A Nearer Moon (10 page)

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.

I
t 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.

“Benny!” Luna thrust her arms into the mud and waded through the muck, grabbing at anything solid.

“Benny!” she screamed, though the sound that reached her was muffled, as if she had cotton balls stuck in her ears. Luna spread her arms wide as she fished through the sludge for a foot, a wrist—anything. She slipped and crashed to the ground, landing on something solid and wiggling.

“Benny!” she wailed, righting herself and grabbing at the wiggling thing beneath her. She pulled and a wrist appeared out of the muck, followed by an elbow and a shoulder and a sputtering, mud-smeared face. Luna pulled until Benny was sitting upright. She wiped the silt away from his nose and around his lips and
hefted him up, pushed him up and over the riverbank, panting for breath as she climbed up after.

Benny crawled on his hands and knees, hacking and spitting, and Luna thought she had never heard a more beautiful sound. He coughed, and big brown splats of goo dotted the ground in front of him.

Benny sat back, leaning into Luna's side. He looked down at the dam below, still shifting, still grumbling, but still holding the swamp in place. He looked at Luna, and at the stream of people rushing along the edge of the swamp toward them.

“Now we're really gonna get it,” he said.

Luna laughed and threw her arms around his mud-caked body. “And this time I'm pretty sure we deserve it.”

Benny chuckled, but it turned into a hacking cough as he fought to clear his lungs again. Luna helped him to stand, and they turned together to face the crowd. “I'm sorry, Benny,” Luna said. “We never should have tried something so dangerous. You could've—you almost—”

Benny cut her words off with a wave of his hand. “We're even,” he said as he leaned into her. “I won't dream up any more stupid ideas if you won't. Deal?”

“Deal.”

P
erdy returned every summer when the moon was at its nearest and pulled herself to the surface of the water where the door had been, hoping and wishing that somehow Gia had found a way back to her.

The years folded, one into another, and still she was alone.

Perdy's heart grew small, and sorrow hardened it into a lonely, ugly thing. The still water grew thick with weeds, and light filtered less and less into the depths. As the decades passed, Perdy sank into the muck until everything around her was as dark and silent as her broken, blackened heart.

After so many years of being alone, of missing her sister's hand in hers, her sister's smile, she came to hate the sound of laughter and any reminder of joy. A fish that frolicked a little too close or a tadpole just grown into his legs that kicked a little too sprightly would spur the anger inside her, and she would lash out like the forked tongue of a water snake to freeze that joy in its place, to stop it from disturbing her terrible quiet, from rustling up feelings that were too sharp to bear.

So it was that before a handful of decades slid by, Perdy was not a creature she herself would have recognized had she bothered to look in a calm, clear pool of water. She had changed so greatly that even had Gia been near, the sound of Perdy's shriveled, wicked heart beating would no longer echo her own.

L
una walked between the huts and knocked softly on Benny's door. He answered, a mug of tea in his hands and a thick scarf wrapped around his neck. Sweat dripped down his temples, and his face was flushed pink.

“You all right?”

“Yeah,” Benny said, puffing out his chest only to double over in a coughing fit. “Well, almost, anyway.”

“You're not sick, are you?”

“Nah,” he whispered, rolling his eyes. “It just makes Poppa feel better to stuff me full of medicine and swaddle me like a baby even though it's hot as blazes in here. How's Willow?”

Luna shook her head. She swallowed, but she didn't have any answer for him. “Did your poppa take away the rest of your firecrackers?”

“Yeah. I guess I deserved it.” Benny shrugged, tugging at the scarf around his neck. “But it should've worked. That dam was all set to collapse—I could hear those old logs groaning and the weight shifting. It should've busted clean through.”

“Good thing it didn't, or else you would've been sunk under a ton of water. What—a half ton of mud wasn't enough for you?”