Chapter Twenty-Nine The Eternal Moon
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE ETERNAL MOON
I lay upon a flat bed of grass, the same moon hovering above me as the one I’d seen over the tor. Only now it was distant. Bleary and farther away. Everything was blended in a pale, liminal haze.
The spring, Rory—the sprites—were gone. Not even the stone pieces of Aisling Cathedral’s broken body remained. When I looked down at myself, I was naked. Skin and hair; muscle, fat, bone. My armor had vanished, but not the scar on my abdomen. I was bare.
And entirely alone.
I stood. Called out. “Bartholomew?”
A shadow shifted in my periphery. I turned. There was nothing there.
I began to walk, the grass soft and warm beneath my feet. The light around me brightened, then flickered. When it began to fade, my body remembered what it was to Divine—what it was to fall through dreams. I braced myself, expecting pain.
None came.
The light around me flickered again. This time, when a shadow moved, I whirled to meet it. A figure stood behind me. It wasn’t Bartholomew.
It was an ox, made entirely of stone.
I put a hand to my throat. “Who are you?”
The ox was muscular, with great ears that fell from the back of its skull. It had no horns, its prominent feature a large hump protruding from the back of its shoulders. When it spoke, its voice was that of an aged woman. Deep and frayed and resounding. “Which name would you like?”
I labored to swallow. “Whichever you’ll give.”
The ox blinked. Even her eyelashes were made of stone.
“Once, I had no name. Trees and rock and water and wind, who gave birth to all manner of creatures, called to me in our language, but none saw fit to give me a name, for I was the only of my kind for a long while. Then, in what you might call a hundred lifetimes, folk came to the land. They spoke a new language, and it had many titles. They gave Traum to the land, and I was auroch. A great, gentle beast of burden. But then time went on, and that name was forgotten, and so I was but ox. Eventually, like all the other creatures of the land, I became sprite.”
I stared at her in utter awe. “You’re Der ewige Mond.”
“The Eternal Moon. Yes. I do believe a king called me that once. It will fade with time like the others, and I will be as I was before. Nameless.” She blinked, long pale lashes tapping against her stone cheeks. “Something a Diviner knows a little about, I think.”
“And you’ve been showing me visions.” I did not know what to say. A Diviner, entirely ill-prepared to dream. “So you’re”—I fumbled with the words—“a god?”
The ox’s nostrils widened, and she sighed.
Tenderly. Pityingly. “What is a god without believers, and what is a believer without a story to believe in? I am but an ancient creature, like the moon, seen but never known. And while my body is full of magic, and those who drown in my blood are gifted visions by the oppressive hand who drowns them, I have never given you a vision, Sybil Delling. All I’ve ever shown were my own memories. ”
She must have seen the turmoil on my brow because her voice softened. She asked, “Would you like me to tell you the story?”
What answer could I give but yes?
“Once, I lay upon fields of bromegrass, and the world grew around me. My mind was full of knowledge, my limbs swollen with strength, my heart beating a contented rhythm. I looked up at the moon and the moon looked down at me and we were the same: ever changing, always constant.
“But the world shifted. Folk came to the land of Traum. Craftsmen. First, they revered me. For my wondrous size, the strength and strangeness of my body. But before long, my wandering nature put them ill at ease. To them I was a holy figure, mercurial in my comings and goings. Better I was in one place; folk were tired of wearing the face of goodness all the time.”
She sighed. “They climbed upon me. Put their weapons in my body.
I lay down, and stayed that way a long while, turning to stone, gowans blossoming from my back.
Centuries later, a carver of stone came, hitting me again and again until he hit my heart and found the spring of my blood, waiting there.
Not long after, another carver of stone was born in my waters, and she would become your abbess.
I do not think she realized that the limestone upon the tor was my heart and the water leaching from it was my blood, but she learned quickly enough how strange both were, even though I tend to think all hearts are transportive and destructive in their own ways—all hearts carry what some might deign to call magic.
“She carved pieces from me. Built a cathedral over me, and the weight was so vast it made me still. So very still. Children dreamed and drowned in my heart blood, and there was naught I could do to reach them. But then you came, Sybil Delling, and you razed the cathedral, and for the first time in centuries, I felt my body stir.”
“The earthquake,” I said, held captive by the story. “What of the ox-eye? Was that—” It was awe inspiring. A little sickening. “Was I eating you?”
“You were made in my water. Made of me. To have my memories, too, is the least painful thing anyone might take.”
I peered into the liminal space, searching it as I’d once searched the hamlets for my Diviners—desperately. “What about Bartholomew? What’s become of my gargoyle?”
She was quiet a long time. “I think you already know.”
I shut my eyes. Shoved the heels of my palms against them and wept, my sorrow hitting me again and again, striving to break me open.
A cold, gentle muzzle drew up my arm.
Far away, a voice echoed. Not within our pale space, but beyond. It was Rory, calling my name.
The ox and I turned our gazes upward. “You understand by now,” she told me, “that you and your knight up there are the last of your kind. You will live very long lives, even if you no longer drink my water. You will age slowly. One way or another, in ten years or one thousand, you will be as I am. Entirely made of stone. Perhaps after, in another millennium or two, you will sleep, and never dream. But until that day comes”—she fixed her solemn gaze upon me—“I’d like you to mind the tor.
Let it no longer be a bleeding heart or a stage for drowning and dreaming.
Let it be a place the old language might hum, uninterrupted.
Those who know me, sprites of the wild who still remember, will come to listen.
One day, folk of the hamlets will come, too, and hear the story of me, of the Omens, of Aisling Cathedral and its Diviners, of kings and knights, knaves and sprites—of all that has happened. And after, perhaps…”
She hummed, and it was a minor tune. “Perhaps the Stonewater Kingdom’s tragedies will not so readily repeat themselves.”
“The tor is not safe for sprites,” I murmured. “None of Traum is. It hasn’t been in a long while.”
“Not since Bauer women of old put their axes in me. Yes, I know.” Her voice softened. “But things change. The name Bauer means something yet.”
She turned as if to go.
“And who do you wish to tell the story?” I called after her. “Me?”
She looked back. Shook her head.
“Rory, then?”
“Mercy, no.”
I frowned.
“Your young king was right. Power always has to go somewhere. And I think,” she mused, “this particular story of gods and sprites and kings, Diviners and knights, must have its embellishments. Oddities. Absurdities. No one really believes a story if it’s entirely true, do they?”
I held very still. “Did you have someone particular in mind?”
“Indeed I do.”
Frail as the wings of a moth, my heart lightened.
Rory called again, his voice louder this time. The dream was coming to an end.
I reached out. Put my hand upon the ox’s muzzle. “And I’ll see this person soon?”
“Oh, I should think so. But first, you must do as I tell you.”
She leaned in, whispering in my ear, her muzzle softer than I thought stone could be. I listened, tears brimming in my eyes.
The ox stepped back, then, turning away and moving slowly, she began to disappear into the pale nothingness.
“He’s a very peculiar boy,” she murmured.
“In all the time I’ve looked upon the world, and that is a very, very long time, there has never been a soul quite like his.
I doubt there ever will be. Young yet old, wise and full of curiosity, fearsome but gentle—childlike in his wonder.
A strange, beautiful contradiction. And who am I to say, but often I’ve wondered…
“What is a god, if not that?”
I woke, and Rory was there. He held me to his chest and dropped tears in my hair, and I stayed in his arms until we both fell asleep in the grass.
An hour before dawn, I was awake. I took the hammer from my belt.
Found an iron rod in the rubble of the cathedral.
Brought it back to the spring and the limestone it leached from, and I did what I’d done since my death, as if I’d been reborn to do it.
I lifted my hammer, my newly made chisel—
And swung.
From the body of Der ewige Mond, I extracted a great chunk of limestone.
Rory woke and watched me work. The day through and then into the night, I chipped and carved away the stone with slow, gentle precision. By then my muscles were stiff, my abdomen sharp with pain, my eyes sore for concentrating. I was coated in limestone dust, wearier than I’d ever been.
And full of hope.
Rory let out a breath. “He’s perfect. A little smaller than before…”
“I didn’t want to take too great a chunk from her body.”
“And you’re sure it will work?” he murmured. “The other stone objects were nothing like this.”
“The limestone is her heart, transportive and destructive and full of magic. It will work.” I turned to Rory. Smiled. “Have a little faith.”
We stood back, looking upon the statue I’d carved. And I was glad, for all the time I had not looked upon Traum clearly, that had never been the case when I’d looked upon a certain batlike gargoyle. He was just as he’d been before, but without a single crack.
“What an arduous process it is to wait,” Rory murmured.
The first thing that moved was a stone wing. Then a finger stirred. Slowly, his nose wrinkled, and when the batlike gargoyle blinked, opening his eyes, it did not matter that the moon was but a sliver in the sky—its light shone in the pallid stone of his gaze.
He looked out at the horizon, then, slowly, his eyes turned to Rory, then me. “Oh.” His bottom lip began to quiver, fangs peeking out. “It’s you, Bartholomew.”
Tears streamed down my face. “You know me? You—you remember me?”
“Of course. I am the most remembering creature I know, and I’d know you anywhere, Sybil Delling.” He reached out, took my hand, his fingers trilling excitedly. “It’s good to be home.”