A Nearer Moon (8 page)

A
week slid by, a week given to sadness and regret Maybe because Mama couldn't face the guilt and grief brimming in Luna's eyes, or maybe because she couldn't find space around her own guilt and grief, she and Luna may as well have been strangers—not speaking, not even meeting each other's eyes.

Things had been different once. Granny Tu said so. Before Daddy died, Mama had been the first out on the water every day, quick to share a grin and a kiss, to snatch up one of her daughters and spin her around and around, high in the air, until the laughter of little girls pealed like bells across the swamp.

But sorrow can spread inside a person, blocking out any light that might find its way in to heal the hidden hurts. And so Mama went more and more often to the chapel at the end of the walkways, and spent more and more of her time at home wreathed in her pious quiet, in her grieving silence.

There were small things that could be done to make the sick person's time a little easier. So when Willow closed her eyes for her morning nap, Luna tiptoed outside. She passed Benny's hut and tramped along the walkways past the school, past the chapel where Mama had been since early that morning, and over the long bridge that led from the huts to the garden.

The trail zigzagged up the hill, and Luna put her hands out to either side to brush the tops of the ferns that lined the path and tickled her shins with every step. A solitary butterfly wafted out of the trees to settle on a cluster of orchids, while honeybees dipped in and out of the cascading blooms.

At the top of the hill, Luna opened the garden gate and fastened it behind her before stepping carefully between tidy rows of crops. Uncle Tin was in the far corner, kneeling beside a flowering cucumber plant and delicately nudging the spiraling tendrils onto the lattice behind it.

“Morning, Uncle Tin,” Luna said, and she knelt down beside him, digging her fingers into the warm, dark soil.

“Well, good morning to you, Luna,” Uncle Tin said in his leisurely way. “What'll it be today?”

“Willow's still sweating like she has a fever. She doesn't say it, but her eyes are all squinty, so I think her head hurts a lot.”

Uncle Tin nodded as he listened, sifting through the soil with his weathered hands.

“And she still grimaces when she turns over, like it hurts to move at all.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Uncle Tin said. “Fever, headache, body aches. That sounds about right.” He tilted his head to give Luna a sad smile.

Of course it sounded about right. Everybody, since the swamp first settled over the land, had shown the same symptoms. The same three weeks. The same helpless slow slide. Luna fixed her eyes on the ground in front of her, where a beetle struggled across the uneven soil. The dirt crumbled beneath him, and he fell onto his back, legs flailing as he struggled to right himself and turn his armored back once again to face the world.

“So, feverfew, right? For the fever? And basil for the body aches? And peppermint for the headaches?”

“My, but you're a quick learner.” Uncle Tin dusted off
his hands and grasped the polished knot at the end of his walking cane. “Let's go look in the herbal to see if there's something I'm forgetting.”

Luna helped her great-uncle lumber to his feet and walked with him to the garden shed where he kept his book of plants and herb lore. Inside, a small table was cluttered with jars of sprouting seeds and spools of twine. Spades and shovels were stacked in the corner, and rows of dusty shelves climbed to the ceiling.

Uncle Tin leafed delicately through the pages. “This book has been in our family for seven generations. It's got notes on tending the garden and taking care of the jungle. It's got warnings for how to keep from angering the sprites, from before they left, of course. There's even a little of the sprite's magic at the back,” he added with a grin, “if you believe in that sort of thing.”

“What do you mean, magic?”

“Oh, I wouldn't know. You'd have to see a sprite to ask it. And no one I know has ever seen so much as one's shadow.”

“If you've never seen them, how did you know they were ever there at all?”

“You just knew. You got the feeling, sure as a body knows anything, that you were walking on land in their care. Anyway, the air is quieter now without the sound
of their tiny feet rustling up the clouds. And sometimes I think the jungle itself is a little lonely.

“What do I know? I just tend to my garden. But some keepers of this book knew plenty about the sprites and their ways. Maybe if we had learned more about them, they wouldn't have left. Maybe, I don't know—”

“What is it, Uncle Tin?”

“Maybe they would have known how to help your sister.”

Luna didn't want to say that he was talking pure nonsense. She didn't want to hurt his feelings. “We should have been the ones who left.”

“Oh, a few families did when the sickness first came. But something went wrong every time, and they always came back.”

Luna scuffed her foot against the dirt floor and kicked the legs of the worktable. A shower of dust settled over her hair and shoulders. She sneezed, and kicked the table once more for good measure. “Yeah, well, your stupid sprites can have their stupid swamp.”

Uncle Tin chuckled, the sound rumbling low in his chest. “Everything is good for something, Luna. Even things that don't seem like it on the surface. Even the swamp that made your sister so sick.

“It's the silt from the swamp that makes our soil so
rich. It's the flowers that grow along the edges that keep the mouse deer and the honeybees close. I know it's hard now, but you'll see—no one thing in this world is pure evil or pure good.”

The air in the shed seemed to whistle in Luna's ears, and a sweat broke out at her hairline. She collected the herbs and backed away. “Well, thanks, Uncle Tin.”

Magic. Hmph.

Luna poured water over the herbs and set the whistling kettle aside. She cupped the mug between her palms and watched the herbs unfurl in a ponderous dance, the aroma of steeping mint rising with the steam to wash over her face.

Tap, tap, tap.

Benny peered in through the screen door, waving when Luna rose to meet him. “Hey!”

“
Shhhh
. You're going to wake them both.” She jerked her head back toward the bed where Willow lay and the rocking chair where Granny Tu slept, her mouth open wide enough to catch a swarm of flies.

“It's time for you to bust out of here, Luna. Have you even seen the sun in a week?”

“I'm busy.”

“Well, get unbusy.”

“I can't go mucking around with you when Willow's not even strong enough to lift her baby finger.” But Benny was right. Luna missed the feel of her push pole in her hands and the coarse belly of her boat under her bare feet. She missed laughing. She missed having something to laugh about.

“I'll tell you one thing: If Willow could string a scolding together, she'd tell you to get out of that sickroom and quit moping around.”

Luna crossed her arms over her chest.

“Come on. You know she wouldn't want this.”

Luna sighed. “All right.” She slid past the screen door and stepped out onto the porch with Benny. “What is it?”

“The firecrackers for Willow, of course! Perigee is next week, and I want to set some off where she can see them from her window.”

Luna rubbed her eyes. Perigee already? Willow's sickness would only last three weeks, and it had already been one—Luna ticked the days off on her fingers—one and a half. She swallowed past a hard lump in her throat. Her sister wouldn't live much past the festival.

“Okay. But I don't want to be gone too long. What do you need me for?”

“You take your boat out there in the middle of the swamp. I'll wait by Willow's window so I'll know what
she can see and what she can't.” Benny thrust a heavy sack with a rope and a float attached into Luna's hands. “When you get where I can see you, drop that in the swamp, so I'll know where to set off the firecrackers.”

Benny went around the back of the hut while Luna climbed down the ladder and stepped into her boat, untying and shoving off in one fluid movement. It felt good to have her boat under her feet again, to feel the muscles of her legs flexing and straining to keep her balance. She thrust her pole into the mud and pushed out into the middle of the swamp.

When Luna was far enough away from the huts and the low-slung walkways, she turned in a slow circle and waved over her head to Benny. She lifted her pole into the air and Benny scrunched down until his eye line was level with the windowsill.

“Left, left,” he mouthed, his arm jabbing in the air over his head. “No—too far—go back!” His arm jabbed in the other direction. “Right there—drop it!”

Luna dumped the sack full of rocks with its bobbing lead down into the water and counted the seconds until it hit and settled into the mud below. She tied the float taut so it couldn't drift.

Benny whooped, then clapped his hand over his mouth.

Luna rested her chin against the tip of her steering pole, looking out over the swamp at the clusters of swaying reeds at the edges and the trees half in and half out of the water. All that water had been part of the river at one time. Granny Tu said so. Maybe if it hadn't always been a swamp, it hadn't always been sick, either.

Luna took her time winding back through the trees and under the walkways, her thoughts unraveling like a ball of yarn, the fringes of an idea beginning to knit together.

“All set!” Benny whispered as her boat banged against the stilts.

“Yeah.” Luna tied off and climbed back up to the porch. “Except I have to figure out how I'm supposed to keep the boat in that one spot and somehow dodge the firecrackers you light up at the other end.”

Benny laughed, swatting away the idea like a gnat buzzing in front of his face. “Nonsense! It's going to be the best show of firecrackers you've ever seen!”

Luna grinned. Benny was right about one thing: Willow was going to love it.

“I've got to ask Granny Tu something. See you later?”

Benny nodded and backed away, down the walkway that led from her hut to his. “I'll be back tomorrow, and you're coming outside with me, even if I have to drag you.”

“As if you could,” Luna shot back over her shoulder.
But as she went inside, her heart felt lighter than it had all week, and the beginnings of a smile tugged at her mouth. She picked up the mug of steeped and cooled tea and set it beside the bed for Willow.

“Granny Tu?” she whispered as she tiptoed into the main room.

“Yes, love?”

“Do you remember the day the river changed its shape?”

“Of course I do.” Granny Tu pulled a long breath through her lips, filling her lungs full enough to last the whole tale. Luna settled on the floor at her grandmother's feet.

“It was the best Perigee these woods have ever seen. Stacks of pies—banana crumble, sago swirl, coconut crunch—piled high as you can imagine. The day before, my mama set me to churning sweet cream so long that I thought my arms would fall clear off.

“The sky was bright, the leaves fairly dancing in the trees. And the moon, of course, was huge in the sky and white as freshly starched cotton. There was music and races and a thunderous firecracker show. Bright-red and golden-yellow waterfalls of light dropping out of the sky, their booms so loud it sounded like the very trees were falling down around us.”

Granny Tu's eyes clouded over and she stumbled in the telling, as if her memory had wandered down a long-forgotten path.

“Then there came a sound like bells tolling through the trees. The ground shook beneath us, and what do you know—the trees
were
falling. We ran for the hilltop and watched from the garden as those big serayas crashed into our sweet, silky river.” Granny Tu walked to the window, where she could look out at the swamp below.

“My mama said the ground just gave way. There never could be a better Perigee—even the dirt knew it!” The strong lines of her face fell. Her voice was softer and quavering when she continued. “Our river was so beautiful, sparkling and dancing through the meadow. You could kneel at the edge and see clear down to the stones lining the riverbed. You could dip your face in and drink, long and deep.

“But now”—Granny Tu shook her head—“it's all mud and sludge and bubbling muck.” She turned away from the window, her eyes landing on Willow's pale, sweat-streaked brow. “No wonder it makes us sick.”