The Knave and the Moon (Stonewater Kingdom #2)

The End of the Story

You know this story, Bartholomew, though you do not know all of it.

I’ll tell it to you as best I can and promise to be honest in my talebearing.

If I’m not, that would be all right. A story is a kind of spectacle, I think.

A strange, shimmering display. How you look at it determines its meaning—it is not for me to say if belief inspired by spectacle should be counted as honest.

Once, a creature lay naked upon fields of bromegrass, and the world grew around her.

Her mind was full of knowledge, her limbs swollen with strength, her heart beating a contented rhythm.

She looked up at the moon and the moon looked down at her and they were the same: ever-changing, always constant.

But the world shifted. She, who had never been truly known, was revered, then desired.

Stories echoed, and suddenly folk of the land felt entitled to her life; it was not long before they took it.

Her flesh was eaten, her bones chipped away, her blood swallowed in thirsty gulps.

When she cried out, the song was a minor tune.

It caught the wind and has ridden it ever since.

There was naught for her to do but to lay still, to wait.

To dream.

I’m sorry. I don’t care to go back to this part of the story either, Bartholomew, but I must. To know the world is, in some part, to mourn it, and what is the past, really, if not a portent? If I don’t tell you what occurred exactly as I know it…

It could all happen again.