed that edict but never before had it been so hard to hold my tongue as it was right this moment.

Bowing my head, I spoke through thinned lips.  “I will do so.” I tried to look at the girl before I left. Tried to give her a small nod of my head as if to tell her that I saw her. I wondered if many people did.  She was already in the back of the shop though, dusting.  I wondered what kind of punishment would befall her for me even asking her to speak.

~~~~~

When I returned to the cottage, I was greeted with the absolute enticing smell of suckling pig.  Reese was out back around a fire pit, roasting an entire hog.  Elias sat in a chair nearby, looking as if he had regained some of his color while Gabriel sat next to him, hunched over.  As I rounded the corner of the house, his eyes lifted though, perking up a bit.

“You’re not dead,” Reese proclaimed. “Good for you.”

I stood on the outside ring of the family, looking in on them.  I could see a few empty bottles sitting around, a mug of tea or kafe, nearby.  They looked as if they had been casually conversing and I hesitated to interrupt them.

“Were you successful?” Elias asked hopefully. I couldn’t help but notice the dark rings beneath his eyes.  This was important to him in several ways.

“I….”

“Elias,” Gabriel started. “She should eat.  It’s been a long day and she does look famished.”

“Oh, I don’t wish to impose,” I said quickly.

“I have an entire pig here. You think you’re taking food from us?” Reese asked with a raised brow.

Elias nodded. “Reese’s new job gave him a bonus today.”

“It would be nice if he would now tell us what his new job is,” Gabriel said softly.  Normally, that statement would be laced with suspicion, but the two celestials only looked at the man as if he could do no wrong.  They were proud of what he had done and all that he had provided.  “Truly, Graceling. Come sit with us and feast.”

I took my place near the fire, holding out my gloves hands.  The warmth seeped into me.  It wasn’t exactly cold out but I still liked the heat. It reminded me of home.

“I have a few options for us,” I told them.  “I went to the apothecary and was able to talk to the chemist at the end of the alley.”

“Lucinda Albright?” Reese whistled low. “Surprised you came back at all. Shouldn’t have gone there with the power you have.”

“Yes,” I said, looking down at my covered grace. “I am coming to understand that now.”

“What did she say?” Elias asked.

“She suggested that I might be able to guide Gabriel through the madness but to use hallucinogenics to do so.  I do not believe this is a method that she truly believes in and was merely testing to see how stupid I may be.”

Reese snorted. “Sounds about right.”

“But she did say there were perhaps some other spells she could do. She would need time and a lot of coin.”

“Why didn’t you do that one then?” Reese asked.

“She didn’t give me the option. She said I should come home and ask the man that this truly effects.” I looked at Gabriel. He had been mainly silent, staring at the fire. The flames reflected silver in his eyes.

“You said there were multiple options?” he asked.

“There was a girl there who spoke of the moon. She said if she had a bit of moonlight, she may be able to manipulate a wolven moon spell into being effective for you. It would at the very least keep the madness at bay until we can figure out how to navigate you through this world.”

Gabriel nodded but said nothing for a long moment. The fire crackled along with the hog.  “I do not wish to trust a woman who knowingly would have given me a hallucinogenic for the sake of getting you out of her shop,” he said carefully.  “But do we know what the legitimacy of this other spell?”

I shook my head. “I know very little of spell work.” Gabriel lifted his gaze to both Reese and Elias.  Both of them shook their head though. We were at a loss.

“Well then,” Gabriel intoned. “We shall go find the moon, I believe.”

“We?”

“You will not be going alone,” he stated.  “And seeing as you are taking this journey because of me, it is only logical that I join you.”

“You are not strong enough, Gabriel,” Elias implored. “You can’t just walk out into the Night Market. You don’t know what it contains.”

“I trust the Graceling,” he said softly.

“Gabriel…”

“My decision is final.”

Reese looked between both Elias and Gabriel, looking as if he wanted to say something. Instead, he pulled a paring knife from his pocket. “Who wants pig cheek?”

I watched that night as they carved into the pig. As plates were passed around, mine given to me in a warning not to break anymore.  The three of them put aside their disagreement and spoke kindly through the evening and by the end of my second plate, I found myself relaxing into their candor and bouts of laughter. I mainly listened, feeling myself smile at the familiar feeling of family once more.  When the night grew chilly, Gabriel set a blanket around my shoulders, coming to sit by my side. Reese and Elias were off in the fields, holding hands and slow dancing beneath the light of the moon.

“They are beautiful,” I whispered.

Gabriel nodded.  “Their love is unique.”

Turning to him, I shook my head. “I will do this quest for you without your help. You can stay here with them if you wish.”

“I do not.”

“Why?”

There was very little contemplation to my question. The answer to it was one he had already thought well on and were now engrained in his bones. “Because it is important to make my way in this world if I choose to live within it as well.”  I felt a small thrill at his words.  I had always felt that way and very rarely had I been given the chance to prove myself.

“I do not even know where we should begin looking for the likes of a moon,” I laughed at him, expelling the excitement and the nerves that I was felling over our upcoming journey. “It seems like a quest straight from a fairy tale.”

“Fairy tale?”

“A book,” I corrected.

“Well, where do these books suggest you start?”

[[We must find someone that perhaps has knowledge of the moon itself]]

[[We must simply look for the highest point in the market where the land and sky can touch]]

[[We must find a tavern. All great journey’s start in a tavern]]